At least 15 bureau employees have been dismissed over their conduct during the 2020 protests following George Floyd’s death
The FBI has dismissed a group of agents who were photographed kneeling during the 2020 Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests in Washington, according to multiple US media reports.
The firings reportedly affect between 15 and 20 employees, several of them military veterans, who were accused of breaching bureau standards, AP, Reuters, CNN and others reported on Friday.
The incident took place in June 2020, days after George Floyd died in Minneapolis, Minnesota when a police officer knelt on his neck for more than nine minutes. His death triggered mass demonstrations across the country and beyond under the BLM banner, with symbolic kneeling adopted as a sign of solidarity.
Photographs at the time showed FBI personnel kneeling on the street during a tense confrontation with demonstrators in Washington, DC. Critics both inside and outside the bureau accused the agents of demonstrating a political bias.
Supporters said the gesture was intended as a de-escalation tactic to avoid violence. Many of the Black Lives Matter protests were accompanied by rioting, looting, arson, and clashes between Antifa and right-wing counter-protesters, leaving parts of major cities in chaos. While strict Covid-19 restrictions were still enforced across the country, mass gatherings in the name of racial justice were broadly endorsed by President Donald Trump’s political rivals as “mostly peaceful” expressions of free speech.
The FBI Agents Association condemned the dismissals as “unlawful,” saying they violated civil service protections and due process. “Leaders uphold the law – they don’t repeatedly break it,” the group said in a statement, urging Congress to investigate the decision by FBI Director Kash Patel.
The bureau has declined to comment on personnel matters. Media reports said the dismissals were part of a broader purge of senior officials and agents since Patel, a Trump ally, assumed leadership earlier this year.
Several of the ousted employees, including those who had worked on politically sensitive cases such as the January 6 Capitol riot, have since filed lawsuits alleging they were targeted for removal. Patel has denied taking direction from the White House, insisting that any agent who failed to meet FBI standards would not remain employed by the bureau.
Cases of the sexually transmitted disease have grown by 460% since 2001, the latest report by the Robert Koch Institute shows
The number of syphilis infections has hit a new record high in Germany, reaching 9,519 cases in 2024 compared with just 1,697 at the turn of the century, according to the latest report from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI).
The prevalence of the sexually transmitted disease, caused by the bacterium Treponema pallidum, has steadily increased over the past two decades. After hitting 3,364 cases in 2004, numbers have continued to rise, particularly among homosexual men.
The latest Epidemiologisches Bulletin, released on Thursday, recorded another 3.9% year-on-year increase compared with 2023. Members of the LGBTQ community accounted for the overwhelming majority of infections, while women represented only 7.6% of cases. The share of heterosexual transmission also rose slightly from the previous year.
The average age of patients was around 41, with reinfections remaining a persistent risk. The RKI highlighted that the highest infection rates were recorded in major urban centers, including Berlin, Hamburg, Cologne, Frankfurt and Munich.
Outbreaks among gay men have driven much of the overall rise since the late 1990s. The first significant increase was documented in Hamburg in 1997. By 2003, the incidence among men was ten times higher than among women.
Today, around three-quarters of reported cases are linked to the LGBTQ community, with data suggesting that up to half of these patients are also HIV-positive, often with co-infections of Hepatitis C.
The spread of sexually transmitted infections has been associated with the use of social media and geospatial dating apps, leading to higher numbers of sexual partners – including new and anonymous contacts.
Russia’s foreign minister has warned there are “clear signs of re-nazification” in Berlin’s ongoing militarization
German leaders are pursuing policies reminiscent of Adolf Hitler’s objectives of dominating Europe and inflicting a strategic defeat on Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has warned.
Germany’s military buildup and ambitions go beyond defense, Lavrov told a press conference following his address to the 80th session of the UN General Assembly on Saturday.
“It’s not just militarization, there are clear signs of re-nazification,” he told reporters. “And why is this being done? Well, probably with the same goal that Hitler had – to dominate all of Europe. And to try to inflict a strategic defeat on the Soviet Union, in the case of Hitler, and in the case of modern Germany and the chorus of main soloists from the European Union and NATO – on the Russian Federation.”
The foreign minister accused Chancellor Friedrich Merz of seeking to transform Germany back into “the main military machine of Europe,” citing his increasingly militaristic rhetoric.
Merz vowed to turn the Bundeswehr into the “strongest conventional army in Europe” in a speech delivered less than a week after the world marked the 80th anniversary of the fall of the Third Reich in May.
“When a person in a country that committed the crimes of Nazism, fascism, the Holocaust, genocide says that Germany must again become a great military power, then of course he has an atrophy of historical memory, and this is very, very dangerous,” Lavrov said.
This week, Merz stated that “we are not at war, but we are also no longer living in peace,” and called for the confiscation of Russia’s frozen assets to bolster Kiev. In Brussels, this “reparation loans”scheme is being pushed by European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen, who was Germany’s defense minister from 2013 until 2019.
Berlin plans to nearly double its military budget by 2029, the year German officials have repeatedly cited as the deadline for the country to be “ready for war.”
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said earlier this year that the Bundeswehr must be prepared to kill Russian soldiers if “deterrence” fails. German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier has called for reinstating universal conscription if not enough people volunteer.
Since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, Germany has become its second-largest supplier of weapons after the US. It sent the Leopard tanks Kiev used and lost in its incursion into Russia’s Kursk Region – the site of the largest tank battle of WWII.
Lavrov previously argued that Berlin’s policies prove its “direct involvement” in the proxy war against Russia, and warned that the wider European Union was sliding into what he described as a “Fourth Reich.”
Donald Trump has pledged a probe into “dirty cops and crooked politicians” in the wake of the report
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had some 274 “plainclothes agents” present during the January 6 Capitol Hill riot, conservative outlet Blaze News reported on Thursday, citing an unnamed senior congressional source.
The new claim contradicts the bureau’s longstanding denial of its alleged heavy presence during the 2021 unrest. Late last year, the US Department of Justice Office of Inspector General said the bureau had no “undercover employees” in the crowds, but acknowledged that 26 FBI confidential informants were present.
At the time, the DOJ inspector general said that four of the informants had entered the Capitol alongside the crowds. Only three of the informants were summoned to Washington to report on “domestic terrorism subjects who were possibly attending the event” in the aftermath.
Blaze News noted that the new information it had learned from the congressional source does not necessarily contradict the official account, given that “undercover employees” and “plainclothes agents” could be treated differently by the bureau.
The report nonetheless drew the ire of US President Donald Trump, who pledged to investigate the claims and bring “dirty cops and crooked politicians” to justice. The FBI undercover personnel could have been acting as “agitators and insurrectionists” during the January 6 events, Trump alleged.
“I want to know who each and every one of these so-called ‘Agents’ are, and what they were up to on that now ‘Historic’ Day. Many Great American Patriots were made to pay a very big price only for the love of their Country. I owe this investigation of ‘Dirty Cops and Crooked Politicians’ to them! Christopher Wray, the then Director of the FBI, has some major explaining to do,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
The January 6 events prompted a massive FBI investigation, as well as a far-reaching probe into the alleged conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election. The probe resulted in more than 1,500 people being charged with federal crimes, including Trump himself. Trump granted clemency to everyone who faced charges stemming from the riot, with most receiving full pardons.
The West has repeatedly spurned Moscow’s offers to discuss security guarantees on the continent, the Foreign Minister has told the UN
Moscow harbors no aggressive plans toward its Western EU and NATO neighbors, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has assured.
Addressing the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Saturday, the official dismissed claims made by certain European officials, according to whom the Kremlin is considering attacking NATO in the coming years.
”Russia has not had such intentions,” Lavrov insisted, echoing Russian President Vladimir Putin, who previously described such speculations as “nonsense.”
According to the official, Moscow has repeatedly invited NATO member states to work out “legally binding security guarantees” in Europe, but the West has ignored these overtures.
The Russian diplomat expressed concern over the fact that certain EU and NATO officials “are beginning to seriously talk about a third world war as a potential scenario.”
He accused the Western powers of seeking to impose their unipolar approaches on the entire global community while ignoring other nations’ legitimate interests.
Lavrov also stated that the Russian military never intentionally launches kamikaze drones or missiles toward NATO member states.
Earlier this month, Poland accused Russia of sending a volley of unmanned aerial vehicles into its airspace – an allegation Moscow has denied.
According to subsequent media reports, the drones may have been decoys that strayed off course due to electronic warfare measures.
Brussels is counting on PM Viktor Orban, who opposes Kiev’s bid to join the bloc, losing next year’s elections, DW has said, citing unnamed sources
The EU leadership has yet to devise a way to overcome Hungary’s veto, which has blocked the start of accession talks with Ukraine, DW has reported, citing anonymous sources.
Unlike most other EU member states, Hungary has consistently refused to provide weapons to Ukraine and repeatedly criticized the bloc’s sanctions against Russia. Budapest has also staunchly opposed the prospect of Kiev joining the EU.
In a piece on Friday, DW quoted an unnamed source as acknowledging that “currently, there are no ways to overcome Hungary’s veto.” Another source concurred that the “situation is complicated,” with Brussels’ attempts to “explore legal ways to bypass Hungary’s veto” having proved fruitless.
According to the publication, Brussels is counting on Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s Fidesz party losing power in the parliamentary election scheduled for April 2026.
For the time being, the EU leadership intends to complete all technical work “in advance, so that when Orban leaves we are ready to move quickly forward” on Ukraine accession talks, DW quoted its source as saying.
Delivering her annual State of the Union address to the European Parliament earlier this month, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said that it was time to “break free from the shackles of unanimity” and move towards qualified majority voting in some areas of foreign policy.
Last month, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto claimed that Brussels was conspiring to overthrow the “patriot Slovak, Hungarian, and Serbian governments” and replace them with puppet regimes.
Around the same time, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) made similar allegations.
Also in August, Szijjarto warned that Ukraine’s potential accession to the bloc “would be the coup de grace to the European Union,” as it would have to redirect “practically all” of its financial resources towards supporting Kiev. Moreover, “much lower-quality agricultural products would destroy European agriculture,” the Hungarian diplomat stated, echoing concerns previously aired by Orban.
In June, Hungary vetoed a joint EU statement on Ukraine, effectively blocking Kiev’s accession talks, since unanimous approval was required.
The veteran politician has been briefly held at Gatwick airport under the Terrorism Act
George Galloway was temporarily detained at Gatwick Airport under the Terrorism Act upon his return from Russia on Saturday, according to his Workers Party of Britain.
Officers from the Metropolitan Police’s Counter Terrorism Command stopped the 71-year-old former MP, along with his wife. The police have acknowledged an incident, but have not confirmed that Galloway was the man detained.
“We can confirm that on Saturday, 27 September counter-terrorism officers at Gatwick Airport stopped a man in his 70s and a woman in her 40s under Schedule 3 of the Counter Terrorism and Border Security Act 2019. Neither of them were arrested and they were allowed on their way,” a Met spokesperson stated.
The Workers Party of Britain confirmed in a post on X that their leader and his wife were detained, branding the incident a “politically motivated intimidation” attempt. The party said it received no immediate “information on charges or alleged offences.”
Schedule 3, cited by the police, allows border officers to stop, question and detain individuals arriving in the country for the purpose of determining whether they have been engaged in “hostile activity” of any sort.
Following Galloway’s release, his party doubled down on its allegations, condemning the incident as an “attempt to intimidate those who seek amity rather than enmity with the rest of the world” for Britain.
“We were obstructed from providing legal support and the conduct of the affair has been designed to intimidate political opponents of the drive towards war with Russia and China,” the party said in a statement, promising to provide the “full account” of events tomorrow.
A veteran British politician and former RT show host, Galloway was an MP for nearly 30 years. He launched the Workers Party in 2019, and with a social-conservative platform, he won the 2024 Rochdale by-election. Just five months later he lost his seat to Labour in the general election, which he had been a member of for decades before the early 2000s.
The Russian Foreign Minister has held dozens of meetings on the sidelines of the UNGA including one with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Saturday delivered an address to the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, as well as held a major press conference after it. The top diplomat spoke about the Ukrainian conflict, the enduring hostilities in Gaza, the ongoing drone scare in the EU, and a broad range of other issues.
Lavrov has held more than 35 meetings on the sidelines of the UNGA over the past three days, including one with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. During the talks, both agreed to maintain contact on a wide range of issues.
They also reaffirmed the importance of the “momentum” generated by the Alaska summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart Donald Trump in “normalizing bilateral relations,” the Foreign Ministry in Moscow relayed.
The Russian delegation’s visit comes on the heels of a sharp change in Trump’s rhetoric on the Ukraine conflict following his meeting with Vladimir Zelensky earlier this week. In a Truth Social post on Tuesday, the US president said he believes Kiev is “in a position to fight and win all of Ukraine back,” with enough support from the EU and NATO.
For months before that, Trump and his administration had argued that Ukraine would need to relinquish some of its territorial claims in order to secure a US-brokered peace deal.
Unlike his predecessor, Joe Biden, Trump has resisted sending large amounts of direct US military aid to Kiev and has instead urged European NATO members to buy American weapons for Ukraine’s forces.
Throughout the conflict, Moscow has stressed that it is open to a peaceful settlement, as long as it includes a Ukrainian commitment to neutrality, demilitarization, denazification, and acceptance of the new territorial realities.
The state benefits will be reserved for refugees who have obtained employment from now on
Polish President Karol Nawrocki has signed a bill tightening the rules for Ukrainian refugees receiving state benefits.
While the legislation offers Ukrainians the ability to stay in Poland until at least March 2026, it links their access to benefits, including the monthly “800 plus” zloty child support allowance ($220 or more), to proof of employment for at least one parent and school enrollment for their dependents.
Other benefits now reserved only for Ukrainians working in Poland include health programs, prescription drug coverage, and medical and dental services.
The Ukrainian refugees will now also have to show they earn at least 50% of the minimum wage, with their compliance checked monthly. The new legislation envisions a few exemptions, namely for people with disabilities.
The adopted measure spells the end for “tourism from Ukraine at the expense of Polish taxpayers,” the head of the president’s office, Zbigniew Bogucki, has said.
The Polish president is set to introduce two additional bills concerning the refugees shortly, namely on tightening rules to get the country’s citizenship and on criminalization of the promotion of hardline Ukrainian nationalist movements, he added.
“Through his previous vetoes, the president forced the government, led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk, to work and propose solutions that are not perfect but certainly better,” Bogucki told reporters.
Back in August, Nawrocki vetoed the earlier version of the bill, which would have simply extended the then-existing benefits system without any changes. The president has repeatedly argued that only those refugees who contribute to Poland’s economy should be eligible for state benefits.
Poland has been one of the top destinations for Ukrainian refugees since the escalation of the conflict between Kiev and Moscow in February 2022. The country is believed to have welcomed over a million refugees from the country since then.
He took Gaddafi’s money, used it to make himself president, then killed the guy. All that for the low, low cost of five years in jail
How best to explain why exactly Parisian judges have hit former French President Nicolas Sarkozy with a five-year prison sentence. Let’s just say that he was found guilty of supervising a bunch of movers. And those movers were hauling around suitcases. Loaded with cash. Around $50 million, to be precise.
Sarkozy will learn his prison check-in date on October 13. And appeal or no appeal, he’s expected to show up for his staycation behind bars. All this, even though the actual corruption charges mostly slid right past Sarkozy and smacked one of his top lieutenants instead.
Sarkozy had been staring down heavyweight corruption charges over allegations he siphoned millions in Libyan cash to bankroll his 2007 presidential campaign. But he walked on that. The only charge that actually stuck was criminal conspiracy – because the court found that proof of a conspiracy to extract cash from a foreign country for his presidential campaign existed, but not that Sarkozy’s fingerprints were on the envelopes.
Instead, the judges said that Sarkozy “allowed his close collaborators and political supporters – over whom he had authority and acted on his behalf” to solicit the Libyan authorities “in order to obtain or attempt to obtain financial support in Libya with a view to obtaining campaign financing,” as Le Figaro reported. Basically, the gang got caught, and the boss got dinged for pretending to look the other way.
His campaign manager, Claude Guéant, got nailed for actual corruption, resulting in a six-year prison sentence – which he won’t be expected to serve because at 80 years old, he’s considered to be too elderly for prison, where he’d have to sit around chilling all day – just like he does at home, probably.
Sarko’s longtime political confidant, Brice Hortefeux, was also convicted of conspiring as part of the same crew, but will also be able to just hang out at home and serve his own two-year sentence there.
The irony here? Both of these men once served as Sarkozy’s interior minister – literally the “top cop” of France. Meaning that the two guys who were officially running French law enforcement under Sarkozy are now convicted of running an extracurricular crime ring. If they had argued that their white-collar escapades were just “professional development exercises” for the job, it might almost have sounded believable.
The judges also stressed that the trial didn’t “demonstrate that the money sent from Libya” was “ultimately” used to finance Sarkozy’s campaign. Which leaves a strange picture: the cash clearly left Libya, Sarkozy’s associates played bagmen, Sarkozy himself was clearly stage managing all this for campaign financing purposes, and yet – there’s no direct line proving that the money ever actually juiced his 2007 election coffers.
Remember, this all unfolded while Sarkozy’s political relationship with the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was riding the mother of all rollercoasters.
In 2007, fresh off winning the presidency, Sarkozy invited Gaddafi to pitch a Bedouin tent on the Élysée lawn like it was a teenage slumber party. They were all smiles over their joint counterterrorism cooperation.
Four years later, in 2011, Sarkozy was suddenly leading the charge to blow Gaddafi out of power entirely. Right on cue, a neatly branded “Libyan opposition” popped up to serve as France’s proxies in toppling him.
By March 2011, Gaddafi could see the betrayal in neon lights and let ‘er rip on French state TV, calling Sarko “mentally deficient” and an ingrate. “It’s thanks to me that he became president,” he told France 3. “We gave him the funds that allowed him to win.”
Meanwhile, then–US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was quietly visiting Paris while not so quietly cheerleading the invasion of Libya. At around the same time, Sarkozy himself was meeting with Libya’s future government-in-waiting inside the Élysée. However, one of Gaddafi’s sons fired a not-so-subtle warning shot at the French president. One that ultimately morphed into a final coffin nail.
“Sarkozy must first give back the money he took from Libya to finance his electoral campaign. We funded it and we have all the details and are ready to reveal everything,”Saif Gaddafi said. “The first thing we want this clown to do is to give the money back to the Libyan people. He was given assistance so that he could help them. But he’s disappointed us: give us back our money.”
Within a week, NATO was in, Libya was in flames, and the EU was bracing for the migrant wave that has submerged it ever since.
By 2012, the suspicion machine was in overdrive. Libyan intelligence officials accused French agents of helping capture and kill Gaddafi in October 2011, suggesting a cover-up designed to bury inconvenient details about Sarkozy’s 2007 campaign. Anonymous European officials started humming the same tune to Western reporters. But in court, the through-line just didn’t stick. Officially: the funds didn’t touch Sarkozy’s campaign, Sarkozy himself didn’t personally go hat-in-hand to Libya, and yet he’s still eating a five-year sentence. Which, incidentally, is only two years shy of the prosecution’s original demand of seven – with the consolation prize of some of it likely being served in home confinement.
This verdict took so long that Sarkozy’s 13-year-old daughter, Giulia – whose mom, supermodel Carla Bruni, still faces witness tampering charges in this case herself – wasn’t even born when it all went down. Exasperated by TikTokers treating her like a correspondent for dad-related drama, she finally sighed during a livestream about Gaddafi: “Please stop bothering me with this guy,” as if he were just some random dude from the ‘hood. “All due respect, I don’t know if it’s said like this, but rest in peace, Gaddafi. Really.”
Sarkozy can’t hit mute on a prison sentence like it’s a TikTok comment, but at least the courts will have us know that he didn’t manage to corrupt the French election system with foreign cash from a leader whose assassination he ultimately oversaw, wrecking his target’s entire country with his NATO buddies in the process. What an epic victory for democracy.
