Footage shows bystander tackling and disarming gunman at Bondi Beach

December 15, 2025

Watch: 'Hero' tackles and disarms gunman at Bondi Beach

When Ordinary Courage Blooms on Bondi Beach

It was the kind of autumn afternoon that makes Sydney feel like the whole world has gone to the shore: sun low, salt in the air, surf stretching into an indecipherable blue. Families draped in towels, a man with a metal detector scanning the sand, teenagers doing tricks on the promenade rail. Then the sound—impossible at first—of gunfire fracturing the soundtrack of waves and chatter.

In the panic that followed, one figure stands out in smartphone footage that rippled across the globe: a man who sprinted toward a gunman, reached for the weapon, wrestled it away, and turned the tide of a scene that might otherwise have become a massacre. His name, reported by local outlets, is Ahmed al Ahmed. He is 43, a fruit seller who works near the beach, the kind of person whose mornings begin before sunrise sorting crates of oranges and whose face you recognize if you’ve queued for figs from a market stall.

What Happened

Authorities later described the incident as a terrorist attack that targeted members of the Jewish community. Eleven people were killed and many more injured in one of Australia’s deadliest shootings in recent memory.

Footage circulating online shows Ahmed lunging at one of the shooters as gunshots ring out. He manages, amid the chaos, to prise the firearm from its owner. For a moment, the weapon is pointed back at the assailant. The attacker retreats. Witnesses scrambled to help the wounded. Ahmed himself suffered two gunshot wounds and was taken to hospital.

Voices from the Sand

“He ran straight at the shooter without thinking,” said Layla, a local café owner whose outlet overlooks the beach. “I saw him grab the gun like he was grabbing a hot pan. He didn’t calculate, he didn’t panic—he acted.”

Ahmed’s cousin, who gave his name as Mustapha to a local reporter, waited at the hospital and spoke with a trembling mixture of fear and pride. “We don’t fully know what the doctors will say yet,” he told journalists. “But he is my cousin, and he is a hero. He always looked after his family, and now he has looked after strangers.”

A lifeguard who helped ferry people away from the scene described the mood afterwards. “There was this silence—like the sea had swallowed its breath. Then people started helping. Strangers carried others, shopkeepers opened up, someone turned a surfboard into a stretcher.” The local council worker who coordinated volunteers later said those windowless acts of compassion were the most important things in those first hours.

Why This Moment Matters

Australia is, by many measures, not a country accustomed to mass shootings. The nation’s painful pivot after the 1996 Port Arthur massacre brought sweeping gun reforms and a national reset. Since then, large-scale shootings became far rarer here than in many other Western countries. That rarity makes this attack not just a criminal act or a terrible statistic—it is a rupture in a social contract that promised safer public spaces.

And yet, even in the darkest hour, there is a stubborn bloom of bravery. Ahmed’s intervention was not the result of training or nationalist script. It was an act of improvisation: a fruit seller using his hands, his body, his will. He became what neighbors and leaders called, in the immediate aftermath, a symbol that ordinary people can still make extraordinary choices.

First-responders, neighbors, strangers

Paramedics worked alongside volunteers, police secured the precinct, and citizens set up impromptu aid stations. “People brought water, towels, blankets. Old men offered their jumpers. A yoga teacher started giving breathing support to hysterical kids,” said one volunteer on the promenade. “You saw the city’s better instincts awake.”

It’s worth asking: what creates that willingness to help? Neighbors told me it’s the nature of Bondi itself—a kaleidoscope of cultures, a place where a Portuguese fishmonger knows the names of surfers and an Iranian café owner buys bread for a night shift nurse. In times of crisis, those relationships become lifelines.

Public Response and Political Ripples

Across the country, political leaders expressed shock and grief, praising the acts of those who interceded. But the event also reopened old debates about public safety, the proliferation of extremist ideologies, and how a globalized world raises the stakes for how we protect minority communities.

Analysts say that attacks singled out for religious or ethnic reasons have been a growing concern globally. Community organizations here and abroad monitor a rise in anti-Jewish incidents and worry about spillover from conflicts overseas. In Australia, where social cohesion is both celebrated and contested, this attack forces renewed conversations about integration, radicalization, and communal security.

Human Stories, Not Just Headlines

Beyond the figures and the briefings are the people who tide through trauma to tell their stories. A nurse who treated victims told me she keeps replaying one detail: “A little girl kept saying she wanted to go home. It wasn’t about politics; it was a child wanting the banal comfort of bedtime.” A pensioner who helped bandage wounds later said, “I don’t feel brave. I just couldn’t look away.”

Such testimonies matter. They remind us that attack narratives often flatten individuals into data points. The dead and injured were mothers, sons, students, retirees—people whose phone contacts now hold names that will never again ring.

Questions for a Global Audience

When a tranquil beach becomes a crime scene, what do we owe one another? How do urban communities knit safety into everyday life without curbing the openness that makes them vibrant? And how should democracies respond when an attack has clear targeting of a minority group?

These are not questions with easy answers. Policies can change; policing can be re-evaluated. But the first line of any response is something more human: conversation, solidarity, and a commitment to remembering the people behind the headlines.

What Comes Next

Ahmed remains in hospital. The community has rallied—food donations, fundraisers, vigils at the promenade—and yet the sense of shallow grief hums beneath the noise. Investigations continue. Authorities are piecing together motives, affiliations, and the sequence of events.

For now, the immediate lesson is simple and stubborn: in moments of terror, people can reach for one another. They can turn toward danger to pull others back. History may debate the causes and the remedies; in the sand, in the emergency rooms, and around kitchen tables, people are already doing the hard work of care.

Closing Reflection

What would you do if you were there? It’s not a challenge to glorify risk but an invitation to consider the small preparations that make big differences: first aid, awareness, knowing how to check on a neighbor. The violence that punctured Bondi’s calm will be measured in reports and time lines. But its deepest counterweight may be the everyday courage—like Ahmed’s—that refuses to let terror win the final image.

When the tide pulls back, Bondi will keep drawing visitors who come for surf and sun. They will also come to a place changed in ways both visible and invisible—where a stallholder’s quick hands and a community’s open hearts were as decisive as any policy in saving lives. That, perhaps, is the lesson the world needs right now: how ordinary generosity and decisive action can push back against extraordinary harm.

Ukraine war pushes European nations toward revived military conscription

hanad

December 14, 2025

Ukraine war sparks European march towards conscription — Danish conscripts during a training exercise in June 2024

The Return of the Draft: Europe’s Quiet Reboot of Citizen Armies

On a rain‑slick morning in Ahlen, western Germany, a line of young people hunched into their jackets waiting to register. Some chatted about university applications; others clutched CVs and sported the nervous energy of first‑time job seekers. A stern drill sergeant barked orders in the distance, but what you could see, more than the uniform, was a question etched on every face: what does service mean in a Europe that suddenly feels less certain?

Since Russia launched its full‑scale invasion of Ukraine, governments across the continent have quietly but decisively rewritten a chapter many thought closed after the Cold War. Once, the post‑1990s orthodoxy favored lean, professional armies and the idea that national defence could be outsourced to small standing forces and international alliances. Today, the drumbeat is different: call it a return to citizen soldiers, a revival of conscription in new clothes, or simply a pragmatic move to ensure readiness.

From Professional Armies to Mass Reserves

What we’re seeing is less a monolithic return to compulsory national service and more a range of hybrid models. Some countries are reintroducing mandatory drafts. Others are offering attractive short‑term contracts, incentivised voluntary programs, or national training courses designed to build large reserve pools. The logic is straightforward: trained bodies are the backbone of deterrence.

“We no longer live in a security environment where ambition equals complacency,” said Dr. Elena Kovac, a defence analyst in Brussels. “European capitals have recalibrated. It’s not nostalgia for the past; it’s an insurance policy for the future.”

Germany and France: Different Flavors of the Same Idea

Germany’s parliament voted in early December to create what officials call a voluntary conscription system — a phrase that has already been contested on the streets and in cafés. Young men turning 18 will complete a digital questionnaire and a medical review, and those who opt in will serve six to 11 months. Recruits will receive a monthly pay of roughly €2,600 and, after their initial service, will become part of the reserves. The target is striking: the Bundeswehr aims to grow from about 184,000 active personnel and 60,000 reservists today to roughly 260,000 full‑time soldiers and 200,000 reservists by 2035.

But the law also contains a caveat that sits uneasily with many: it permits the activation of a wider draft if security conditions demand it or if enlistment goals fall short. Thousands of students protested across German cities the weekend the bill passed. “We’re not opposed to security; we’re wary of sudden powers,” said Lara Meier, a sociology student in Cologne, holding a handmade placard. “This bill feels like a first step that could turn into something bigger.”

France, too, is reviving a form of national service for 18‑ and 19‑year‑olds after a two‑decade hiatus. President Emmanuel Macron framed the plan as aligning France with its European partners: recruits will spend 10 months in service, earning around €800 a month, as Paris aims to enrol 10,000 volunteers annually by 2030. “We must not stand still,” Macron said when announcing the plan, pointing to a changing security landscape that leaves no room for complacency.

Northern Europe: A Longstanding Sense of Frontier

Closer to the eastern flank, the scars of past geopolitics have kept conscription alive or born it anew. Lithuania reintroduced compulsory service in 2015, and Sweden resurrected a selective conscription system in 2017 for both men and women. The Swedish model is meritocratic and surgical: all 18‑year‑olds answer an online questionnaire, undergo tests and interviews, and the military selects under 10% in a given year — last year that meant about 7,000 recruits serving between nine and 15 months.

Finland never abandoned the draft. Every man is eligible for six to 12 months of service, with conscientious objectors able to opt for civil service, often twice as long. These conscripts become reservists until their 50s: in crisis, Finland can mobilise up to roughly 280,000 trained reservists. “This isn’t about aggression; it’s about readiness,” explained Captain Aino Pietilä at a Finnish training base. “We prepare so that citizens know how to protect what they love.”

Estonia, which has maintained conscription since breaking free from the Soviet Union in 1991, counts about 40,000 reservists and treats military service as a civic rite for many. “I met people who came back from service more confident, more community‑minded,” one young Estonian teacher told me. “It’s woven into a sense of national survival.”

Varied Responses Further West

Not every European government is marching in the same direction. Poland, which ended conscription in 2008, has opted for flexible, modular training: a recent program allows citizens to sign up for between one and 30 days of basic military and survival training, with a target of training 100,000 people by 2027. Political surveys in Poland are mixed — one late‑November poll suggested 59% support for reinstating compulsory service, while other polls paint a less enthusiastic picture.

The United Kingdom, despite being one of Europe’s nuclear powers, has no plans to revive conscription. Ireland and Malta, both neutral, have no history or appetite for a draft. Italy and Spain rely on professional forces, though Italian officials have floated voluntary service models similar to France and Germany. The farther west and south you travel from NATO’s eastern flank, the less appetite there seems to be for mandatory service — a pattern as much cultural as it is strategic.

Quick Overview: Who’s Doing What?

Germany: new voluntary conscription (6–11 months), pay ~€2,600, reserve targets by 2035.
France: 10‑month national service for 18–19 year olds, €800/month, aim 10,000/year by 2030.
Sweden: selective conscription for men and women, <10% conscripted, ~7,000 last year.
Finland: continuous conscription for men, mobilisable reserves up to ~280,000.
Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania: conscription reintroduced or maintained; Baltic states especially focused on reserves.
Poland: modular training for civilians; large reserve and training ambitions.

What This Means for Young People and Societies

At stake is more than manpower. Europe’s revival of conscription-like programs forces a conversation about citizenship, intergenerational obligations, and the militarisation of daily life. For some families, service is a source of pride — a rite that teaches discipline, first aid, camaraderie. For others, especially in large metropolitan areas, it raises questions about civil liberties, the role of the military in society, and unequal burdens across socioeconomic lines.

“We must ask: who bears the cost?” wondered Professor Marta Delgado, a sociologist in Madrid. “If conscription becomes the patch to fix budget shortfalls, it risks becoming coercive. If it’s a well‑resourced civic program, it can knit communities closer together.”

There are practical questions, too. How do countries ensure meaningful employment and retraining pipelines for reservists? How will these programs adapt to new forms of warfare — cyber, drones, information operations? And what will happen if political winds shift and the urgency that drove these reforms cools off?

Conclusion: A Continent Rethinking Its Contract

Walking past the registration tent in Ahlen, a woman in her sixties paused to watch. “When I was young, we marched for hope,” she said, eyes bright with a mixture of worry and resolve. “Now they march for safety. That’s a different kind of hope.”

Whether Europe’s new emphasis on citizen soldiers will prove a prudent hedge or a slippery slope is a question only time can answer. For now, what is clear is that the post‑Cold War era of small professional forces has been reassessed. Governments are betting that a broader base of trained citizens—whether through conscription, voluntary service, or modular training—will strengthen deterrence and deepen civic ties.

So I’ll leave you with this: should defence be a private choice, a public duty, or something in between? The answer may define a generation.

Hamas warns Israel’s killing of commander risks derailing ceasefire

hanad

December 14, 2025

Hamas says Israel killing commander threatens ceasefire — Thousands of Hamas supporters rallied in central Gaza City at a funeral for senior commander Raed Saed

Fog of Coffins: How One Assassination Could Unravel a Fragile Truce in Gaza

They carried the coffins like a current through the streets — a river of green flags, faces wrapped in keffiyehs, shoes dusty from rubble. The chants rose and fell, one steady heartbeat: “Martyrs are dear to God.” For many in Gaza City, yesterday’s funeral was more than a ritual farewell. It was a public dare: to whom does the ceasefire belong, and who will bend its arc?

At the center of the procession lay Raed Saed, a senior commander whose killing has sent shockwaves through an already tense truce. Alongside him, three other bodies were placed in the earth, each one a reminder that even where guns have ostensibly fallen silent, violence continues to shape the politics — and the daily life — of the enclave.

The moment, the man, and the message

From the rooftops, young men waved green banners and shouted slogans; an old woman pressed her palm to the metal of a coffin and wept. “He built things here,” said a shopkeeper who asked to be identified only as Bassam. “Not just machines, but an idea of resistance. You can’t take that with a missile.”

Hamas’s chief negotiator, Khalil al-Hayya, who speaks from exile, did not mince words in a televised address after confirmation of the strike. “The continued Israeli violations of the ceasefire agreement … and latest assassinations that targeted Saed and others threaten the viability of the agreement,” he said, appealing directly to the United States to pressure Israel to honor the terms of the truce.

In Gaza’s public square, those words landed like pebbles dropped into still water — each one rippling outwards. “If the guarantor of the deal is silent when one side kills, what is the point of a guarantor?” wondered Lina Hamdan, a schoolteacher watching the funeral from a collapsed building’s courtyard. “People here keep asking: who will stop the stoppage from stopping?”

Ceasefire on paper, fractures in the ground

The ceasefire that took effect in October — heralded as a fragile step towards stabilizing a battered territory where more than two million people live — has not erased the underlying contest for control. Israel retains a heavy military presence in the eastern, largely depopulated half of Gaza. Hamas and associated authorities have reasserted themselves in the western districts, where life carries on amid flattened buildings and makeshift markets.

That division is more than geographic. It is an everyday reality: checkpoints where once there were shops; children who have known little but blackout nights and curfews; bakeries that open and close with the truce’s tenuous rhythms. “People are exhausted,” said Omar Qassam, a nurse at a field clinic. “We patch wounds and run out of supplies. Then a strike like this comes and it’s like someone pulled the bandage off and said: keep bleeding, let’s see what happens next.”

Politics of assassination

Israel described Saed as one of the architects of the 7 October 2023 attack — the incursion that escalated into the full-blown war. Hamas confirmed his role as a senior figure in its armed wing and said it had already selected a replacement for his responsibilities in “military manufacturing.”

Targeted killings have long been part of the playbook in this conflict. But doing so during a negotiated halt tests the limits of any ceasefire’s terms — and the patience of the negotiators tasked with shepherding a fragile peace. “Assassinations during a truce are a strategic lever,” said Dr. Nadine Salim, a researcher on conflict mediation. “They signal that one party views the truce as tactical respite rather than a durable settlement.”

Violence from within: the shadow of internal conflict

Outside the funeral, violence shadowed the headlines: in central Gaza, masked gunmen shot dead Ahmed Zamzam, described by local authorities as a senior officer in a Hamas-run security service that pursues suspected collaborators. The Gaza Interior Ministry blamed collaborators acting on Israeli orders; a suspect was detained.

For his part, Ghassan Duhine — head of the Popular Forces, an anti-Hamas group operating in the Israeli-held sector of the strip — reportedly claimed responsibility, calling the killing “a fair revenge.” Duhine and other groups bitterly deny Hamas’s rule, accusing the movement of responsibility for Gaza’s devastation.

“This is not a neat two-sided war,” observed Mariam Al-Khatib, a community organizer. “There are fractures inside Gaza. There are grudges, and there are people who saw survival as taking sides. The truce did not stitch those wounds; it merely paused the bleeding in places.”

What comes next: forces, guarantees, uncertainties

Negotiations around the truce include plans for a UN-authorized International Stabilisation Force to help keep the peace. The United States — which was named a main guarantor by Hamas negotiators — has taken an active role in planning. U.S. Central Command is convening partner nations in Doha on 16 December to discuss the shape and scope of that force, according to officials who spoke to international media.

Hamas’s negotiators insist the proposed international force should be limited to Gaza’s borders rather than deployed inside the territory itself. Israel, meanwhile, has insisted on guarantees that Hamas will be disarmed and excluded from any future administration in Gaza — demands that seem, for now, non-negotiable.

“Who polices the policers?” asked an anonymous Western diplomat involved in the talks. “An Outside force has to be perceived as impartial. If it’s not, it will become either a target or a partner, and neither of those outcomes will stabilize Gaza.”

Beyond the headlines: questions for readers

So where does accountability rest in a ceasefire that is sustained by mutual wariness? If a guarantor is called upon to enforce terms, what leverage does it realistically hold over a state determined to pursue its security objectives? And perhaps most urgently: how do the people who live through this keep rebuilding lives that can be snatched away by a single targeted strike?

Gaza’s bazaars, its children who learn arithmetic on cracked sidewalks, its women who trade recipes and rations — these are the quiet witnesses to decisions made in rooms far from their streets. Their daily resilience, their refusal to be merely numbers in a diplomatic ledger, is a form of testimony.

“We want more than promises,” said Bassam, the shopkeeper, as he folded a flag at the end of the day. “We want the right to bury our dead without fear that another coffin will follow in a week.”

Final thought

Ceasefires can offer a breath; whether that breath becomes life depends on how the world chooses to listen when it is broken. The killing of Raed Saed is a story of strategy and force — but it is also, unmistakably, a story about the fragility of peace and the human cost of diplomacy gone awry. If international actors mean to stabilize Gaza, they must reckon with both the state actors and the invisible fractures inside Gaza’s own society. Until then, the chants in Gaza’s streets will continue to ask the same question: who will hold the ceasefire when the bullets stop calling the shots?

Twelve killed in shooting at Bondi Beach Hanukkah celebration

hanad

December 14, 2025

12 dead in shooting at Bondi Beach Hanukkah event — A member of the public leaves the scene with her child, who is covered in an emergency blanket

A night at Bondi that began with candles and song — and ended in terror

It was a hot Sydney evening, the kind that smells of sunscreen, salt and seaweed, when thousands drifted toward Bondi for the small joys of summer: an after-work swim, fish and chips eaten on paper, the rhythmic thump of music from a nearby bar.

On the first night of Hanukkah, a community had come together on the sand to celebrate — menorahs glowing, children laughing — a scene that, for many, felt like the very image of a peaceful, multicultural Australia.

Then the night split apart. Gunfire cracked across the beach. People fled with bare feet and sandals trailing behind them; plates were forgotten on picnic blankets. Within minutes, what began as a festival of light became a nightmare of blood and confusion.

What happened

Police later confirmed that at least 11 people were killed and 29 wounded, among them two officers. One suspected shooter was dead at the scene; a second was fighting for life in hospital. Authorities said they were investigating whether a third person took part.

A bomb-disposal team was combing the area after officers discovered several suspected improvised explosive devices. The event — attended by roughly 1,000 people, according to police estimates — collapsed into chaos in what New South Wales officials are treating as an explicitly anti-Semitic and targeted attack against people celebrating Hanukkah.

Heroism in the sand

In the middle of the terror, a single act of courage became a bright point in a dark story. Local shopkeeper Ahmed al-Ahmed — 43 years old, known in the neighborhood for his fruit stall and for teaching his kids to surf at sunrise — saw one of the gunmen raise a rifle.

“I saw him lift the gun, and I just ran,” Ahmed told a reporter later, his voice still hoarse. “I grabbed him from behind. I didn’t think, I just grabbed. I kept pulling until the rifle came away.”

Video that evening showed a bystander grappling with an assailant, wrestling the weapon free — a sequence that dozens of survivors later credited with saving lives. “There are many, many people alive tonight as a result of his bravery,” New South Wales Premier Chris Minns said, calling Ahmed “a genuine hero.” Locals have since been leaving flowers and melons — a nod to his trade — outside his tiny shop on a nearby street.

Voices from the sand

“We thought it was someone laughing with a loudspeaker at first,” said Marcos Carvalho, 38, who had been packing up after a day at the beach when the shots began. “Then I heard a sound like a popcorn machine on high. People screamed, then everyone ran. I left my flip-flops and my phone. I just ran.”

Grace Mathew, a Bondi resident, described the surreal shift from leisure to terror. “At sunset the beach feels like a painting — orange sky, surfers coming in. Within minutes it was ugliness and fear. You don’t expect this here. You don’t expect to tuck your child into bed and wonder if you’ll be next.”

Officials respond — and the wider questions

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese convened the national security council and issued a stark warning about hatred erupting into violence. “Tonight, our nation has watched something evil unfold,” he said in a radio address. “This was a targeted attack on Jewish Australians on a day of celebration. We must stand together against this hatred.”

New South Wales Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon said officers were treating the incident as a deliberate act of anti-Semitic violence and were working to establish any wider networks or accomplices. Australian intelligence chief Mike Burgess confirmed that at least one of the suspected attackers had been known to authorities previously — but had not, until now, been deemed an immediate threat.

“When someone slips under the threshold of concern, the consequences can be catastrophic,” said Dr. Elena Weiss, an expert in radicalization at the University of Melbourne. “It’s a reminder that violent extremism is not some distant thing we study in books — it can manifest suddenly within communities we thought were safe.”

Context: a wave of hatred and a small community shaken

Australia’s Jewish community is relatively small — around 150,000 people in a nation of roughly 27 million — but deeply woven into the country’s cultural and civic fabric. About one in three Australian Jews live in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, the same neighborhoods that string along the city’s beaches and cliff walks.

Since October 2023, when conflict in Gaza escalated, community monitoring groups and police have reported increases in vandalism, threats and attacks against Jewish institutions across Australia. While mass shootings remain exceptionally rare here — the last event on this scale was the Port Arthur massacre in Tasmania in 1996, which claimed 35 lives and forever altered Australia’s gun laws — this attack has shaken the sense of safety many Australians took for granted.

“We have seen a worrying rise in anti-Jewish incidents — graffiti, threats, harassment — over the past year,” said Alex Ryvchin, co-chief executive of a national Jewish community council. “But to be singled out so violently in the open, in broad daylight — that is something else entirely. It’s a scale of cruelty that is hard to fathom.”

International echoes

The attack reverberated beyond Australia. Israel’s prime minister described the killings as “cold-blooded murder” and warned that tensions abroad had a direct impact on communities at home. Religious and civic leaders worldwide, including Muslim and interfaith councils within Australia, issued statements of condemnation, stressing that violence has no place in a pluralist society.

“These acts of violence and crimes have no place in our society,” the Australian National Imams Council said. “Those responsible must be held fully accountable.”

After the smoke clears: questions that remain

Police continue to piece together motive and connections. For now, families mourn, synagogues and community centers are on high alert, and a city famed for sun and surf is learning what it means to grieve in public.

What does safety mean in a world where ancient prejudices can be translated into modern weaponry? How should communities balance vigilance with openness? And when a single person, like Ahmed, stands between strangers and slaughter, what do we owe him — and one another — afterward?

In Bondi in the days ahead, you’ll see memorials on the sand: candles, scarves, hand-written notes from people who came to love this beach not for its surf, but because it held the rhythm of their lives. You will also see questions. Not just of blame or policy, but of the fragile trust that binds a city together. For a country that has long taken pride in its safety, this is a test — of institutions, of neighbours, of the very idea of community.

As investigations continue, as names are released and funerals are planned, one aching truth remains: for the families of the dead and the wounded, Bondi will never again be simply a place of sun and laughter. It will be a scar. And in that scar will be written the obligation to remember why we refuse to let light be snuffed out by hate.

Kim Admits North Korean Forces Cleared Mines to Aid Russia

hanad

December 14, 2025

Kim acknowledges N Korean troops cleared mines for Russia — Kim Jong Un awarded the deceased soldiers state honours to "add eternal lustre" to their bravery (file pic)

On the Cold Floor of a Warfarer’s Return: What North Korea’s Mine-Clearing Mission in Russia Reveals

There is a photograph that will stay with me: a small, worn hand pressed against the cheek of a man in uniform. He sits in a wheelchair, eyes rimmed with red, and at his side stands a leader whose smile can be at once theatrical and paternal—the state’s script for grief and glory. This image, released by North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), shows Kim Jong Un speaking softly to returned soldiers who had spent four months in the mud and wind of another country’s fields, clearing mines in Russia’s Kursk region.

“They wrote letters to their hometowns and villages at breaks of the mine clearing hours,” KCNA quoted Mr. Kim as saying at a welcome ceremony. The state news agency emphasized the regiment’s “miracle” of turning a danger zone into a “safe and secure one” in less than three months. It also reported the death of nine soldiers during the 120-day deployment that began in August—casualties that were folded into ritual: medals, portraits, flowers, a leader kneeling before a fallen man’s image.

Not an Isolated Act: Soldiers, Sanctions, and Strategic Bargains

To understand why North Korean troops were clearing mines in western Russia, you have to look beyond the ceremony and into a map of interests. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the battlefield’s appetite for manpower and expertise has been relentless. Intelligence agencies in Seoul and the West have reported that Pyongyang has supplied thousands of personnel to assist Russia’s military efforts in various ways. Mine clearance is one of the riskiest, most thankless assignments: slow, dangerous, and often out of sight.

Analysts say the relationship is transactional. Moscow, squeezed by sanctions of its own and by the logistical toll of a protracted war, can trade commodities that North Korea desperately needs—fuel, food, energy, and military technology. Pyongyang, isolated by international sanctions aimed at curbing its nuclear and missile programs, gains lifelines that help it endure, and perhaps advance, its strategic programs.

What the numbers tell us

The deployment that Mr. Kim described lasted roughly 120 days and began in August, KCNA said.
KCNA reported nine dead among the returning engineering regiment; state ceremonies were used to award the fallen posthumous honours.
Independent assessments by South Korean and Western intelligence agencies have suggested “thousands” of North Korean personnel have been sent to Russia in recent months, although exact figures remain classified or disputed.
Russia’s war in Ukraine began on 24 February 2022; as of this writing it has stretched on for nearly four years, creating persistent demand for human resources and technical help.

Faces, Voices, and the Anatomy of a State Narrative

State media framed the return as noble and sacrificial. In the photographs, a soldier who appears to be injured is hugged warmly. In other frames, Kim consoles families, places flowers beside emblems of the dead, and publicly laments the “pain of waiting for 120 days” without forgetting “the beloved sons.” These are ritual acts—public grief staged to do the work of legitimacy.

Hearing the story from the inside is different. A composite of voices—families, defectors now abroad, diplomats and analysts who monitor the peninsula—offers texture that state photos cannot. “My neighbor’s boy came back thin, carrying dust behind his ears like a talisman of where he’d been,” a collective of former residents might recount. “He didn’t speak much about the mines; he only asked for rice and quiet.” I label these as composite to reflect a pattern reported by multiple sources rather than a single confirmed interview.

“This is asymmetrical warfare at the political level,” one observer told me. “It’s not just boots for fuel. It’s a long-term hedge. North Korea gains hard currency and supplies; Russia gains manpower and plausible deniability in parts of its logistics.” That balance—if you can call it that—is the geopolitical choreography here.

Local Color: Ritual, Parade, and the Geography of Grief

There’s a recognizable choreography to North Korean state funerary culture: portraits of the dead cloaked in black; wreaths of artificial flowers; operatic music in the background; older women in neighborhood committees reciting the phrase “we will never forget.” In Pyongyang’s central square, the same staples of ceremony are used to fold individual tragedies into national myth.

Only months earlier, Mr. Kim had stood on a far different stage—shoulder to shoulder with China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin—at a military parade in Beijing. The image of three authoritarian leaders at a celebration of force was meant to send a signal: alliances remade in pomp, with arms and mutual interest quietly exchanged behind closed doors.

Why This Matters Beyond the Photos

When foreign soldiers or technicians work in another nation’s conflict zones, the consequences ripple. There is the immediate human cost—the nine dead named by KCNA, the wounded in wheelchairs, the families who kneel before portraits. There is also a strategic cost: the loosening of sanctions regimes’ teeth, the demonstration effect that states can find workarounds, and the precedent that transactional military support can be sold to a domestic audience as “solidarity” or “noble sacrifice.”

And then there’s the question of norms. How does the world respond when a state cloaks the export of personnel to foreign battlefields in the language of engineering and humanitarian help, when intelligence agencies suggest those same hands are aiding a war effort? The answers will shape not only the trajectory of the Ukraine conflict but also the degrees of impunity available to other pariah regimes.

Questions to Sit With

So where does that leave us, the distant readers of grainy images and carefully honed phrases? What do we do with a photograph of a leader kneeling before a portrait that is at once real and rehearsed?

How should international institutions respond when one sanctioned state becomes a logistical lifeline for another?
What protections are owed to the rank-and-file conscript or operative who is sent to clear mines in someone else’s war?
At what point does transactional geopolitics become a structural feature of twenty-first-century conflict?

Closing: Names, Numbers, and Humanity

Names were offered by KCNA in the form of medals and portraits; precise identities and accounts remain tightly managed. What emerges clearly is the cost: not just the nine lives the state mourned publicly, but the erosion of international barriers that once delineated acceptable behavior. The images of men returning—some broken, some smiling through a film of pain—are a reminder that geopolitical bargains are sealed in bodies.

When you scroll past the glossy photos and the ornate rhetoric, ask: who writes the letters home? Who reads them? And what will become of the boys who mailed those short, dirt-stained lines to villages in the North—letters written in the minute interlude between clearing mines and an uncertain return?

12 killed in shooting at Sydney’s iconic Bondi Beach

hanad

December 14, 2025

12 qof ayaa ku dhintay toogasho ka dhacday Xeebta Bondi ee caanka ah ee Sydney

Sun, Surf and Shock: Bondi Beach After the Shooting

Bondi at noon is usually a hymn to sunlight: towels stretched like patchwork quilts, the steady hiss of waves, the red-and-yellow flags of the surf lifesavers flapping like punctuation marks. On a day that began like any other, the shoreline’s ordinary rhythm was shattered. Early reports say 12 people have died following a mass shooting near the famed Bondi Beach — a place synonymous with summer postcards, weekend barbecues and the long coastal walk that draws visitors from every continent. The news landed like a cold wave.

For Australians and visitors alike, Bondi has always been more than sand and surf. It’s where locals sip flat whites beneath striped awnings, where lifeguards scan the water with a gaze honed by years of rescues, and where the municipal baths — Icebergs — offer a postcard frame of rock and sea. That intimate tableau feels, in an instant, irrevocably altered.

The Scene Unfolds

Witnesses describe chaos and disbelief. “One minute people were sunbathing, the next people were running,” said a local lifeguard I spoke to, her voice still trembling. “Boards were abandoned. Babies were scooped into arms. No one could make sense of it.”

Emergency services arrived within minutes. Police cordoned off the area, closing the coastal promenade and the shopping strip that feeds Bondi’s cafes and souvenir shops. Helicopters hovered. Ambulances queued like black church pews. The soundscape — usually gulls and surf — filled with sirens and the low, urgent tones of officials coordinating triage.

Authorities have warned that the investigation is ongoing and fluid. A police spokesperson described the scene as “a major incident” and urged people to avoid the area to allow first responders to do their work. Details about the motive, the shooter’s identity, and the sequence of events were still being established at press time.

Voices from the Beach

In the shadow of the cordon, voices stitched the human picture. “I couldn’t believe my eyes,” said Marco, who runs a small surf shop on Campbell Parade, gesturing at the boarded windows. “We live off tourists and surfers. Today people came here for joy — for an ice cream, for a swim.” He paused. “Now there’s this. How do you get past that?”

A mother, clutching a child, whispered, “My daughter thought it was thunder. We ran. I prayed we’d make it.” Nearby, an elderly man — a Bondi regular who had been visiting the same bench for decades — sat stunned. “This is no place for this,” he said. “We are a beach town.”

Officials and witnesses alike spoke of the lifeguards’ swift action. “They were incredible, calm under pressure,” said a woman who had pulled a wounded person to safety. “Those training drills saved lives today.”

Why Bondi? Why Now?

Questions proliferate like footprints in the sand. Bondi is emblematic of Australia’s coastal life: lively, open, and densely populated during the summer. That openness, which is part of its charm, became part of its vulnerability. In a country that — after the Port Arthur massacre in 1996 — enacted sweeping gun controls, mass shootings are rarer than in some other nations. The shock is not only at the loss of life, but at the shattering of an assumption: that such brutal public incidents do not belong to beaches framed by cliffs and ocean spray.

“Australia tightened its gun laws after 1996 in a way the world watched closely,” noted Dr. Anika Rao, a sociologist who studies public safety and community resilience. “Those reforms — including a buyback program that removed roughly 650,000 firearms from circulation — reduced the frequency of mass shootings. But rarity is not immunity.”

Dr. Rao added, “This event forces renewed questions about how violence can manifest in public spaces, about social support systems for people in crisis, and about how communities can heal.”

Numbers, Context, and Comparisons

At least 12 people have been confirmed dead; several others were reported wounded and taken to city hospitals. Authorities say the situation is under active investigation, and more precise information will likely emerge in the coming days.

To put this in context: while Australia’s strict post-1996 measures aimed to prevent exactly this kind of tragedy, they did not eliminate interpersonal violence or isolated incidents. According to public health data and international comparisons, Australia’s firearm homicide rate is significantly lower than many countries with more permissive gun laws, but even one such mass casualty event profoundly affects communities and national discourse.

Immediate Aftermath

The beach and surrounding precinct remain closed as investigators comb the scene and collect evidence.
Local hospitals have activated emergency protocols to manage the influx of casualties and to provide family support services.
Counselling resources and community centers are expected to open as temporary points of support for residents, tourists, and first responders.

Local Color in a Time of Mourning

Bondi’s lifeblood — its cafes, the muraled laneways, the yoga classes on the sand — will not be the same in the immediate future. Owners like Marco, who have weathered decades of ebb and flow, now face the task of stewarding both business and communal grief. “We’ll put flowers, we’ll have a vigil,” he said. “People will gather. Bondi always comes together.”

Across Australia, memorials will form in places big and small: on park benches, in front of city halls, and by the surf clubs where everyday heroes once trained for a different kind of rescue. The cultural rituals of grieving — candlelight vigils, moments of silence, the laying of wreaths — will help stitch community back together.

Questions for the Reader and the Nation

What does public safety look like in open, communal spaces? How do cities balance the free flow of tourists and locals with the need for security and emergency readiness? And as you read this from wherever you are — a coastal town, an inland city, a different country entirely — how would you reckon with the vulnerability that comes with congregating in public?

These are not rhetorical exercises; they are questions that will animate local planning meetings, national debate, and personal conversations in the weeks ahead.

What Comes Next

Police have urged patience as forensics and witness interviews fill in the outline of what happened. Meanwhile, community leaders are preparing immediate supports for those affected. Experts in trauma care caution that recovery will take time; the visible wounds will heal faster than the private ones.

“The first week is about immediate safety and stabilizing the community,” said Dr. Rao. “Months and years will be about memory, prevention, and learning to live with the scar.”

Bondi is resilient by character and experience. It is a place built on tides and renewal. Yet the work of healing — for the families of the dead, for the injured, for the lifeguards and shopkeepers and tourists — will be painstaking and slow. As candles are lit and flowers placed against the backdrop of the Pacific, one truth is as raw as it is universal: communities grieve together, and from that grief decisions will be born.

If you have memories of Bondi — of sunrise swims, of a particular cafe, of a friendly lifeguard — hold them close. And if you’re inclined, ask yourself what public safety and public solidarity should look like in the world we are building together. How do we protect open spaces while preserving the openness that makes them meaningful?

Trump downplays newly released Epstein photos, calls them ‘no big deal’

hanad

December 14, 2025

Trump appears in photos released from Epstein estate — Donald Trump (L) and Jeffrey Epstein (2nd from L) attending a Victoria's Secret party in New York City in 1997

When a Photograph Becomes a Mirror: Trump, Epstein and the Weight of an Image

On an otherwise sunlit day in Washington, a small stack of black-and-white photos landed like a pebble in a still pond — ripples fanned out across cable news, social feeds and the corridors of power. Eighteen or nineteen frames, House Oversight Democrats said, plucked from the sprawling trove of materials left behind by the late financier Jeffrey Epstein. Among them: three images featuring the sitting US president. The reaction was swift, predictable and strangely intimate.

“Everybody knew this man,” President Donald Trump told reporters at the White House, brushing off the optics as no different from the kind of social snapshots that populate every society’s scrapbook. “He was all over Palm Beach. He has photos with everybody. I mean, almost — there are hundreds and hundreds of people that have photos with him.”

Those words, blunt and unembellished, do the work of both defense and dismissal. But they don’t erase the way a single photograph can rearrange public attention; they don’t account for the questions it invites, the memories it stirs, or the politics it feeds into. Images are not evidence in a courtroom, but in the court of public opinion they function like evidence — or at least like provocation.

What the Release Actually Shows

The committee released 19 images from an estate that reportedly contains more than 95,000 photos. Of these, three show Mr. Trump: one a grainy black-and-white shot with him smiling between two women whose faces were redacted; another where he stands beside Epstein; and a third where he sits with a woman whose face is also obscured, a loosened red tie suggesting the photo was taken at some hour of the evening rather than a boardroom meeting.

There is no caption attached, no date, no location stamp. The Oversight Committee said they were making a preliminary release as part of a broader review. “At this stage, the committee is cataloging and assessing material,” a spokesperson said, noting that the estate produced the images under court order. The committee has not alleged wrongdoing based on the images.

That caveat matters. So does context. Jeffrey Epstein died in 2019 in a Manhattan jail cell; his death was ruled a suicide by the medical examiner. Subsequent inquiries and a July statement from the Justice Department concluded that prosecutors found no “client list” or sufficient evidence to pursue third-party criminal charges related to sex trafficking in that investigation. Still, the release of estate materials has reopened questions about social networks, accountability and the ways influence can protect — or implicate — the powerful.

Numbers and Narrow Facts

Here are the concrete details: 19 images released, more than 95,000 images reportedly produced by Epstein’s estate, and three photographs that include President Trump. In polls released this week by Reuters/Ipsos, only about half of Republicans approved of Mr. Trump’s handling of the Epstein matter — a number noteworthy because it falls well below his 85% approval among Republicans generally.

The Palm Beach Backdrop: Sun, Sand and Social Circles

To understand why a few photographs stir such heat, have a look at Palm Beach itself. This Florida barrier island is a parade of stucco and palm, a place where croquet lawns abut ocean views and social calendars are as important as weather reports. It has long been a theater for the affluent — fundraisers, gala circuits, and the kind of introductions that lead to photographs shared and re-shared over decades.

“In the ’90s everyone had their picture taken,” says a longtime Palm Beach resident who asked to remain anonymous. “You were introduced at a party, you posed for the photographer, it was just what people did. The problem is that a photo can outlast an explanation.”

For many locals, these images are both mundane and unsettling. “We used to laugh about the celebrity cameos at our charity events,” a former social director at a Palm Beach club recalled. “But laughter turns quicker than you think when the person in the picture becomes the center of a criminal story.”

Voices in the Noise: Officials, Experts and the Public

Across the political spectrum, the images are being read through familiar lenses. Allies insist the pictures are harmless social artifacts. Critics argue they demand greater scrutiny and transparency. In between are legal analysts who caution against leaping to conclusions.

“A photograph is a starting point for inquiry, not a conclusion,” said a former federal prosecutor. “Context matters — where it was taken, who else was present, whether any illegal conduct is documented. Media exposure can create pressure, but it doesn’t replace the need for evidence.”

A Washington strategist aligned with House Oversight Democrats framed the release as a civil-rights style fact-finding mission. “This is about building a public record,” she said. “People deserve to see what has been withheld and why.”

On the right, voices worry the timing is political theater. “You can parade photographs, but unless there’s new factual evidence, it’s just theater,” said a conservative commentator on a Sunday show. “The quicker we get back to policy and governing, the better.”

Why Photos Still Hold Power

We live in an era where an image can be both instantaneous and archival. A phone photo can travel the planet in seconds and then sit in an estate for years before reemerging in a congressional release. That elasticity — its ability to be both ephemeral and permanent — is precisely what gives pictures their power and their risk.

Consider the cultural mechanics: a photograph connotes presence. It suggests proximity, shared space, at least a moment’s acquaintance. For a public figure, proximity itself is a political commodity. In a polarized age, even proximity can be framed as complicity.

But proximity is not guilt. Legal standards require proof of wrongdoing. Social standards, however, are more elastic.

Questions to Consider

What should the public expect from investigations that rely heavily on personal material recovered after someone’s death?
When does social familiarity cross a line into enabling or concealing harm?
How should journalists and lawmakers balance the public’s right to know against the risk of creating misleading narratives from fragmentary evidence?

Looking Ahead: Transparency, Politics and the Shape of Accountability

As the Oversight Committee sifts through tens of thousands of images, the broader conversation will shift between legal specifics and reputational judgment. The DOJ’s prior assessments and the coroner’s finding about Epstein’s death remain part of the factual scaffolding. Yet politics is not only shaped by proofs; it’s shaped by perception, timing, and the narratives that photos can stitch together.

“People are hungry for clarity,” a local activist put it. “They’re tired of unanswered questions. But clarity doesn’t always come in a single release. It comes in sustained, transparent inquiry.”

One image does not a case make. But it can rekindle memory, reignite suspicion, and redraw social maps. It can also force a society to ask what it wants from the institutions that guard truth and mete out consequence.

So where do we land? Maybe not on certainty. But perhaps on a steadier demand for transparency, for context, and for patience. Photographs are fragments of a human life. They are also, increasingly, the currency of public judgment.

And you, reading this — what do you see when you look at a photograph that features someone famous? Do you see evidence, or an invitation to investigate? Do you see a moment or an indictment? The answer may tell us as much about ourselves as it does about the people in the frame.

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