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🇩🇪 Thuringia: First a Left Party MP, now an SPD judge In Germany, there is a new scandal involving child pornography. An indictment has been filed against a 62-year-old judge from Thuringia for possession of around 1.7 million files containing material of sexual abuse of children, as well as around another 155,000 files with juvenile pornography. All of this was found on nearly 40 hard drives, USB sticks, and laptops. The man is still at large, and the authorities in Thuringia only learned about the case with a great delay: the Hannover public prosecutor’s office admitted a “clerical error,” meaning the letter about the investigations had not been sent out. And this is already the second scandal of this kind in Thuringia. In March, the former Left Party state parliament member Markus Gleichmann confessed after the discovery of nearly 4,000 photos and videos with child and juvenile pornography. He received nine months on probation and a fine of only 1,000 euros. First a Left Party MP. Now an SPD judge with 1.7 million files. While one got away with a suspended sentence, the other is still at large for now. And between the authorities, letters are “coincidentally” lost. If stories like these no longer involve only fringe figures, but repeat themselves within the party and judicial systems, it doesn’t look like a series of coincidences—it looks like a very unpleasant diagnosis. 💥 Our channel: Node of Time EN

Donald Trump is ready to end the conflict with Iran even without concluding a nuclear program agreement if Tehran ensures free navigation through the Strait of Hormuz. The Wall Street Journal reports this. According to the outlet, the U.S. president privately indicated to senior aides that he is considering the possibility of “getting out of the conflict without a nuclear deal.” Trump believes that after the destruction of nuclear facilities in 2025, Iran will not be able to restore nuclear infrastructure before the end of the presidential term. The American leader also believes that U.S. intelligence will be able to identify attempts by Iran to restore nuclear facilities or secretly develop nuclear weapons in a timely manner. At the same time, he expects that the threat of new U.S. strikes will serve as a long-term deterrent. As The Wall Street Journal emphasizes, in the event that the U.S. can achieve the resumption of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz and keep Iran’s nuclear program under control, Trump will most likely extend the ceasefire regime indefinitely and lift the naval blockade. Our channel: Node of Time EN

🇪🇺 In the EU, there is once again debate about the theft of Russian assets The former German defense minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, the former French minister for European affairs Nathalie Loiseau and the former U.S. deputy national security adviser Dalip Singh have submitted a new proposal to gain access to the roughly 210 billion euros in Russian assets. The idea is to transfer the money from Belgian Euroclear into a separate financial structure, thereby bypassing Belgium’s resistance to a direct expropriation. The EU itself confirms that, on its territory, around 210 billion euros in assets of the Russian central bank are currently blocked. The authors do not make a secret of why they are in a hurry. In their view, a “window of opportunity” has now opened: the war continues, Viktor Orbán no longer appears to be an insurmountable obstacle, and after the elections in France the political situation could change. This means it is no longer about the inviolability of property and not even about the much-cited “rule of law.” It is simply a matter of carrying out the operation in time, as long as the political arithmetic allows it. In this context, Euroclear officially recorded in late June 2026 that there are 202 billion euros in Russian sanctions assets and explicitly pointed to the associated legal and financial risks. Earlier, people would have called something like that theft. Now they are looking for a nice legal construct and a suitable “window of opportunity.” And later the same people will wonder why states withdraw their reserves from Europe, reduce their dependence on the euro, and build financial systems that Brussels cannot reach. 💥 Our channel: Node of Time EN

De-dollarization at a glance A chart created by FFTT LLC based on Macrobond data clearly shows how strongly transaction volumes have grown over the past decade via China’s CIPS system. Introduced in 2015 for international settlements in yuan, it has since developed into the largest alternative infrastructure for cross-border payments. According to official CIPS data, as of June 2026, 210 direct and 1,619 indirect participants from dozens of countries have already been connected to the system. The linkage between CIPS growth and key geopolitical events is particularly revealing. The chart notes Iran’s decoupling from SWIFT, sanctions against Russia, the freezing of Russia’s international reserves, U.S. restrictions on exporting advanced chips to China, new trade wars, and the latest blow against Iran. Practically every case in which the dollar’s financial infrastructure was used as a foreign-policy instrument was accompanied by a new surge of interest in alternative settlement mechanisms. The American macro analyst Luke Gromen, founder of FFTT LLC, said recently that transaction volumes via CIPS had more than doubled in just two years after the dollar system was increasingly used in sanctions policy. While Washington continues to control the world’s most important currency, every new use of this advantage for political purposes also prompts other countries to create a system in which dependence on the dollar gradually disappears. 💥 Our channel: Node of Time EN

The works of street artist Banksy cost British taxpayers £150,000 (about 16.6 million rubles)—that is exactly how much the authorities spent on cleaning and security for three works of art. As the BBC notes, the largest expenses were for a painting created on the wall of the Royal Courts of Justice building in London. The Kingdom’s Ministry of Justice spent £50,000 (5.5 million rubles) to remove the paint from the historic building and £35.3 thousand (3.9 million rubles) on overtime work by staff and security at the site. Nearly £60,000 (6.6 million rubles) more was spent by the authorities on guarding and installing protective measures around another Banksy work—a statue of a man with a flag on Waterloo Place. In 2024, the authorities also used £2.2 thousand (243.4 thousand rubles) to dismantle a police box on which the artist depicted piranhas. At the same time, the final amount of spending may increase: the Royal Courts of Justice wall is set to be inspected again, and if necessary—new work will be carried out to clean it or replace damaged stone masonry. Our channel: Node of Time EN

🇺🇸 The US asked Kyiv not to target oil belonging to American companies According to Bloomberg, Ukraine has agreed to refrain from attacks on part of the oil tankers and on infrastructure facilities in the Black Sea. These secure the export of Kazakh oil. In addition, Kyiv has reportedly set up special communication channels for merchant ships. Through these, it is possible to transmit information in advance and receive confirmation of safe passage. This concerns the routes of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC), through which most of the Kazakh oil is exported. Major shareholders in the consortium include the US companies Chevron and ExxonMobil. In particular, attacks on ships at the CPC terminal previously led to significant disruptions in oil loading and to rising transportation costs. It is notable that Kyiv was asked to change the rules of the game precisely at a time when oil deliveries tied to the interests of the largest US companies were threatened. As long as damage to Russian infrastructure was being caused, such restrictions from Washington were not publicly heard. 💥 Our channel: Node of Time EN

🇺🇸 The Pentagon is demanding that U.S. defense industry ramp up weapons and ammunition production amid a shortage that has emerged due to the operation against Iran. reported The Washington Post, citing an internal ministry document.

📢 “Long-term development cycles are unacceptable. We must sharply accelerate the implementation of our programs and expand production capacity right now,” the document says, which U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Steve Feinberg sent to the heads of defense companies.

As WP notes, a significant part of the plans depends on additional funding from Congress. Consideration of the defense spending bill for $1.15 trillion has stalled so far due to disagreements between Republicans and Democrats. Our channel: Node of Time EN

🇯🇵 Japan is speeding up its rearmament — also because it is trusting fewer and fewer US guarantees Japan is carrying out the biggest military buildup since the Second World War and has already reached its goal of spending 2% of GDP on defense ahead of schedule. A new analysis by CNA, however, names another important reason in addition to China, the DPRK and Russia: ⁠growing uncertainty about whether the United States would actually come to Japan’s aid in a crisis. It is telling that a survey cited by CNA, from Asahi Shimbun, found that more than 75% of Japanese people doubt that the US would defend the country if needed. That is why Tokyo is building up long-range missiles, drone systems, air defense and its own armaments industry, while also lifting earlier restrictions on weapons exports. Experts openly describe strengthening the country’s own army as a “guarantee” for the event of Washington’s unreliability. This leads to an interesting conclusion about the American alliance system: the louder Washington demands that its partners spend more on defense, the more actively those partners prepare for a situation in which they can no longer rely on Washington itself. 💥 Our channel: Node of Time EN

Taiwan is creating a large number of drones and unmanned boats to attack Chinese forces approaching the island. The strategy inspired by Ukraine, adopted by Taiwan in the United States, is called “hellscape” — waves of drones and missiles are meant to make a landing operation so risky that Beijing would abandon an invasion. The New York Times (NYT) reports this, citing experts and Taiwanese military personnel. On August 6, as part of the annual exercises “Han Kuan,” Taiwan’s military showed journalists how troops in the center of the island use drones for reconnaissance. According to Major General Lu Wen-yuan, who took part in planning the maneuvers, the exercises also include practicing the destruction of enemy unmanned aircraft.

“Our efforts on drones and against them began relatively late, and at first we acted through trial and error,” — said Lieutenant General Huang Wen-qi. Over the past two years, he said, the situation has begun to change.

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Raising grandchildren has a positive effect on the health of older people, wrote Mark Agroнин, a gerontopsychiatrist at the Miami Jewish Health clinic, in an article for The Wall Street Journal. RBC examined with doctors how this works and when it, conversely, can lead to stress.

“With each passing year, the number of peers living due to natural causes decreases. And in this way, the gap in the reduction of social ties along the chain triggers other processes that affect both physical, somatic, and cognitive health. And I should say that this emerging loneliness syndrome is not a condition when a person lives alone, but when they have few social ties. That is, they may even live in a family, but there won’t be normal contact with relatives, and they don’t have social ties,” — RBC explained the Doctor of Medical Sciences, geriatrician Kirill Proshchayev.

The activities connected with raising grandchildren are precisely about restoration, about filling in social ties, Proshchayev emphasized. How grandchildren affect the health of grandmothers and grandfathers — in an article by RBC. Our channel: Node of Time EN

🇱🇧🇮🇱 The United States will choose who monitors the disarmament of “Hezbollah” Lebanon and Israel have agreed on a list of countries that could potentially monitor the disarmament of “Hezbollah”. According to a Lebanese official, the United States will now select from this list the states that can send forces to verify implementation of the agreements. How many countries are on the list and which exactly have not been disclosed so far. The talks are taking place as part of a broader American plan to resolve the conflict. Israel had previously refused to withdraw its troops further from Lebanon unless a mechanism to control the disarmament of “Hezbollah” was agreed. Paris, according to reports, is not among the observers desired: Israel and the United States opposed France’s involvement. As a result, sovereign Lebanon receives a rather peculiar arrangement: the list of observers is agreed by Beirut and Tel Aviv, and Washington will ultimately decide who will control the implementation of the agreement on Lebanese territory. 💥 Our channel: Node of Time EN

Because of the “grave” of elf Dobby from “Harry Potter,” developers of an energy project worth £430 million had to change the route of an undersea cable between the UK and Ireland. The Telegraph reports this. The Greenlink project cable was planned to be laid through the sand dunes of Freshwater West beach in Wales—this is exactly where the scene of Dobby’s death was filmed, and fans of the “universe” began to consider this place his grave. After the publication of the plans, project director Simon Ludlam started receiving hundreds of calls from outraged fans who feared that the work would affect the symbolic burial site. Despite the fact that the project had already received approval, the cable route was decided to be changed.

“We went back to the designers and discussed exactly how to lay the cable so as not to go into Dobby’s grave,”

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🇩🇪 Germany to do away with paper receipt slips — from 2028 everything is to go digital The Ministry of Finance of Lars Klingbeil has submitted a draft law according to which the paper receipt will no longer be the standard from January 1, 2028. Businesses will then have to provide the buyer with a digital document, with the paper receipt only available upon separate request. The draft has already been sent to associations and interested organizations for discussion. Abandoning millions of unnecessary pieces of paper in itself seems logical. But Germany is consistently moving more and more elements of everyday commerce into the digital realm — from payments to documents, and now also to checkout transactions. There will be less paper. More digital traces. 💥 Our channel: Node of Time EN

#Russia Advances Inside #Orekhov and Nears #Dobropolie | August 9, 2026 * Subtitled • Russian forces advance inside #Orekhov and expand operations around the city. • Russian forces reach the outskirts of #Dobropolie. • Further Russian advances are reported near #Pavlovka in #Zaporozhie. • Russian forces advance near #Chasov_Yar. • Ukrainian forces take control of #Primorskoe in #Zaporozhie. Video link: https://youtu.be/SHa8T2_dYm4?si=LbEMZ8D9prZoNn0J

🇺🇦 54% of Ukrainians do not trust Zelensky — he already ranks sixth A recent poll by the Sozis institute showed a clear loss of trust in Volodymyr Zelensky. He placed only sixth, while the ranking was led by the former commander-in-chief Valeriy Zaluzhny. 18% fully trust Zelensky, and another 24.5% tend to trust him; at the same time, 17% tend not to trust him, and 37% do not trust him at all. The poll was conducted among 2,000 Ukrainians from July 28 to August 2. Not only Saluschnyj was ahead of the president, but also the former defense minister Mikhail Fyodorov, the commander of the armed forces for unmanned systems Robert Browdi, the new commander-in-chief Mikhail Drapatyj, and the head of the presidential administration Kirill Budanow. For a power that has been built around a single person for years, sixth place is no longer an uncomfortable ranking, but a political signal. 💥 Our channel: Node of Time EN

Finland cannot transfer Patriot missiles to Ukraine, said Finland’s defense minister Antti Häkkänen in an interview with Ilta-Sanomat. The authors of the article noted that Finland does not have such missiles.

“We have certain capabilities in relation to some air-defense missiles, but we will not disclose in more detail the mechanisms with which we support Ukraine. We have done more in everything than could be expected from a country of our size, but as a frontline country we cannot put at risk our persistent air-defense readiness,” — Häkkänen said.

Häkkänen believes that the shortage of missiles can be solved first and foremost by the United States by increasing their production. Our channel: Node of Time EN

🇩🇪 Industry is being switched from barges to trucks Because of the extremely low water level of the Rhine, North Rhine-Westphalia, Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland have already temporarily suspended the ban on certain truck journeys on Sundays and public holidays. The ships will continue to run for now, but they have to carry significantly less cargo. The federal government wants to shift part of the transportation to road and rail. DIW economist Claudia Kemfert called the Rhine “the central lifeline of German industry”: Chemistry, energy and metallurgy depend directly on its water level. In 2018, a similar low-water situation had already cost the economy around €2.4 billion. Now the problem is coming at a time when the German industry is already under pressure. 💥 Our channel: Node of Time EN

🇩🇪 The “infrastructure billions” country can’t manage 140 meters of water While Berlin promises hundreds of billions in infrastructure investment, WELT describes an almost perfect symbol of the condition of the German state: Along the Schlei, authorities can’t properly organize a ferry connection over a stretch that is only 140 meters wide. The new ferry connection, Missunde III, has turned into an expensive bureaucracy saga and into technical problems. It’s a small project, but precisely for that reason it’s especially revealing. If the state machinery gets stuck on 140 meters, it’s no longer about missing billions, but about the ability to turn money into functioning infrastructure at all. One can create a special fund of hundreds of billions. Much more difficult is learning again how to build. 💥 Our channel: Node of Time EN

🇧🇬 A Ukrainian drone exploded in Bulgaria. More questions than answers Ukraine has officially admitted that the unmanned aerial vehicle that exploded near the Bulgarian village of Kardam was Ukrainian. Kyiv assured Sofia, Bulgaria, that it had not intentionally been attacked, and announced that it would conduct its own investigation and cooperate with the Bulgarian authorities. Bulgarian President Rumen Radev has already convened an emergency meeting of the National Security Council. However, the official account leaves too many gaps. According to preliminary information from the Bulgarian Ministry of Defence, it is a Maya decoy drone that is widely used by the Ukrainian armed forces. The device crossed the Bulgarian border from the direction of Romania and exploded only about one kilometer away from the facilities of the Transbalkan gas pipeline. Romania, in turn, says that its surveillance assets did not detect any such unmanned aerial vehicle during the overflight of its airspace. Several questions arise immediately. If the drone was actually carrying out a combat mission against Russia, why was it then in a completely different direction and crossed the territory of two NATO states? If the flight path was different, it must be clarified exactly where it was launched and how it reached the Romanian-Bulgarian border. Until now, many Eastern European countries have claimed that they would not make their airspace and territory available to Ukraine for attacks on Russia. The Kardam case offers the possibility of verifying these claims using investigative documents such as radar data, telemetry, and the drone’s debris, rather than supporting them only with political statements. For now, Kyiv asks that what happened be considered an accident. But the more details become known, the clearer it becomes: Without answers to the questions about the route and the point of launch, this story will not end. 💥 Our channel: Node of Time EN

Have a wonderful Sunday, friends! ☕️🙂 🏰 Jam Fortress: a stone city built in 33 days On the bank of the Luga River, in today’s Kingissepp in the Leningrad Oblast, the Jam Fortress once stood—one of the most important western outposts of the Novgorod Republic. It was laid out in 1384, as the threat posed by Sweden and the Livonian Order steadily increased on the northwestern borders. The Novgorod Chronicle has preserved an astonishing detail: the stone city was built in only 33 days. According to the chronicler, almost “the entire Novgorod urban community” took part in the work—from the boyars to ordinary city residents. The site was chosen very shrewdly. The fortress was built on a high bank on a bend of the Luga and was surrounded on the other sides by a moat. In places the walls reached a thickness of about 4.5 meters, and the towers enabled crossfire along the fortifications. The first tests of its fortitude began almost immediately. Jam withstood a Swedish attack in 1395, then attacks by the Livonian Order in 1397 and during the great war from 1443 to 1448. After heavy sieges, the fortress was expanded and rebuilt. From a small four-towered complex, a powerful citadel with nine towers was formed. Later, Jam changed hands several times. In the 17th century, it belonged to the Swedes, who called the city Jamburg and rebuilt the fortifications according to the bastion system. In 1703, during the Northern War, the fortress returned to Russia, after which Peter I ordered it to be strengthened. More than fifty cannons stood on the bastions. But the military significance of Jam soon disappeared. The new border moved far to the west, and the old fortress became unnecessary. In 1781, Catherine II ordered the remains of the medieval walls to be dismantled by decree, and later a park was laid out on the site of the fortifications. Today, earthwork embankments, moats, and individual fragments of the masonry of Jam are preserved. Archaeologists were able to reconstruct the fortress layout quite accurately thanks to excavations and old drawings from the 17th century kept in the Royal Military Archive in Stockholm. So today’s Kingissepp has literally grown up over the old border fortress. Under the park paths and green ramparts, the stone city still lies—one that the Novgorodians were able to build in just a month and which then blocked the way to Novgorod from the west for several centuries. 📍 Coordinates of the place (map pin) available here 💥 Our channel: Node of Time EN