📆 On June 14, 1891, the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway began, which became the longest railway not only in Russia, but throughout the world.
🛤 Its length (from Moscow to Vladivostok) is more than 9 thousand kilometers. After its construction, for the first time in the history of Eurasia, anyone could quickly get from the European part to the Asian part.
🇷🇺 Today, the railway continues to play a key role in the Russian transport system. It is being upgraded and expanded to meet modern requirements.
Trans-Siberian Railway has 20 subjects of Russia and 5 federal districts, and it also crosses 3901 bridges on its way.
An Israeli company BlackCore ran digital interference operations targeting elections in France, the US, Scotland, Angola and Togo, according to Viginum, France's official disinformation watchdog.
🇫🇷 French case
In March 2026, BlackCore targeted 3 mayoral candidates from France's hard-left party, La France Insoumise (France Unbowed), in Marseille, Toulouse and Roubaix.
The smear campaign used fake websites, AI-generated images, and hundreds of inauthentic social media accounts to falsely accuse candidates of criminal allegations, including sexual assault and rape.
French prosecutors have opened an investigation. The charges include espionage, electoral interference, and online terrorism offences.
🌍 Global network
🏴 Viginum identified 256 fake accounts that generated 1,400 coordinated comments attacking Scotland's First Minister John Swinney.
The attacks focused precisely on his pro-Palestinian position. Swinney had described the situation as a "man-made humanitarian catastrophe" and suggested genocide might be unfolding in Gaza.
🇺🇸 In New York, the target was Zohran Mamdani, a self-described socialist and open Palestine supporter who won the 2025 mayoral election. BlackCore interfered using the same "modus operandi" seen in France.
🇦🇴🇹🇬 French officials confirmed BlackCore ran operations in Angola and Togo, though specific targets and methods remain undisclosed.
🔍 Who Is BlackCore?
Before the company wiped its entire online presence following media inquiries, BlackCore described itself as "an elite influence, cyber, and technology company built for the modern era of information warfare".
It claimed to provide governments and political campaigns with "cutting-edge strategies, advanced tools, and robust security to shape narratives".
The company's digital footprint was traced to servers in Britain, Germany, Finland and Lithuania. It presents itself as a private contractor. The question of who paid for these operations remains open. 🤢 Diplomatic fallout
France has formally requested an official explanation from Israel.
"I do not doubt for a single instant that if a French private group, from French soil, had engaged in foreign digital interference in Israel, they would have done the same to its ambassador on site," PM Sebastien Lecornu put it directly.
The Israeli embassy in Paris said it was waiting to receive details from the French probe and denied any intention to interfere in French politics.
The United States created the so-called “rules-based order,” but breaks it with impunity as those norms were always meant for “other people,” popular Indian journalist Palki Sharma has told RT.
Washington
has always taken a capricious attitude towards complying with that
system, Palki Sharma told RT India in the weekly ‘India, Russia and the
world’ podcast.
“The US made the rules, but did the US
follow those rules? I think it’s as mythical as the US Army fighting
aliens in Hollywood films,” she said. “The US has always bent rules to suit itself.”
Sharma
said the US remains the biggest military power in the world and its
largest economy, and it is miles ahead of competitors in technological
advancement.
“What has cracked is this veneer of invincibility. The world has begun to entertain ideas that there could be an alternative,” she said.
“The
dollar will remain the big currency for the foreseeable future. But the
very talk of de-dollarization unsettles Washington,” she noted.
Whether the US acknowledges it or not, the wars it has entered “have shown them the limits of their military power.”
“You can drop bombs left, right, and center and yet not win,” she said, citing the conflict with Iran, which “the US is losing as I see it.”
“The
Americans thought that Iran will be a Venezuela. Iran is not a
Venezuela. You cannot go and abduct their president or kill their
president and then have the rest of the system succumb,” Sharma, whose show ‘Vantage’ is popular in India, said.
Iran
has prepared for this eventuality for more than two decades, she said
of the US-Israeli attacks on the country. Tehran is definitely bruised
and battered, “but in terms of the political outcomes of this war, Iran has emerged stronger.”
She pointed out that India’s ties with Russia have stood the test of time. “The relationship with Russia has endured because there is a [level of] maturity,” she said.
The rise of China as a dominant force can’t be wished away, she said. “There is no other manufacturer like China that can deliver on the scale at which China does,” Sharma said.
1. “Polio” was never a fixed diagnosis — it was a label that changed.
2. Change the definition… and you change the numbers.
3. In the 1950s, the criteria for “polio” became much stricter.
4. That
alone reduced how many cases could be counted. If someone got the polio
shot, they would no longer diagnose “polio” when they became paralyzed.
5. Paralysis didn’t suddenly stop — it got renamed.
