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NRC: Individual fell into ‘reactor cavity’ at Palisades Nuclear Plant

The United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission said the person fell into the reactor cavity, ingested cavity water and was transported off-site.

 Steven Bohner, October 22, 2025, https://www.wzzm13.com/article/news/local/nrc-individual-fell-into-reactor-cavity-palisades-nuclear-plant/69-8c68f69f-4b48-4869-b66a-f3b18e8c7bbb

COVERT, Mich. — The United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) said an individual fell into a “reactor cavity” at the Palisades Nuclear Plant in Covert, Mich.

The NRC said the incident happened on Oct. 21, around 9:30 a.m., when an individual fell into a reactor cavity at the plant. They said the individual ingested “some amount” of the cavity water, and was decontaminated by radiation protection personnel before being taken off-site to seek medical attention about nine hours later at 4:32 p.m.

The NRC report said the individual had “300 counts per minute detected in their hair,” and categorized the individual as “contaminated.” The report listed the incident as a non-emergency. 

The reactor cavity is a space between the reactor vessel and a concrete shield surrounding the reactor, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Holtec International provided 13 ON YOUR SIDE with the following comment:

“While performing work inside the containment building, a Palisades contractor fell into a pool of water located above the reactor. The contractor was wearing all required personal protective equipment, including a life vest, which is standard when working near the pool without a barrier in place. The worker was promptly assisted from the water, evaluated, monitored, and decontaminated for removable contamination in accordance with established industry standards and safety procedures. Radiological assessments are ongoing and are expected to confirm exposure well below regulatory and administrative dose limits. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission was properly notified, and a review of human performance factors contributing to the incident is underway. The worker sustained minor injuries from their fall and has since returned to work.”

The Palisades Nuclear Plant is in the process of restarting its 800-megawatt reactor. Once restarted, Palisades would become the first nuclear power plant in the United States scheduled to restart its reactor after its fuel had been removed.

In July, the NRC approved a series of licensing and regulatory actions that are essential for the plant to restart, including allowing Holtec to load fuel into the reactor.

At the time of the incident, it is unclear if fuel was present in the reactor.

October 24, 2025 Posted by | incidents, USA | Leave a comment

Vaunted Trump Ceasefire? Israel has a genocidal Palestinian ethnic cleaning to complete

Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL, 22 Oct 25, https://theaimn.net/vaunted-trump-ceasefire-faggedaboudit-israel-has-a-genocidal-palestinian-ethnic-cleaning-to-complete/#google_vignette

The tremendous support given to Trump’s second ceasefire in Israel’s genocide in Gaza ignores reality and history.

How quickly the Trump high-fivers forget Israel abandoned Trump’s first ceasefire that lasted from January 19 to March 18. During that time Israel continued to kill hundreds of Palestinians while restricting food, water and medicine. Then, with Trump’s bombs, they resumed their grotesque genocide further obliterating Gaza while killing tens of thousands more Palestinians.

The first ceasefire released 33 Israeli hostages, leaving 48 to languish as Israel returned to their first priority, ridding Gaza of its Palestinians not yet disappeared. It took nearly 7 months for pressure to build on Israel to agree to a second ceasefire to return remaining hostages, 20 living and 28 dead.

But like Ceasefire 1, Ceasefire 2 is just genocidal ethnic cleansing by subtler means. In the first 9 days, Israel’s military has killed or wounded nearly 400 Palestinians, while again restricting food, water and medicine. Israel still occupies over half of Gaza, establishing yellow lines forbidding Palestinians to cross.

On ceasefire day 10 Israel unleased massive air strikes across Gaza. In their most grotesque ceasefire violation, Israel bombed a vehicle that strayed across Israel’s yellow line, killing 11 family members including 3 women and 7 kids.

Was Trump outraged? Only at Hamas who he’s threatening to obliterate by giving Israel the green light to ‘finish the job.’

This should surprise no one with a moral conscience. Israel has been violating the ceasefire in Lebanon for nearly a year. During that time they’ve killed over 4,000 Lebanese, destroyed tens of thousands of homes and gobbled up 5 Lebanese areas.

That’s some ceasefire you negotiated Mr. Trump. All you accomplished is delay Israel’s one and only goal…bringing a Palestinian free Gaza into Greater Israel.

October 24, 2025 Posted by | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel, USA | Leave a comment

The Great Narco Pretext: Trump Readies for Regime Change in Venezuela.

20 October 2025 Dr Binoy Kampmark, https://theaimn.net/the-great-narco-pretext-trump-readies-for-regime-change-in-venezuela/

Since the start of September, the Trump administration has busied itself with striking boats in international waters stemming from Venezuelan and possibly Colombian waters. Their mortal offence: allegedly carrying narcotics cargo destined for consumers in the United States. A few days following the first strike on September 2, President Donald Trump stated in a War Powers Resolution notification to Congress that the action was one of “self-defense” motivated by “the inability or unwillingness of some states in the region to address the continuing threat to United States persons and interests emanating from their territories.”

In early October, a presidential notice was issued deeming those killed in such strikes on suspicion of drug smuggling “unlawful combatants.” The notice to Congress advanced an anaemic excuse to justify murder instead of arrest, an echo of previous, elastic rationales used by administrations to justify an enlargement of executive war powers: “based on the cumulative effects of these hostile acts against the citizens and interests of the United States and friendly foreign nations, the president determined that the United States is in a non–international armed conflict with these designated terrorist organizations.” The US had “reached a critical point where we must use force in self-defense and defense of others against the ongoing attacks by these designated terrorist organizations.”

The document amounted to an arrogation of extraordinary wartime powers to combat drug cartels, treating the trafficking of illicit narcotics to an armed assault on US citizens. Geoffrey S. Corn, a former judge advocate general lawyer, thought it a most adventurous move, given that drug cartels were not engaged in “hostilities”. “This is not stretching the envelope,” he told The New York Times. “This is shredding it. This is tearing it apart.”  

In the kingdom of alternative legal realities, White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly articulated the position in an email: “the president acted in line with the law of armed conflict to protect our country from those trying to bring deadly poison to our shores, and he is delivering on his promise to take on the cartels and eliminate these national security threats from murdering more Americans.”

The number of possible international law violations are far from negligible. Michael Schmitt lists a few in Just Security. Most obvious is the physical violation of a State’s sovereignty, which can take place through interfering with its “inherently governmental functions” comprising such matters as law enforcement. To also authorise kinetic operations in another State’s territory can amount to wrongful intervention in its international affairs. Last, though not least, is that using force in this context may be unlawful, violating Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter and customary law.

Nothing in this cooked up scheme adds up. If the intention is to curb overdoses on US soil from drug use, flow of fentanyl would be the object of the exercise. But fentanyl hails from Mexico, not South America. The broader agenda is a more traditional one: the assertion of the imperium’s control over countries in the Americas, eliminating regimes deemed unfriendly to Washington’s interests. Narcotics has become the throbbing pretext, with Trump accusing Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro of being the leader of the drug trafficking organisation Cartel of the Suns. He is also accused of using the dark offices of the Tren de Aragua prison gang to conduct “irregular warfare” against the United States, despite countering claims by the intelligence community that the gang is not under Maduro’s control. (The reaffirmation of the initial intelligence assessment by the National Intelligence Council led to the sacking of its acting director, Michael Collins.)  

In 2020, the first Trump administration offered a reward of up to US$15 million for information leading to the arrest and conviction of Maduro. Two more increases to the bounty followed, the latest on August 7 being US$50 million following the sanctioning of the Cartel of the Suns by the Department of Treasury as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist. “As leader of Cartel of the Suns,” declares the State Department in its notice of reward, “Maduro is the first target in the history of the Narcotics Rewards Program with a reward offer exceeding $25 million.”

Trump, in one of his moments of sharp frankness, concedes that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been authorised to conduct covert lethal operations on Venezuelan soil and more broadly through the Caribbean in a presidential finding. “We are certainly looking at land now, because we’ve got the sea well under control,” he told reporters hours after the secret authorisation was revealed.  

In explaining his shoddy reasons, Trump cited Venezuela’s emptying of its “prisons into the United States of America” and the issue of drugs. “We have a lot of drugs coming in from Venezuela, and a lot of the Venezuelan drugs come in through the sea, so you get to see that, but we’re going to stop them by land also.”

To the finding can be added a bulking military presence in the region: eight surface warships and a submarine in the Caribbean, 10,000 US troops, largely garrisoned at bases in Puerto Rico, with a contingent of Marines equipped with amphibious assault boats. In the meantime, the recent winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, the Venezuelan opposition figure María Corina Machado, salivates at the prospect of regime change with muscular intervention from Washington. The pieces are being moved into place, and the self-proclaimed peace maker in the White House is readying for war.

October 22, 2025 Posted by | secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

Trump furious War Chief Hegseth didn’t kill all on Venezuelan boat No. 6 he sent to Davy Jones Locker.

Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL . 19 Oct 25

Rule No. 1 about being a mass murderer of hapless souls on unarmed boats off Venezuela is, ‘Leave no survivors.’ War Secretary Pete Hegseth followed that rule to a tee in his murderous strikes on 5 unarmed boats, killing all 27 aboard.

But he screwed up boat No. 6, allowing 2 survivors to be picked up by Hegseth’s death dealing Navy. Since of course there was no evidence of their involvement in drug smuggling, the irrelevant reason for blasting their boat, Trump’s Hit Man quickly whisked them off to drug kingpin Nicholas Maduro’s Venezuela. Oops, their actual countries of Columbia and Ecuador which are not on Trump’s mass murder radar.

Not bashful about trumpeting his Venezuelan boat murder rampage, Trump took to his War Criminal Social platform, touting “It was my great honor to destroy a very large DRUG-CARRYING SUBMARINE that was navigating towards the United States on a well known narcotrafficking transit route. It was loaded up with mostly Fentanyl, and other illegal narcotics and there were four known narcoterrorists on board the vessel”. Trump omitted his horror that 2 survived to refute his insane murder justification scheme.

Come on Attorney General Pam Bondi. You’ve got Trump’s gleeful confession on the web to convince any responsible juror of his guilt in mass premeditated murder. Time to do your job as Attorney General, enforcing the law instead of being Consigliere for Trump’s Murder Incorporated.

October 22, 2025 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Trump Furloughs Top Nuclear Weapons Staff (What Could Go Wrong?)

The workers responsible for protecting the U.S. nuclear arsenal are now being furloughed.

Robert McCoy, October 21, 2025, https://newrepublic.com/post/202015/trump-furloughs-nuclear-weapons-staff-shutdown

The government’s nuclear watchdog agency is poised to be understaffed, as Politico reports the Trump administration has placed about 80 percent of its personnel on furlough amid the ongoing government shutdown.

The National Nuclear Security Administration is a semiautonomous agency within the Department of Energy that maintains the U.S. nuclear stockpile, responds to nuclear emergencies domestically and abroad, and works to prevent nuclear proliferation globally. The NNSA’s staff of fewer than 2,000 workers oversees about 60,000 contractors.

On Monday morning, the administration sent out furlough notices to about 1,400 employees, Politico reports, leaving just 375 staff members on the job for the time being. This is an unprecedented action in the agency’s 25-year history.

Last week, when the then-impending cuts were first reported, Energy Secretary Chris Wright called the workers “critical to modernizing our nuclear arsenal.”

This is just the latest controversial NNSA staffing news to come out of the second Trump administration. The agency previously faced scrutiny for terminating hundreds of workers at the behest of President Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, before scrambling to rehire some of them as Wright confessed he’d “made mistakes” and moved “a little too quickly.”

October 22, 2025 Posted by | employment, USA | Leave a comment

Trump rejects Zelensky on Tomahawks, but Washington’s war lobby refuses to “lose”

By rejecting Tomahawk missiles for Ukraine, Trump once again disappoints Zelensky. To negotiate with Putin, will he also defy the Beltway?

Aaron Maté, Oct 21, 2025

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky was hoping to leave the White House on Friday with a commitment for long-range US Tomahawk missiles that can strike Russia. Instead, Zelensky once again found himself on the losing end of his strained relationship with President Trump. After musing about providing Tomahawks and even declaring that Ukraine was positioned to recapture all of its territory, Trump rejected Zelensky’s request and urged him to cede the Donbas region to Moscow.

“[Trump] said Putin will destroy you if you don’t agree now,” a source told the Washington Post. “It was pretty much like ‘no, look guys, you can’t possibly win back any territory. … There is nothing we can do to save you. You should try to give diplomacy another chance.’” According to a European official, Trump is now “saying the U.S. needs Tomahawks, and doesn’t want to escalate.”

Trump’s renewed aversion to escalation followed a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who initiated the conversation to lobby against Zelensky’s request. Putin likely conveyed a stark warning. For Ukraine to fire Tomahawks at Russia, the US military would have to do the job inside Ukrainian territory. And because the Tomahawks are technically nuclear-capable, Russia, by its own military doctrine and the logic of basic deterrence, would have to fire back beyond Ukraine. Given the abundance of US military assets near its borders, Russia would have no shortage of targets……………………………………………………………….(Subscribers only) https://www.aaronmate.net/p/trump-rejects-zelensky-on-tomahawks?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

October 22, 2025 Posted by | Ukraine, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Tireless advocacy delivers victory

    by beyondnuclearinternational

A grand coalition and legal support won a hard-fought struggle to stop Holtec’s radioactive waste dump, writes Kevin Kamps

Holtec International and Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance’s (ELEA) joint scheme to construct and operate the world’s largest high-level radioactive waste dump, midway between Hobbs and Carlsbad, has been terminated. This is a hard-won environmental justice (EJ) victory, and brought about by the tireless work of countless Indigenous, as well as grassroots EJ, environmental, and public interest allies for more than a decade.Together they have successfully blocked a dangerous dump scheme and the many thousands of “Mobile Chornobyl” radioactive waste shipments its opening would have launched nationwide.

Beyond Nuclear has fought against this Holtec-ELEA consolidated interim storage facility (CISF) since it was first launched on “Nuclear Fool’s Day” (April 1), 2017, when Holtec’s CEO, Krishna Singh, publicly unveiled the CISF license application just submitted to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), at a Capitol Hill press conference. 

In fact, Beyond Nuclear and coalition allies wrote the NRC in October 2016, warning that CISFs — such as Interim Storage Partners’ (ISP) in Texas, some 40-miles east of Holtec’s site — were illegal on their face, and urging the agency to cease and desist from processing such applications. NRC ignored our own warnings and those of others and proceeded with docketing the license applications.

Many years of intense NRC licensing proceedings on both Holtec and ISP’s CISFs, and related environmental reviews, followed. Our coalition engaged at every step, alongside environmental allies in New Mexico, Texas, and across the country. For example, we broke records, in terms of the number (many tens of thousands) of public comments opposing both dumps, at the environmental scoping, as well as the Draft Environmental Impact Statement stages, despite the latter taking place during the Covid-19 pandemic. 

The grassroots environmental coalition partners included Don’t Waste Michigan, et al. (Citizens’ Environmental Coalition of New York, Citizens for Alternatives to Chemical Contamination in Michigan, Demanding Nuclear Abolition (formerly Nuclear Issues Study Group) of New Mexico, Nuclear Energy Information Service in Illinois, Public Citizen’s Texas Office, San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace of California, and Sustainable Energy and Economic Development Coalition in Texas), as well as Sierra Club chapters in New Mexico and Texas. Together, we generated many dozens of contentions in NRC Atomic Safety and Licensing Board proceedings, all of which were rejected, with those rulings rapidly upheld by the NRC Commissioners despite our appeals.

Our coalition, which includes an oil and ranching company, as well as the States of New Mexico and Texas, then appealed to three separate federal courts of appeal across the country. Many years of federal court battles have taken place, all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court. 

Although the Supreme Court ruled last June that Texas and the oil/ranching company lacked standing, the merits of the dump opponents’ cases, including Beyond Nuclear’s, have never had their day in court. Beyond Nuclear is considering further appeals of adverse rulings by the federal courts thus far, in an attempt to address the CISFs’ violation of such laws as the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, as Amended, as well as the Administrative Procedure Act.

This work could not have been done without yeoman efforts bye our attorneys, Diane Curran of Harmon Curran in Washington, D.C., and Mindy Goldstein, director of the Turner Environmental Law Clinic at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. Invaluable legal support also came from Wally Taylor, the Cedar Rapids, Iowa-based attorney who served as legal counsel for Sierra Club, as well as Terry Lodge, the Toledo, Ohio-based attorney who served as legal counsel for Don’t Waste Michigan, et al., in these proceedings.

We benefitted from a number of expert witnesses who served Sierra Club and Don’t Waste Michigan, et al., including: the late Robert Alvarez of Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C.; Dr. James David Ballard, a retired California State University, Northridge professor (see his report, here); Dr. Marvin Resnikoff of Radioactive Waste Management Associates in Vermont; and Dr. Gordon Thompson of Institute for Resource and Security Studies in Massachusetts.

Our fight was significantly enhanced by members and supporters of Beyond Nuclear in New Mexico and Texas — most of them working ranchers and orchardists — who have steadfastly and for many years provided legal standing for our NRC interventions and federal court appeals……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Despite this tremendous environmental justice victory, we must remain vigilant. ELEA has already stated it is seeking a new partner to nuclearize its southeastern New Mexico site, including to do reprocessing. Besides being environmentally ruinous, with large-scale releases of hazardous radioactivity into the air, onto soil, and into surface waters and groundwater, the separation of fissile Plutonium-239 from highly radioactive waste via reprocessing is also a glaring nuclear weapons proliferation risk. Reprocessing is also astronomically expensive, and the public will be left holding the bag.

For its part, Holtec has also stated it will simply carry on seeking “collaborative siting” (formerly called “consent-based siting”) as part of an ongoing DOE initiative. Holtec has recently targeted Arkansas communities. Many times for the past several decades now, low-income and/or Black/Indigenous/People of Color (BIPOC) communities, especially Native American reservations, have been targeted for such schemes by the nuclear industry. 

(T-shirt design at left by the late Noel Marquez)

A part of the good news here is that Holtec’s proposed barge shipments of highly radioactive waste on surface waters — such as the Hudson River past New York City; Cape Cod Bay, Massachusetts Bay, and Boston Harbor in Massachusetts; Barnegat Bay and the Jersey Shore into Newark, New Jersey; and Lake Michigan — have been fended off yet again, at least for the time being. 

So have the potential road and rail shipments of highly radioactive waste — potential ‘Mobile Chornobyls’ — through most states in the Lower 48. CISFs automatically double transport risks, as irradiated fuel would have to be transferred from interim storage to an eventual permanent disposal site. 

Regarding the latter, Holtec and ISP, as well as NRC, outrageously assumed Yucca Mountain, Nevada, on Western Shoshone land, would serve as the permanent repository.

Decades of previous hard work by many hundreds of environmental, EJ, and Indigenous groups across the country fended off the permanent repository at Yucca Mountain, as well as “interim storage” at both Yucca, and the Skull Valley Goshutes Indian Reservation in Utah, another aborted radioactively racist scheme in which Holtec was a partner. Holtec would have provided 4,000 storage/transport containers of dubious structural integrity to PFS on the tiny reservation west of Salt Lake City, had the dump not been stopped. But PFS was blocked, and never broke ground, despite having received an NRC construction and operating license.

As with Private Fuel Storage in Utah, despite NRC’s rubber stamping of the license, we have now also blocked Holtec’s CISF in New Mexico, and hope to do the same at ISP’s CISF in Texas.

For more information about Holtec’s now blocked CISF in New Mexico, and Interim Storage Partners’ CISF in west Texas (just 0.3 miles from the New Mexico state line, and upstream), including our coalition’s resistance to both, see our Centralized Storage website section (2022-present). For earlier posts (2009-2022), see the Centralized Storage section at Beyond Nuclear’s archived website. And see Beyond Nuclear’s educational video, featuring Mustafa Ali (formerly President Obama’s head of EJ at EPA), and grassroots Indigenous and Latinx New Mexican voices, opposing the CISFs, and our series of backgrounders detailing the reasons for our opposition, posted here. https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2025/10/19/tireless-advocacy-delivers-victory/

October 22, 2025 Posted by | opposition to nuclear, USA | Leave a comment

Trump-Zelensky meeting was ‘bad’ – Axios.

18 Oct, 2025 , https://www.rt.com/news/626650-trump-zelensky-meeting-bad/

The Ukrainian leader left Washington without promises on Tomahawk missiles, the outlet’s sources say

Friday’s White House meeting between US President Donald Trump and Vladimir Zelensky was “tense,” with the Ukrainian leader failing to secure deliveries of long-range Tomahawk missiles, Axios has reported, citing sources.

Trump told Zelensky he does not plan to provide Tomahawks “at least for now,” according to two people briefed on the meeting. The talks lasted around two and a half hours and were described by one source as “not easy,” and by another as “bad.” At times, the discussion “got a bit emotional,” the outlet said.

”Nobody shouted, but Trump was tough,” one source told Axios. The session ended abruptly when Trump reportedly said, “I think we’re done. Let’s see what happens next week,” possibly referring to upcoming Russia-US talks.

Speaking to reporters afterwards, Zelensky declined to answer questions about Tomahawk deliveries, only saying the US “does not want escalation.”

Trump said “it’s not easy” for Washington to provide the missiles because it needs to maintain its own supplies for the nation’s own defense. He also acknowledged that allowing Kiev to conduct strikes deep into Russia could lead to an escalation.

Moscow has warned against supplying the missiles to Ukraine, arguing they would “not change the situation on the battlefield” but would “severely undermine the prospects of a peaceful settlement” and harm Russia-US relations.

Zelensky has sought Tomahawks – which have a maximum range of 2,500km (1,550 miles) – for weeks, insisting that Ukraine would only use them against military targets to increase pressure on Russia and move toward a peace deal. However, the Ukrainian leader has threatened Russia with blackouts in border regions and Moscow. Russian officials also suggested that Kiev is plotting to use the missiles for “terrorist attacks.”

The Trump-Zelensky meeting followed a phone call between Trump and Putin, after which both sides signaled plans for a summit in Budapest, Hungary, in the near future.

October 21, 2025 Posted by | politics international, Ukraine, USA | Leave a comment

Trump: “Thank you so much, Bibi. Excellent work.”

Manlio Dinucci, Voltairenet.org, Sat, 18 Oct 2025, https://www.sott.net/article/502465-Trump-Thank-you-so-much-Bibi-Excellent-work

President Donald Trump,like all his predecessors, has continued the US policy of military support for Israel. But he has broken with the revisionist Zionists. Thus, he lavishly congratulated Benjamin Netanyahu, but forced him to accept his peace plan.

President Trump said in his speech to the Israeli parliament:

“I want to express my gratitude to a man of exceptional courage and patriotism. There is only one, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Bibi, please stand. You are a very popular man. You know why? Because you know how to win. Thank you so much, Bibi. Great job. I think, as you said, Bibi, peace is achieved through strength.

“And that’s really the point. The United States has the largest and most powerful military that the history of the world has ever seen. I can tell you, we have weapons that no one could have ever imagined. We produce the best weapons in the world, and we have an awful lot of them. And, frankly, we supplied many of them to Israel. Bibi kept calling me, ‘Can you get me this weapon? This one, and this one?'” Some I’d never heard of, Bibi, and yet I was the one producing them. But we would have gotten them for you. And they’re the best. You used them well. You need someone who knows how to use them, and you obviously used them very well. So well that Israel became strong and powerful, which in the end led to peace.”

Official data confirms that the United States has provided Israel with at least $21.7 billion in military aid since the start of the Gaza war on October 7, 2023. In addition, both the Biden and Trump administrations have agreements to sell Israel weapons and military services worth tens of billions of dollars more in the coming years. Between October 2023 and May 2025, Israel received 940 ships and cargo planes loaded with weapons from the United States, the Israeli Defense Minister said on May 27, 2025.

The Trump administration has accelerated the supply of weapons to Israel, including 2,000-pound bombs (about one ton) that Israel has used to destroy buildings, hospitals, water infrastructure, and other civilian targets in Gaza. In February 2025, the Trump administration’s State Department notified Congress of three arms sales to Israel: 35,529 Mk-84 and BLU 117 2,000-pound bombs and 4,000 I-2000 penetrator warheads for $2 billion; 5,000 1,000-pound bombs and JDAM guidance kits for $675 million; and Caterpillar D9 bulldozers for $295 million.

In March, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that since Trump took office on January 20, 2025, his administration has approved nearly $12 billion in major arms sales to Israel. Now, the Trump administration is planning new arms sales to Israel worth $6 billion. These include 30 AH-64 Apache helicopters worth $3.8 billion, nearly doubling Israel’s current fleet of military helicopters, and 3,250 assault vehicles costing $1.9 billion.

In addition, the United States has supplied significant arms to Israel, Germany, and Italy. Germany has provided frigates and catfish, ammunition, and military services. Italy has supplied helicopters and cannons for Israeli warships. Italy, moreover, produces components for the US F-35 fighter jet in Cameri (Piedmont), including for other countries that possess this fighter, including Israel, which also used it to bomb Gaza. Added to this is the fact that the Trapani-Birgi air base in Sicily will soon become the first international training center for US F-35 fighter pilots outside the United States. The new center will train pilots not only from Italy, but also from allied countries that use the F-35 fighter jet, including Israeli ones.

October 21, 2025 Posted by | Israel, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The Bloc Québécois is calling for an immediate halt to the transfer of radioactive waste to Chalk River, on the shores of the drinking water source for millions of Quebecers

Anne Caroline Desplanques, Journal de Montréal, October 20, 2025, https://www.journaldemontreal.com/auteur/anne-caroline-desplanques

The request sent to the Minister of Energy and Natural Resources, Tim Hodgson, follows a series of reports by our Investigative Bureau, which had rare access to the Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL) site where the waste is stored.

In the past year, the laboratories received 62.8 tonnes of irradiated uranium fuel from the Gentilly-1 nuclear generating station in Bécancour. This high-risk material is stored in a dozen gigantic reinforced concrete silos in the middle of the forest, along the Ottawa River.

The least contaminated materials are stored nearby, in containers stacked on top of each other.

More silos and containers need to be added as CNL also wants to dismantle two other federal nuclear power plants, in Ontario and Manitoba, and bring the waste back to Chalk River, they told us.

Risk of environmental disaster

“This is probably one of the worst possible and worst imaginable places to decide to store nuclear waste,” says the Bloc Québécois, which fears “an ecological and environmental disaster.”

CNL says the storage is only temporary: the high-level radioactive waste is ultimately to be placed in a geological repository more than 650 metres deep, supposed to open by 2050 in northwestern Ontario.

But for Lance Haymond, chief of the Kebaowek First Nation, whose traditional territory includes CNL, the opening of the geological repository remains hypothetical, as construction has not even begun yet.

The repository project is expected to cost $26 billion. Chief Haymond is concerned that the federal government will not be able to afford such a bill in these times of budget restraint and therefore may abandon the silos in Chalk River.

Long legal battle ahead

As for less contaminated waste accumulated in other containers, CNL wants to bury it directly on site one kilometre from the river. But the Kebaoweks has blocked the project in court.

They won the battle in the first instance, but the war continues since Ottawa has taken the case to the Court of Appeal. The hearings began in early October. Lance Haymond, supported by the Assembly of First Nations Quebec-Labrador and the Assembly of First Nations of Canada, promises to go all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary.

The conflict is therefore likely to drag on for years. In the meantime, and whatever the courts ultimately decide, the accumulation of garbage in Chalk River must stop, argues the Bloc Québécois.

October 21, 2025 Posted by | Canada, wastes | 1 Comment

The madness of Trump’s vision for America


The Trump administration has banned or cautioned against using at least 350 words or phrases, including “climate change” (with and without a hyphen), “evidence-based,” “chest-feed + person” (don’t ask), “wind power” and yes, even “women.”

 17 October 2025,  https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/madness-trumps-vision-america

From terrifying the children of immigrants to pepper-spraying frogs, the US under Trump is rapidly descending into mayhem, writes Linda Pentz Gunter

N INFLATABLE frog has been pepper-sprayed, spawning (sorry) an army of affinity frogs and other creatures real and fictional, protesting at the often violent arrests of immigrants. A clarinettist in a brass band has been assaulted and arrested, abbreviations have been outlawed and naked bicycle riders are swarming our streets.

If it looks like the United States has gone mad, that’s because it probably has.

All of this happened in just one US city — Portland, Oregon — the hotbed of antifa, according to the Trump administration, which is trying to proscribe the “group” even though these days “antifa,” an abbreviation of “anti-fascist,” pretty much defines anyone who opposes Trump, and was never an actual organisation.

Also this week, the US Secretary of Defence, who, in the interests of achieving peace says he has renamed his purview the Department of War although no-one actually calls it that, announced this week that the United States had given the Qataris their own air force base in Idaho.

DoD Secretary Pete Hegseth’s bizarre declaration was quickly retracted after President Trump’s own “America First” base reacted with shock that a foreign power was being gifted its own military base on American soil. What Hegseth apparently meant, or what he now says he meant it to mean, is that the US will be hosting the Qatari military on a US base for training purposes, a not uncommon practice.

In another ominous move by the DoD, this time to shut down free speech, the department has ordered media outlets that cover the Pentagon to sign onto a new press policy that forbids defence reporters from soliciting, obtaining or using any information not already authorised by the DoD. All but one have refused to do so.

Meanwhile, as the Gaza ceasefire agreement was finally announced, Jared Kushner, the reprehensible son-in-law of the even more repulsive US president, floating in some parallel universe and with visions of beachfront real estate still dancing in his head, publicly pronounced Israel “exceptional” for refusing to replicate “the barbarism of the enemy.”


Kushner seems not only to have missed the two-year genocide in Gaza but also Israel’s cruel and inhumane treatment of Palestinians for the many decades prior.

He is not alone, of course. The US mainstream media has been awash in happy reunion stories of the returned Israeli hostages, which would be entirely understandable if they did not at the same time largely ignore the grimmer realties surrounding the simultaneous release of the Palestinian hostages (for such they are, not “prisoners,” since most have never committed a crime).

Some of the Palestinians just released were never reunited with their families at all but were instead immediately deported to Egypt. Others were left in the West Bank where the hostile and violent takeover of Palestinian lands and homes by illegal Israeli “settlers” continues.


Even those who could joyously reunite with their loved ones, in some cases after decades of separation, were not allowed to savour that moment without the spectre of the Israeli menace still literally hanging over their heads.

Instead of bombs falling from the skies, the Israelis rained down threats in the form of paper messages warning Palestinians that “We are watching you everywhere. If you show any support for a terrorist group, you will expose yourself to arrest and punishment.”

No-one should believe that this ceasefire signals any intent whatsoever by Israel to relinquish its control over the lives of Palestinians.

The obvious response to all this? Give Trump the Nobel Peace Prize! The past weeks have seen a non-stop sycophantic advocacy campaign by legions of leaders and political commentators who advocated for Trump with almost unprecedented zeal. That was before last Friday’s announcement of the decidedly problematic choice of Venezuelan opposition leader and “iron lady” Maria Corina Machado instead.

That is the paradigm we are now in: the belief that the Nobel Peace Prize should be awarded to those who enabled, funded, armed and participated in a genocide, once they themselves decided to halt their own war crimes.

Trump could have ended Israel’s genocide in Gaza on day one of his presidency with a single phone call to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He chose not to. Like us, he watched the killings, bombings, and forced starvation along with the targeted assassinations of 1,700 doctors and more than 200 journalists, live-streamed on our screens for two years. We’ve been horrified. He did nothing. Worse still, at times he egged on Netanyahu to “finish the job.”

Back home, Trump continues with his quiet coup. Denied for now the possibility of sending troops into major US cities, he will continue testing this, with an eye to deploying them during the 2026 midterm elections that could see both the US House and Senate swing to the Democrats.

Federal agencies are being purged of dissenters and stacked with “yes men.” The Elon Chainsaw Massacre may be over now that billionaire Elon Musk, who ordered the early rounds of dismissals through the entity he invented — the Department of Government Efficiency — has fled the scene. But the maiming continues, as critical workers are fired, public institutions defunded and non-profits viewed as progressive or “woke” are blacklisted.

The barbarity of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activities has prompted citizen protests and sometimes even interventions in cities across the US. Portland has become the epicentre of street theatre protest.

The resistance began, as it often does, with a single individual, a man in an inflatable frog costume who goes by the name of Apollo Toad, staring down ICE (Immigration & Customs Enforcement) agents. Pretty soon, others rallied to his side, dressed as a variety of animals and cartoon characters, at once mocking the proceedings, but at the same time driving home the absurdity of Trump’s attempt to label them terrorists.

The Portland clarinettist, Oriana Korol, had been playing music with the Unpresidented Brass Band before she was knocked down according to eyewitnesses, then grabbed and taken to a jail in the neighbouring state of Washington to face charges of assaulting a federal agent, accusations her bandmates say are trump(et)ed up.

In Florida, far-right Governor and Trump acolyte Ron DeSantis is trying to get a Bill passed in his state’s legislature, HB 119, also known as the “No Sharia Act,” a fear-mongering attempt to “stigmatise Muslims by pretending that US courts could be ‘overruled’ by foreign or religious law,” the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a grassroots civil rights and advocacy group, said in a statement.

“In reality, American courts are already bound by the US Constitution’s Supremacy Clause, making HB 119 completely unnecessary and clearly unconstitutional,” the group said.

Black Hawk helicopters have descended on Chicago, frightening children out of their beds in the middle of the night, dragged naked and handcuffed with their families Gestapo-style out onto the street before being driven away in unmarked cars.

Ironically, one of the most banned books in America right now is A Clockwork Orange that features a dystopian, violence-filled future. It’s a black comedy, but the censors miss that. In the meantime, there were 44,000 gun deaths in the US in 2024, equivalent to wiping out an entire British town the size of Salisbury or Ashton-under-Lyne.

The Trump administration has banned or cautioned against using at least 350 words or phrases, including “climate change” (with and without a hyphen), “evidence-based,” “chest-feed + person” (don’t ask), “wind power” and yes, even “women.”

On the international front, Trump is bombing boats out of Venezuelan waters without a care as to who might be on them, leading to concerns of a war against Venezuela. He has announced he may send long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine, a clear provocation to Russia.

At home, renewable energy projects have been all but killed off. Trump has threatened 100 per cent tariffs against China. The price of eggs has become the least of our problems.

There are still 190 active lawsuits challenging Trump administration actions, down from more than 300 since Trump took office in January which already seems like a lifetime ago.

We are still clinging to the hope that our legal system will save us from autocracy and a descent into fascism, even though the US Supreme Court is stacked in Trump’s favour. Three of the nine justices were placed there by him alongside three other arch-conservatives. It was that court that declared last year that the president has widespread immunity from prosecution while in office.

The government is still shut down. Trump says he won’t go to heaven (in case anyone cares), for achieving the Gaza ceasefire. But he is determined to plunge the country he is supposed to be leading into a living hell.

October 21, 2025 Posted by | culture and arts, USA | Leave a comment

A US Strike in Caribbean Leaves Survivors, Reports Say

News of the strike comes as the US military’s top commander for Latin America has suddenly stepped down.

By Sharon Zhang , Truthout, October 17, 2025

new, seemingly not yet publicly disclosed U.S. strike on a boat in the Caribbean has left survivors for the first time, reports say.

Reuters, citing a U.S. official, reported that the U.S. bombed what they claim is a drug trade-related vessel on Thursday. However, unlike the military’s previous five strikes, which were publicly disclosed by officials, the attack did not kill all of the people on board, the source said.

Other news outlets confirmed that the strike had not killed everyone on board, and that this was a first amid the current escalation, officials said.

Trump administration officials have not touted the strike on social media. Footage and information on previous strikes that the U.S. has said killed 27 people altogether have been posted online by military officials and President Donald Trump, with the administration seemingly using the footage — something not typically posted online in such a matter — as a show of strength. The posts announcing the strikes were typically made just hours after they occurred.

News of the attack comes amid the sudden announcement of the departure of the top military official overseeing the strikes in the Caribbean on Thursday. Adm. Alvin Holsey announced that he is leaving his role as the head of the U.S. Southern Command, which oversees military operations in Latin America, on December 12.

Following the announcement, Holsey claimed that he would retire from the Navy. However, both a current and a former U.S. official told The New York Times that Holsey had raised concerns about the U.S.’s operations in the Caribbean, and two officials told CNN that “tensions had been simmering” between Holsey and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth for weeks in the lead-up to the decision. Holsey’s departure from what was supposed to be a three-year post after less than a year is highly unusual.

“At a moment when U.S. forces are building up across the Caribbean and tensions with Venezuela are at a boiling point, the departure of our top military commander in the region sends an alarming signal of instability within the chain of command,” said Sen. Jack Reed (Rhode Island), the Senate Armed Services Committee’s top Democrat.

The strike and circumstances surrounding it potentially show that the administration is carrying out a wider campaign of aggression in the region than it is disclosing.

CNN reported this week that one of the strikes in September targeted Colombian nationals, despite administration officials typically only referring to attacks on Venezuelans in public statements. The administration has reportedly authorized a wide-ranging assault on gangs in the region that is far larger than what has been publicly disclosed.

Further, media reports say that Trump has authorized the CIA to carry out covert operations within Venezuela and around the Caribbean.

Some information may also be obscured because the Pentagon effectively barred most of its dedicated press corps this week from covering the country’s largest federal agency.

The Department of Defense unilaterally imposed new, restrictive rules that sought, seemingly, to exercise control over journalists’ coverage and threatened expulsion. Rather than comply, dozens of journalists turned in their badges and left.

October 20, 2025 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Deloitte to pay $34mn over audit work on US nuclear fiasco.

Deloitte has agreed to pay $34mn to investors who blamed the auditor for
losses stemming from the collapse of one of US’s largest nuclear power
projects, a rare legal settlement by a Big Four firm.

Former shareholders in the South Carolina utility Scana said Deloitte failed to spot red flags and allowed management to hide mounting problems with the construction of two nuclear reactors a decade ago. Scana shares tumbled when it eventually abandoned work on the reactors in 2017, leading to its cut-price sale to a rival utility and jail time for its former chief executive, who pleaded guilty to misleading regulators. The fiasco also pushed construction company Westinghouse into bankruptcy.

 FT 17th Oct 2025,
https://www.ft.com/content/f9fc0a78-ff10-40f3-8253-220d9acd56bb

October 20, 2025 Posted by | business and costs, USA | Leave a comment

Amazon spills plan to nuke Washington…with X-Energy mini-reactors

COMMENT. At left -the picture of the as yet non-existent “small” nuclear project, to supply great steel towers -the so-called “cloud” of data.

The nuclear and AI industries abound with lies in their propaganda

Now they just need to get regulatory approval

Tobias Mann, The Register, Fri 17 Oct 2025

Despite technological and regulatory hurdles, Amazon remains convinced that small modular reactors (SMRs) are the answer to the cloud titan’s power woes.

Last fall, the house of Bezos announced a $500 million investment in SMR startup X-Energy. On Thursday, the e-tailer revealed that X-Energy’s Xe-100 SMR designs would eventually supply Washington State with “up to” 960 megawatts of clean energy.

“Eventually” is the key word here as construction isn’t expected to start until the end of the decade and the plants won’t begin operations until sometime in the 2030s.

The plan is to deploy the 80 megawatt reactors at a new facility called the Cascade Nuclear Energy Center outside Richland, Washington, in three phases, each totaling 320 megawatts of generative output. For context, xAI’s 200,000-GPU Colossus supercomputer uses roughly 300 megawatts of power when it is fully utilized. 

Amazon notes that X-Energy’s SMRs should be smaller, faster to deploy, and cheaper to operate than conventional pressurized water reactors. This is a common argument in support of the miniaturized nuclear power plants, but it’s worth noting that the tech hasn’t actually been proven out. In fact, higher-than-expected operating costs have already doomed one early SMR project.

And that’s not the only challenge facing X-Energy. The company’s SMR tech has yet to receive Nuclear Regulatory Commission approval, which is required before construction of the reactor itself can begin. But that’s not stopping Amazon from sharing 3D renders of what the power plant might look like when complete………………………………………………………………………………………………
https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/17/amazon_nuke_washington/

October 19, 2025 Posted by | technology, USA | Leave a comment

Key US nuclear agency to send 80% of workforce home as shutdown drags on.

About 1,400 staff at NNAS, which manages America’s nuclear weapons stockpile, to be furloughed on Monday

Joseph Gedeon , 18 Oct 25, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/17/government-shutdown-nuclear-agency-nnsa

The agency that maintains the US nuclear arsenal will be sending home 80% of its workforce as the government shutdown drags through its 17th day and into the weekend, now the longest full funding lapse in US history.

House armed services committee chair Mike Rogers said in a Friday press conference that the National Nuclear Security Administration has now exhausted its carryover reserves.

“We were just informed last night that the National Nuclear Security Administration, the group that manages our nuclear stockpile, that the carryover funding they’ve been using is about to run out,” said Rogers, a Republican from Alabama. “These are not employees that you want to go home. They’re managing and handling a very important strategic asset for us.”

The NNSA, which operates as part of the department of energy, does not directly control operational nuclear weapons – a Pentagon responsibility – but plays a strategic role in keeping warheads secure and functional without conducting explosive tests. The agency also runs non-proliferation programs aimed at preventing nuclear materials from reaching hostile nations or terrorist organizations.

Around 1,400 NNSA employees will be furloughed without pay starting on Monday, leaving only 375 staff members designated as essential to continue working, according to an agency notice obtained by Politico. A department of energy spokesperson confirmed the approximate workforce numbers.

The spokesperson also said that NNSA’s office of secure transportation, which is responsible for transporting government-owned nuclear material across the country, is funded through 27 October, and added that Chris Wright, the energy secretary, will be at the NNSA site in Las Vegas on Monday to “further discuss the impacts of the shutdown on America’s nuclear deterrent.

Under the agency’s 2025 contingency protocols in the event of a shutdown, the skeleton crew on duty will focus exclusively on hyperspecific safety operations: monitoring nuclear materials, maintaining unique equipment, ensuring reactor safety for navy vessels, and continuing international nonproliferation work it deems essential for security.

But most scientific research, stockpile maintenance, and global security programs will be suspended, potentially creating delays in sensitive national defense projects that need rigid and consistent oversight.

The current impasse has now become the longest complete government-wide shutdown in US history, surpassing a 16-day funding lapse in 2013. Previous lengthier shutdowns affected only portions of the federal government.

Speaker Mike Johnson blamed Senate Democrats for the crisis, saying earlier this week the country is “barreling toward one of the longest shutdowns in American history, unless Democrats drop their demands”. Republican leaders are also now worried about potential airport disruptions during the upcoming Thanksgiving travel period if the stalemate continues.

Hundreds of thousands of federal employees, including congressional and agency staffers, remain either furloughed or working without pay.

October 19, 2025 Posted by | employment, USA | Leave a comment

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