Air Force reinstates Tuskegee Airmen training following backlash from Pete Hegseth and Katie Britt

January 27, 2025

The Air Force has resumed a course on the first Black pilots unit that was temporarily yanked to ensure compliance with President Donald Trump’s executive order banning DEI in the federal government.

Following backlash from legislators and even the new Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the Air Force claimed reports it had yanked a course teaching new recruits about the 15,000 Black pilots, mechanics and cooks in the segregated Army of World War II known as the Tuskegee Airmen were “inaccurate.”

However, Hegseth wrote on X Sunday that the course’s removal had been “immediately reversed.”

Lt. Gen. Brian Robinson, Air Education and Training Command commander, said in a statement that the segment that included videos on the Tuskegee Airmen was temporarily yanked on Jan. 23 because a section of it that included DEI material was directed to be removed.

A video on the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP), a paramilitary group of female pilots in World War II, was also temporarily removed.

From left to right, Tuskegee Airmen pilots Lt. Colonel Washington Ross, Lt. Col. Harry Stewart, Colonel Charles McGee and Lt. Col. Alexander Jefferson stand next to a Tuskegee Army Airfield AY-6 Texan fighter plane during a ceremony to honor the airmen at Selfridge National Airbase in Harrison Township, Michigan, on June 19, 2012.

“We believe this adjustment to curriculum to be fully aligned with the direction given in the DEI executive order,” he said. “No curriculum or content highlighting the honor and valor of the Tuskegee Airmen or Women Air Force Service Pilots has been removed from Basic Military Training.”

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“No Airmen or Guardians will miss this block of instruction due to the revision, however, one group of trainees had the training delayed. The revised training, which focuses on the documented historic legacy and decorated valor with which these units and airmen fought for our nation in World War II and beyond will continue on 27 January.”

Gen. David Allvin, Air Force chief of staff, explained further, “Allow me to clearly dispel a rumor – while we are currently reviewing all training courses to ensure compliance with the executive orders, no curriculum or content highlighting the honor and valor of the Tuskegee Airmen or Women Air Force Service Pilots has been removed from Basic Military Training.”

Some 14,000 Tuskegee Airmen served in World War II, including hundreds of its now legendary fighter pilots. (Tuskegee University Archives)

“From day one, I directed our Air Force to implement all directives outlined in the Executive Orders issued by the president swiftly and professionally – no equivocation, no slow-rolling, no foot-dragging. When policies change, it is everyone’s responsibility to be diligent and ensure all remnants of the outdated policies are appropriately removed, and the new ones are clearly put in place,” he went on in a statement.

“Despite some inaccurate opinions expressed in reporting recently, our Air Force is faithfully executing all the president’s executive orders. Adhering to policy includes fully aligning our force with the direction given in the DEI executive order. Disguising and renaming are not compliance, and I’ve made this clear. If there are instances of less-than-full compliance, we will hold those responsible accountable.”

Before the Air Force announced it would resume training on the airmen on Monday, Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., had accused it of “malicious compliance.”

“I have no doubt Secretary Hegseth will correct and get to the bottom of the malicious compliance we’ve seen in recent days. President Trump celebrated and honored the Tuskegee Airmen during his first term,” she said.

Tuskegee Airmen pictured in 1945. (Tuskegee University Archives)

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“Amen! We’re all over it, Senator. This will not stand,” Hegseth echoed.

WASP were vital to ferrying warplanes throughout World War II. The Tuskegee Airmen, an active fighter unit from 1940 to 1952, were the first soldiers who flew during World War II. The group destroyed more than 100 German aircraft.

The nation’s armed forces were not desegregated until 1948, under an executive order from then-President Harry Truman.

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Trump is expected to issue a new executive order focused on rooting out DEI in the military on Monday, in addition to one restricting accommodations for transgender troops. Another executive order will reinstate service members who were fired over refusing the COVID-19 vaccine.

Inside a $35 Billion Loan Project, Led by World Bank, Aims to Expand Electricity in Africa

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January 27, 2025

The leaders of more than half of Africa’s nations gathered this week in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania’s sprawling seaside metropolis, to commit to the biggest burst of spending on electric-power generation in Africa’s history.

The World Bank, African Development Bank and others are pledging at least $35 billion to expand electricity across a continent where more than a half-billion people still don’t have it. About half of the money will go toward solar “minigrids” that serve individual communities. The loans will come at below-market interest rates, a crucial stipulation as global lenders usually charge much higher rates in Africa, citing higher risks.

In an interview, Ajay Banga, the president of the World Bank, cast the initiative in sweeping terms where economic development met societal stability and basic human rights. “Without electricity, we can’t get jobs, health care, skills,” he said. The success of electrification, he said, is “foundational to everything.”

The summit’s promise is to get half of Africa’s 600 million unelectrified people powered up in just six years. That averages out to five million people a month. Mr. Banga said the World Bank, on its own, had not yet even passed the one-million-a-month mark.

Despite the unusually strong statements of political will, many people, particularly in Africa’s beleaguered power sector, expressed deep skepticism. In fact, some noted that one need not look farther than the host country, Tanzania, to find a cautionary tale.

Recently the world’s biggest developer of solar minigrids, Colorado-based Husk Power Systems, closed up shop in Tanzania because the government insisted that it sell its electricity at the same price as the heavily subsidized government-run electric utility.

Unable to make money at that price, Husk said, the company sold its assets, which it had spent millions of dollars on, at a steep loss. Some remain intact but are defunct. Others have been dismantled and are being sold for spare parts.

This despite the fact that Tanzania had seemed like an ideal market to Husk when it arrived there in 2015. The country’s new president at the time, John Magufuli, had earned the nickname “The Bulldozer” both for building roads and for reining in corruption. Only a third of Tanzanians were connected to the grid.

Husk’s departure left thousands of people powerless and frustrated, as they had been willing to pay Husk’s higher prices. Among them is Mwajuma Mohamed and her family in Matipwili, a community where around 200 houses and businesses briefly got power from a Husk solar minigrid that’s now caked in dust.

“When we got electricity, it was like we were normal people suddenly,” she said, showing a visitor around her darkened house. The first thing she bought, she said, was a TV, which is now back in the box it came in. “It feels unfair. It feels like we wasted money.”

Without naming Husk, Tanzania’s energy minister, Doto Biteko, said in an interview that some minigrid operators charged artificially high prices, which resulted in inflation. “We are not trying to give anyone a hard time,” he said. “But it is the government’s role to decide what is reasonable.”

Lenders are trying to address this issue head on. The loans from the World Bank and the African Development Bank put into place this week are contingent on the regulatory overhauls that, in many cases, allow for private electricity providers to compete more freely with state-run utilities. Tanzania is one of 12 countries signing such “compacts” at the summit meeting. In the coming months, 18 more are expected.

In addition to solar minigrids, a roughly equal amount of money will go toward extending traditional, existing power grids, which are mostly supplied by hydropower and fossil fuels.

But it is the plummeting cost of building solar power, driven by China’s breakneck growth as a producer of inexpensive, high-quality solar panels, that would be the mission’s main enabling factor. Not only has solar power become more affordable, it takes far less time to deploy than building a dam or power plant and has the added benefit of not emitting greenhouse gases.

“It’s the tech and the pricing. That’s why this is finally happening now,” said Raj Shah, who leads the Rockefeller Foundation, which is investing tens of millions of dollars in renewable energy projects around the developing world. “The reason almost 30 heads of state are here is because they now see this is the quickest, least-cost way to create jobs and prevent the kind of instability they see growing in their countries.”

In the time since Husk shut down the minigrid in Matipwili, poles carrying power from Tanesco, the state-run utility, arrived in the village. But they serve only a quarter as many people, and the service is inferior, customers say. Like all but four of Africa’s dozens of electric utility companies, Tanzania’s runs at a steep loss and lack of maintenance leads to frequent and lengthy power cuts.

“With Husk, we could buy a package at a set price and use however much electricity we wanted, so people like me started businesses,” said Gesenda Mwise Gesenda, the village chairman, who uses a Tanesco connection to refrigerate drinks that he sells. “With Tanesco, it actually costs me three times as much for the same amount of power. Either it is my meter going up and up, or the power cuts for hours, even days.”

The experience in Matipwili explains why lenders are increasingly favoring decentralized electrification. “What we’re seeing here is the realization that in many places where a grid doesn’t currently exist, extending it there is not cost-effective nor is it beneficial to end users, at least compared to a solar minigrid,” said Ashvin Dayal, who leads the Rockefeller Foundation’s power and climate program.

The mission’s funders say they have been clear with governments that money alone cannot solve the problem and that regulatory change is what might attract even more investment beyond the $35 billion this week.

Mr. Banga described attending a climate and energy summit in Kenya last year where he met a group of African leaders. “I said to them, ‘Hey guys, you want to be in your jobs for another few years? You have to promise jobs and quality of life. I can help you, but you need to step up to the plate.’”

Multilateral funding is never 100 percent assured, and not just because of concerns about the countries receiving aid. A new administration in Washington that is openly hostile to both renewable energy and foreign aid has caused uncertainty over the World Bank’s core funding, if only because the United States is the World Bank’s biggest contributor and holds outsize sway over who runs the institution. For now, the bank has enough money in its development aid pot to fund its electrification mission, in part because of last-minute decisions made by the outgoing Biden administration.

Mr. Banga was circumspect about the chance of hitting the bank’s electrification goals in such a short period of time, but said he hoped the investments rolled out in Dar es Salaam would spur private equity, sovereign wealth funds and local banks to follow them.

“It’s a huge mountain to climb. You can’t just decree it,” said William Brent, Husk’s chief marketing officer. “Husk is building one minigrid a day and that’s the fastest in the industry. Even if you added 10 more Husks, you’d still only get a fraction of the way there.”

Husk has built 70 minigrids in Nigeria, where it has found a receptive regulatory environment. And it said on Monday that it would enter the Democratic Republic of Congo this year.

While lenders and presidents rubbed shoulders in Dar es Salaam, however, Congo also offered a reminder of the volatility that threatens progress. Rwandan-backed rebels took the Congolese city of Goma on Monday, where some of the same funders supporting the new initiative had backed a minigrid project.

Cities fall, governments renege on commitments and debts pile up. Lenders know they are still up against the same underlying issues that have so limited investment in African infrastructure and left many countries economically hobbled.

But lack of electricity is more than just a drag on economies. It’s a drag, period, to not have electricity in a world where more than 90 percent of people do.

It means no internet, no speakers to play music, no cold beer from the fridge, no light for kids to do homework.

When Husk came to Matipwili, Mashavu Ali, 45, a mother of eight, was above all excited for one of her daughters, who had the best grades in the village secondary school. She imagined her studying late into the night.

Since they lost electricity access, her daughter has dropped to third. Ms. Ali now rents a small rooftop solar panel for roughly 20 cents a day, but the light it provides is dim and, without a battery to store power, it doesn’t work on cloudy days. Her children go to bed soon after the sun sets. And she has set aside her own dreams of how she could support them with just a little bit of power.

“My plan had been to open an ice cream business,” Ms. Ali said, sitting outside her house, surrounded by family. It was already dark out and the one outdoor bulb powered by the rented panel began to flicker. “What to say, eh? It remains an idea.”

‘All-American family’ was massacred in an apparent murder-suicide: police

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January 27, 2025

Authorities are investigating an apparent murder-suicide after a family of four was found dead last week in their Pennsylvania home.

Paul Swarner, 35, Karen Swarner, 32, and their two young children were found dead in their house in Hempfield Township, Pennsylvania, on the morning of Friday, Jan. 24, according to police and a public report by the Westmoreland County Coroner.

Law enforcement believe Paul Swarner shot and killed his wife and two children before killing himself, Trooper Steve Limani of the Pennsylvania State Police explained in a press conference Friday, covered by WTAE.

“It’s unthinkable, unfathomable. To be honest with you, I don’t have the words to describe how awful it is,” Limani said. “You’re talking about your wife, but then a 5-year-old and a 1-year-old. It’s just devastating.”

HUSBAND OF NURSE, MOM OF THREE FOUND DEAD AT BOTTOM OF STAIRCASE WENT FOR BEER AFTER FINDING BODY: POLICE

Paul and Karen Swarner and their two children were found dead in their home in an apparent murder-suicide, police said. (Karen Swarner/Facebook)

Authorities believe the last person to have spoken with the family had “a normal conversation” with Karen on Wednesday, Limani said, adding, “There was no, what you’d consider strife or any type of concern of, fear of endangerment.”

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The following day, Paul’s parents tried calling the family in the afternoon but did not hear back from them. Karen’s father then called 911 at 11:30 p.m. Thursday.

Limani noted that authorities recovered a Ruger .22 from the home, adding, “It appears that was the firearm that was used.”

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Paul and Karen Swarner and their two children were found dead in their home in an apparent murder-suicide, police say

Paul and Karen Swarner and their two children were found dead in their home in an apparent murder-suicide, police said. (Karen Swarner/Facebook)

When asked about a possible motive, Limani said, “We’re trying to see if there’s a reason. There’s maybe a baby-camera… that we’re trying to look through to see if there’s anything that took place. To see if there was a triggering point or something that would’ve caused Paul to have these, experience these thoughts.”

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“We don’t have any domestic violence history when it comes to the state police being involved in anything [in] that particular household,” he added.

Limani said the couple was married for about 10 years and had an “all-American family,” adding, “It looked like a very loving household with pictures and all the things that you would ever think that you would walk into a home and see.”

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Paul and Karen Swarner and their two children were found dead in their home in an apparent murder-suicide, police said. (Karen Swarner/Facebook)

A reporter at Friday’s conference noted that this incident marked the second murder-suicide in Westmoreland County since Christmas Eve, 2024.

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“Generally in the holidays we do have most of our problems…when it comes to mental health,” Limani said.

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“I don’t know what was going on with Paul. I don’t know why it would’ve happened,” he added. “I hope we’re able to find some answers.”

Authorities asked that anyone with information contact state police in Greensburg.

Mollie Markowitz is a reporter for Fox News Digital. Email tips to [email protected]. She joined Fox in 2019 and made her way from producing live news coverage to true-crime documentaries at Fox Nation. She has interviewed Ted Bundy survivors, the children of notorious serial killers, survivor Lisa McVey, members of law enforcement and families impacted by traumatic crime.Currently, she covers national crime stories for Fox News Digital. You can follow Mollie on LinkedIn.

They Fled a Rebel Advance. Then the Rebels Marched on Their Refuge.

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January 27, 2025

On Sunday, the streets of Goma buzzed with motorcycles and were consumed by panic.

Asifiwe Iragi Rugesha tried to navigate her six children through the crowds of fellow dispaced people. They had fled bombing in Kibati that morning. But with M23 closing in on Goma, they had hardly fled to a place of safety.

Still, it was the only option, Ms. Rugesha said.

“There is nothing else to do,” she said. “If M23 comes to Goma, we will die.”

Florida Democratic Party official and ‘LGBTQ+ rights activist’ arrested on child porn charges

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January 27, 2025

Authorities arrested a Florida Democratic Party official and prominent LGBTQ activist on child pornography charges this month after he allegedly shared content with an undercover officer.

Matthew Inman, 39, served as treasurer for the Orange County Democratic Party and also as president of Rainbow Democrats, an LGBTQ activist group. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the middle district of Florida charged Inman with the transportation of child sexual abuse material. Authorities say Inman received and saved several videos “depicting adults sexually abusing young children.”

“In October 2024, Inman traveled to Las Vegas and began talking online with an undercover law enforcement officer posing as the father of a 9-year-old boy. During this conversation, Inman expressed interest in meeting and sexually assaulting the purported child. He also sent [child sexual abuse material] videos to the undercover officer,” the attorney’s office added.

The FBI soon obtained a search warrant for Inman’s house, and authorities say the suspect tried to delete videos from his phone as he hid from officers in the attic of his home.

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Florida Democrat Matthew Inman was arrested on child pornography charges. (Seminole County Sheriff’s Office)

Rainbow Democrats issued a public statement on social media just days after Inman’s arrest, saying they were “shocked.”

“We offer our condolences to any victims of child sexual abuse and hope justice will be served to the fullest extent of the law,” the organization’s board of directors wrote. “We have suspended Mr. Inman from the Caucus. He has no acting role in any capacity with the organization as of now. He will be officially removed at our next general meeting.”

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“The Rainbow Democrats are working to move beyond this horrible incident to continue our service to the community,” the statement finished.

An X account appearing to belong to Inman identified him as an “LGBTQ+ rights and civil rights activist.” The account also notes his roles with Rainbow Democrats and Orange County Democrats.

Orange County Democrats also released a statement regarding Inman’s arrest, and has since elected a new treasurer.

“We are deeply appalled and horrified by the news that Matthew Inman has been arrested on charges of sexual abuse involving a minor. We unequivocally condemn child sexual abuse in the strongest possible terms and hope that any victims involved receive the support and resources they need moving forward,” the party wrote.

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“After learning of the allegations against Mr. Inman, the Orange County Democratic Party acted swiftly to suspend him from all voluntary roles and responsibilities. We will continue to uphold the highest standards of accountability and integrity,” the statement continued.

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Inman was booked by the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office on Jan. 16 and remains in custody at the John E. Polk Correctional Facility, according to state records.

Anders Hagstrom is a reporter with Fox News Digital covering national politics and major breaking news events. Send tips to [email protected], or on Twitter: @Hagstrom_Anders.

Displaced Palestinians Reunite With Loved Ones in Northern Gaza

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January 27, 2025

new video loaded: Displaced Palestinians Reunite With Loved Ones in Northern Gaza

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Senate slated to vote on South Carolina billionaire hedge fund executive to lead US Treasury

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January 27, 2025

The Senate is scheduled to vote Monday afternoon to confirm President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Treasury Department.

The Senate voted on Saturday to advance Scott Bessent’s nomination by a 67–23 margin and his confirmation is expected Monday.

Bessent recently appeared before the Senate Finance Committee for his confirmation hearing, where he called to extend the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that Trump approved during his first term.

“This is the single most important economic issue of the day,” Bessent, a hedge fund billionaire from South Carolina, told lawmakers.

TRUMP TREASURY PICK: EXTENDING TRUMP TAX CUTS ‘SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT ECONOMIC ISSUE’

Scott Bessent, Trump’s pick to lead the Treasury, said extending the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is the ‘single most important economic issue of the day.’ (Vincent Alban/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

“If we do not renew an extension, then we will be facing an economic calamity,” Bessent said. “And, as always, with financial instability, that falls on the middle and working class.”

Bessent cautioned that a “gigantic” middle-class tax increase would occur if the tax cuts expire.

Many of the reforms included in the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act are scheduled to end in 2025. Groups like Americans for Prosperity, a grassroots network founded by the billionaire Koch Brothers, claim that millions of Americans will face a hike of more than $1,500 in taxes in 2026 if the cuts are not renewed.

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Investor and hedge fund manager Scott Bessent testifies before a Senate Finance Committee hearing on his nomination to be secretary of the Treasury, on Capitol Hill, Jan. 16, 2025. (Getty)

But critics of Trump’s tax plan, including Democratic lawmakers like Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and groups like the liberal public policy institute Center for American Progress, argue the cuts only benefited the wealthy and claim the perks failed to reach ordinary workers.

However, Bessent said Trump and his administration will create a “golden age” of economic prosperity for all Americans.

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A bronze seal beside a door at the U.S. Treasury building in Washington, D.C.

The Senate is expected to confirm President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Treasury Department, Scott Bessent, on Jan. 27, 2025. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters/File Photo)

“Today, I believe that President Trump has a generational opportunity to unleash a new economic golden age that will create more jobs, wealth and prosperity for all Americans,” Bessent said at his confirmation hearing.

Trump’s economic plan includes extending the 2017 tax cuts and imposing tariffs ranging from 10% to 20% on all imported goods. For countries like China, that number could go up to 60%.

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Bessent, who previously wrote an op-ed for Fox News Digital supporting the use of tariffs, backed the Trump administration’s employment of tariffs in multiple exchanges with lawmakers during his confirmation hearing.

The Treasury Department is responsible for managing federal finances and oversees agencies that include the IRS.

Diana Stancy is a politics reporter with Fox News Digital covering the White House.

Gazans Crowd the Road North, Joyful but Anxious

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January 27, 2025

To mark the moment, some people distributed sweets. Some flashed victory signs at passing photographers. A group of small boys led a celebratory chant. “Right or left, north is best,” they sang. “To the north we go!”

There were so many people trying to leave that it became hard to walk through the central city of Deir al Balah, a hub for displaced Gazans. Family after family was taking down tents and packing belongings into plastic bags. Some people heaved gas tanks onto their backs. One man fixed wheels to a plastic box, turning it into a makeshift stroller for his baby.

As they walked, they envisaged the jubilation of being reunited with relatives who had ignored the Israeli evacuation orders and stayed north at the start of the war.

“The first thing I’ll do is hug my mother at her shelter,” Anwar Abu Hindi, 41, a housewife heading north with several children. “Our emotions are all over the place.”

But amid the euphoria, there were some notes of caution and frustration. For a start, the people heading north by car, along the inland highway, encountered long traffic jams; private security contractors were screening northbound vehicles, slowing cars to a crawl.

And many feared what awaited them when they arrived. Northern Gaza has become a wasteland, following intense Israeli airstrikes and the military’s demolition of scores of buildings, many of which had been rigged with traps and explosives by Hamas. In recent months, fierce fighting between Israel and Hamas, which continued until the start of the cease-fire this month, caused particularly widespread damage north of Gaza City.

Many of those returning on Monday did not know if their houses were still standing.

“Thank God we survived this war,” said Shorouq al-Qur, 27, a law graduate returning to Gaza City. But, she said, “no matter where we find shelter, whether here or there, it’s still a life in tents, surrounded by destruction and sadness.”

Belarus’ election extends President Lukashenko’s rule, called a sham by opposition, EU

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January 27, 2025

UN chief meets with Putin, hugs Lukashenko at BRICS summit

United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres drew condemnation for his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin as well as his warm embrace with Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko while attending the BRICS summit in Russia.

Belarus held an orchestrated election over the weekend that the opposition and the EU rejected as a farce, extending authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko’s more than three decades in power.
Belarus’ 2020 election, which was also called a sham by dissenters, triggered months of unprecedented protests in the country.
Lukashenko has been in power since 1994 and has relied on subsidies and political support from Russian President Vladimir Putin, who also helped him survive the 2020 protests.

Belarus’ authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko extended his more than three decades in power in an orchestrated weekend election that the opposition and the European Union rejected as a farce.

The Central Election Commission declared early Monday that Lukashenko won the election with nearly 87% of the vote after a campaign in which four token challengers all praised his rule.

Members of the country’s political opposition, many of whom are imprisoned or exiled abroad by Lukashenko’s unrelenting crackdown on dissent and free speech, called the election a sham — much like the last one in 2020 that triggered months of protests that were unprecedented in the history of the country of 9 million people.

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Since then, more than 65,000 people were arrested and thousands beaten, with the crackdown bringing condemnation and sanctions from the West.

The EU rejected Sunday’s vote as illegitimate and threatened new sanctions.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said the election offered no choice to voters, marking “a bitter day for all those who long for freedom and democracy.”

The head of the Central Commission of the Republic of Belarus, Igor Karpenko, fifth from left, and his colleagues attend a news conference on presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus, on Jan. 27, 2025. (AP Photo/Pavel Bednyakov)

“Instead of free and fair elections and a life without fear and arbitrariness, they experience daily oppression, repression and human rights violations,” she said in a post on X.

Lukashenko has been in power since 1994 and has ruled the country with an iron fist. He has relied on subsidies and political support from Russian President Vladimir Putin, himself in office for a quarter-century, a relationship that helped him survive the 2020 protests.

Lukashenko allowed Moscow to use the country’s territory to invade Ukraine in 2022 and later hosted some of Russia’s tactical nuclear weapons.

Putin called Lukashenko on Monday to congratulate him on his “convincing victory.” Chinese President Xi Jinping also sent congratulations.

Some observers believe Lukashenko feared a repeat of those mass demonstrations amid economic troubles and the fighting in Ukraine, and so scheduled the vote in January, when few would want to fill the streets again, rather than hold it in August.

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Leading opponents have fled abroad or were thrown in prison. Activists say the country holds nearly 1,300 political prisoners, including Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ales Bialiatski, founder of the Viasna Human Rights Center.

Since July, Lukashenko has pardoned more than 250 people. At the same time, authorities have sought to uproot dissent by arresting hundreds more in raids targeting relatives and friends of political prisoners.

Opposition leader-in-exile Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who fled Belarus under government pressure after challenging Lukashenko in 2020, denounced the election as a “senseless farce” and urged voters to cross off everyone listed on the ballot.

Sweden Suspects ‘Gross Sabotage’ After Damage to Cable Under the Baltic Sea

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January 27, 2025

The Swedish authorities on Monday boarded a ship in connection with what they described as “gross sabotage” after an undersea communications cable in the Baltic Sea was damaged a day earlier. The ship was escorted to the coast of Sweden for an investigation, the authorities said.

“We suspect that a serious act of sabotage was committed in the Swedish economic zone yesterday,” Mats Ljungqvist, the Swedish prosecutor leading the investigation into the damage, said in a phone interview on Monday.

The authorities have not yet made public the nature or the extent of the damage to the communications cable, which runs between Sweden and Latvia.

The incident follows other suspected sabotage attempts on cables under the Baltic Sea, which has recently become a theater of potential hybrid warfare between NATO and Russia.

Two weeks ago, the Atlantic alliance started a new patrol and surveillance operation to protect critical infrastructure in the sea, on which Russia has coastline, after a number of cables were severed.

The NATO mission, called Baltic Sentry, is intended to help protect underwater cables and pipelines by enhancing the alliance’s presence in the region, said Mark Rutte, the organization’s secretary general. The operation involves frigates, maritime patrol aircraft, submarine satellites, remotely operated vehicles and drones.

NATO, of which Sweden is the newest member, said the mission was an effort “to improve the ability to protect critical undersea infrastructure and respond if required.”

Alliance officials have regularly said that, while they suspect Russia of being behind the sabotage of cables and pipelines, actual responsibility is extremely difficult to prove.

The Swedish security service said a preliminary investigation suggested that the incident on Sunday may have been an effort to target Swedish interests. The seized vessel “is suspected to have carried out the sabotage” the security service said in a statement issued Monday.

“Right now, Swedish authorities are on the vessel to conduct various investigative measures,” Johan Wikstrom, a spokesman for the service, said by telephone on Monday.

Mr. Ljungqvist, the prosecutor, said that the seized vessel was called the Vezhen.

Navigation Maritime Bulgare, a Bulgarian shipping company that lists the Vezhen in its fleet as a bulk carrier with a Maltese flag, posted a statement on its website on Monday referring to a “a force majeure situation that occurred due to the unfavorable hydrometeorological conditions in the area.”

The company said it did not have “information about any intentional actions by the crew” that could lead to cable damage and expressed its support for the authorities in the investigation.

Mr. Wikstrom said the coast guard on Sunday escorted the vessel to the Swedish coast. It is now anchored outside of Karlskrona, a southern city that is home to Sweden’s largest naval base and also the coast guard headquarters.

Mr. Wikstrom declined to provide other details about the seized vessel or how and where the authorities had discovered the damage to the cable.

NATO ships and aircraft responded to the reported damage and were working with their regional allies, the alliance said on Monday in an email.

Prime Minister Evika Silina of Latvia said in a social media post that Latvian, Swedish and NATO authorities were working together to investigate the incident, patrol the area and inspect vessels. She added that the cable had been damaged in Sweden’s economic zone and that the authorities had started a “criminal investigation.”

In late December, the Finnish authorities seized an oil tanker that they suspected of cutting undersea cables, accusing the ship of being part of Russia’s “shadow fleet,” which Western officials say they think Russia uses to evade sanctions. In response, NATO said it would increase security in the region and the European Union threatened new sanctions against Moscow.

In November, several European countries halted a Chinese commercial ship after two fiber-optic cables were severed. Germany’s defense minister described the severing of the cables as an act of “sabotage” aimed at European countries that have supported Ukraine while it fights Russia, though American intelligence authorities said they were not cut deliberately.

In 2022, explosions damaged parts of the Nord Stream pipeline, stopping Russian natural gas deliveries to Western Europe. American intelligence pointed to a pro-Ukrainian group, although much remains murky about the incident.

The cable that was damaged on Sunday belonged to Latvia’s state-run radio and television center, according to a statement from the center on Sunday night.

The statement noted that, since the cable lies at a depth of more than 160 feet, the center would be able to determine the exact nature of the damage only once the repair work began.

Steven Erlanger contributed reporting from Berlin.

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