🐟📈 Tuna auction signals positive outlook for Japan in 2025

At Tokyo's Toyosu market, a 276 kg tuna sold for 207 million yen in the first auction of 2025, the second-highest price after the record set in 2019.

The tuna auction is traditionally seen as an unofficial economic forecast for the coming year.

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Sputnik journalist Maxim Romanenko found a fragment stuck in his clothes near his heart after a Ukrainian kamikaze drone attack in the DPR:
 

“It was only after the evacuation that I discovered a small abrasion on my chest in the area of my heart. In the same place, a small metal fragment got stuck in the clothes,” he said.

 
According to him, thankfully, an examination in the traumatology department of a hospital in Donetsk found no fragments or damaging elements in his body.

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NATO to urge UK to boost air defense spending over country's vulnerability

NATO will urge the United Kingdom to sharply increase spending on air and missile defense amid concerns that the British military will not be able to repel attacks on cities and outposts in 15 years, the Times reported citing sources.

As military sources told the newspaper, a number of NATO members have recently expressed disappointment that London was not doing enough to protect Europe from long-range missiles.

A draft NATO plan called Capability Target 2025 will raise the need for the UK to invest in land-based air defense systems, to protect nuclear power plants and military bases, the newspaper said.

The UK had failed to invest in missile defense systems for decades, experts told the outlet.

Thus, British ships could be attacked by more modern ballistic missiles if they are transferred to players such as the Yemeni Houthis.

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Germany to tighten policy on Syrian refugees, while Baerbock builds bridges with new gov't - report
 
In less than 24 hours since the visit of German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock to Syria to get acquainted with the new leadership, the German authorities decided to complicate the rules of staying in the country for Syrian refugees, encouraging them to return home.
 
The action plan presented by German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser in case of stabilization of the situation in Syria provides for:
 
▪️ depriving refugees of the status of protected persons and subsidies for protection, as a result of which they will be forced to leave the territory of Germany.
 

She noted that the deprivation of the status of protected persons will apply to those who "do not have the right to reside (in Germany) for other reasons, such as work or education, and do not want to return to Syria voluntarily."

 
▪️supporting refugees who want to return to their homeland. Faeser noted that the state program aimed at those who want to voluntarily return to Syria will be expanded.
 
▪️speedy deportation of criminals and Islamists.

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🏄‍♂️🥇🌊23-year-old surfer Alessandro Slebir broke the world record by conquering a 32-meter wave off the coast of California

The previous world record was set on a 26-meter-high wave by German surfer Sebastian Steudtner in Nazare, Portugal, in 2020.

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🟠Another brutal crime by the Zelensky regime: Russian Foreign Ministry comments on attacking journalists in Donbass

🟠Austria’s Nehammer steps down as chancellor

🟠Italian PM Meloni travels to US to meet Trump

🟠Israel intercepts Houthi rocket near Hadera

🟠Germany to tighten policy on Syrian refugees, while Baerbock builds bridges with new gov't

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📹Sputnik journalists Maxim Romanenko and Mikhail Kevkhiev, who were injured in the Donetsk People's Republic, shared the moment when the Ukrainian drone attacked their car

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Israel may slash Gaza aid after Trump takes office

Tel Aviv considers cutting humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip after US President-elect Donald Trump enters office, an unnamed Israeli official has been cited by CNN as saying.

“The humanitarian aid is not reaching the right hands,” the official claimed, in an apparent nod to Hamas. The source added that limiting aid to deprive Hamas of resources was one of “several” options currently being considered.

UN, Israel at odds over Gaza aid trucks

The claims come after the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that only 2,205 aid trucks had entered Gaza in December.

Israel insists that more than 5,000 such vehicles arrived in the Palestinian enclave last month, whereas the OCHA says at least 91% of the population are facing high levels of acute food insecurity.

Russia provides humanitarian support to the Gaza Strip, Russian Foreign Ministry said in May noting that Moscow would expand this assistance. However, it could be effectively implemented only with a complete ceasefire, the ministry added.

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❗️Ukrainian forces lost two Leopard tanks and up to 410 militants and in the Russian Tsentr Battlegroup's area of responsibility

🇷🇺🪖More statements from the Russian MoD daily briefing on the special military operation's progress:    
 
▪️Russian troops hit the infrastructure of military airfields and concentrations of manpower and military equipment of the Ukrainian armed forces in 137 districts;
 
▪️Ukrainian losses in the Russian Zapad combat group's zone of responsibility amounted to 450 fighters;
 
▪️Russia's Yug Battlegroup eliminated 230 Ukrainian militants;
 
▪️Ukrainian forces lost up to 150 soldiers in the Russian Vostok combat group's area of responsibility;
 
▪️Due to the actions of the Russian Sever and Dnepr groups, Ukrainian losses amounted to 120 fighters.

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Russian fighter aircraft shot down a Ukrainian MiG-29, the Russian Defense Ministry added.

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