Enslave
Profiteer
Rule
Don’t go there!
Perhaps ironically, one of the most famous 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse paintings is by a Russian:
- Pestilence (on a White Horse -> COVID !?)
- War (on a Red Horse -> PUTIN !?)
- Famine (on a Black Horse -> HYPERINFLATION !?)
- Death (on a Pale Horse -> TOO LATE !?)
- Meduza
- DW
- Ahead
Russian officials are complaining about the country’s mobile Internet shutdowns and blocked messaging apps. The outages don’t just disrupt their day-to-day work — they’re cutting off the channels regional administrations rely on to communicate with each other and to monitor public sentiment. As the Kremlin pushes residents onto its state-built Max messenger and hints that a full block of Telegram may be on the horizon, the system officials depend on to feed information to their constituents is starting to crack. Meduza special correspondent Andrey Pertsev spoke with officials and political strategists to learn how Russia’s information lockdown is backfiring on its own bureaucracy.
Since the start of Moscow’s full-scale war in Ukraine, Russian courts have convicted more than 1,000 people on charges of treason and espionage, according to a new study by analyst Kirill Parubets conducted for the human rights group Department One. In 2025 alone, courts handed down 468 such verdicts — the highest annual figure since 1997, when Russia’s current Criminal Code came into force. Meduza shares the main takeaways from the report.
A car bomb killed Lieutenant General Fanil Sarvarov, head of the Russian General Staff’s army operational training directorate, in Moscow on Monday, according to Russia’s Investigative Committee. The agency said an explosive device had been placed under Sarvarov’s Kia Sorento in the city’s south and detonated.
On Friday, President Vladimir Putin held his annual Direct Line call-in show, where he fielded questions from carefully selected journalists and Russian citizens for nearly four and a half hours. This televised event gave Putin yet another opportunity to expound upon everything from the war in Ukraine and relations with the West to the state of the Russian economy. But as usual, many of his remarks were either not entirely correct or downright untrue. Meduza fact-checks some of Putin’s most confounding takes.
Like our earlier reports on the combat situation in Ukraine, this article reviews recent battlefield developments based on open-source information. Meduza has condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine from the outset, and our military analyses reflect our commitment to objective reporting on a war we firmly oppose.
2025.12.21
Data centers are growing rapidly in size and number, leading to a significant increase in their consumption of energy, water and minerals. This expansion is largely driven by the increasing demand for Artificial Intelligence (AI), cloud computing and digital services.
What are data centers?
According to Yes Energy, Data centers store, process, and manage large volumes of digital data and computing resources. Data centers house the necessary infrastructure for businesses, organizations, and online services to store and access data, run applications, and ensure reliable and high-speed network connectivity.
2025.12.19
Rick Mills, Editor/Publisher, Ahead of the Herd:
Simon, I would really like to talk about the results from the BiTe Zone and the Grad Project, its future and what’s next for Rackla Metals.
I was for the drill program, based on the fact that the bismuth carries the gold in these RIRGS [Reduced Intrusive-Related Gold System]; gold is associated with the bismuth. But it seems like the numbers that were reported, maybe the decimal point should have been a point or two to the left.
Continue reading Under the Spotlight – Simon Ridgway, CEO Rackla Metals at Ahead of the Herd.
2025.12.19
Rick Mills, Editor/ Publisher, Ahead of the Herd:
Bruce, why don’t you tell us about gold in banded iron formations.
Bruce Counts, CEO, Storm Exploration:
It is important to understand that gold is not deposited when a banded iron formation is forming. That happens later on, when the iron formation is being deformed by faulting and folding. Gold-rich fluids circulating through the rocks at the time of deformation react with the iron formation causing the precipitation of gold and sulphide minerals like arseno-pyrite.
Continue reading Under the Spotlight – Bruce Counts, CEO Storm Exploration at Ahead of the Herd.
By Ken Bailey – Outdoor Canada
My first up-close look at B.C.’s famed Muskwa-Kechika wilderness was through the ears of a horse winding up Gathto Creek, a tributary of the Muskwa River. That was roughly 30 years ago during a 12-day elk hunt, but I still remember the diversity and abundance of game our party saw—despite only exploring a tiny part of the vast 6.4 million-hectare landscape.
Riding above the treeline one morning, for example, we encountered a group of nine bull moose and eight cows; I still don’t understand how or why they were together like that.
By Ollie Williams – Cabin Radio
Science and tech researchers at the Department of National Defence say they’re heading north and bringing money with them. Do communities believe the promises?
At a Calgary conference largely dominated by Arctic climate change science, a different session popped up on Tuesday: “From science to mobilizing Indigenous business for Arctic defence and security,” sponsored by DND.
In that session, DND told northerners it’s ready to spend large sums of money not just on Arctic sovereignty, but on a wide range of other projects, and it wants to spend that cash with Indigenous businesses.
2EMMA Featured Stories
Mandela’s Kiss Endures
The 2024 Global Elections Super-Cycle
Stay tuned for continuous updates on elections around the world. Click on a country for the latest elections data and analysis.
- Number of national elections to be held in 2024 18 of 68
- Overall turnout (based on registered voters) 63%
- Total number of ballots cast in 18 elections 467,094,737
Pulled conclusions from pooled data compilations
Using some of the world’s largest companies by market cap & some of the most quoted indices + two most sung alternatives: data for this millennia where available
- At 134x, Apple is the absolute stock price growth winner; with Amazon at 45x and Google at 32x
- Despite the lack of interest or dividends, gold at 6.6x looks good compared to any other stock or index!
- Barrick Gold on the other hand seems to be poorly correlated to anything including the gold metal itself!?
- But Barrick is the only stock producing negative correlations with most of the indices including a relatively high -0.77 with the Euronext100 index
- If one wast trying to get something totally uncorrelated on purpose- it would be hard to beat: gold and the Euronext100 index at -0.03; or Barrick and the Hang Seng index at 0.04; or gold and Merck at 0.16; or BTC and the FTSE index at 0.19
- Correlation against a basket of indices & alternatives is best in Disney and Google (0.81-0.82), albeit at different growth multiples
- If an average historical P/E is somewhere in the 20x range, then the current S&P quoted average which is in high 30s is as warned high, BUT: only Amazon and Visa seem to be widely out of range (justified by growth in online transactions?), with many below current & historical averages
- In the current world of no interest & no inflation, maybe the higher P/E averages are justified..? For how long, that is a different question…
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