Some officials with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) were upset by President Donald J. Trump's recent decision to claim responsibility for a covert drone strike earlier this month against a facility in Venezuela linked to drug trafficking, an operation normally intended to be secret or at least have no obvious links to the United States, current and former officials told the Wall Street Journal. “There was near-universal dismay among former intelligence officials that President Trump chose to disclose what almost certainly was intelligence community covert action,” said Marc Polymeropoulos, a former senior operations officer with the CIA.

Thailand this morning released 18 Soldiers with the Royal Cambodian Army that it had detained since initial cross-border clashes between the two countries in July, as part of a ceasefire mediated by China which was agreed to earlier this week by the Foreign Ministers of Cambodia and Thailand.

Finnish authorities have boarded and detained a vessel in the Gulf of Finland, off the coast of the Porkkala Peninsula, that is suspected of damaging submarines cables running between Finland and Estonia. According to the Helsinki Times, the Fitburg, a Saint Vincent-flagged Russian-owned cargo vessel that had departed Saint Petersburg, Russia, bound for Israel on Tuesday, is believed to have used its anchor to damage upwards of five underwater-submarine cables operated by the Finnish telecommunication company Elisa early in the morning on Wednesday.

Finnish President Alexander Stubb has stated that Finland is “prepared for security challenges of various kinds,” and will “respond to them as necessary,” following reports of damage caused this morning to several underwater-submarine cables by a Russian cargo ship in the Gulf of Finland.

U.S. President Donald J. Trump has announced that he will be ordering the withdrawal of the National Guard from Chicago, Illinois; Los Angeles, California; and Portland, Oregon, stating that crime has been “greatly reduced” as a result of the deployment, while adding, “We will come back, perhaps in a much different and stronger form, when crime begins to soar again - Only a question of time!”

This announcement follows a recent ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court against the Trump Administration’s deployment of the National Guard to Illinois in order to assist Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) has announced, that at the direction of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, military forces under Joint Task Force-Southern Spear (JTF-SS) carried out a strike Tuesday, December 30, against three narco-trafficking vessels traveling in a convoy in International Waters.

According to SOUTHCOM, intelligence indicated that the vessels were transiting along a known narco-trafficking route and had transferred narcotics between the three vessels prior to the strikes, with three narco-terrorists aboard the first vessel killed in the initial engagement while the remaining narco-terrorists abandoned the other two boats, jumping overboard and distancing themselves before follow-on engagements sank their respective vessels, all of which were believed to have been associated with a Designated Terrorist Organization (DTO).

Following the strikes, search-and-rescue operations for the survivors were launched by the U.S. Coast Guard.

I know I’m a bit late, but Happy New Year to everyone following along here. Thank you for the continued support throughout what was - without question - an extremely eventful 2025. Stay safe out there and enjoy the time you have with friends, family and others you hold dear. 🥂

U.S. national-security officials, as well as the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), said Wednesday that Ukraine did not target Russian President Vladimir Putin or one of his residences in an alleged drone operation, challenging claims made earlier this week by the Kremlin and President Putin in a phone call with President Donald J. Trump, according to an official briefed on the intelligence who spoke with the Wall Street Journal.

Only days after reports stated the Guyana-flagged Iranian-linked sanctioned crude oil tanker, M/T Bella 1 - which the U.S. Coast Guard has now been chasing for over a week across the Northern Atlantic - following a failed boarding off the coast of Venezuela, had painted a Russian Flag on its hull and attempted to claim protection from the Russian Federation. Officials have told The New York Times that the Russian Government has made a formal diplomatic request that the United States stop its pursuit of an oil tanker via the State Department, with the Bella 1 recently appearing in Russia’s official register of ships, under a new name, the Marinera, homeported in Sochi, on the Black Sea.

An official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing law enforcement matter said the Trump Administration continued to view the tanker as “stateless” because it was flying a false flag when it was first approached by the U.S. Coast Guard.

Throughout 2025, Russia launched 54,000 one-way attack drones, 44,782 guided-aerial bombs, and 2,000 missiles against Ukraine, with 46,000 drones and 1,100 missiles being successfully intercepted by the Ukrainian Air Force.

The Russian Ministry of Defense published a video earlier today showing Admiral Igor Kostyukov, Head of the Main Directorate of the General Staff of Russia's Armed Forces, handing over data and a controller from a Ukrainian one-way drone that they claim was used in the the alleged attack on President Vladimir Putin’s state residence in the Novgorod Oblast, to U.S. Coast Guard Cpt. Richter Tipton, military attaché for the American Embassy in Moscow.

The Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer, USS Paul Ignatius (DDG-117), seen earlier today, January 1, 2026, pulling into Naval Station Rota in Spain, following a strike mission on Christmas against ISIS in Northwestern Nigeria, involving the launch of over a dozen BGM-109 “Tomahawk” Land Attack Cruise Missiles (TLAM).