DAVID ADAMS provides a round-up of some stories on the odder side of life…
Palmerston in his new role. PICTURE: Governor of Bermuda’s Office/FCDO (licensed under CC BY 2.0)
• Palmerston, the former chief mouser for the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office, has come out of retirement to take up a new position as a “feline relations consultant” for the Governor of Bermuda. Palmerston, notorious for his spats with colleague Larry who serves as chief mouser to the Cabinet Office at Number 10 Downing Street (now serving with his sixth Prime Minister), said on his X feed that he’s still semi-retired but has given up some of his time to work for Andrew Murdoch with whom he’s lived since announcing his retirement in 2020. But Murdoch, recently sworn in as the Governor of Bermuda, managed to convince him to help out. And for those who don’t know, Palmerston explains that Bermuda is a British Overseas Territory and a “beautiful archipelago of islands in the Atlantic Ocean” measuring about 54 square kilometres located and is located about 1,030 kilometres from the east coast of the US.
• An Australian state lawmaker has changed his name to “Aussie Trump”, in what he said was a protest against the country’s ruling centre-left Labor Party. Trump, formerly known as Ben Dawkins, is an independent lawmaker in Western Australia’s upper house of parliament, where Labor also has a majority. “I’ve launched a political protest against the tyranny and systematic corruption of the Labor government in WA,” he wrote in a post on X late last Wednesday, signing off as “Aussie”. “Vote Labor Out! & Drill Baby Drill!,” he wrote in a second post, echoing US President Donald Trump’s plan to increase extraction of oil and gas in the United States. The lawmaker’s name on the parliament’s website has been updated to Austin (Aussie) Letts Trump. He also posted a photo on X showing legal confirmation of the name change from the state’s Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages. The Australian Trump was expelled from the Labor Party in 2023 for multiple alleged breaches of family violence restraining orders. “This is simply attention-seeking stuff,” Western Australia’s Premier Roger Cook, who leads Labor in the state, said of the name change at a press conference on Thursday. “I’m not sure how much lower he can go.” Labor faces a state vote in resource-rich Western Australia next month, before the country goes to the polls in a nationwide election that must be held by May. – ALASDAIR PAL, Sydney, Australia/Reuters
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A flag flies behind an enclosure on the territory of the US embassy in Moscow, Russia, on 28th March, 2018. PICTURE: Reuters/Tatyana Makeyeva/File photo
• Russia’s foreign intelligence service released an English-language video last Thursday, urging “true American patriots” who care about world peace to get in touch via secure communication in response to efforts by the CIA to recruit Russians. The US’ Central Intelligence Agency has said the war in Ukraine is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to recruit agents in Russia. It released a video in 2023 targeting Russian officials with an appeal to tell the truth about a system it said is riddled with lying sycophants. Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), the main successor organisation to the Soviet-era KGB’s First Main Directorate, ridiculed the CIA’s “clumsy attempts” to recruit Russians with the videos. The SVR video, released on its website and also appearing on the Telegram messaging app, references the joint Soviet-US efforts to defeat Nazi Germany in World War II and then underscores the dangers of the Ukraine war. “We are convinced that the destructive efforts of the Central Intelligence Agency are futile, and the Russian and American peoples have not forgotten the glorious pages of the history of the joint struggle against Nazism,” it said. “In our video message, we not only remind you of the past, but also offer options aimed at the future.” The video, part parody of the CIA’s videos and part emotional images of a ranch and Soviet and US troops embracing during World War II, then switches to harsher pictures of the war in Ukraine, where the United States and other Western nations have backed Kyiv with military and financial help. It ends with an address that interested US citizens can use to communicate with the SVR over the TOR network which allows anonymous communications. – GUY FAULCONBRIDGE, Moscow, Russia/Reuters
