The Harju District Court has sentenced Elyar Isajev to 18 years in prison for the premeditated murder of a 59-year-old woman, who was stabbed dozens of times last September.

Cinema chain Cinamon announced on Monday that it will reopen a movie theater in the historic Kosmos building in Tallinn this June, returning to its former home after a four-year relocation.

Opposition party leaders hit back at Reform Party Chairman Kristen Michal's criticism on Sunday, accusing him of fearmongering and offering no vision for an alternative future.

Junior coalition party Eesti 200's board on Sunday said Estonia needs radical, fundamental and long-term changes in tax policy, the labor market and pension system.

Starting from next year, patients who believe they need psychiatric care will first be referred to their family physician who will determine with the help of an e-consultation whether specialist treatment is needed.

Members of the Riigikogu's motorcycle support group have submitted a draft bill to the government for consideration that would grant motorcycles the right to use bus lanes.

2022. aasta 24. veebruaril alustas Venemaa režiimi juht Vladimir Putin sissetungi Ukrainasse. Pärast seda, kui Ukraina lõi tagasi pealetungi Kiievile, on lahingute kese kandunud Ida- ja Lõuna-Ukrainasse. Postimees kajastab 1546. sõjapäeva sündmusi allolevas blogis.2026/ukraina-kalender 

Riigipiire on juba sulgetud ka Aafrika sees.

Machines are increasingly replacing humans on the front line, but troops are still vital for defending territory.

The bodies of all five Italian divers who died in the Maldives last week have now been found, officials tell the BBC.

The UK-headquartered banking giant aims to move some of the effected workers to other roles in the business.

Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham is looking to manage the markets as well as the Makerfield byelection

LONDON — A little-known British defense minister is being urged by MPs to consider a bid to replace Keir Starmer, as a leadership crisis consumes the governing Labour Party. Al Carns, the minister for the armed forces, is being touted by supporters who say the party now needs a radical change if it is to win back thousands of voters who dumped Labour for Nigel Farage’s Reform UK or the left-wing Greens at recent local elections. Carns, who only entered parliament as the MP for the Birmingham Selly Oak seat in 2024, is a former special forces commander who served five tours in Afghanistan and has been awarded the Military Cross for gallantry. His backers see him as a fresh face in Westminster with a compelling backstory at a time when career politicians are frequent targets for voters’ ire. Some Labour MPs have viewed the ex-commander as a possible future leadership candidate since arriving at Westminster — but his supporters have brought that timeline forward and insist he must be part of any contest which takes place this year, following a series of blows to Starmer’s authority. The prime minister has said he is staying put after his health secretary, Wes Streeting, resigned, and longtime critic Burnham announced a bid to re-enter parliament to challenge him. More than 90 MPs have called for Starmer to set out a timeline to quit. While there is no leadership race currently underway, one is now more likely than it has been at any time under his premiership. Burnham and Streeting have both signaled their intention to stand for the top job, but three parliamentary allies of Carns — granted anonymity to discuss sensitive matters — argued that any competition must not be restricted to the two front-runners.  One Labour MP backing Carns said he appealed to a “broad spectrum” within the party, and on some issues, “he’s further left than perhaps people might think.” They said he had gathered positive support among “tens” of MPs so far, which is particularly strong among the 2024 intake of new MPs. Carns, they said, is “keeping his options open.” The same person said Carns “sees the military as a vehicle of social mobility” and argued he is placed to attract support from MPs in the places where Reform poses a threat to Labour — known as the Red Wall — as well as from its Scottish representatives. Carns is known to have good links with former Deputy Labour Leader Angela Rayner, and the pair have bonded over their shared experience of growing up in deprived circumstances. A second MP said Carns wanted to talk about resilience, which was not just about defense policy, but “getting people back into a space where they can live comfortably and have a bit of spare money to enjoy their lives.” A third MP said they would “like to see Al in the mix” despite the likelihood of other big names putting themselves forward. Two of these MPs acknowledged that Carns may be more likely to find promotion as a future defense or foreign secretary under another leader, but insisted he should not rule himself out at this stage. “It’s a long shot for sure and not without risk — but when you’re at 20 percent in the polls, you have to do something. Steady as she goes won’t cut it,” one said of Labour’s electoral prospects. Calvin Bailey, another military veteran and Labour MP, has backed Starmer to remain as prime minister. However, asked about Carns, he told Times Radio: “He’s one of the most decorated military officers to enter politics; why wouldn’t he be a contender?” Calvin Bailey, MP for Leyton and Wanstead, is pictured at the Waltham Forest local election count on May 8, 2026. | Nicola Tree/Getty Images Bailey added: “He had quite an austere upbringing, went to a normal school at 17, decided to join the services and the services have made him what he is today… If that is not a Labour story… then I don’t know what is.” Policy questions Other MPs are more skeptical. One pointed out that if there was a third challenger, “it really has to be a woman,” while another said Carns lacked a clear policy offer. Carns has also raised eyebrows with his approach to communications. Government ministers are normally expected to stick to talking points about their brief and not attract undue attention. Yet the former soldier has become known for pointedly ignoring the chaos inside his party while posting pictures of sunsets or paratrooper missions, and wrote a frank post-mortem of the local and devolved elections in the New Statesman last week, arguing: “Too many people in this country work hard and still feel like they’re losing.” Two government officials suggested his op-ed should not have gone ahead during one of the PM’s most difficult moments.  A serving military officer said Carns was not universally liked within the armed forces. “He’s very quick to play on his military status,” they said of Carns, while also accusing him of deflecting criticism of delayed government investment in defense. Carns declined to comment.

The Trump administration has been dancing around the question of whether it will carry out military strikes against Cuba. I am told it is increasingly willing to take such a step. That’s a significant escalation from a few months ago, when officials were primarily focused on using economic and diplomatic pressure to squeeze the communist regime in Havana. A U.S. official and a person familiar with the administration’s discussions on Cuba told me that President Donald Trump and his aides have grown frustrated that the U.S. pressure campaign, which includes starving the island of fuel, has not led Cuba’s leaders to agree to significant economic and political reforms. So they’re taking the military option more seriously than previously. “The mood has definitely changed,” said the person familiar with discussions, whom, like others, I granted anonymity to discuss a sensitive issue. “The initial idea on Cuba was that the leadership was weak and that the combination of stepped-up sanctions enforcement, really an oil blockade, and clear U.S. military wins in Venezuela and Iran would scare the Cubans into making a deal. Now Iran has gone sideways, and the Cubans are proving much tougher than originally thought. So now military action is on the table in a way that it wasn’t before.” Last week, news broke that the U.S. is moving toward indicting former Cuban President Raul Castro, the 94-year-old brother of late Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. This has led to some speculation that the U.S. could carry out a military extraction operation against Castro, the same way it did against Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro in January. But U.S. military planners are weighing an array of options beyond grabbing one or two individuals, I’m told. The military action could range from a single airstrike meant to scare the regime into concessions to a ground invasion meant to uproot it. U.S. Southern Command has in the past few weeks “convened a planning series” — in other words, started drafting plans for potential military action — the U.S. official and the person familiar with the talks told me. No action is imminent. The Pentagon has plenty of firepower in the region. Cuba, a nation of 10 million, is just 90 miles off Florida’s coast. One highly unlikely scenario is the use of Cuban exiles in any mission. “They have determined that the exiles have no role here except as cheerleaders and gadflies. This won’t be Bay of Pigs 2.0,” the person said. A White House official reiterated to me Trump’s claims that Cuba will soon “fall” and “we will be there to help them out.” The official added: “It’s the job of the Pentagon to make preparations in order to give the commander-in-chief maximum optionality. It does not mean the president has made a decision.” Administration officials already are laying the public relations groundwork for military moves. Secretary of State Marco Rubio hinted at something ominous in an interview with Fox News last week. “We’ll give them a chance,” said Rubio, who also serves as national security adviser. “But I don’t think it’s going to happen. I don’t think we’re going to be able to change the trajectory of Cuba as long as these people are in charge.” Over the weekend, Axios reported that Cuba had acquired hundreds of military drones and had discussed ways to use them in case hostilities erupt between Washington and Havana. Many national security analysts took that report to be a leak aimed at making a case for a U.S. military strike on Cuba. The Cuban Embassy in Washington did not reply to my requests for comment. It’s always unwise to predict what the capricious Trump will do, so maybe don’t rush to Kalshi just yet. Trump also has to consider the politics given his sinking poll ratings as gas prices leap due to the Iran war. The size of a Cuba operation, if there is one, could come down to what he feels his MAGA backers will tolerate. “They could try to do a pretty small operation, but if that’s what they’re thinking they may be overestimating again what they could accomplish,” said Brian Latell, a former senior CIA official who dealt with Cuba. But there’s no question the administration’s position on Cuba has grown increasingly harsh, especially in the last few weeks, and I hear from people close to the administration and in it that the U.S. maneuvering, including targeted media leaks, is due to sincere exasperation with the Cuban leadership. Cuban officials don’t seem to fully grasp how economically dysfunctional their country has become, the U.S. official said. They respond to U.S. pressure by offering ideas such as allowing outside investment in hotels when their real problems are structural, including with their dilapidated power grid. It’s also not always clear who is truly in charge in Havana or how much power the Castro family retains, the official added. “The system is so calcified and consensus-based. They are living in another reality, and they literally do not care about the Cuban people at all,” the U.S. official said. Cuban officials have been asking Russia for more help, the U.S. official said. Moscow already sent one tanker of fuel that the U.S. allowed to reach the island in late March, offering a temporary reprieve. Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel wrote on X on Monday that U.S. military aggression against Cuba “would provoke a bloodbath of incalculable consequences.” He appeared to be responding to a rash of recent actions that have made the Trump administration’s impatience increasingly obvious. Aside from the report about the drones and the potential Raul Castro indictment, they include: an expansion of U.S. sanctions against Cuba; the publicizing of CIA Director John Ratcliffe’s visit to the island last week, during which he made several demands of Havana; reports that the U.S. is increasing surveillance flights over the island; and the U.S. and Cuba sparring over conditions attached to a U.S. offer of $100 million in aid. Defense Department officials did not reply to my requests for comment, but a State Department spokesperson repeated administration allegations that Cuba is a haven for terrorists and U.S. adversaries. Rubio’s public messaging has shifted as the administration’s internal calculus has changed. Rubio is a U.S.-born child of Cuban immigrants and he has long loathed the oppressive, corrupt Havana regime. But in the initial days after the Venezuela operation, which led to the cutoff of Venezuelan oil exports to Cuba, Rubio emphasized the importance of economic change in Cuba more than political change. Such messaging suggested that, at the time, Rubio wanted to move deliberately and methodically in Cuba — to limit the chaos of a potential sudden political collapse. (Or perhaps this is what Trump wanted, and Rubio went along with it; spokespeople for the administration would not tell me either way.) The idea was to convince the existing Cuban leadership to make serious economic reforms. Such reforms include privatizing many state assets; giving Cuban citizens more internet access; and allowing more foreign investment. But, according to people familiar with the discussions, the regime saw such moves as threats to its survival. The regime’s view — and it’s not entirely unfounded — is that many of Cuba’s economic problems are due to the decades-old U.S. embargo on the Caribbean country and other U.S. pressure. There’s also certainly precedent for the idea that allowing economic change could undermine an authoritarian’s power. As the months went on, Rubio’s message changed. He began to stress political change alongside economic change. More recently, he’s spoken of the need to toss out the “people in charge” without getting too specific. I’m told that this isn’t a political move to appease Cuban-American activists in his home state of Florida. Rather, Rubio has become increasingly convinced that the regime in Havana is incorrigible. Perhaps most intriguingly in recent weeks, Rubio has played up the idea that Cuba poses a national security threat to the U.S. — allegations backed up with suggestive photos from Southcom. This is a message echoed by others in the administration, who say Havana’s links to Moscow and Beijing make it a special danger and note that Cuba is listed on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism. (Plenty of analysts say the notion of a Cuban threat to the U.S. is wildly overstated). According to a CIA official who shared background information about Ratclife’s recent visit, the spy chief “made clear that Cuba can no longer serve as a platform for adversaries to advance hostile agendas in our hemisphere.” What I would warn Cuba watchers against is believing that Trump’s struggles in Iran will hold him back from carrying out a military operation against Cuba. The mess in Iran could leave the president impatient to score another win. He may see Cuba as an easy victory. That could prove a miscalculation, former U.S. officials and analysts warned. “There are true believers there,” a former State Department official who dealt with Cuba said. Of course it won’t be simple. It never is. But that rarely stops Trump.

Two teen gunmen kill three at San Diego mosque in suspected hate crime.

Al Jazeera's correspondent in Tehran says Iran's leaders are 'projecting defiance' and rejecting 'pressure' from the US.

Spokesperson for Indian Ocean island nation says they will try to recover explorers in next couple of daysRescuers have located the bodies of four Italian divers deep inside an underwater cave in an atoll in the Maldives, four days after they were reported missing.Searches had resumed after being suspended following the death of a local military diver during a perilous mission to try to reach them. Continue reading...

Britain likely to face ‘warm, welcoming stance’ if it seeks re-entry but also a ‘hard-headed one’ – with no special dealsBritain would not be able to rejoin the EU on the special terms it enjoyed in the past, veterans of the Brexit negotiations have said.The warnings came as senior Labour politicians jostling for the leadership of their party and country talk openly about wanting to return to the union at some point in the future. Continue reading...

US president also suggested they should co-operate with Russian leader against the International Criminal Court

Renewal of 30-day licence comes as high fuel costs hit American consumers