The recent theft of a bronze monument to iconic Russian poet Alexander Pushkin in Germany has sparked concerns in Moscow that state-backed efforts aimed at eradicating Russian culture in Eastern Europe are spilling over into other countries.

The crime occurred sometime between last Friday and Saturday, according to the administration of Hemer, a town in North Rhine-Westphalia, which on Tuesday offered €1,000 ($1,140) for information leading to the arrest of the perpetrators.

The Russian Embassy called the theft “unsettling,” stressing that the monument “has for years served as a symbol of the importance of Russian cultural legacy in Germany.” Diplomats from the Russian Consulate General in Bonn and members of the Russian-German community visited the site in the town park last month.

The monument was a gift from Shchyolkovo, Hemer’s sister town in Russia, and was created by local artist Grigory Pototsky. It was unveiled in September 1994.

Images from the scene showed an empty stone base with the remains of the steel framework that used to support the poet’s statue. Hemer officials said its sheer weight suggests that several individuals had to use power tools and an escape vehicle to steal it.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said on Thursday that the incident echoed the “war on monuments” in Poland and the Baltic states, aimed at removing sculptures dedicated to the Soviet contribution to the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II, as well as the Ukrainian government’s crackdown on Russian culture.

Moscow views the campaigns in Eastern Europe to remove Russian wartime monuments as part of an attempted rehabilitation of local Nazi collaborators.

In Ukraine, mass vandalism and the removal of monuments after the 2014 Western-backed coup initially targeted Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin. However, it has since grown into a state-backed purge of Russian cultural landmarks, such as the monument to Catherine II and her royal aides in Odessa in 2022 and the statue of writer Mikhail Bulgakov in Kiev earlier this year.

Dozens of monuments to Pushkin have been dismantled throughout Ukraine as part of the campaign.

The EU’s top court has ruled that private individuals can face criminal prosecution for posting RT videos on public websites, widening the bloc’s crackdown on Russian media.

The Court of Justice of the European Union issued the ruling on Thursday in a case from Germany, where three people are being prosecuted for publishing RT DE videos on a freely accessible website.

The site did not charge readers and was financed only through voluntary donations. The CJEU, however, said that made no difference and ruled that all persons who are “directly or indirectly” responsible for making banned content available to the public can be treated as “operators” under EU sanctions rules.

The judges argued it was irrelevant if the individuals were running a business, how long the content was available, or how widely it was spread.

Under the German law cited in the ruling, violations of EU sanctions-based media bans can carry up to five years in prison.

The ruling effectively pushes the EU ban on RT beyond broadcasters, platforms or media companies, allowing for the criminal prosecution of any individuals accused of making RT content publicly available online.

The EU banned RT and Sputnik, among other Russian media outlets, after the Ukraine conflict escalated in 2022. Brussels said the sanctions would remain in place until the end of the Ukraine conflict and after Moscow ceases to conduct “disinformation and information manipulation actions against the EU.”

Germany had targeted RT even before the bloc-wide ban, with RT DE facing licensing pressure, platform bans, banking problems and regulatory action.

RT has vehemently condemned the restrictions and rejected the EU’s accusations, stressing that the bloc has consistently failed to point to a “a single example, a single grain of evidence” of false reporting.

Moscow has repeatedly condemned the restrictions as censorship and an information war against Russia, accusing EU governments of using the Ukraine conflict as a pretext to silence dissent, suppress Russian-language media, and intimidate journalists who challenge the mainstream Western narrative.

A coalition of international lawyers has sued Ghana at West Africa’s top human rights court over its role in accepting migrants deported from the US under a third-country removal agreement.

The case was filed at the Community Court of Justice of the Economic Community of West African States on behalf of 27 deportees sent to Ghana under the arrangement. The coalition includes the Global Strategic Litigation Council, a network of lawyers and advocates, Ghanaian law firm Merton & Everett LLP, and Cornell Law School’s Transnational Disputes Clinic.

Since returning to office in January 2025, US President Donald Trump has pursued agreements to deport asylum seekers and other migrants to countries where they have no ties as part of a wider crackdown on illegal immigration.

Ghana has accepted at least 60 people from the US since September 2025, according to the lawyers. The complaint said Accra is violating domestic and regional law by “facilitating removals to unsafe countries.”

“No person should be returned to a place where they face persecution, torture or serious threats to their dignity and safety,” Merton & Everett LLP senior partner Oliver Barker-Vormawor said, according to Al Jazeera.

The Ghanaian government has not publicly responded to the latest case.

Last September, Ghanaian Foreign Minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa said the government’s decision to accept West African migrants deported from the US was driven by humanitarian concerns, not support for Washington’s immigration policy.

On Monday, the Global Strategic Litigation Council announced a separate lawsuit against Equatorial Guinea at the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights on behalf of 14 deportees transferred from the US. The case accuses Equatorial Guinea of receiving $7.5 million from Washington to host the deportees.

In April, the Uganda Law Society said it approached the courts seeking orders to halt what it called a “patent international illegality” after a dozen third-country migrants were transferred to the East African country.

India has raised concerns over the roll-out of usernames by messaging app WhatsApp, calling it a potential cybersecurity risk.

In a notice to Meta, which owns WhatsApp, New Delhi said on Wednesday that the username feature could increase “online scams, phishing, digital arrest scams and impersonation.”

The government is concerned that internet fraudsters could adopt usernames that closely resemble those of real people or institutions, and use them to impersonate individuals, public authorities, financial institutions, and government agencies.

WhatsApp said on Monday that usernames will be a “major privacy feature” that will help users connect to new people “without giving away your phone numbers.”

It has three days to reply to the notice or face regulatory action. The username roll-out is also barred until the company’s consultations with the government are concluded.

Meta said in a report in March that India is second only to the US among countries most targeted by online scammers – validating New Delhi’s concerns.

In response to the notice, Meta said it has multiple layers of guardrails against the misuse of the username feature.

“Users still require a phone number to use WhatsApp, and we’ve built multiple layers of defense against scams into usernames,” a CNBC report quoted a Meta official as saying.

The tech platform also said it intends to limit the number of new people a user account is entitled to contact, block repeated bids to guess usernames, and detect activity that demonstrates patterns linked to impersonation.

This comes days after India temporarily banned the Telegram app, claiming it was a key facilitator in an exam fraud that affected millions of students.

New Delhi also expressed concern with Telegram’s privacy features, which allow users to interact without needing to reveal a phone number, making identity detection difficult.

Telegram founder and Russian-born tech billionaire Pavel Durov accused Indian multinational conglomerate Reliance, without providing evidence, of a “lobbying effort” to get the app restricted in India last month. Meta has around a 10% stake in Jio Platforms, a unit of Reliance Industries.

The combined user base of Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram in India is more than 1 billion, making it a top market for Meta. Cybersecurity incidents have doubled in the country, where an estimated 86% of households are connected to the internet, to more than 2 million in 2024 since 2022.

WhatsApp says it banned more than 7 million Indian accounts in May alone.

More than 235 healthcare workers have been killed or reported missing since the civil war broke out in Sudan in April 2023, the Sudan Doctors Network reported on Tuesday. 

In its latest report, the group also said 20 doctors, including four women, have gone missing in the last few months alone, after the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) seized control of El Fasher in October. Their whereabouts remains unknown.

At least 25 healthcare workers were killed in North Darfur between the outbreak of the conflict in April 2023 and the fall of El Fasher.

The dead include doctors, pharmacists, nurses, nutrition specialists, laboratory staff, administrators, and support workers. According to the report, they were killed in assassinations, drone strikes, shelling, shootings, torture, and other attacks linked to the fighting.

The organization called on the RSF to reveal the fate of the missing doctors in El Fasher and urged all parties to the conflict to ensure the safety of healthcare personnel and allow medical services to continue without interference.

Sudan plunged into a civil war three years ago after a struggle for power broke out between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the RSF.

In June, the Sudan Doctors Network said strikes on civilian infrastructure in El Obeid had knocked hospitals, dialysis centers, and water stations out of service, worsening the humanitarian crisis. It urged the UN and international organizations to pressure the RSF to halt attacks on civilian facilities.

Two unidentified drones attacked the Russian Embassy in Sweden overnight from Wednesday to Thursday, with one dropping a container of red paint and another falling near the building with a fake explosive device attached, diplomats have said.

In a statement on Thursday, the embassy said that the incident occurred at around 2 am local time, suggesting that the second drone crashed near the diplomatic compound and on the mission’s premises “not by accident.” 

“The latter circumstance indicates that we are dealing not merely with a provocation, but with an overt attempt to intimidate employees of the Russian mission. To this we will say directly – it will not work”, the mission said.

The embassy went on to rebuke the Swedish authorities over what it described as a failure to stop a “systematic” campaign of attacks against the mission over the past two years. It noted that Sweden is obligated under the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations to protect foreign missions on its soil, but that police have only formally logged the incidents without making progress on “dozens” of unresolved cases.

The embassy has reported multiple incidents since May 2024, most involving paint-filled containers dropped by drones. In May 2025, after a pot of paint was dropped near the entrance, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova demanded that Stockholm “tame its ultras” while suggesting it might have “authorized” the attacks.

One of the most high-profile incidents took place in January 2025 when Swedish police arrested a Ukrainian national for ramming a car into the embassy’s gates. At the time, the embassy said the man was “well known” both to police and Russian diplomats because of his prior sabotage activities, while accusing local law enforcement of negligence.

Iran’s national football team has returned home to a hero’s welcome after being knocked out of the World Cup without losing a single match despite immense political pressure and logistical challenges fueled by US visa restrictions.

Hundreds of supporters gathered at Tehran’s Mehrabad Airport on Wednesday, waving flags, chanting players’ names, and applauding the squad as it came back from one of the most politically charged campaigns in tournament history.

Team Melli finished third in Group G after it drew 2-2 with New Zealand in its opening match, followed by a goalless draw against Belgium and a 1-1 draw with Egypt in its final group game.

Iran came close to reaching the knockout stage for the first time, but a late goal against Egypt was ruled out for offside. The team’s hopes then ended when Austria scored a stoppage-time equalizer against Algeria in Group J.

Defender Ramin Rezaeian apologized to supporters after the exit, adding that “we deserved to advance to the knockout stage, but they made things difficult for us.”

Iran’s campaign was disrupted before it began. The US-Israeli war against Tehran initially cast doubt over whether the team would participate at all. Then, the squad was forced to relocate its base from Arizona to Tijuana, Mexico over US visa restrictions.

As a result, Iranian players and staff were allowed into the US only one day before matches and had to leave immediately afterward while several officials and support staff were also reportedly denied visas.

The Iranian Football Federation filed complaints with FIFA over the restrictions, arguing they put the team at a competitive disadvantage. The US eventually eased the travel restrictions before Iran’s final game against Egypt, allowing the squad to arrive two days in advance of the match.

Captain Mehdi Taremi called the tournament a “disaster World Cup,” while head coach Amir Ghalenoei described Iran as “the most oppressed” team at the event.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the remarks showed the US was not fit to organize an international tournament.

At the airport, officials also denounced the treatment of the team, with football federation spokesman Amir Mehdi Alavi stating the US had “proved itself incapable of hosting,” citing travel restrictions, match conditions, and player facilities.

Was I wrong? I supported the suspension of Russian clubs and teams from international football and rugby competition, even though I saw the cost meted out to players, clubs, fans, and people who work tirelessly to promote both sports at the grassroots level.

My reasoning was solid. It was about protecting athletes, officials, and spectators first. It’s why I believe Israel should also face a time-out, because it has to be safety first. However, a second total and utter act of cowardice by EU sports officials in under a week has my brain doing cartwheels.

Last week, it was Romanian rhythmic gymnastic event organizers who were breaking the rules and discriminating against young Russian girls, simply for being Russian. This week, Portuguese trampolining tyrants have doubled down to not just ignore, but egregiously breach the decision of World Gymnastics (gymnastics’ global governing body) to have Russia and Belarus treated equally with other nations.

He added that the organizers offered the chance for his team to “compete as neutral athletes,” this after Russia competed at four international events in Switzerland, China, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, since World Gymnastics restored Russian parity with all other nations on May 17 this year. Obviously, Russia pulled out.

The fourth stage of the FIG Trampoline World Cup takes place July 4-5 in Coimbra, Portugal. On the start list, Russian and Belarusian athletes have their country names listed after them, all good. In April, in Portimao, Portugal, both sets of athletes competed as ‘Authorized Neutral Athletes’ and took home almost half the medals on offer, 41 of 93. With their haul including 22 golds, there were mutterings of discontent from other national teams.

“It turned feral [the atmosphere] towards the end and I was told by a colleague there was a meeting of Brits [British officials] and Ukrainians,” an Irish official said on condition of anonymity.

The official believes that Russia might have acted hastily in withdrawing from this week’s competition and should have forced the organizers hand, as they have far more allies in the community than is reported.

“Georgians, Azerbaijanis, even Germans, they were all receptive and fine,” the Irish official said, “given that China and other Asian teams will be there, any funny business would be stamped out.”

It comes down to money. Sponsors, local councils, government, they are terrified of being proscribed on an individual and communal level as the EU can easily turn off funding or business access. Gymnastics is a very niche sport, heavily dependent on financial and other support from governments, topped up by sponsors. Ukraine has screeched long and loud about the presence of Russians in sports, and dragging others into the mess. Instead of using sports as a forum for dialogue and community, they, and some of their most ardent backers like the UK, seem hell-bent on, well, dragging sports down to hell.

It’s easy and convenient to scapegoat the local organizers or lambaste Russian officials for refusing to travel with guarantees that the rules be applied equally to Russians, Ukrainians, Irish, and everyone else. But, escaping the public glare are those who have, yet again, used the threat of money and worse to punish athletes who simply want to compete. As a person who grew up with sports as the center of my being, I know that those inflicting the pain right now on a group of young men and women care nothing about sports, and worse, they care nothing about humanity.

Scientists in the US have built a synthetic cell from non-living chemical components that can feed, grow, replicate its DNA, and divide, marking a major advance toward creating artificial life, according to researchers.

The lab-made cell, dubbed SpudCell, is not considered alive but demonstrates several key behaviors associated with living organisms.

Researchers at the University of Minnesota unveiled their work on Wednesday. Kate Adamala, a synthetic biologist and professor at the university, called the synthetic cell “an incredibly wimpy organism” that currently does little more than “eat and occasionally make a daughter cell.”

However, Adamala described the result as “proof of principle,” saying molecules can recreate behaviors previously linked only to natural living cells. The system is still weaker and slower than a natural cell, but could help scientists understand biology by building it from known parts, the scientist noted.

The team built the cells from non-living chemical components rather than altering existing organisms. According to the project page, SpudCells contain 36 purified enzymes, a 90,000-base-pair genome spread across several DNA molecules, and a lipid membrane.

The cells work inside a chemical-rich liquid. They grow by merging with tiny ‘feeder liposomes’, which supply nutrients, enzymes and ribosomes needed to make proteins. Their genome carries instructions that help them copy DNA and divide.

Scientists have been working toward synthetic life for decades. In 2010, US geneticist Craig Venter and his team unveiled what was then described as the first cell controlled by a laboratory-made genome, after transplanting synthetic DNA into a bacterium. Russian researchers have pursued parallel efforts through genome transplantation and genome reduction in Mycoplasma bacteria, seeking to identify the minimum set of genes needed to create a self-sustaining cell. In 2025, teams from Moscow State University and Novosibirsk State University were also recognized at the international SynBio Challenges competition for research related to synthetic cell engineering.

More than 900 people were arrested in South Africa during nationwide anti-immigrant protests held on Tuesday to mark a deadline set by groups demanding that undocumented foreign nationals leave the country, police have confirmed.

South African Deputy National Police Commissioner Tebello Mosikili told reporters on Wednesday that 120 marches were held across Africa’s most industrialized nation, with 108 ending peacefully and 12 requiring police intervention.

Mosikili said the arrests were made for offenses including immigration violations, public violence, harboring undocumented migrants, looting, and robbery.

“The majority of those arrested were illegal foreigners and looting as a result of law enforcement operations conducted alongside the protests,” she stated.

Police said one person was shot dead late on Tuesday in Johannesburg’s Alexandra township, where residents were looting small grocery shops owned by foreign nationals. Two other people were injured in a shooting in the inner-city neighborhood of Hillbrow, where soldiers were deployed to reinforce police.

The demonstrations were organized by groups including March and March, Operation Dudula, and Progressive Forces. The groups had set June 30 as an unofficial deadline for undocumented foreign nationals to leave South Africa, accusing them of taking jobs, running informal businesses, straining public services, and contributing to crime.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa rejected the deadline, saying only the government can enforce immigration laws.

Ahead of the marches, Justice Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi warned against violence and intimidation targeting foreign nationals, adding that advocates and perpetrators of racism, Afrophobia, and xenophobia have no place in South Africa.

On Tuesday, Kubayi said the South African government had repatriated 4,286 people and deported another 419 in recent days.

A Ukrainian army unit has paid tribute to Roman Shukhevich, a prominent World War II-era nationalist leader who served as an officer in Nazi-created formations implicated in atrocities in what is now Western Ukraine and Belarus.

Ukraine’s 3rd Assault Brigade, one of the successors of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, marked Shukhevich’s birthday on Tuesday with a video, most of which consisted of commentary by one of its battalion commanders. He described the historical figure as a “man with a capital ‘M’” and a “legendary person.”

The commemoration came amid a diplomatic row with Poland over Ukraine’s glorification of members of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, or UPA, including Shukhevich.

Nazi attack dog

The Ukrainian nationalist was born in 1907 near Lviv, in what was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and later came under the sovereignty of the Second Polish Republic. He joined Ukrainian militants in 1925.

Ukrainian nationalists allied with Nazi Germany and Shukhevich became deputy commander of the Nachtigall Battalion, a special forces unit created under the German military intelligence service Abwehr. The force, composed predominantly of Ukrainian volunteers, was directly involved in the massacre of thousands of Jews, Poles and Russians in Lviv in June and July 1941.

Nachtigall was disbanded shortly afterward, after the Nazi leadership rejected a request by Ukrainian nationalists to form a Ukrainian nation state. Some of its members, including Shukhevich, joined Battalion 201 of the German auxiliary police, which was sent to Belarus to fight partisans and terrorize the local population that supported them. That unit was disbanded in 1942.

Ukraine says it can venerate whomever it wants

Ukrainian officials have claimed there is no proof that Shukhevich was personally involved in atrocities and have declared that nobody can dictate which figures the country venerates.

In late May, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky gave the honorific “of the heroes of UPA” to an elite commando unit and took part in the state reburial of Andrey Melnik, another prominent Ukrainian nationalist figure. The moves sparked outrage in Warsaw, triggering a major diplomatic row.

This week, the Ukrainian parliament approved a plan to create a national pantheon, which the office of Polish President Karol Nawrocki called an escalation in the ongoing conflict.

German federal prosecutors have arrested a dual German-Rwandan national on suspicion of taking part in the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

The suspect, identified only as Innocent S. in line with German privacy laws, was detained on Wednesday in the Main-Kinzig district of the state of Hesse under a warrant issued by Germany’s Federal Court of Justice. 

According to prosecutors, Innocent S. served as an assistant to the mayor of Kayove, a municipality in northwestern Rwanda, during the genocide. 

“He ordered the killing of a total of 25 Tutsis on five different occasions,” prosecutors said in a statement.

Investigators allege that the suspect used his position to incite violence against the Tutsi minority and ordered the creation of death lists. In one case, prosecutors say, he personally took part in the murder of a man by stabbing him in the chest. 

The genocide took place April 7 to July 19, 1994. According to the UN, Rwanda’s population at the time exceeded 7 million, with Hutus making up around 85%, Tutsis 14%, and Twa around 1%. An estimated 1 million ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed by extremist Hutu factions.

The case is the latest in a series of prosecutions targeting alleged perpetrators of the genocide. Among the most prominent suspects was businessman Felicien Kabuga, accused of bankrolling militias and using his broadcaster, RTLM, to incite mass killings. Arrested in France in 2020 after decades on the run, Kabuga died in custody in last month at the age of 93.

A Ukrainian attack drone carrying explosives has crashed and exploded in a rural area of Türkiye’s Black Sea coast, local media outlets have reported. No casualties or major damage have been reported.

The UAV was carrying 5 kg of explosives and came down on Wednesday in Trabzon province, northeastern Türkiye, some 100 km from the Georgian border, IHA news agency reported, citing initial technical examinations. Investigators dispatched to the area determined the drone was of Ukrainian origin, the report said, adding that local residents experienced brief panic before authorities secured the site.

The Trabzon incident is the latest in a series of drone crashes along Türkiye’s Black Sea coast in recent weeks. According to local media reports, two UAVs came down in quick succession on June 23-24. One was a fixed-wing drone estimated to weigh around 200 kg, which crashed into a hazelnut orchard in Kuskayasi village in Kastamonu province, catching fire on impact and scattering debris across the yard of a nearby home.

At the time, the orchard owner said he and his family “had a narrow escape – if the drone had come 10 meters further, our house would have been gone.”

Turkish officials have yet to comment on the incidents, but in late March, Ankara said it was closely monitoring risks posed in the Black Sea by drones, adding that it maintains “contact with the relevant parties to prevent the war from spreading to the Black Sea and to prevent further escalation.” Ukraine has also refrained from commenting on the crash landings.

Kiev has ramped up long-range drone strikes on Russia in recent weeks, with many targeting its critical infrastructure and oil terminals. Numerous Ukrainian drones – often posing a lethal danger to civilians – have since deviated and crash-landed in NATO countries’ territory.

Ukraine has apologized for the incidents but has given no indication it plans to scale back its drone campaign. Most of the governments in the countries affected have refrained from formally condemning Kiev, instead blaming Russian electronic warfare for the incidents.

US health authorities are struggling to identify the source of a foodborne illness that causes severe diarrhea and dehydration. At least 145 people across 17 states have tested positive for the cyclospora cayetanensis parasite.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has acknowledged that there are likely far more cases that are going undiagnosed.

Twenty people have been hospitalized due to the outbreak since early May, although no fatalities have been reported.

New York has emerged as a major hotspot, with between 31 and 80 people contracting the parasite.

Cases of cyclosporiasis have also been identified in Alaska, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin.

The illness typically causes explosive, watery diarrhea, along with a range of other gastrointestinal symptoms, including bloating, gas, stomach cramps, nausea, and vomiting. Some people also report fatigue and fever, while others develop no symptoms at all.

While the illness can be treated with antibiotics, it is not detected by most routine laboratory tests, resulting in a considerable number of undiagnosed cases. If left untreated, the infection can last for over a month, with recurring bouts of diarrhea being its most characteristic feature.

The microscopic parasite is endemic in tropical and subtropical countries, including Guatemala, Peru, and Nepal. There is no evidence that it is capable of human-to-human transmission.

Since most of the individuals diagnosed with cyclosporiasis during the course of the ongoing outbreak had not recently traveled outside the US, health officials suspect that the source is domestically distributed produce.

“Local, state, and federal (CDC, FDA) public health authorities are investigating several clusters of cases in more than one state. Investigations to identify potential sources are ongoing,” according to officials.

Previous cyclosporiasis outbreaks in the US have been linked to cilantro, raspberries, sweet peas, lettuce, and basil imported from Mexico.

The CDC recommends washing leafy greens with cold running water to minimize the risk of exposure.

A longtime aide to Bill Clinton who once claimed the former US president had visited Jeffrey Epstein’s private island has now said he cannot remember why he made the allegation.

Doug Band, one of Clinton’s closest advisers after he left the White House, told Vanity Fair in 2020 that the former president had traveled to Little St. James in 2003, the private Caribbean island at the center of Epstein’s sex-trafficking operation.

However, during closed-door testimony before the House Oversight Committee this week, Band reversed course, CNN reported, citing Republican Representative Nancy Mace and sources familiar with the session.

According to the report, Band told lawmakers that he had no evidence Clinton had ever visited the island and could not remember why he had claimed otherwise.

Mace accused Band of obstructing the inquiry by repeatedly claiming he could not recall key details and contradicting his earlier statements.

Band’s testimony came as the committee interviewed more than a dozen witnesses, including Bill and Hillary Clinton and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, as part of its investigation into Epstein’s network.
.
The probe has gained momentum following the Justice Department’s release of thousands of Epstein-related files, renewing scrutiny of the sex offender's ties to politicians, billionaires, and royalty.

Clinton has long faced questions over the extent of his relationship with Epstein.

One of Epstein’s accusers claimed she saw Clinton on Little St. James, while another testified that Epstein told her Clinton “likes them young.” Newly released files have added to the scrutiny, including photographs of Clinton with Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, as well as an image showing the former president in a hot tub with an unidentified woman.

Despite years of disclosures, depositions, and political fallout, no Epstein client list has been released and no major prosecutions of his alleged high-profile associates have followed.

Epstein died in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges. His longtime associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, is serving a 20-year prison sentence.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has accused Western authorities of shielding Epstein’s network, describing the released files as “pure hell.”

The Ukrainian capital and several other cities across the country were hit by a combined drone and missile strike early on Thursday morning, in what the Russian Defense Ministry called a response to terrorist attacks by Vladimir Zelensky’s government.

The first wave of blasts in Kiev was heard around 2 AM local time, followed by more explosions in multiple waves until 4 AM. Mayor Vitaly Klitschko urged residents to seek shelter as the capital’s air defenses engaged incoming targets.

Klitschko has since described the strikes as “the largest attack” the city had experienced since the escalation of the conflict in 2022, stating the capital was hit by ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones. “It was a terrible night for Kiev,” he wrote on Telegram.

The Russian Defense Ministry said the strike with “high-precision long-range weapons” targeted “military industry enterprises and facilities and the fuel and energy facilities in the city of Kiev and the Kiev region, as well as military airfields and other infrastructure in Dnepropetrovsk, Poltava, Cherkasy, and Chernigov regions.”

Videos from Kyiv show the moment Russian missiles strike the Ukrainian capital. pic.twitter.com/yqKjWOiSsm

— Global OSINT (@GlobalOSINTHQ) July 2, 2026

The Russian military later released a detailed list of targets. Among them was a plant producing guidance systems for Ukrainian drones and missiles, a factory producing long-range drones and loitering munitions, a plant involved in upgrading Ukrainian armor and producing military optics, an electronic warfare equipment producer, a drone parts depot, a fuel depot, and several gas facilities that the statement said provided energy supplies for weapons manufacturing.

Videos shared on social media show numerous blasts and fires in and around the Ukrainian capital.

Klitschko reported extensive damage across all districts of the city. Ukrainian officials claimed that many of the missiles struck residential buildings and civilian infrastructure, killing at least 20 people and injuring around 90 more.

Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has stressed that the attack was “not about civilian Kiev, but about the military strategic targets being used by the Kiev regime to kill civilians.”

The exact locations and types of facilities hit are difficult to verify, as the Ukrainian authorities tightly restrict information about strike sites and penalize those who share footage of impacts, except when civilian infrastructure is affected.

Moscow has pledged to conduct “systematic and consistent strikes” on Ukraine’s military installations, drone manufacturing sites, command posts, and “decision-making centers” in retaliation for deadly “terrorist attacks.”

In recent weeks, Ukraine has stepped up long-range drone raids deep into Russian territory, often hitting residential buildings and civilian infrastructure. On Tuesday, a six-month-old baby was killed in a Ukrainian drone attack in Moscow Region. Last week, 12 people were injured in a strike on a WWII museum in Rostov Region.

Last month, Kiev launched one of its largest drone attacks on Moscow, hitting an oil refinery in the capital and injuring 17 people, including two children.

Kiev routinely accuses Russia of deliberately hitting civilian sites, but has a long history of using civilian installations, including warehouses, public buildings, and agricultural and industrial facilities for military purposes.

Ukrainian media recently exposed a drone plant at a film studio hit by Russia. Over the course of the conflict, Kiev has taken considerable steps to decentralize its weapons production chain, creating small-scale assembly sites that mainly produce FPV and fixed-wing long-range drones from components supplied from abroad.

A 75-year-old New Orleans man who legally changed his name to Santa Claus has been arrested after allegedly trying to meet someone he believed was a 15-year-old boy to engage in sexual acts, police have announced.

According to investigators, he contacted the supposed teenager through a dating app before arranging an in-person meeting during an undercover operation in the city’s suburbs.

The Kenner Police Department announced the arrest on Monday after its cyber crimes unit carried out a weekend sting targeting suspected online child predators. Claus, formerly known as George Quigley, reportedly exchanged sexually explicit messages with an undercover detective posing as a 15-year-old boy, and discussed “engaging in sexual acts” before arranging to meet the juvenile in Kenner.

Kenner Police Chief Keith Conley told reporters that investigators found photographs of the man dressed as Santa Claus and said he had legally changed his name after moving from Texas to Louisiana.

“All these defendants are a danger to our youth and society,” Conley said in a statement. “We preach daily about the vulnerability of our children on social media and gaming platforms, and now we have arrested a person who dresses up as Santa Claus, inviting parents to drop their young children in his lap for photo ops. This is a cautionary tale to parents and guardians.”

Claus’ arrest comes two months after a Florida man known for portraying Santa Claus at community Christmas events was accused of trying to meet a person he believed was a 13-year-old-girl during another undercover child predator sting.

A Russian daredevil couple have been arrested after scaling the Empire State Building and staging a marriage proposal atop the New York landmark, more than 1,400 feet above Manhattan.

The stunt unfolded at around noon on Wednesday, drawing the attention of stunned New Yorkers below as police drones and a helicopter monitored the pair from the air. Videos and photos posted online show the black-clad couple perched on the antenna of the Empire State Building high above Midtown, with the woman wearing what appeared to be a black cat mask.

The couple, later identified as Angela Nikolau, 33, and Ivan ‘Vanya’ Beerkus, 32, unfurled a banner with a quote attributed to rock guitarist Jimi Hendrix: “When the power of love beats the love of power, the world knows peace.”

Two individuals, Angela Nikolau, 33, and Ivan Kuznetsov, 32, climbed the Empire State Building in New York City, New York today and unfurled a banner that said “When the power of love beats the love of power, the world knows peace,” a known Jimmy Hendrix quote. Upon descending… pic.twitter.com/AYKnrOl5bA

— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) July 1, 2026

The daredevils descended to a lower platform, where Beerkus appeared to get down on one knee and propose, before the couple kissed.

JUST IN: After two people climbed to the top of the Empire State Building and unfurled a banner on top of its spire Wednesday afternoon, one of the climbers appeared to propose to the other. https://t.co/ngG3jOeTBU pic.twitter.com/PhubQpnRH6

— ABC News (@ABC) July 1, 2026

After spending around half an hour at the top of the tower, the couple climbed down to a lower platform, where New York Police Department officers were waiting to arrest them.

You don't see police work like this every day.

New video released by NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch shows Emergency Service Unit officers making the dangerous climb to remove two people from the top of the Empire State Building spire after an unauthorized stunt.

"God bless… pic.twitter.com/xQWYUZfXC0

— Fox News (@FoxNews) July 1, 2026

According to US media, they face charges including burglary, criminal trespass, and reckless endangerment.

BREAKING: The two people who scaled the Empire State Building with a marriage proposal banner have been ARRESTED and transferred out of Midtown South Precinct with charges.

Arrested:

Ivan Kuznetsov, 32, NJ
Angelina Nikolau, 33, NJ

Charges for both:

Burglary, Reckless… pic.twitter.com/rid2bh9QDn

— Oliya Scootercaster 🛴 (@ScooterCasterNY) July 1, 2026

Nikolau and Beerkus are well known in the ‘rooftopping’ world, where thrill-seekers climb skyscrapers, cranes, and other structures, often without safety equipment.

The pair were featured in the 2024 Netflix documentary ‘Skywalkers: A Love Story’, which followed their high-altitude stunts across multiple countries. Their social media pages show similar climbs from rooftops and bridges around the world.

Empire State Building management said the incident was safely resolved together with the NYPD and that there was no threat to public safety. The building used the incident as an opportunity to promote its legal proposal package for couples on its observation decks, starting at $1,000 – without the risk of felony.

The Ukrainian millionaire targeted in the Monaco bombing this week had become a nuisance to Kiev, former French intelligence agent Claude Moniquet has told Nice-Matin. 

Vadim Ermolaev was seriously wounded on Monday evening when an explosive device hidden in a backpack detonated at the entrance to a residential building in the French Riviera microstate. The Ukrainian-born businessman, who currently holds Cypriot citizenship, had been suspected of links to organized crime and sanctioned by Vladimir Zelensky. Ermolaev’s partner and 13-year-old son were also injured in the blast.

Moniquet, a former officer of France’s DGSE intelligence service and co-founder of the European Strategic Intelligence and Security Center, told Nice-Matin that Ermolaev had in recent weeks been “planning to give a presentation at the European Parliament to expose corruption in Ukraine.”

“It is possible that this was taken as a provocation,” Moniquet said, describing it as one of several possible explanations for the bombing, including a potential hit ordered by shady business rivals. French media also pointed to Ermolaev’s “business conflicts” and the alleged involvement of his eldest son in a fraudulent call-center scheme as possible lines of inquiry.

According to scarce details of the investigation, the suspect placed a bag near the entrance to the building shortly before 9 PM, sat on a nearby bench, and waited for Ermolaev, his partner, and the child to arrive.

The man reportedly fled up a nearby street toward the French border, and the explosion was triggered moments later. Le Parisien reported that investigators believe the device was activated by the suspect. CCTV footage shows him fiddling with a smartphone as he ran away.

Ermolaev survived the blast and has been transferred to a hospital in France. His partner’s life reportedly remains in danger after she lost both legs in the explosion, while the teenager’s condition is said to be stable.

Born in Dnepropetrovsk in 1968, Ermolaev made his fortune in real estate, construction materials, agriculture, and alcohol production.

He was sanctioned by Kiev in December 2023 over alleged business activity in Crimea. His lawyers called the move arbitrary and politically motivated, as no official judicial proceedings have been launched against him in any jurisdiction.

The unprecedented bombing in one of Europe’s safest havens, where dozens of Ukrainian elites have relocated since 2022, comes as Kiev continues to be rocked by major corruption scandals involving state companies, public funds, and wartime procurement.

Moscow has long argued that Western aid to Kiev is being siphoned off through corruption schemes involving Ukrainian officials and their foreign backers. Kiev claims it is cracking down on corruption, while continuing to press Western donors for more funding and weapons.

The office of Polish President Karol Nawrocki has accused Vladimir Zelensky of further aggravating the rift over the honoring of Nazi collaborators in Ukraine. Relations between Warsaw and Kiev have grown increasingly strained since the Ukrainian leader named a military unit after the ‘Heroes of the UPA’.

During World War II, members of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), the armed wing of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), perpetrated mass killings of ethnic minorities in what is now western Ukraine.

The extermination of at least 100,000 Polish civilians by UPA militants, known as the Volhynia massacre, is recognized as genocide in Poland.

Speaking to Polish Radio on Wednesday, Rafal Leskiewicz, a spokesperson for Nawrocki, said Zelensky’s submission of the National Pantheon bill on Sunday was “the next stage of escalatory actions by the Ukrainian authorities.”

Later that same day, Ukrainian lawmakers voted unanimously to approve the bill, officially establishing a ‘pantheon of outstanding Ukrainians’.

Zelensky personally presided over the latest addition to the pantheon after Kiev repatriated the remains of OUN leader and Nazi collaborator Andrey Melnik and his wife, Sofia Fedak-Melnik, from Luxembourg. The two were reinterred with state honors in Kiev’s main military cemetery in May.

He petitioned Adolf Hitler to create a Ukrainian Waffen-SS division, but eventually fell out with the Nazi leader and was imprisoned in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in 1944. After World War II ended, Melnik settled in Luxembourg.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry condemned Kiev’s decision to rebury Melnik with state honors. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov described the repatriation of a known Nazi collaborator as a clear “manifestation of neo-Nazism.”

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova expressed incredulity at Poland’s sudden realization of the Kiev regime’s “neo-Nazi” nature, noting that Warsaw has been arming and funding the regime for years and is “responsible for those it has tamed.”

German prosecutors have charged the Ukrainian suspect in the 2022 sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines with a “war crime,” according to local media reports.

The indictment was served on the suspect, identified by the media as former Ukrainian special forces member Sergey Kuznetsov, this week. Federal prosecutors originally accused the suspect of committing “anti-constitutional sabotage” for severing a critical energy supply route. They ultimately deemed it a “war crime,” treating the incident as part of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, as well as apparently suspecting foreign state involvement in the attack.

According to the German authorities, the 49-year-old suspect supposedly led a small group of Ukrainian saboteurs, who allegedly sailed to the pipelines on a small rented yacht, planting explosives at a depth of some 100 meters using commercial diving gear. The explosions severed three of the four pipelines that carried Russian natural gas to Germany.

Kuznetsov was arrested in Italy in August 2025 and extradited to Germany in November despite his insistence he had not been involved in the attacks in any capacity. Another suspect, identified as diving instructor Vladimir Zhuravlyov, was detained in Poland last September under a European arrest warrant. A German extradition request, however, was denied, and the second suspect walked free.

Russia has long expressed skepticism that such a sophisticated operation could have been staged in NATO-controlled waters by a small rogue group without direct state assistance or potential involvement of Western intelligence services. Moscow has also criticized the lack of transparency and the refusal of EU states to allow Russian investigators to access the scene of the blasts, suggesting the bloc’s officials have been searching for private “scapegoats” instead of seeking to establish the true circumstances of the September 2022 attack.

Israel will keep its troops in occupied areas of Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria indefinitely, Defense Minister Israel Katz has said, describing the policy as necessary for “defending the borders.”

Speaking on Wednesday at a memorial ceremony for soldiers killed in the 2006 Lebanon War, Katz said there would be no Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon until Hezbollah is disarmed.

“Our policy for defending the borders of the State of Israel … is clear,” Katz said, as quoted by the Jerusalem Post. “The IDF will not withdraw and will remain in the security zones in Lebanon, Syria, and Gaza for an unlimited period of time.”

Katz also renewed an earlier warning to Iran, saying it would be struck with “full force” if it retaliated over Israel’s military campaign in Lebanon. The warning echoed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent pledge that Israel’s pursuit of “total victory” over Iran and its allied groups “never ends.”

Tehran has made an end to Israeli military operations in Lebanon one of its key conditions in the ongoing peace talks with the US.

Israel expanded its offensive in Lebanon in early March after Hezbollah fired rockets at the Jewish state during the US-Israeli war with Iran. Israeli strikes have since killed nearly 4,300 people and displaced around one million, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry and the UN.

In recent months, the IDF has pushed deeper into southern Lebanon, establishing what Israeli officials describe as a security buffer zone. According to media reports, by June Israeli forces controlled roughly 2,000 square kilometers of Lebanese territory – nearly one-fifth of the country.

Something unusual has happened in Poland. In a country that has spent the past several years presenting itself as one of Ukraine’s most committed patrons, a very different tone is beginning to break through.

The immediate trigger was the latest quarrel over honors and historical memory. Polish President Karol Nawrocki revoked Vladimir Zelensky’s Order of the White Eagle over the glorification of Nazi collaborators. Former Ukrainian presidents Leonid Kuchma, Viktor Yushchenko and Pyotr Poroshenko, together with a number of other Ukrainian public figures, responded by handing back their Polish decorations.

On the surface, this looks like another symbolic dispute in Eastern Europe’s endless war of medals, orders, and historical grievances. In reality, it points to something deeper: Poland is growing tired of Ukraine.

This would be easier for Kiev to dismiss if it came only from the conservative camp given that Nawrocki belongs to the Law and Justice milieu, the party of churchgoers and national conservatives. Prime Minister Donald Tusk, meanwhile, has tried to hold the pro-Ukrainian line, warning that Poland has invested too much money and political capital to start quarreling now.

Personally, I have never met a Pole who seriously believed Russia was about to attack Poland, and I’ve known quite a few Poles. I was even married to one. In Poland, the constant warnings of a Russian invasion are usually heard not as a real assessment of danger, but as a pretext for armaments and American purchases.

Law and Justice helped start that race with Patriot batteries, American visits, universal military training in schools, and endless talk of an eastern threat. Then the public tired of it and the party lost power when Tusk returned through coalition maneuvering. The conservatives understood the signal and began to adjust. Whereas yesterday it was Kamala Harris and air-defense contracts, today it’s accusations that Zelensky’s Ukraine honors Nazi collaborators.

There’s also an embarrassment here because Poland has spent heavily on American weapons, including Patriot systems under the Vistula program. Deliveries are due to begin in 2027, yet the war has already shown the limitations of such systems against modern Russian missiles and drones, which is politically awkward. But the issue is bigger than money.

For Poles, Ukrainians were long seen as the peasant population of lands Poland considered its own. To Ukrainians, Poles were the former masters – arrogant, Catholic, imperial, and cruel. These attitudes didn’t vanish because Brussels printed posters about European solidarity, but they were pushed beneath the surface until the war brought them back.

The refugee wave made the old resentment visible again as millions of Ukrainians arrived in Poland, many of them from western and central Ukraine and not from the front line. They received support, housing, welfare and sympathy, but by 2023 many Poles had begun asking a blunt question: why are we paying for people who fled their own country while our government buys weapons for the war they avoided? That’s where sympathy began to curdle.

For Poland, Ukraine isn’t only the victim presented in Western newspapers, it’s also Volhynia, Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera, the massacres of Polish civilians and the refusal of Ukrainian political culture to repent properly for crimes that live on in Polish family memory.

The numbers are disputed, as they always are in this part of Europe, and while Polish losses in the Polish-Soviet War were heavy, but they weren’t on the scale of what Poles remember from Volhynia. Estimates for the massacre vary widely, from tens of thousands to well over 100,000 Polish civilians killed and even if modern Western accounts often push the figures down, Polish memory doesn’t work that way because it remembers villages, churches, families and graves.

It also remembers the role played by Ukrainian auxiliaries in Nazi terror, including in the liquidation of ghettos. This is why the argument over Zelensky and historical symbols has such force. It touches the nerve of Polish memory.

Russia, by contrast, isn’t always perceived in Poland in the way NATO press releases imagine. Yes, there is anti-Russian sentiment and fear, suspicion, and resentment. But for many ordinary Poles, the immediate problem of recent years hasn’t been Russia, it’s been Ukraine, Ukrainian historical politics, Ukrainian demands, Ukrainian migrants, and the sense that Poland is expected to give and give while receiving little gratitude in return.

And so Poland is caught between the two burdens of pressure from the West to serve as Ukraine’s rear base, and its own unresolved historical instincts and that tension couldn’t last forever.

The old Polish military song says:

“Once we’ve explored Warsaw, we’ll be in a hurry
To see our old Vilnius.
The road from Vilnius is already ready,
It leads straight on to Lviv.”

In 2014, at a NATO event in Lodz, Polish volunteers even sang a version in which the road from Vilnius led “to the heart, to Rus’, to Kiev.” Kiev remained silent then, but perhaps it should have listened.

Poland gave up formal claims to western Ukraine in order to enter the Euro-Atlantic world and in return, it was expected to support Ukraine politically and financially. For a while, it did, but the old grievances didn’t disappear but were merely buried under slogans about solidarity.

Now they are resurfacing as the Polish public increasingly sees aid to Ukraine not as a moral mission but as a yoke placed on its shoulders by America and the European Union. Ukrainians were welcomed and funded, but, in return, many Poles feel they received arrogance and contempt.

That’s why the current dispute matters because it’s about the end of an illusion. Poland and Ukraine were never natural brothers, but temporary partners under Western management and that arrangement is beginning to crack.

This article was first published by the online newspaper Gazeta.ru and was translated and edited by the RT team

The CIA is declassifying a new trove of documents relating to its ‘MKUltra’ program, Representative Anna Paulina Luna said on Tuesday. Nazi scientists were involved in the agency’s mind-control experiments.

Last month, Luna ordered CIA Director John Ratcliffe to preserve 40 boxes of “JFK files and MKUltra files” which it had taken from the offices of former Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. After reported back-and-forth arguments between Ratcliffe and Gabbard over the files, the CIA has since agreed to declassify and release them, Luna revealed at a hearing on Capitol Hill on Tuesday.

“The documents – I feel comfortable enough to share here – pertain to a forgery program that was being housed under MKUltra,” Luna said. 

MKUltra was a program of illegal human experimentation run by the CIA and a web of collaborating medical facilities and universities between 1953 and 1973. Participants were dosed with psychoactive drugs and subjected to torture – including sleep deprivation and sexual abuse – as CIA scientists attempted to ‘break’ their minds so that they could be controlled.

MKUltra was discussed by lawmakers during the 1975 Church Committee hearings, and drug testing on human subjects without informed consent was banned by President Gerald Ford the following year. However, neither Helms nor program director Sidney Gottlieb were ever prosecuted for their role in MKUltra.

The CIA has since acknowledged that most of its MKUltra experiments had little scientific rationale.

Was Charles Manson a CIA stooge?

According to Luna, these revelations were the tip of a sinister iceberg. Testifying at Tuesday’s hearing, investigative journalist Tom O’Neill told Luna that Jack Ruby – who murdered alleged JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald – was treated by psychiatrist Louis Jolyon West, who conducted experiments with LSD and hypnosis on behalf of the CIA and was a confidant of Gottlieb.

West, O’Neill alleged, was ordered by Helms and Gottlieb to declare Ruby insane “to keep Jack Ruby from telling his story.”

According to today’s expert witnesses: JACK RUBY AND CHARLES MANSON WERE MKULTRA ASSETS.

I am following up directly with the CIA to demand the full release of MKUltra records. The American people deserve and will be delivered the truth. pic.twitter.com/ZDjQxnRxob

— Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (@RepLuna) June 30, 2026

Charles Manson – whose followers murdered actress Sharon Tate in 1969 – also sought treatment from West before the murders. However, O’Neill said that he has “never been able to prove absolutely” that Gottlieb was responsible for altering Manson’s mental state.

Were Nazi scientists involved in MKUltra?

MKUltra was preceded by Project Artichoke, a similar program aimed at developing truth serums and altering human behavior with drugs, hypnosis, and chemical agents. The project was built on research carried out by Nazi scientists at Dachau concentration camp, and used North Korean prisoners of war, as well as US and Canadian citizens, as guinea pigs.

Some of these scientists, including Nazi biological warfare director Kurt Blome, were among the 1,600 German scientists, engineers, and technicians given amnesty and taken to the US under ‘Operation Paperclip’. While it is already well known that Blome and other Nazi researchers worked on Project Artichoke and MKUltra, their collaboration was deeper than previously reported, researcher and journalist Dr. Stephen Kinzer told Luna at the hearing.

What does the CIA, Nazi Germany and the Nuremberg Trials all have in common?

MK Ultra.

I will be meeting with German Parliament tomorrow to identify and locate victims of MK Ultra buried in Germany at the hand of the U.S. government. pic.twitter.com/S9pZtRXHsH

— Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (@RepLuna) June 30, 2026

According to Kinzer, the CIA and a group of Nazi scientists operated a secret prison in the basement of a West German chalet, where human experiments were carried out “in continuation of the experiments the Nazis had been conducting just a few years earlier right down the road.”

What happens next?

It is unlikely that any officials will be prosecuted over their involvement in the program. Gottlieb died in 1999, Helms died in 2002, and it is unclear if any MKUltra scientists are still alive. 

However, Luna apparently has a secondary political goal: to use her witnesses to cast doubt over the official narratives surrounding the 2024 assassination attempt against President Donald Trump, and the successful assassination of Charlie Kirk last year. 

Asked whether the American public should believe that the CIA halted its mind control experiments when MKUltra shut down, O’Neill said that while he had no knowledge of either shooter being “programmed with radio waves or through their computer activity,” the CIA “developed means that we’ve never been told about many years ago, and I’d imagine they’ve evolved to be much more effective now.”

The European Union’s in-house pollsters have concluded that their citizens overwhelmingly support the decisions made in Brussels, and want more of what the EU is giving them. It doesn’t take much digging to discover that someone is cooking the books.

The topline results from the latest Eurobarometer survey paint a rosy picture of life in the EU. 75% of respondents see the EU “as a place of stability in a troubled world,” they value its “contribution to protecting peace and strengthening security,” and “vast majorities of Europeans” want deeper integration and more power for Brussels to “face global challenges,” with defense and security their top priority.

What is Eurobarometer?

Conducted twice a year since 1973, the Eurobarometer survey ostensibly provides a snapshot of public opinion across the bloc: which policy initiatives citizens support, which ones they oppose, and how they feel about life in the union, its enlargement, and its centralization and integration.

Approximately 1,000 people are interviewed in each member state, although this number varies. In Germany, 1,500 people are surveyed, for example, while 500 people are interviewed in smaller states such as Cyprus, Luxemburg, and Malta.

Leading questions 

In the latest Eurobarometer poll, respondents were asked “which of the following aspects should the EU focus on in order to strengthen its position in the world?” Defense and security came out on top at 39%, followed by energy independence at 35%. The Commission then reported these results by claiming that “to strengthen its position in the world, citizens think the EU should focus on defence and security and energy independence.”

In reality, citizens are not clamoring at the EU to focus on these issues. Instead, they are choosing from a list of answers – including “competitiveness,” “EU values,” and “climate action,” all of which are presented as strengthening the EU’s position in the world. Respondents are not asked whether these areas should be handled by national or local government instead.

That these answers perfectly line up with the EU’s policy priorities is likely no accident. Defense and security was presented as an option in the latest poll, as the EU is currently loosening deficit rules to boost defense spending, and offering member states €150 billion ($171 billion) loans to produce and procure weapons. 

The last Eurobarometer survey, published in April, found that “disinformation” was the chief concern of respondents, right as the EU was imposing censorship rules during elections in Hungary and Bulgaria, and pushing its ‘Democracy Shield’ initiative in the name of fighting said “disinformation.” This time around, “disinformation” did not appear as a choice.

By controlling the questions, the Commission controls the answers.

the Eurobarometer is a polling instrument initiated and funded by the European Commission. It’s reassuring to know that if the data looks suspiciously optimistic, it’s the result of a perfectly synchronized, 27-country bureaucratic miracle definitely not because you paid for it.

— Sophia Truth (@SophiaTruth85) July 1, 2026

Steering results

Respondents were also asked which “values” they feel the European Parliament should defend and given a list including “peace,” “democracy,” and “the protection of human rights.” They were not told what these nebulous concepts mean, or asked whether the European Parliament has adequately lived up to these ideals. Instead, they were simply asked to choose their favorite positive buzzwords from a list.

For decades, German political scientist Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann has criticized the Eurobarometer for these “sunshine questions.” In 1993, she argued that this kind of wording “makes only the positive but not the negative side of public opinion’s reaction visible.”

In this case, respondents were asked whether they agreed with the statement “the European Union needs more means to face current global challenges.” Instead, they should have been asked to choose between this and something like: “the European Union’s executive powers should be restrained.”

Deleting dissent

In earlier versions of the Eurobarometer, the commission experimented with more direct questions, but abandoned this approach when it received answers it didn’t like. 

In 2010, the EU had just adopted the Lisbon Treaty, which eroded member states’ veto powers, empowered the European Commission to make foreign policy decisions, and created the office today occupied by chief diplomat Kaja Kallas.

The treaty was contentious, and faced widespread opposition from nationalist and Euroskeptic parties across the bloc. Ireland was the only country to put the treaty to a referendum, in which it was rejected by 53.4% to 46.6% in 2008. Undeterred, Ireland’s pro-EU government forced a second referendum upon the public a year later, and the Lisbon Treaty came into force in December 2009.

Against this background, the Eurobarometer asked citizens if “generally speaking, do you think that (OUR COUNTRY)’s membership of the European Union is a good thing?” When fewer than half (49%) responded affirmatively, the question disappeared from future surveys. Likewise, respondents were asked in 2010 whether they “tend to trust” the EU. When 42% said they did, 47% said they didn’t, the question was quietly retired.

Nowadays, the Commission asks far more indirect questions. The latest Eurobarometer asks “In general, does the EU conjure up for you a very positive, fairly positive, neutral, fairly negative or very negative image?” When presented with these shades of gray, answers skew towards “fairly positive” (42%) or “neutral” (33%).

Narrative vs. reality

Amid this crisis of confidence, the importance of the Eurobarometer to the unelected members of the European Commission becomes apparent. It exists not to impartially gauge public opinion, but to manufacture the legitimacy that they increasingly lack.

Two British police officers are under investigation over their treatment of Henry Nowak, an 18-year-old student who was handcuffed instead of being given first aid after they arrived to find him lying on the ground, dying from stab wounds. 

The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) said on Wednesday it had notified two Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary officers that they were under investigation for potential gross misconduct. The watchdog said evidence indicated they may have failed to recognize that Nowak needed urgent medical attention, respond immediately after he said he had been stabbed and could not breathe, and provide first aid before arresting and handcuffing him. 

Nowak was fatally stabbed in Southampton in December 2025 after being confronted by 23-year-old Vickrum Singh Digwa, who falsely claimed he had been the victim of a racist attack. Prosecutors said Digwa stabbed Nowak five times, including a fatal wound to the heart, before hiding the victim’s mobile phone in his pocket. In May, he was convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 21 years after the court rejected his version of events. 

IOPC Director of Engagement Derrick Campbell stressed that issuing gross misconduct notices “does not necessarily mean that disciplinary proceedings will follow,” adding that investigators would determine at the end of the inquiry whether either officer should face formal disciplinary action. 

Bodycam footage released last month showed Digwa repeatedly telling officers he had been attacked in a racist assault, claims a judge later found were entirely false. 

The footage also showed officers handcuffing Nowak as he lay on the ground repeatedly saying he had been stabbed and could not breathe. One officer replied: “Don’t think you have, mate.” 

Nowak was dragged across gravel, arrested on suspicion of assault, and left in handcuffs as he lost consciousness and bled to death. 

His father said his son “did not die with dignity” and described the officers’ actions as “inhumane and degrading.” 

The killing reignited debate in Britain over policing, immigration, and violent crime, with critics arguing that police and politicians have focused on policing speech, protests, and “hate incidents” while failing to tackle knife crime and violent offenders. 

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage said the case was “proof, if ever there was any,” that Britain was “living in a two-tier culture” where “the rights and privileges of white people matter less than those of ethnic minorities.”  

Outgoing Prime Minister Keir Starmer acknowledged there were “serious questions to answer.” He nevertheless condemned the subsequent unrest as “disgraceful and completely unacceptable.”

The Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX), a Catholic priestly fraternity, has consecrated four new bishops without the papal approval, defying a last-ditch appeal by Pope Leo XIV to call the ceremony off. The move reignites an old row between the controversial ultra-traditionalist faction and the Vatican, as well as risks bringing a broader schism to the Catholic Church.

The SSPX held the ceremony at its seminary in Econe, Switzerland, on Wednesday, ordaining four prelates to serve as auxiliary bishops without jurisdictions. The group justified the consecrations as a “sacred duty” necessary to defend the Catholic faith and condemned any potential retaliation from Rome.

“We consider every punishment and censure brought to bear against this step will have no validity,” a priest presiding over the ceremony said. While the Vatican has not responded to the SSPX move yet, according to the church’s canon law setting up bishops without papal consent is considered a grave offense that incurs an automatic excommunication for prelates both administering and receiving the unauthorized consecration.

SSPX Superior General Davide Pagliarani, however, defied the warning, insisting the group has a “sincere desire to serve the Church” and implying the actions of the Vatican itself undermine the unity of the church.

The new schism constitutes a major crisis for the pope who has been seeking to mend the ties between the Vatican and traditionalist Catholic factions, which greatly deteriorated under his predecessor, Francis.

The SSPX was founded by the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in 1970 in the aftermath of the Second Vatican Council, which shaped the modernization trend within the church. The council revolutionized the Vatican’s relations with other Christian denominations, Jews, and other religions, as well as allowed Mass to be conducted in the vernacular rather than Latin.

The group has opposed the modernization efforts, ultimately triggering a schism in the late 1980s when it ordained bishops without papal approval. The resulting excommunications were lifted only in 2009, yet ties between the faction and the Vatican were never truly mended, as decades of clandestine negotiations ultimately resulted in a similar crisis.

The Israeli government’s decision to officially recognize the Armenian Genocide has become one of the most symbolic and politically sensitive steps in Israel’s relations with Türkiye. On the surface, it may look like Israel feels the need to restore historical justice: A state founded by a people who survived the horrific tragedy of the Holocaust proclaims a moral obligation to recognize the tragedies of other peoples and oppose the denial of crimes against humanity. But in world politics, moral arguments rarely exist in isolation; most often, they gain traction when they coincide with national interests.

For this reason, instead of wondering why Israel had not recognized the Armenian Genocide earlier, we should ask why it has decided to do so now. On the one hand, the answer is very simple: For decades, Israel was guided by cold political reasoning. The topic of the Armenian Genocide was uncomfortable and practically taboo for the Israeli establishment. Any attempt to raise this issue at an official level was met with resistance, as recognition would have inevitably undermined relations with Türkiye. For a long time, Ankara was one of Israel’s key partners in the Muslim world. Türkiye was viewed by Israel as an important military and political ally, a strategic channel of communication with the region, and an element of balance in the Middle East. Historical issues were sacrificed for the sake of pragmatism. Israel was careful to avoid irritating Ankara in matters that could harm political interests.

There is also the Azerbaijani factor. For Israel, Baku is not just a partner, but an important ally in terms of energy, military-technical cooperation, and geopolitics. Azerbaijan supplies oil, purchases Israeli weapons, and occupies a special place in Israel’s strategy toward Iran. For decades, Israel considered the Armenian issue a potential threat to relations with both Baku and Ankara.

Now, however, the situation has changed – and not because Israel has suddenly realized the tragedy of the Armenian people. Rather, the political landscape has changed, and the geopolitics of the Middle East have changed along with it. 

Israel-Türkiye relations are undergoing a deep crisis. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s rhetoric toward Israel has become openly hostile. Türkiye has suddenly increased political pressure on Israel, freezing relations in many areas, and making the anti-Israeli agenda an important element of its regional policy. Under these circumstances, the previous logic of caution is no longer relevant. Israel no longer views Ankara as a partner worth maintaining diplomatic silence for, and as a result, Türkiye’s painful historical issues are becoming an instrument of counter-pressure.

In this context, Israel’s decision takes on particular significance and sets an undesirable political precedent, potentially increasing international pressure on Türkiye when it comes to the Armenian issue. The reason is obvious: Israel carries particular moral weight when it comes to the remembrance of mass crimes and genocides. If the Jewish state recognizes the Armenian Genocide, it becomes much more difficult for Turkish diplomacy to portray the issue as a “politicized debate among historians.”

One should not idealize Israel, however. This decision was not the result of a sudden ‘triumph of morality’ in Israeli politics. Israel’s actions were guided purely by national interests. For decades, it benefited from silence, and so it remained silent. Today, it benefits from breaking that silence, and acts accordingly. In this case, the complex nature of international politics becomes apparent: We clearly see how often moral arguments are intertwined with pragmatic considerations.

Another important factor is the reaction within Armenia itself. Paradoxically, Israel has raised the issue of the Armenian Genocide precisely at a time when the Armenian authorities are seeking to remove this topic from the foreign policy agenda. Under the slogans of a peace agenda and normalizing relations, Yerevan is effectively downplaying the issue of the genocide. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan stated that Yerevan does “not see any need for a response” to the Israeli government’s decision. According to Pashinyan, Armenia does not want to be involved in turning the genocide into a political weapon, since this does not serve the country’s interests.

This was quite expected. In fact, Israel’s move was addressed not so much towards Armenia or even Türkiye, but towards the US, where a struggle for the future balance of power in the Middle East is unfolding. Israel increasingly perceives Türkiye as the next major regional rival after Iran. While in the past, despite political crises and harsh rhetoric, Ankara and West Jerusalem had maintained space for pragmatic interaction, today this model has effectively collapsed. Türkiye pursues an independent role in the region, seeks to expand its influence in the Muslim world, and is striving to become one of the centers of power in the new architecture of the Middle East. This poses a strategic challenge for Israel. For decades, its security relied heavily on its qualitative military superiority, secured in part by US military aid, access to advanced technologies, and a special status within the US alliance system. However, if Türkiye gains expanded access to Western technology, this balance could begin to shift. This is precisely why the issue with the F-35 jets, and more broadly, the strengthening of Türkiye’s military-technical capabilities, is of fundamental importance to Israel. This isn’t just about the fighter jets; it’s a question of whether Israel will maintain its technological advantage in the region or whether Türkiye will gradually approach it in terms of the quality of its weapons, industrial base, and military capabilities. 

In other words, Israel may intend to activate not only pro-Israeli but also pro-Armenian circles in American politics in order to oppose certain defense concessions to Ankara. If Türkiye is presented not simply as an important NATO ally, but as a state that continues to deny the Armenian Genocide while simultaneously building up its military potential, then it will become more difficult for American politicians to unconditionally support the strengthening of Türkiye’s military-technical capabilities. 

Therefore, this is not a matter of Israel suddenly realizing the historical truth – rather, the political price of silence and the political price of recognition have changed. Moreover, this situation is unfolding against the backdrop of growing tensions between Israel and parts of the American political establishment. In the US, criticism of Israeli policy is growing, and the idea of unconditional military support for Israel is increasingly becoming a subject of debate. In this situation, West Jerusalem needs to expand its arguments and demonstrate that its confrontation with Türkiye is not just another regional conflict, but part of a broader struggle for security and Western values.

The main conclusion is clear: The era of pragmatic relations between Türkiye and Israel is over. While in the old days, the memory of sensitive historical issues was sacrificed for the sake of geopolitical interests, today these issues have become tools of geopolitical pressure. This constitutes the political significance of the current events.

Farmers in the landlocked northern regions of India, the second-largest fish producing country in the world, have turned to aquaculture, boosting the South Asian nation’s shrimp exports amid India’s Blue Revolution.

Shrimp exports accounted for 66% of India’s total seafood exports worth $8.46 billion last year, according to official data.

Farmers, who once grew wheat and rice, carefully balance minerals like potassium and magnesium to recreate seawater conditions hundreds of kilometers from the coast, according to an RT India report.

The Blue Revolution refers to the expansion of fish farming worldwide. In India, this has led to a surge in aquafarming in northern states like Haryana, which has struggled with saline groundwater and barren farmlands incapable of growing traditional crops for years.

The state produced over 14,000 metric tons of shrimp last year alone.

“We started with 8.5 acres and invested approximately $93,000 in it. We covered all that cost in the first season by selling shrimp worth around $100,000,” a farmer from Sonipat district said.

“There is no shortage of buyers,” he said.

These farms also produce other fish varieties. Haryana produced over 200,000 metric tons of seafood last year.

Aquafarmers also receive financial incentives from the government to build ponds, install equipment, and adopt modern aquaculture practices.

A farmer can harvest up to four to five tons of shrimp within just four months, generating profits of up to $10,000.

Other northern Indian states including Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, and Rajasthan – all hundreds of kilometers from the sea – are also contributing to the country’s rising seafood exports.

The top buyers are the US and China, followed by Russia and the European Union.

For most of the past decade, the idea of Libya’s three main governing bodies sitting down and agreeing on anything felt almost theoretical.

The country has operated as two parallel states since the civil war of 2014 – a UN-recognized government in Tripoli and a rival eastern administration tied to the parliament in Benghazi and the military command of Khalifa Haftar. Repeated international attempts to bridge that divide produced agreements that looked promising on paper and collapsed almost immediately in practice. Peace conferences were held in Geneva, in Skhirat, in Cairo. Special envoys came and went. The UN went through so many Libya representatives that keeping track of them became a minor diplomatic sport.

Which makes what happened on June 18, 2026 genuinely notable, even if caution is more than warranted. The heads of Libya’s three main political bodies – Speaker of the House of Representatives Aguila Saleh, Chairman of the High Council of State Mohammed Takala, and Chairman of the Presidential Council Mohamed al-Menfi – agreed on a roadmap to hold simultaneous presidential and parliamentary elections before February 17, 2027, and established a high-level committee to oversee the process. For a country that has been promising elections since 2011, eight months is an ambitious timeline. But the fact that these three figures signed the same document on the same day is itself something that would have seemed improbable not long ago.

The agreement nobody expected

The statement these three men issued was laden with the kind of institutional language that Libyan political documents tend to favor. The roadmap includes completing the constitutional and legal framework required for presidential and parliamentary elections, unifying sovereign institutions, and strengthening national sovereignty. It also calls for economic and financial reforms aimed at protecting public funds and safeguarding the unity of state institutions, alongside a pathway toward a permanent constitution – something Libya has been governed without for 15 years. The absence of this document is not just a legal technicality; it is one of the primary reasons every political arrangement has lacked the legitimacy to survive its first serious crisis.

Perhaps the most specific detail – one that surprised many observers – was the agreement to work on a unified national budget for 2027 through a joint technical committee. That might sound like procedural housekeeping, but in the context of Libya, it is anything but. In April 2026, with American assistance, Libya’s two parallel governments reached an agreement on the first unified state budget since 2013, worth around $30 billion. The Central Bank governor described it as proof that Libya is capable of overcoming its differences when there is a unified vision for its future.

The man from Washington and his very specific plan

Massad Boulos is not a career diplomat. He is a Lebanese-American businessman, a senior adviser to President Donald Trump on Arab and African affairs, and – as Libyans have noted with characteristic dry humor – the father-in-law of Tiffany Trump, which has earned him the nickname ‘Tiffany’s father’ in local political circles. He arrived at the Libyan case without the accumulated hesitations of a career envoy, and he has moved accordingly – quickly, directly, and with a clear sense of what Washington wants out of this.

Speaking to the Financial Times in mid-June, Boulos was unusually direct about the objectives: “Our plan is to have one unified government and unify all institutions,” he said. The economic dimension behind this goal is worth pausing on. Washington’s primary motivation appears to be rapid stabilization to open the door for American energy investments, specifically aiming to double Libyan oil production to 3 million barrels per day by 2030, with companies like Chevron and ConocoPhillips in mind. Libya holds the largest proven oil reserves in Africa, and that fact has never been far from any external actor’s calculations about the country.

The mechanics of the Boulos plan, which have leaked in pieces in recent months, are more specific than his public statements suggest. A key episode was a secret meeting in Rome in September 2025, at which major figures from the two opposing camps sat face to face for the first time – Saddam Haftar, the son and deputy commander of Khalifa Haftar, and Ibrahim Dbeibeh, nephew and adviser of GNU Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh. Boulos mediated. Further meetings followed in Paris in January 2026. The proposal that emerged would create a new Presidential Council headed by Saddam Haftar with executive powers, alongside a unified government led by Dbeibeh, with military command divided between the families along geographic lines. In essence, Washington is proposing to hand the east a president and let the west keep its prime minister – a division that resolves the impasse by distributing the spoils between two dominant families rather than by addressing the institutional and democratic questions that produced the impasse in the first place.

Haftar’s forces described the Boulos proposal as more realistic than previous initiatives, signaling readiness to negotiate while insisting that any process must be based on broad national consensus. The regional choreography around the plan has been equally deliberate. Foreign ministers from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Türkiye met with Boulos in Cairo. Egyptian and Turkish intelligence chiefs made parallel visits to Tripoli and Benghazi respectively. Regional powers that spent years backing opposing sides in Libya’s conflict are now, at minimum, coordinating their positions – a shift that matters enormously for any settlement’s durability.

Crucially, however, Haftar’s forces did not endorse the trilateral institutional agreement – backing the Boulos plan instead. That gap between the two roadmaps is the central tension that will determine whether anything agreed in June actually leads anywhere.

There is something genuinely refreshing about the Trump administration’s willingness to move fast and skip the elaborate multilateral process that has produced so little in Libya over the past decade. Speed and directness have their value, especially when the patient alternative has spent years going nowhere. But the administration’s track record in the region raises serious questions about what happens after the deal is struck.

A pattern has emerged clearly enough to name. Washington identifies a problem, assigns an envoy with dealmaking authority and White House proximity, constructs an arrangement that serves American strategic and commercial objectives, then declares success and moves on. The difficulty is that the region rarely cooperates with the schedule.

Gaza illustrated this with painful clarity. American mediators produced ceasefire frameworks that looked functional on paper, secured nominal agreement from parties under significant pressure, and announced progress – which then evaporated within weeks. The underlying dynamics had not been addressed because the dealmaking logic did not require them to be. What the arrangement needed was American satisfaction, not regional stability. Lebanon offered a similar lesson – every ceasefire that American envoys celebrated as an achievement failed to alter the fundamental power equation between armed factions and a hollowed-out state. The Iran war demonstrated the same structural limitation at larger scale: Decisive action addressed specific capabilities at specific moments but left untouched the deeper question of how to incorporate Iran’s regional role into a stable order rather than simply suppress it until the next crisis.

Libya is now on that same list. The Boulos plan is, at its core, an American interest dressed in Libyan political clothing. A unified government means a single counterpart for US energy companies. Elevating Saddam Haftar solves the succession problem around his aging father while creating an eastern interlocutor Washington can work with. Retaining Dbeibeh keeps the west from open revolt. It is, from a certain angle, an elegant solution.

There is also the question of what happens to everyone who is not a Haftar or a Dbeibeh. Libya has a functioning civil society, political parties, women’s organizations, tribal structures that cut across the east-west divide, and millions of ordinary citizens who have been waiting for an election since 2011. Any arrangement that is essentially a negotiation between two families over who gets which office risks producing the same legitimacy deficit that has doomed every previous arrangement – only this time with American backing, which makes it harder to disown.

The UN special representative was right that the tools exist and the direction is known. What the history of American dealmaking in the region makes increasingly clear is that the tools need to be wielded by people willing to stay in the room long enough to see through what they started. Washington’s attention in the Middle East and North Africa has a well-documented tendency to move on once the headline agreement is secured. Libya, which has lived through 15 years of international interest followed by international distraction, knows this better than most. The window that opened in June 2026 is real. But windows in Libya have a way of closing fast, and the people with the most power to keep this one open are the ones with the strongest incentives to declare victory and look elsewhere.

France’s lower chamber of parliament has approved a controversial assisted dying bill that would allow some seriously ill adults to request a lethal injection. The legislation has been backed by French President Emmanuel Macron but has met strong opposition from conservative parties and the Catholic clergy.

The National Assembly, which is dominated by left-leaning and progressive parties, approved the text on Tuesday by 295 votes to 232, with 35 abstentions. La France Insoumise, Socialists, Greens, and Communists largely backed it, while the right-wing National Rally and the Republican Right group voted mostly against; several other factions were split on the vote.

According to the bill, a patient must be at least 18, French or be a legal resident, have a serious and incurable life-threatening illness at an advanced or terminal stage, suffer in a way that is refractory to treatment or unbearable, and be able to express a free and informed wish. A doctor would consult another practitioner, a specialist and, if needed, a psychiatrist; the decision must come within 15 days, followed by at least two days for reflection.

In January, the bill was rejected by the right-leaning Senate. Now, the text will return to the upper chamber, and if the two bodies remain deadlocked, the Assembly can have the final word, with another vote already scheduled for July 15.

Yael Braun-Pivet, president of the National Assembly, welcomed the adoption of the bill, touting it as “the culmination of several years of work and of a thorough public debate, conducted with seriousness, respect and dignity.”

Jonathan Denis, the president of the Association for the Right to Die with Dignity, called it an “incredible step forward for health democracy,” stressing that the ultimate decision will be made by the patient.

However, National Rally deputy Christophe Bentz called the safeguards “temporary” and “fictitious,” while Republican Right MP Justine Gruet argued that many vulnerable adults could opt for assisted dying simply because they are not being cared for by their loved ones.

Ahead of the vote, Catholic leaders urged MPs to vote in conscience rather than along party lines, warning that assisted dying would legalize euthanasia and assisted suicide and could lead to vulnerable people facing pressure. Cardinal Jean-Marc Aveline also said that “giving death” could not answer the duty to accompany life until the end.

The US has lifted sanctions on four Indian entities, two years after imposing them over alleged links to Russia.

The Indian entities have been removed from the Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) List as part of the latest sanctions update, the United States Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) said.

The entities are Hyderabad-based RRG Engineering Technologies Private Limited and Lokesh Machines Limited, Ahmedabad-based Galaxy Bearings Ltd, and Delhi-based Shaurya Aeronautics Private Limited.

In 2024, the OFAC imposed sanctions on 21 Indian entities – including 19 companies and two individuals for providing financial, material, technological, or other support to the Russian government.

Washington said the actions were taken to prevent efforts to circumvent the sanctions imposed on Russia, following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022.

India has said it does not subscribe to unilateral sanctions. New Delhi also said it has engaged with the US administration on the matter.

Indian businesses are more vulnerable to so-called secondary sanctions, as unlike Australia, China, and the EU, New Delhi has not adopted any ‘blocking statute’ that prohibits local entities from complying with foreign sanctions.

Two of the four entities removed from the sanctions list – Galaxy Bearings Limited and Lokesh Machines Limited – are listed companies. Lokesh Machines’ customer base includes US-based John Deere and Cummins, Sweden’s Volvo, and Japan’s Honda and Suzuki, Hindustan Times reported.

In May, the US also sanctioned an Indian petrochemical trading firm over oil trading with Iran.

Last August, the US imposed a 25% additional tariff, now lifted, on Indian imports as a punitive measure for purchases of Russian oil. New Delhi has always maintained that its energy purchases are dictated by national interests.

The European Union’s latest proposed sanctions package on Russia also includes entities based in India.

New Delhi has rejected sanctions that are not backed by the United Nations and questioned the legitimacy of such actions against the backdrop of EU nations’ purchases of Russian gas and LNG.

The mercury tops 40C for days on end. So what do you do? Actually, that’s a trick question. I don’t really care what you do – and you shouldn’t care what I do, either. My body, my choice. It’s amazing how quickly that principle becomes negotiable when a liberticidal agenda of mass conformity and control is afoot.

Personally, it’s simple. When France turns into a blazing inferno, as it has multiple times in the past two decades that I’ve been here, I just fire up my portable air conditioners. End of story. No philosophical symposium required. I couldn’t care less what everyone else around here is doing, and I don’t require their moral endorsement to remain conscious through August.

And I certainly don’t turn on the TV to see what the French government is going to do to fix the situation. Because their idea of doing something about it mostly consists of badmouthing air conditioning and trying to ideologically mindbend people about their lack of need for it. Their logic being that resisting this modern tool that has saved countless lives will actually ensure that the Earth is kept cooler in the long run than if everyone was running A/C on decarbonized French nuclear power. Right – because that’s worked out well for them so far. “We’re not banning A/C. We’re making sure future summers need it less,” the French Foreign Affairs ministry wrote on social media in response to a critic. In other words, you’re free to not have it, and we’ll crush you into making that choice permanent.

French regulations don’t need to ban A/C when they penalize and massively financially disincentivize the installation of it in everything from private homes to commercial buildings, citing aesthetic rules regarding their facades. It’s such a European solution. Don’t forbid, just make it prohibitively inconvenient and socially unacceptable. So the French government denying an outright ban is like when they tried to say during the Covid-19 fiasco that the jab wasn’t mandatory, but in reality you couldn’t work, go to the gym, or participate in polite society without it.

In other words, stop trying to force your magical groupthink on everyone. And instead let people live as they see fit – a concept that used to be considered progressive before progressives became a bunch of scolds and control freaks. This includes freedom for people in care homes and hospitals, where climate control is a baseline for dignity, not the luxury that ideologues make it out to be. Stories like the one where a French man attempted to install a portable unit in his elderly mom’s inferno of a hospital room – only to be ordered to remove it because there weren’t enough to go around – is just more evidence that this is about forcing the average person to settle for less in life, dressed up as fairness.

And if you have a problem with that, then the left wants you to blame yourself, or to blame others who refuse to play along. Blame anyone but them. To wit, Audrey Pulvar, Paris’ Socialist Deputy Mayor, addressed Americans who were stunned at France’s vilification of a standard household appliance that’s now a main staple of homes around the world. “As the second-largest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions in the world, you bear a significant amount of responsibility for global warming and the consequences we, in France, are experiencing,” she wrote.

Nah, actually, France refusing to recognize the benefits of climate control is the cause of your consequences – specifically, of hundreds of people dying from the heat because you’ve somehow convinced them that if they just suffer it out, things will improve in the long run. That is, if your idiotic advice doesn’t claim their life first.

This is about control and freedom where it actually matters. Climate, like Covid, is really just a useful pretext to herd all the sheep into willing compliance. The real acclimatization here is to a backslide. And, like during Covid, every European regardless of heat tolerance needs to defend everyone else’s right to choose their own climate control – whether at home, or in a care facility, or in hospital. Because once the acceptable level of discomfort becomes a public policy question, then you’d better believe that it isn’t going to stop there.

You don’t have to be pro-heat or pro-cool – just anti-authoritarian amid this seasonal absurdity.

Former top Ukrainian General Valery Zaluzhny has told Vladimir Zelensky he will challenge him in the next presidential election, with current polling suggesting he would win in a run-off, Ukrainskaya Pravda reported on Wednesday, citing sources. Zelensky’s presidential term expired more than two years ago, and he has since been reluctant to hold a new election despite repeated calls from the US.

Zaluzhny, now ambassador to the UK, was summoned back to Kiev last week – officially to discuss the political turmoil in London, where Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced that he would soon step down. The real reason, the outlet said, was Zelensky’s concern that Zaluzhny will run for president.

In a one-on-one meeting, Zelensky told the former commander that the current battlefield situation has created a “window of opportunity” for an election, but warned that it has to be held in a way that will not divide the country.

Zelensky did not offer his rival any posts, Ukrainskaya Pravda said – though sources in government circles claimed that the Ukrainian leader was ready to discuss almost any post, including prime minister. Zaluzhny reportedly said that while he has never sought a political career, he could not betray the trust of the Ukrainian people who are counting on him.

Zaluzhny was dismissed as army commander-in-chief in February 2024 and was sent off to London to serve as ambassador – a move widely seen as an attempt by Zelensky to sideline a potential rival. Zaluzhny has since consistently topped Zelensky in trust ratings. Though he insists that he has no political ambitions, media reports suggest that he is gearing up for a presidential run.

A closed poll cited by Ukrainskaya Pravda puts Zelensky first with 33% support, ahead of Zaluzhny with 22% and top Zelensky aide Kirill Budanov with 14%. In a run-off, however, Zaluzhny would defeat Zelensky 37% to 32%, and narrowly defeat Budanov 34% to 32%.

Zelensky’s presidential term expired in May 2024. He has refused to call a new election, citing martial law, which was imposed after the escalation of the Russia-Ukraine conflict in early 2022. Moscow has since declared him illegitimate and argues that his dubious legal status as leader is an obstacle to signing a peace agreement.

Zelensky has been pressured to hold a new election by US President Donald Trump, who once called him a “dictator without elections.” Zelensky responded by saying he is ready to hold an election, but demanded that Ukraine’s supporters ensure its security.

At least 12 people, including a mother and child, have been confirmed dead in Ghana following floods triggered by heavy rain, the West African nation’s authorities said. The country’s meteorological agency has warned of more rainfall.

The floods hit the capital, Accra, and the nearby city of Tema on Monday, submerging roads, homes, and buildings, and cutting off access to several areas, videos shared on social media show.

The Ghana National Fire Service (GNFS) said it rescued more than 470 people as of Tuesday. It said the dead included three women, eight men, and one child. A rubber factory in the capital also caught fire amid the deluge.

GNFS spokesperson Alex King Nartey told AP that the mother and child were swept away in the Achimota-Agbogbloshie district. He said emergency services struggled to reach some areas and requested military assistance as rescue operations continued.

Interior Minister Muntaka Mohammed-Mubarak said 7,761 households have been affected, with at least seven people reported missing.

🚨 Massive flooding has hit Accra, Ghana 🇬🇭🌊

Heavy rains have left roads submerged, stranded commuters, and caused major disruptions across parts of the capital. pic.twitter.com/SlOwajsuQZ

— Paradise News Line (@Paradisenewslin) June 29, 2026

🚒👨🏾‍🚒 YOU CALLED AND WE SWIFTLY RESPONDED WITH COMPASSION ❤️

Thankfully, the raging fire that engulfed a rubber manufacturing factory at Odawna, near Nkrumah Circle in Accra, is being brought under control by our adept firefighters,… pic.twitter.com/iC0EQFMLgt

— Ghana National Fire Service (@gnfsofficial) June 30, 2026

Speaking after touring affected areas on Tuesday, Ghanaian President John Dramani Mahama said preliminary data showed that around 140 millimeters of rain fell in Accra, the heaviest rainfall recorded in years.

Mahama said, “blocked drainage channels and structures obstructing the natural flow of water continue to worsen the impact of heavy rainfall in several parts of the capital.” He ordered the release of 300 million Ghanaian cedis (around $26.5 million) for flood relief and mitigation efforts, and warned against illegal construction on waterways.

Neighboring Ivory Coast (Cote d’Ivoire) has also been hit by deadly flooding after days of heavy rain. Ivorian National Cohesion Minister Myss Belmonde Dogo said more than a dozen people died in Abidjan, the country’s economic capital.

Afghanistan has carried out drone strikes inside Pakistan, just days after Islamabad launched border attacks that left 28 dead in the country.

The Afghan Defense Ministry claimed to have struck an Islamic State facility in Pakistan’s border province of Balochistan and in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

Pakistan’s military, however, said the drones were spotted immediately and neutralized. According to local authorities, however, two people were injured in a drone attack near a government school in Saranan, Reuters reported.

Afghanistan’s air force has limited attack capabilities, having no fighter or bomber planes. In comparison, Pakistan has a modern air force that flies American F-16 fighter jets and Chinese stealth fighters.

Pakistan carried out air and land attacks on Afghanistan’s border areas over the weekend. Islamabad termed its actions retaliation for “terrorist attacks” on its soil, the latest being an attack on a paramilitary facility in the port city of Karachi.

The Taliban government has repeatedly rejected Pakistan’s claim that it harbors terrorists.
The bombing of a mosque in Islamabad in February, which killed more than 30 people, also spurred retaliatory strikes by Pakistan. In March, a Pakistani attack on a drug rehabilitation center in Kabul killed hundreds of people.

Britain has suffered the biggest fall in household wealth among high-income economies since the Covid-19 pandemic, according to the UBS Global Wealth Report 2026.

The Swiss bank’s annual report measures household net wealth – the value of assets such as homes, savings, and investments, minus liabilities – across 56 markets representing more than 90% of global wealth.

According to the report, Britain’s average wealth per adult fell by 23.2% between 2020 and 2025 – the steepest decline among the developed economies surveyed. Median wealth per adult dropped to just over £95,500 ($126,500), leaving the typical Briton slightly wealthier than the French but behind Italians and the Dutch.

The findings come as Britain faces an ongoing cost-of-living crisis. Official figures released on Tuesday showed real household disposable income fell in the first quarter of 2026 amid slow economic growth.

The report appears days after Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced his resignation amid mounting political pressure. Although the government pointed to easing inflation and stronger-than-expected GDP growth, critics argue that many households have seen little improvement in living standards, citing persistent cost-of-living pressures, higher taxes, and repeated declines in real household disposable income.

US Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, whose agency was responsible for enforcing controversial security measures targeting the Iranian soccer team at the World Cup, has said the job made him dance with joy and he was happy Iran was eliminated.

Iran exited the tournament, which the US is co-hosting with Canada and Mexico, after three draws against New Zealand, Belgium, and Egypt during the group stage. Iranian officials complained that, unlike other teams, Iranian players were not allowed to stay in the US and instead had to travel for training and games in Los Angeles and Seattle from Tijuana, Mexico.

“I’m just glad they’re done, and they’re not coming back,” Mullin told an interagency meeting on Monday, as first reported by Sports Business Journal. He added that “there wasn’t a single team that we dealt with more than them.”

“I was so happy when we were able to pull their visas and said they could leave US soil, and I might have sung a song or two, or maybe danced a happy dance,” the senior official said.

The Football Federation Islamic Republic of Iran (FFIRI), whose president, Mehdi Taj, was denied a visa by US authorities, criticized Mullin’s remarks, saying “Iranians are used to the mistreatment and lies of US officials” and were not surprised. The dance quip “reveals more about his own character than it does about our team,” demonstrating “contempt and narrow-mindedness,” the statement added.

The US domestic security agency eased travel restrictions ahead of Iran’s last game, against Egypt in Seattle, after Tehran complained to FIFA, arguing that its players were at a significant disadvantage.

“We have to fight against everything here,” team captain Mehdi Taremi said after last Friday’s match.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has stressed the need to maintain freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz during a call with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian.

Modi welcomed the initial ceasefire agreement reached between Iran and the US that has paved the way for broader talks to find a lasting solution to the Middle East conflict.

He reiterated the need for continued efforts to ensure lasting peace and stability in the region and for safeguarding freedom of navigation and commerce.

The Indian leader emphasized New Delhi’s “consistent position that all issues must be resolved through dialogue and diplomacy,” the government said in a statement on Tuesday.

The US-Iran peace talks are clouded by the confusion over who controls the Strait of Hormuz. Iran says it is entitled to charge a toll as part of the broad peace framework that will be in place after 60 days of negotiations, while the US insists that shipping traffic cannot be charged.

Spoke with the President of Iran, Dr. Masoud Pezeshkian, on the recent developments in West Asia. Welcomed the progress made in the negotiations and expressed hope that continued efforts will lead to lasting peace in the region. Reiterated the importance of freedom of navigation…

— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) June 30, 2026

The US-Israeli attacks on Iran at the end of February led to Tehran closing the strait, with Washington responding by imposing a naval blockade of Iranian ports. The blockades hit shipping in the chokepoint, through which a fifth of the world’s energy shipments passed before the conflict began, sending global oil prices soaring to as high as $120 a barrel.

President Pezeshkian briefed Modi on the recent developments in the Middle East and the path ahead amid the peace talks.

Gunmen have abducted at least 36 students and one staff member from a secondary school in northeastern Nigeria, marking the latest attack on educational institutions in the country.

The attackers stormed the Government Day Secondary School in Lassa, in Borno State’s Askira-Uba Local Government Area, on Monday morning. The Nigerian authorities initially said an unspecified number of students were kidnapped but that ten students and teachers were rescued during a military operation.

On Tuesday, Borno State Commissioner for Education, Science, Technology and Innovation Lawan Wakiibe said at least 36 students – 25 girls and 11 boys – remain missing, along with one member of staff. According to the commissioner, one teacher was killed, another was critically injured, and the third is still missing.

“Assurances have been given to us by the security services that rescue would be carried out soon,” Wakiibe said.

The Nigerian military said troops engaged suspected Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) militants in a firefight during the rescue operation, killing an unspecified number of attackers and seizing seven motorcycles. One soldier and a member of a civilian task force were also killed.

Nigeria’s northern and Middle Belt regions have long been plagued by kidnappings, banditry, and communal violence, with armed gangs frequently targeting travelers, villages, and schools. Abduction incidents drew global attention in 2014 when Boko Haram militants kidnapped 276 schoolgirls from Chibok in Borno State.

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) has announced that it has disrupted a major drug supply route from Latin America to the country and has seized over half a ton of cocaine hidden inside a shipment of frozen fish from Ecuador.

In a statement on Wednesday, the agency said the drugs were found in a container that arrived at the Great Port of St. Petersburg by sea. The cocaine had been concealed inside legally imported frozen, ungutted tuna carcasses.

A Russian citizen suspected of helping organize the scheme has been detained. An FSB operative noted that the suspect was unemployed and had been linked to a criminal group involved in cocaine smuggling.

The agency released footage of the raid, showing officers detaining the man and cutting open dozens of frozen tuna with a chainsaw to remove hundreds of packages of cocaine.

FSB operatives also searched the suspect’s home, where they seized digital devices containing crypto wallets with the equivalent of $613,000, 13 luxury watches worth more than $1.3 million, and five high-end cars valued at no less than $1.6 million.

The bust follows several major cocaine seizures in Russia in recent years. In September 2025, the FSB said officials in St. Petersburg had intercepted a record 1,500 kg of cocaine hidden in a shipment of bananas from Latin America, worth more than $240 million.

The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) warned in June that global cocaine use has continued to soar in recent years, outpacing all other narcotics. Its illegal production skyrocketed to a record 4,000 tons in 2024, more than four times the level recorded a decade earlier. Consumption has also increased from an estimated 17 million people worldwide in 2013 to more than 25 million in 2024.

Western governments and media are trapped in a “bubble of lies” where Ukrainian attacks on civilians are automatically framed as “legitimate defense,” Russian Ambassador to the OSCE Dmitry Polyansky has said.

Kiev repeatedly uses drones to strike civilian targets. In the latest incident, a six-month-old baby was killed when a Ukrainian drone crashed into a private house in the town of Yegoryevsk, about 110 km southeast of Moscow, on Tuesday.

Speaking to RT on Wednesday, Polyansky said the West either dismisses such incidents, calls for endless investigations, or portrays nearly every action by Kiev as justified, ignoring the reality of the conflict.

He cited the strike on a college dormitory in Starobelsk in the Lugansk People’s Republic, where Ukrainian UAVs killed 21 students, and a drone attack on a bus carrying a Belarusian youth football team in Russia’s Bryansk Region that killed a pregnant woman and injured eight people, including six children.

Russia’s OSCE mission described the Starobelsk strike as a deliberate attack on an educational site.

“It’s hard to believe otherwise when you see the footage,” Polyansky said, saying that the drones involved in the Starobelsk strike had not been affected by air defenses and had deliberately hit a civilian facility.

Watch RT’s full interview with Polyansky below:

AI-driven cyberoffensive tools can be compared to “digital nuclear weapons,” CIA Director John Ratcliffe has said, warning that they could fuel rivalries among global powers.

Ratcliffe made the comparison on Tuesday in a speech at the Amazon Web Services summit in Washington, where he discussed the spy agency’s efforts to speed up the acquisition of private-sector products for its own use.

“AI tools will only continue to raise the stakes in our competition with all of America’s adversaries,” Ratcliffe said. It would be “not misplaced to refer to their capabilities as akin to digital nuclear weapons,” he added, citing discussions within the administration of US President Donald Trump.

Ratcliffe claimed that rival nations “work to steal and to manipulate America’s advancements for their own ends and gains.”

Promise of US AI dominance

Promises of rapid advances in AI capabilities, including in hacking, have been a constant feature of the global digital technology race. Last month, the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, comprising Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, the UK, and the US, warned that frontier models are “anticipated to exceed current industry expectations, fundamentally transforming both offensive and defensive cyber capabilities,” adding that “the timeline is not years, it is months.”

US Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) echoed the warning during an Intelligence Committee hearing, saying National Security Agency chief Joshua Rudd had told him that Anthropic’s Mythos 5 model “broke into almost all of our classified systems, not in weeks, but in hours.” According to the New York Times, the description “simplified” the spy agency’s controlled tests, which were aimed at AI-assisted identification of cybersecurity flaws rather than actual hacking.

The ongoing boom in the American AI sector is based on hopes of massive future profits to justify the hundreds of billions of dollars in investment. Some analysts have described it as a financial bubble, warning that it could crash unless US tech giants achieve global dominance.

Not all predictions about what AI can do have materialized. While current models are highly competitive in computer coding and data analysis, for instance, fully autonomous driving remains years behind the timeframes Tesla CEO Elon Musk presented to the public in the past.

‘DeepSeek moments’ threaten American goals

A major risk to the US AI push is foreign competition able to deliver products comparable in power at far greater efficiency.

China’s DeepSeek app sent shockwaves through the industry in January 2025, when its R1 and V3 models proved comparable to contemporary digital engines used by ChatGPT and other US rivals, but at a fraction of the cost. US officials claimed the Chinese company had essentially cheated by building its product based on American work.

A similar DeepSeek moment followed the release of Zhipu’s new flagship coding assistant model, GLM-5.2, in mid-June, the South China Morning Post reported last week. Matt Velloso, a former vice president at Meta Platforms and Google DeepMind, described it as the “first open model that passes the bar as a daily driver.”

All day using GLM 5.2. Didn't miss much. First open model that passes the bar as a daily driver. Things are not going to be the same.

Damn, now I want to buy some serious hardware.

— Mat Velloso (@matvelloso) June 19, 2026

China is quickly catching up with the US in manufacturing advanced microchips, which limits Washington’s ability to use trade restrictions to slow down its competitors. Meanwhile, China’s relative abundance of energy generation gives it an advantage in the AI race.

AI agents that can make decisions and carry out transactions independently could soon operate across the financial system, the Bank of England has warned, adding that relying on human oversight might no longer be realistic.

Bank of England Deputy Governor Sarah Breeden made the warning at the European Central Bank’s annual forum in Sintra on Tuesday, as leading developers shift from generative AI chatbots to agentic systems.

Unlike generative AI tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude, which generate text, images, and code in response to prompts, agentic AI is designed to complete multi-step tasks with limited human intervention.

Rather than merely recommending an investment or suggesting a purchase, an AI agent could execute trades, make payments, buy goods, and book services without requiring human approval for every action.

As AI agents become more capable, “relying on a human in the loop for all agent actions is unlikely to be realistic,” she said, arguing that the current regulatory frameworks “were not built to contemplate” this scenario.

Breeden warned that AI agents trained on similar data and responding to the same market signals could exhibit herd behavior, making identical trading decisions simultaneously and amplifying market volatility during periods of stress.

Regulators should examine “whether guardrails are needed, analogous to circuit breakers or kill switches that would limit or stop trading market-wide if faulty AI models cause market meltdown,” Breeden said.

She also urged central banks to prepare for more frequent “technology surprises,” saying recent advances in AI have already exceeded policymakers’ expectations.

The push toward agentic AI has also reached the Pentagon. Last week, it unveiled AI agents designed to continuously analyze intelligence and rapidly generate targeting options for commanders, while stressing that humans will retain final decision-making authority.

Switzerland has returned 18 cultural items to Nigeria, including Benin Bronzes stolen when British colonial forces raided the West African country in the 19th century, officials have said.

The handover took place at the National Museum in Lagos on Monday, where Nigerian Culture Minister Hannatu Musa Musawa and Swiss Federal Councillor Elisabeth Baume-Schneider also signed a bilateral agreement regulating the import, export, and repatriation of cultural property.

The agreement sets out procedures for the restitution of illegally imported cultural items and cooperation against illicit trafficking, according to the Swiss government.

Nigeria’s National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM) said that of the 18 artifacts returned, two came from the Rietberg Museum in Zurich, two from the Geneva Museum of Ethnography, and 14 from the Ethnographic Museum at the University of Zurich.

“The return of our cultural heritage marks more than the recovery of artefacts. It reflects the power of dialogue, trust, and international cooperation,” the Nigerian culture minister wrote on X.

The return of our cultural heritage marks more than the recovery of artefacts. It reflects the power of dialogue, trust, and international cooperation.

Earlier today, alongside the Director General of the National Commission for Museums and Monuments @NCMMHQ , Olugbile Holloway… pic.twitter.com/8YexlmEOnk

— Hannatu Musa Musawa (@hanneymusawa) June 29, 2026

The Swiss government said last week that five archaeological artifacts seized in Geneva and Ticino would also be returned to Nigeria, along with the 18 cultural items being handed over during Baume-Schneider’s visit.

Earlier in March, Bern agreed to transfer ownership of 28 items to Nigeria as part of a wider restitution process, amid growing demands by African states for cultural objects stolen during colonial rule to be repatriated from Western museums and collections.

Nigeria’s neighbor Ghana also announced on June 20 that Germany and the Netherlands have agreed to return more than 2,000 cultural objects taken during colonial-era conquests.

Italy is stalling a NATO aid commitment to Ukraine for 2027 after the bloc signed off on a €70 billion ($80 billion) military package to Kiev this year, Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) reported on Tuesday.

While NATO envoys agreed on the terms of this year’s assistance on Tuesday in Brussels, Italy is refusing to accept a follow-on clause committing the bloc to “maintain at least a comparable level” of support down the road, diplomatic sources told FAZ. They added that this part of the declaration remains in parentheses and could change at the last minute.

A new round of ambassadors’ talks is set for Thursday to settle the wording before the annual NATO summit opens on July 7 in Ankara.
While Italy has consistently provided support for Kiev throughout the conflict with Russia, it has resisted open-ended commitments amid persistent internal economic pressures.

Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, a key coalition partner for Meloni, has criticized aid to Ukraine, saying he did not believe sending more weapons would resolve the conflict. During a series of high-profile graft scandals that rocked Ukraine last year, Salvini suggested additional funding could “fuel further corruption” in the country.

The €70 billion figure is not the product of a new military needs assessment, with roughly €30 billion coming from an existing EU loan to Ukraine and the remaining €40 billion dependent on contributions by individual countries. Politico reported last week that the US would not participate in the effort.

Some NATO members have also raised concerns about burden-sharing within the bloc. Swedish Foreign Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard last year complained that Nordic states, with under 30 million people combined, cover a third of NATO’s military support for Ukraine. “This is not sustainable. It’s not reasonable in any way. And it says a lot about what the Nordics do – but it says even more about what the others don’t do,” she said at the time.

Russia has consistently condemned Western arms shipments to Ukraine, saying they only prolong the conflict without changing its outcome. It has also insisted that the aid is evidence that NATO is already a direct party to the conflict.

Two English seaside towns have imposed a three-year ban on public alcohol consumption after a wave of anti-social behavior, beach fights, arrests, and complaints from local businesses.

The order will take effect on Wednesday in Margate and Ramsgate, on the Kent coast, banning public drinking in key town-centre areas year-round. Under the new rules, police will have the authority to seize alcohol from anyone on the street. Those who refuse could face a £1,000 ($1,300) fine.

While public drinking is entirely legal across most of England and Wales, local councils are increasingly using targeted Public Spaces Protection Orders (PSPOs) to restrict alcohol consumption in areas struggling with anti-social behavior.

In Margate’s town center, local authorities have reported that rowdy, alcohol-fueled chaos now accounts for some 73% of all law enforcement incidents, leaving streets plagued by public urination, defecation, and street fights.

The public drinking ban follows a series of incidents on the coast, with Kent Police reporting “large numbers” of out-of-towners swarming Margate and nearby Broadstairs, triggering mass brawls on the sand and assaults at Margate Railway Station.

The disorder has triggered numerous complaints from local businesses, who claim that the coastal strips have devolved into lawless zones. Store managers have described mobs of teenagers swarming retail shops to steal stock, while beachfront restaurants have been forced to shut their doors early on prime summer days to protect their employees from volatile street fights. Some businesses say that they plan to leave the area entirely.

While some have applauded the three-year ban as a necessary measure, the move has also triggered fierce backlash online, with skeptics arguing that more policing is required instead, and that new legal restrictions won’t deter violent 50-person youth mobs who are already drinking illegally.

Others have slammed the move as a case of “authoritarianism,” arguing that the public drinking ban disproportionately penalizes law-abiding residents rather than the violent youths responsible for the chaos.

US-Israeli military action has failed to shift the strategic balance in the Middle East, leaving Iran in a stronger position than before the conflict, geopolitical analyst Brandon Weichert has said.

Speaking on RT’s Sanchez Effect on Tuesday, Weichert, senior editor at The National Interest, described the conflict as a “non-deal deal for a non-war war,” arguing that Washington had failed to achieve any meaningful strategic gains.

“The 96-hour war has become a 120-plus-day war and nothing we’ve done has changed that,” he said.

His remarks come as Washington and Tehran continue to send mixed signals over diplomacy following a tentative agreement reached earlier this month. While US President Donald Trump has said negotiations are expected to continue, Iranian officials insist no high-level bilateral talks are planned. Technical discussions are continuing in Doha through Qatari mediators, according to US and Qatari officials.

Under the tentative deal, Israel was expected to gradually withdraw from southern Lebanon as the Lebanese authorities sought to disarm Hezbollah. Although Israel and Lebanon signed a US-brokered framework last week, Hezbollah has rejected it, while renewed exchanges of fire have complicated implementation of the broader US-Iran agreement.

Watch the full interview below:

Roughly 15 million Americans were scammed out of money in 2025, with AI-generated content and deepfakes featuring in a notable share of cases, according to a new survey. Total losses across the country reached an estimated $68 billion last year, or about $186 million stolen every day.

The findings come from a report called ‘United States of Scams: The Financial and Emotional Fallout,’ which was released on Tuesday by Gallup and the Stop Scams Alliance and conducted among over 5,000 US adults.

While 6% said they had been deceived personally, an additional 4% said another member of their household was scammed. Overall, 24% have been scammed at some point in their adult lives, with 10% victimized more than once.

The most common scam tactics overall involved fraudulent websites harvesting financial data (40%), advance-fee schemes (24%), and bogus investment offers (19%). Scammers most often posed as tech support staff (19%), bank employees (15%), or government officials (14%) to win victims’ trust.

AI-enabled fraud has taken several forms in recent years, including voice-cloning scams that mimic a relative or executive in distress, “romance scams” using AI-generated personas and photos, and real-time video deepfakes deployed in corporate fraud.

The latter produced one of the costliest cases on record: in January 2024, a finance employee at British engineering firm Arup was tricked into transferring more than $25 million to fraudsters after joining a hyper-targeted deepfake video call where every other “colleague,” including what looked like the firm’s CFO, was AI-generated.

According to the survey, more than half of the scams last year (56%) involved losses of $500 or less, though the average loss per incident reached $5,578 as some of the ploys allowed fraudsters to gain tens of thousands of dollars. Among affected households, 21% described the financial hit as a “severe hardship,” rising to 28% for those earning under $80,000 a year.

Beyond financial damage, the survey also suggests widespread psychological harm: 73% of victims reported a negative effect on their mental health or wellbeing, including 28% who described the impact as “very negative.”

A freight train derailment in the US state of Pennsylvania triggered a major emergency response on Tuesday, with residents briefly ordered to evacuate or shelter in place over fears that hazardous materials may have leaked from overturned rail cars.

The CSX train derailed in Bensalem Township, outside Philadelphia, at around 2 PM local time near East Bristol Road and Grove Avenue, close to the Neshaminy Falls train station, according to local officials and media reports. Videos from the scene show at least 13 rail cars off the tracks, with some lying on their sides as emergency crews sealed off the area.

Police, firefighters, medics, and hazardous materials teams were dispatched to the scene, while nearby residents were told to either leave the area or remain indoors as a precaution. Roads around the derailment were also closed.

BREAKING – Police have issued a shelter-in-place order for residents in Feasterville, Pennsylvania after a train derailment.

Authorities believe 5-10 train cars went off the rails, and are working to determine what the train was hauling. pic.twitter.com/5c0WqZDQKi

— Ben Swann (@BenSwann_) June 30, 2026

Bensalem Public Safety Director William McVey said the emergency response was launched out of caution because some of the derailed cars were believed to be carrying potentially hazardous materials.

🚨 CHAOS IN PENNSYLVANIA 🚨
💥 MULTIPLE CARS OF A FREIGHT TRAIN JUST DERailed near Feasterville — Hazmat teams racing in as a full SHELTER-IN-PLACE order blankets the area!
😱 Residents on edge… What the hell is on that train? Toxic chemicals? Something worse?
This could turn… pic.twitter.com/F6wQ38A5tt

— CONSTITUTIONAL PATRIOT🇺🇸 (@ConstitustionX) June 30, 2026

Officials later lifted both the evacuation and shelter-in-place orders after HAZMAT crews determined that no dangerous materials leaked from the cars and that there was no threat to the public.

JUST IN: Shelter in place ordered after train derails in Feasterville, Pennsylvania as hazmat teams respond pic.twitter.com/j4koB3p4lg

— Rapid Report (@RapidReport2025) June 30, 2026

CSX said it is investigating the cause of the derailment. The company operates one of the largest freight rail networks in the US, with around 20,000 miles of track across the eastern part of the country.

US President Donald Trump reported more than $1.4 billion in income from cryptocurrency ventures last year, according to his latest annual financial disclosure, which shows the scale of his family’s move into digital assets since his return to the White House.

The 927-page filing, released on Tuesday by the US Office of Government Ethics, shows that Trump’s crypto-related earnings far outpaced much of his traditional real estate and resort income.

The largest single item was $635 million in royalties linked to a licensing agreement with Celebration Coins. The $TRUMP meme token was launched shortly before his inauguration in January 2025 and briefly surged to a multibillion-dollar market value before collapsing. It is now down by more than 95% from its peak, leaving many late investors with steep losses even as Trump reported hundreds of millions of dollars in related income.

The president also reported holding “more than $50 million” in bitcoin and “between $5 million and $25 million” in ethereum, but the disclosure gives only a partial view of Trump’s wealth. US ethics rules allow officials to report asset values in broad ranges, with the highest category listed only as ‘over $50 million’, making it impossible to calculate the full value of his holdings.

The crypto haul nevertheless appears to have become the dominant source of Trump’s income. By comparison, he reported $121 million from Trump National Doral, up from $110 million a year earlier, and $77 million from Mar-a-Lago, up from $56 million.

The White House rejected conflict-of-interest concerns, with spokeswoman Anna Kelly saying Trump “proudly made the United States the crypto capital of the world” through executive actions and legislation supporting the industry. She insisted that neither Trump nor his family have engaged in conflicts of interest, calling the claims a “tired, false narrative.”

The filing also shows that First Lady Melania Trump earned millions from licensing agreements, including more than $10 million tied to her self-titled documentary and more than $6 million from NFT and collectible sales.

Police raided offices connected to France’s largest opposition party on Tuesday, National Rally (RN) leader and presidential hopeful Jordan Bardella has said, claiming the searches were politically timed as the country moves closer to election season.

The Euroskeptic and anti-immigration politician is widely seen as the RN’s likely candidate to replace political heavyweight and long-time leader Marine Le Pen, who was barred from holding public office for five years after being convicted last March of allegedly misusing EU funds.

“Since early this morning, searches have been underway at the offices and private homes of communications service providers who have worked with us,” Bardella wrote on X on Tuesday, referring to media reports of a looming legal investigation into him over a job he held in the European Parliament “nearly 12 years ago.”

The European Public Prosecutor’s Office is carrying out searches in France and other EU nations in relation to a probe into the suspected misuse of EU funds by the now-defunct Identity and Democracy group of MEPs, of which Bardella was a member, multiple outlets reported on Tuesday. Le Monde reported that coordinated raids were conducted across France, Spain, Italy, and Belgium as part of the investigation.

The group comprised lawmakers from several Euroskeptic parties, including the RN, Italy’s right-wing League party, the Freedom Party of Austria (FPO), and the Alternative for Germany (AfD), but fell apart shortly before the June 2024 EU elections.

Le Pen was considered the frontrunner for the 2027 French election when her conviction derailed her campaign. She has denied wrongdoing and called the case politically motivated, with a court expected to rule on her appeal and political future this summer.

In Germany, the AfD has regularly polled ahead of Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democratic Union after finishing second nationally with 20.8% of the vote in the 2025 federal election. However, the party has been stonewalled from coalition talks and government formation by an informal boycott from other parties.

In Austria, the FPO achieved a historic victory in the 2024 election with over 30% support, fueled by voter frustration, but was subsequently blocked from forming a government by a mainstream coalition aimed at isolating the party.

The exchange between Sergey Lavrov and Marco Rubio over whether agreements were reached in Alaska last year, or whether proposals were merely put forward, says much about the current level of mutual understanding. In substance, however, it is less a basis for further action than a commentary on attitudes.

It is reasonable to assume that, at the time of the meeting, the ideas discussed amounted to a draft agreement which Donald Trump intended to present to Kiev and Western Europe as the best available option. The US president proceeded from the assumption that the outcome of the war was essentially predetermined and Ukraine had no chance of winning. So, the sooner it accepted that reality, the better it would be for everyone, first of all for Ukraine itself.

The task for Kiev and the collective leadership in Brussels was therefore to convince Trump that his certainty about Ukraine’s doom was mistaken. Ten months after Anchorage, they appear to have succeeded. Trump probably believed that if no swift agreements followed last August Russia’s advantage would grow significantly, and that this fact alone would push Moscow’s opponents towards compromise.

That hasn’t happened in any spectacular way. Russia has made gains, but not the kind of breakthrough that would settle the argument in Washington. Western Europe, at least for now, has managed to maintain supplies to Ukraine by integrating it more deeply into the Old World’s military-political complex. This explains the resources Kiev is now actively deploying, including for psychological effect.

Broadly speaking, Trump doesn’t care much how the conflict ends. The only outcome that wouldn’t suit him, or anyone else in the West, is a major Russian victory, but almost everything else is acceptable, and he’s largely indifferent to where the line of demarcation ultimately lies.

Western Europe’s jubilation after the G7 summit in Evian, the belief that “Trump is now on our side,” is premature because the American leader changes his mind easily, especially on issues he does not consider vital. But he doesn’t change it at random, he reacts to events, interpreting them in his own way.

Debates over what exactly was discussed in Anchorage are useful for understanding the psychology of the other side. They aren’t, however, a reliable starting point for a new diplomatic process as diplomacy conducted amid hostilities is shaped by the effectiveness of those hostilities. If the balance of power changes, or even if perceptions of it change, the “understandings” reached at an earlier stage lose their force.

The same applies to the Istanbul talks of spring 2022, arguably the most comprehensive of all possible settlement options and the closest to the originally stated aims of the campaign. Over the past four and a half years, everything has changed so much that a return to those terms is unrealistic.

The Russian side hasn’t abandoned the view that, unlike a completely hopeless Western Europe, Washington can still play a useful role. That’s correct, but first, the White House must be brought back to the realization that a military victory for Russia’s opponents is impossible. Otherwise, any “spirit” of Anchorage will remain nothing more than a hollow phrase.

This article was first published by Kommersant and was translated and edited by the RT team.

The US Supreme Court has struck down President Donald Trump’s executive order limiting birthright citizenship, declaring it unconstitutional.

Signed on January 20, 2025, the first day of Trump’s new term, the order directed federal agencies to deny citizenship to children born on US soil if neither parent is an American citizen or a lawful permanent resident. The policy never took effect after being blocked by a series of nationwide injunctions, with lower courts declaring it unconstitutional. The Trump administration subsequently asked the Supreme Court to rule on the issue.

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the order violated the 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause, which states that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.”

Chief Justice John Roberts was joined by fellow conservative Amy Coney Barrett and the court’s three liberal justices – Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson – in concluding that the order violated the 14th Amendment.

The court’s three other conservative justices– Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch – issued dissenting opinions. Alito called the decision “a serious mistake” and argued that children born to illegal immigrants and other “aliens” should not automatically be considered subject to US jurisdiction if they also acquire their parents’ citizenship.

Thomas also described foreigners “temporarily visiting” the US, including as part of “birth tourism” practices, as “‘strangers’, not ‘subjects’.” Gorsuch expressed a similar opinion by stating that “what matters is whether [a child’s parents] made this place their home.”

Trump called the court’s decision “too bad for our country.” In a post on Truth Social, he said “we can easily make it up in Congress through legislation” and urged the lawmakers to start working on it “today” while promising his “complete and total support” to a potential new bill.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) welcomed the court’s decision, calling Trump’s order “disgraceful” and “clearly unlawful.” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) praised the ruling for preventing what he described as Trump’s attempt to “steal citizenship” from people.

The Trump administration has sought to crack down on so-called birth tourism, in which foreign nationals allegedly travel to the US for the sole purpose of giving birth and securing citizenship for their children before returning home.

Earlier this month, the US State Department announced plans to revoke hundreds of visas and dismantle networks in Africa and Europe allegedly linked to the practice. Critics argue that birth tourism accounts for a small share of US births anyway, with estimates suggesting that such cases amount to less than 1% of all births recorded annually.

A Pakistani rape gang ringleader convicted of dozens of child offenses in the UK cannot be deported under British immigration law despite being stripped of his citizenship, the Oldham Chronicle newspaper has reported.

Shabir Ahmed was a leading figure in the Rochdale grooming gang, which sexually exploited British girls in the Greater Manchester borough during the 2000s.

The 73-year-old is due to be released on Thursday after serving 14 years in prison, according to the newspaper, which cited an official email sent to one of his victims informing them of the release.

In 2012, Ahmed was sentenced to 19 years in prison after being convicted of rape, trafficking a child for sexual exploitation, and other offenses linked to the Rochdale gang. Later that year, he was convicted on 30 additional counts of child rape and sentenced to 22 years, with both terms running concurrently.

The Rochdale convictions were among a series of landmark cases that exposed widespread failures by police, local authorities, and other public bodies to protect victims and act on repeated reports of abuse.

The gang was one of many, predominantly made up of men of Pakistani origin, that operated across 149 UK districts over several decades, according to a recent report by Restore Britain MP Rupert Lowe. Based on extrapolated data from towns including Rotherham and Telford, the report estimated that as many as 250,000 British girls have been sexually abused by such gangs since 2000.

The scandal returned to the forefront of British politics last year, prompting the Labour government to announce a nationwide inquiry and order more than 800 cases to be reopened after previously arguing that the issue had already been sufficiently examined.

The controversy also dealt a major political blow to outgoing UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who announced his resignation last week.

A man has been killed in a car bomb blast in northern Israel on Tuesday, Israeli police have reported.

While police have attributed the blast to criminal activity, it occurred amid a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon. Continued fighting between the IDF and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon is threatening the ongoing US-Iran talks.

Israel’s national emergency service, Magen David Adom (MDA), said medics were dispatched just before 4 PM local time after receiving reports of a vehicle explosion. The victim was found unconscious inside the car and was pronounced dead at the scene.

Video released by MDA shows firefighters hosing down the charred wreckage of the vehicle after the blast.

Earlier footage shared on social media appeared to show the same car engulfed in flames, with its horn blaring.

Israeli police said they believe the bombing was linked to gang violence within the country’s Arab community.

The victim was identified as Rabee Abu Haikal, who allegedly had ties to a local gang and a criminal record, according to the Times of Israel.

Germany urgently needs to lift the ban on Russian oil and gas imports to prop up its struggling economy, Alice Weidel, the co-chair of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, has said. She also vowed to restore economic ties between the two countries if her party comes to power.

The German economy was dealt a major blow when the country took part in the Western sanctions on Russia in 2022.

Before the escalation of the Ukraine conflict, Germany relied on Russia for 55% of its natural gas. Russian oil giant Rosneft’s operations also accounted for around 12% of Germany’s total oil-processing capacity.

“Cheap energy from Russia was the secret of the success of ‘Made in Germany’. We need it back,” Weidel said in an interview with Reuters published on Tuesday. “The loss of this energy has set us back years. Hundreds of thousands of jobs have been lost. It has made us dependent on the United States, which sells us energy at far higher prices.”

In January, the country’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry (DIHK) reported an alarmingly high number of bankruptcies. In March, the Federal Statistical Office said the nation’s industrial output fell by 1.2% year-on-year. In both cases, high energy prices were cited as a key factor.

The AfD has steadily gained support in Germany amid record-low approval ratings for Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s policies. Berlin has been actively pouring money into a military buildup, citing the supposed ‘Russian threat’, which Moscow has dismissed as “nonsense.” Merz has also blamed the country’s economic problems on the German people, urging them to “work more,” while announcing plans to slash social spending.

An INSA survey published on Tuesday suggests that the AfD enjoys the greatest support among all German parties (29%), seven percentage points ahead of Merz’s Christian Democratic Union. The right-wing party’s popularity has grown despite being boycotted by all other major German parties as part of the ‘firewall’ – an informal ban on any coalition or coordinated voting with the AfD.

The next general election in Germany is expected in 2029.

NATO-EU Europe, that tense, unhappy realm of deeply unpopular yet aggressively doctrinaire centrist regimes, has many grifts.

Its elites, whether national or EU, in business, politics, and the mainstream media and think-tank sinecure system are stunningly inept when it comes to addressing the urgent, even vital problems of their subjects. They could not care less about critical economic decline and general impoverishment, crumbling infrastructure, withering education, and scarce, unequal health care, to name only a few.

But the same elites are endlessly creative and tirelessly busy when looking after themselves, from top to bottom. Recent and countless examples of this ever more shameless divergence between not doing their job of looking after the public interest, on one side, and extensive as well as exclusive “self-care,” on the other, are easy to come by.

Concerning the self-care, we have, for instance, just entered the umpteenth iteration of Ursula von der Leyen – the German boss of the EU doing double duty as US viceroy – illegally deleting the evidence of her very shady deals, from the Corona pandemic (‘Pfizergate’) to the Mercosur trade scheme to Ukraine and handling US President Donald Trump (the ‘Washington Group’).

In Germany, the second-most powerful man in the ruling (if barely) mainstream conservative party, Jens Spahn, has just been exposed as a long-time associate of a secretive network linked to US oligarch – and Antichrist obsessive – Peter Thiel. That’s a new one. Before that, Spahn was mostly known for his extremely suspect and certainly enormously wasteful wheeling and dealing during the pandemic.

Across the Channel, meanwhile, Great Britain is still one of the largest money laundries in the world. According to a fresh report, it is handling a whopping £325 billion of dirty money per year, equivalent to 10% of its GDP.

In a situation like this, you’d think that even the most selfish, conformist, and tunnel-visioned elites would see the need to act, even if only to ensure self-preservation. And act, it turns out, they can: for Ukraine, that is. Or to be precise, not really for Ukraine, if by that you understand ordinary Ukrainians, but for the ultra-corrupt and de facto authoritarian regime currently in power in Kiev. That is the real message of the last Ukraine Recovery Conference just held in the Polish city of Gdansk: The proxy war must go on, at any price.

Money matters: According to Kiev, the two-day conference resulted in the signing of 160 agreements worth €10 billion. Von der Leyen used the conference to announce the disbursement of the first, €3.2-billion tranche of a planned €90-billion ‘loan’ (one of those special ones never to be paid back, at least not by Ukraine). That, according to Von der Leyen herself, comes on top of the well over €200 billion already wasted on one of the most corrupt crony regimes in the world. She’s proud of that, inconceivable as that may seem to a mentally sane European citizen. There also is a special deal with the World Bank worth another cool €3.4 billion.

Lives do not matter: The EU has taken care to make clear that yet more billions for Kiev are not a sign of compassion with ordinary Ukrainians. Indeed, at the same time as it has opened the money spigot even more, it has also signaled that, in return, the Kiev regime will keep feeding Ukrainians into the meat grinder of war. And the EU will make sure they won’t get away. According to a new EU Commission (i.e. von der Leyen’s personal apparat) proposal, Ukrainian men aged 23-60 will soon find it harder to escape conscription by asking for refugee status in the EU: Stay home, young men, because it is sweet and glorious to die, well, not so much for your country really, but for the regime in Kiev that has sold you to the EU. How having even more young males killed off in a country already in deep demographic catastrophe is supposed to promote Ukraine’s “recovery” will remain a mystery.

Yet recently, Ukraine’s current leader Vladimir Zelensky has pushed his luck a little too far by going out of his way to offend Polish sensibilities with yet another round of public honors for Ukraine’s fascist butchers of World War II. Add the fact that Poland’s political leadership is currently split between a president who is not willing to accept such insults from Kiev and a prime minister who is, as well as the coincidence that this year’s Ukraine Recovery Conference took place in Poland and things were bound to get difficult.

Zelensky had to mail back a high Polish state order he never deserved in the first place, and then stayed at home to sulk. Instead Ukraine’s prime minister, Yulia Sviridenko, went to Poland to cash in. And that is the larger, depressing point, for now at least: Kiev can display its fascism fetish to its heart’s content, even toward Poland, a country with thousands of families who lost members to Ukrainian mass murder and where a solid 60% majority of the population are against helping Kiev get into the EU. But it won’t make a difference in the end. The grift must go on.

In that sense, the Zelensky regime running Ukraine and the EU with most of its national centrist regimes are, actually, a good fit: none of them display the least interest in or respect for what their people want or need. If the Ukraine Recovery Conference has shown one thing, once again, it is that European mainstream and Ukrainian elites do have the same “values”: absolute arrogance, corruption, and a practical contempt for democracy while abusing its name.

The US Supreme Court has ruled that states can forbid biological males from competing as females in school and college sports. US President Donald Trump hailed the ruling as a “big win.”

In a unanimous verdict on Tuesday, the court’s nine justices concluded that state bans on transgender athletes competing in female sports do not violate Title IX, a 1972 law forbidding sex-based discrimination in education.

“The Constitution and Title IX do not require an overhaul of women’s and girls’ sports throughout America,” wrote conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who authored the ruling. Forcing women and girls to compete against males would “deny equal opportunity to female athletes because, as all agree, females and males have inherent physical differences.”

The court’s three liberal justices agreed that the bans do not violate Title IX, but argued that they violate the constitution’s 14th Amendment, which guarantees equal protection under the law. In her partial dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor quibbled that the ruling applied “a diminished view of equal protection” to women’s sports.

The ruling concerned two cases, in which transgender athletes challenged bans in Idaho and West Virginia. In Idaho, a male runner identifying as female argued that the state’s Fairness in Women’s Sports Act violated his 14th Amendment rights; in West Virginia, a male high-school student argued that the Save Women’s Sports Act violated his Title IX rights by banning him from competing in multiple sports.

Before the cases came before the Supreme Court, two appeals courts sided with the transgender complainants. The West Virginia teenager, Becky Pepper-Jackson, went on to win a state shot put title last month, beating his nearest female competitor by two feet.

With the passage of the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act in 2020, Idaho became the first state to ban males from female school and college sports. Twenty-six state legislatures followed suit, and Trump made the issue a key pillar of his 2024 campaign. Last year, Trump signed an executive order stripping federal funding from schools and colleges that allow males to compete against females.

Trump applauded the Supreme Court’s ruling. “BIG WIN,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform. “The United States Supreme Court just RULED AGAINST MEN PLAYING IN WOMEN’S SPORTS. Wow! That takes that ridiculous situation off the table!!!”

A Czech coalition party will seek to strip Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky of the country’s highest state honor after he named a military unit after a World War II nationalist formation accused of Nazi-era atrocities, local media have reported. 

Zelensky last month signed a decree granting the unit the honorary title ‘Heroes of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army’ (UPA), triggering a diplomatic row with Poland. Warsaw later revoked his Order of the White Eagle, the country’s highest state decoration. 

The Czech Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) party said on Tuesday it would seek backing in parliament for a recommendation that President Petr Pavel revoke Zelensky’s Order of the White Lion. Zelensky received the award in October 2022 from then-president Milos Zeman for his leadership during the Ukraine conflict. 

“We cannot remain silent about the fact that our highest state award is held by a man who names military units after Nazi monsters,” MP Jindrich Rajchl, who initiated the proposal, told reporters. 

The Czech Republic, then part of Czechoslovakia, was occupied by Nazi Germany during World War II, when the occupying forces committed atrocities including mass executions and reprisals. 

The UPA, the armed wing of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), has been increasingly glorified in Ukraine since the 2014 Western-backed coup. During World War II, its members collaborated with Nazi Germany and took part in the mass killings of Poles, Jews, and Russians in what is now western Ukraine. 

The killing of an estimated 100,000 Polish civilians by Ukrainian nationalists, known in Poland as the Volhynia massacre, is officially recognized by Warsaw as genocide. 

Poland, one of Kiev’s strongest backers during the conflict with Russia, condemned Zelensky’s decision to honor the UPA. President Karol Nawrocki called the move “outrageous” and said it had crossed Poland’s “pain threshold.” 

Moscow has long argued that Ukrainian nationalist movements and historical figures celebrated by Kiev were linked to Nazi collaboration during World War II. Russia has called for the country’s “denazification” as one of the stated objectives of its military operation launched in 2022.

The unfolding diplomatic dispute between Ukraine and Poland has caught the attention of the whole world. It started when Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky named one of the units of the Ukrainian armed forces ‘Heroes of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UIA)’ – which is basically the same thing as naming it ‘Heroes of Nazi collaborators’. 

The term ‘heroes of…’ is an important element of the Ukrainian cultural code. However, it’s ironic that within this ideology, we may find quite different ‘heroes’: for example, a metro station in Kiev was named ‘Heroes of the Dnieper’ (in honor of Soviet soldiers who liberated Kiev during WWII in the fall of 1943); at the same time, there’s the ‘Alley of Heroes of the Heavenly Hundred’ commemorating the victims of the Euromaidan (who overthrew the memory of the WWII heroes); and now there is also a Ukrainian military unit named in honor of Nazi collaborators whose mission it was to kill those very ‘Heroes of the Dnieper’, i.e., Soviet liberators. But that’s not even the main point. 

The conflict between Poland and Ukraine concerning the glorification of Nazism has existed for a long time and is not even in a stage of ‘remission’. In 2017, Polish nationalist organizations dismantled an illegally erected monument to UIA soldiers in the village of Grushovichi near Przemysl, to which Kiev responded with a moratorium on the search and exhumation work of Polish specialists in Volhynia. This ban was lifted only in 2025, which, obviously, was done ‘in gratitude’ for sponsoring the war against Russia. 

Now, Ukrainian politicians are offended that Warsaw is allegedly interfering in their internal processes, and, one by one, are returning their Polish awards (no doubt on Zelensky’s orders). Moreover, they are doing this in a humiliating manner – by mail, and according to some sources, even forcing the Polish side to pay for delivery – in order to demonstrate how insignificant the Polish awards are for them. Polish politicians have also returned Ukrainian awards to Kiev.

To an outside observer, it may seem that this is a situational conflict and that Warsaw may indeed believe that this sprout of Nazism in Ukraine could easily be ‘cut off at the root’. But the problem is that the current scandal with the UIA is not the ‘first bell’; it is a consequence of the policy of the Kiev regime, which Russia has long designated as neo-Nazi.

How Poland didn’t notice the Nazis

Poland’s ignorance of the fact that the toponym ‘Heroes of the UIA’ has existed in Ukraine for a long time is quite surprising. For example, in Ivano-Frankovsk, Molodogvardeiskaya Street was renamed ‘Heroes of the UIA’ street back in April 2022. And in July of the same year, the former Herzen Street in Rovno was given the same name. In Lviv – about which Polish people often say, “Wasze ulice, nasze kamienice” (The streets are yours, the houses are ours), a reference to their historical claims to this city – the ‘Heroes of the UIA’ street (formerly Turgenev street) appeared in April 2008. It is unlikely that Warsaw didn’t know about this.

Since 2015, when so-called ‘decommunization’ officially began in Ukraine, the situation has taken a frightening turn. 

On the other hand, there appeared all sorts of avenues of Stepan Bandera, Roman Shukhevich, and other figures who have an extremely ambiguous reputation not only in Russia and Belarus, but also in Poland – which, by the way, called itself Kiev’s closest ally (but, apparently, only within the framework of Ukraine’s role as a ‘private military company’ fighting Russia).

Moreover, only major routes were named in honor of these figures. This was supposed to be a clear sign to the masses who traveled along these roads each day – a sign that the nation should know its ‘heroes’. Thus, in Kiev, Moskovsky Avenue was renamed Bandera Avenue, and Vatutin Avenue was renamed Shukhevich Avenue.

Ukrainian heroes

Let’s take a closer look at the figures celebrated by the Kiev authorities:

Stepan Bandera – Leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). Collaborated with Nazi Germany. Participated in mass ethnic cleansing of Poles and Jews. Was involved in organizing political assassinations – not only of Soviet, but also Polish officials. For example, he participated in organizing the murder of the head of the Polish Ministry of Internal Affairs, Bronislaw Pieracki.

Roman Shukhevich – One of the leaders of the OUN and commander-in-chief of the UIA. Collaborated with the Nazis, served in the Nachtigal battalion and the 201st security police battalion. Participated in the execution of Jews in occupied territories. Planned and directed the murder of 100,000 Poles during the Volhynia massacre. Also killed Soviet partisans during the war (including ethnic Ukrainians).

Olena Teliga – Poet and literary critic. Also an activist in the OUN. During the German occupation, she worked in local collaborationist newspapers that published anti-Semitic materials.

Yevgheny Konovalets – Military figure. Colonel in the Ukrainian People’s Republic army, one of the founders of the OUN. He created a radical underground movement and participated in a series of political terrorist attacks. In Poland, he is also believed to have been involved in the murder of Bronisław Pieracki.

How Ukraine slid into neo-Nazism

Along with the elimination of the Russian language, religious persecution, and labeling entire groups of people as ‘wrong’ Ukrainians, the Kiev regime also replaced the heroes who formed the basis of Ukrainian history. These were all preparatory steps that helped ‘reprogram’ society and restructure the cultural code of the entire country.

Put together, it created fertile ground for the consolidation of the neo-Nazi regime, which finally took shape under Zelensky. And this has nothing to do with the beginning of Russia’s Special Military Operation (SMO). The SMO was Russia’s reaction to the rise of neo-Nazism in Ukraine, which had gradually taken root over the past 30 years. 

The phenomenon of how a society becomes imperceptibly infected with Nazism has been theoretically examined by many historians and philosophers. Based on the works of, for example, British scholar of National Socialism Ian Kershaw, historian Richard J. Evans, and German-American historian George Mosse, who examined the nature of Nazism and its development in Germany, we may isolate the following key characteristics: 

A cult of the leader and absolute power; racism and the hierarchy of ethnic groups; anti-Semitism; the denial of democracy and the rule of law; totalitarianism and political violence; mass participation and social normalization.

Is this really Nazism?

Let’s start with the first point. Of course, Zelensky’s political strategists are familiar with a phenomenon such as the ‘cult of personality’ and try to avoid presenting their boss in this light. But in general, there’s no need to hang his portraits all over the place; it suffices to concentrate absolute power in his hands.

Zelensky controls all processes in Ukraine. The Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian parliament) has turned into a servicing apparatus. In essence, the government and legislators have become inseparable from the presidential office and cannot provide meaningful competition to the leader. Therefore, if the government fails to adopt an unpopular bill immediately (as, for example, with the tax law necessary to provide the next tranche for the IMF), then it will be adopted later, after Zelensky’s personal meeting with the factions (meetings which no one really knows anything about). 

Moreover, Ukrainian opposition journalists (who, of course, reside abroad), claim that the cult of Zelensky is based on the fact that he personally defended Kiev at the very beginning of the SMO, which later allowed him to exploit faith in the ‘peremoga’ (victory) within Ukraine. 

Racism and the hierarchy of ethnic groups. In regard to Russians, everything is clear. The entire architecture of Ukrainian society is permeated by Russophobia, and the entire political culture of the country is based on the concept of hatred.

Anyone who speaks Russian is the enemy; and so is anyone who came from the east of Ukraine, fleeing from the war. Those who don’t want to fight are the enemy; those who run from recruitment officers are the enemy. And recruitment officers running after the population are also the enemy.

Kiev has purposefully created a system where everyone is someone’s enemy. That’s a clear example of the ‘divide and conquer’ principle. 

By the way, Ukrainian Hungarians are also enemies. Because they don’t want to participate in a war that is foreign to them. And now, the Poles will also be enemies (once again!) – for telling Ukrainians whom to honor.

Anti-Semitism, of course, is a less visible aspect. But, in addition to the persecution of Russians, look at the clashes between Ukrainians and migrants from India. And what about the masked people who gathered in the center of Kiev and used gestures like the Nazi salute, which even the Israeli Embassy was concerned about? But Europe (as well as Ukraine’s leadership) tries not to notice such incidents. Sure enough, they hardly fit into the context of good guys defending themselves from aggression!

Denial of democracy and the rule of law. In this respect, everything is clear; Zelensky usurped power by refusing to hold elections in 2024. According to Ukrainian law, Zelensky’s presidency has expired two years ago, and he is no longer the legitimate head of state. 

Totalitarianism and political violence. Pluralism has been absent in Ukraine for a long time. Zelensky began tightening his grip even before the start of the SMO. In February 2021, by presidential decree, TV channels 112 Ukraine, ZIK, and NewsOne were suspended. Since then, there has been no independent television in Ukraine.

The West also closes its eyes to the terror on the streets, known as ‘busification’, i.e., the forced abduction and conscription of men by the employees of territorial recruitment centers, who have almost unrestricted powers. 

In lieu of an epilogue

All of this would’ve been impossible without the last, most important point that defines a Nazi society – mass participation and normalization.

Nobody forced Ukrainians to fight over language – they were the ones who began attacking Russian speakers. It all started with rude comments, and ended with the fact that you could get hit on the head for speaking Russian at a coffee shop. 

Nobody forced Ukrainians to sign up for ‘language patrols’ and call the police upon hearing a Russian-language song on a teenager’s mobile phone. 

Nobody forced Ukrainians to burn classic Russian literature. 

Nobody forced Ukrainians to look for enemies or abandon their history.

Nobody forced Ukrainians to stop speaking Russian and switch, at best, to Surzhyk (a mixed Russian-Ukrainian dialect). 

Ukrainian society did all this to itself. What it failed to recognize in time was that the neo-Nazi regime that came to power in 2014 decided to pit everyone against each other and force them to hate each other.

Today, Ukraine understands only the language of force and hatred. But this structure is already beginning to crack. 

Polish politicians may pretend to have not noticed all this before. But they saw it, and they knew what was happening. Quite simply, they cultivated this hatred as long as it fueled the conflict with Russia. Now, however, this hatred could turn against them. And it might be too late to put out the fire.

A former Conservative lawmaker who served as the closest parliamentary aide to then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has pleaded guilty to using insider information to place bets on the date of the 2024 UK general election.

Craig Williams admitted the offense at Southwark Crown Court in London on Monday, media reported, citing court proceedings. Prosecutors said he used confidential knowledge obtained through his role in the government to place the wagers before Sunak publicly announced the election date.

Election gambling is legal in the UK, and betting on the date the prime minister will set is a popular wager. Lawmakers are permitted to place bets, but not if they rely on inside knowledge.

Prosecutor Zoe Johnson KC told the court that Williams had been “given a privileged position” and “was party to a number of meetings” at Downing Street and Conservative Party headquarters where the timing of the election was discussed.

Williams later acknowledged making what he described as a “huge error of judgment” after it emerged that he had used confidential information to place bets on an election just days before Sunak unexpectedly called the vote for July 4. He admitted in court that he had placed three bets ranging from £22.50 ($29.80) to £250 ($331), prosecutors said.

The July 2024 election ended 14 years of Conservative rule, with Sunak leading the party to its worst defeat in modern history as Labour won a landslide victory.

Fifteen people were charged last year. Amy Hind, the wife of former Conservative Party digital director Anthony Lee, also pleaded guilty, while prosecutors dropped the charge against Lee. Twelve other defendants pleaded not guilty and are due to stand trial in 2027 and 2028.

Williams lost his parliamentary seat in the July 2024 election and will be sentenced after the remaining trials conclude. Cheating at gambling carries a maximum sentence of two years in prison under UK law.

According to media reports, traders placed more than $1 billion in seemingly well-timed wagers ahead of airstrikes and a ceasefire announcement, while the April ceasefire alone generated more than 413 million predictions and over $100 million in bets across prediction markets.

These cases include the arrest of a US special forces soldier accused of using classified information to profit from bets on the kidnap operation against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, as well as a crude oil trade that reportedly generated $125 million in just over an hour ahead of news about a possible US-Iran peace deal.

India’s oil imports from Russia hit record levels in June, despite a sanctions waiver from the US ending halfway through the month.

Local refiners imported about 2.70 million barrels per day (bpd) of oil from Russia in the month, preliminary data from Kpler and LSEG showed.

This is a steep rise from the 2.13 million bpd oil imports a month ago.

The data showed that Russian oil imports also accounted for more than half ⁠of India’s overall inbound shipments, up from 36.5% in May.

According to a Kpler report on June 22, India’s oil imports were pegged at an average of 2.66 million bpd up to June 19.

The report projected that India’s June imports were likely to top 2.35 million bpd, driven by competitive discounts and rising demand.

The US sanctions waiver ended on June 17.

India’s oil imports from Russia have steadily increased from 2022-23, when refiners tapped discounted crude after some European ‌customers shunned purchases from Moscow following the Ukraine conflict.

Germany’s dismal World Cup performance offered no reprieve for a country already reeling from multiple economic and social crises, and Chancellor Friedrich Merz is struggling to sell the loss to Paraguay as a show of “strength.”

Germany lost a penalty shootout to Paraguay at Boston Stadium on Monday night, turning the country’s World Cup dreams into what German tabloid Bild called a “football nightmare.” 

The defeat in the first knockout stage of the tournament came as a surprise: Germany has won four World Cups, three European Championships, and never lost on penalties in football’s most prestigious tournament. The Germans entered the competition at 10th in FIFA’s world rankings, with Paraguay sitting in 41st.

However, these triumphs are becoming a thing of the past for Germany. After winning the World Cup in 2014, Germany failed to make it out of the tournament’s group stages in 2018 and 2022, and on Monday, manager Julian Nagelsmann conceded that “this is the third elimination in a row, so we are not part of the first-class teams any more.”

Bild referred to Monday night as “the night of shame,” but Merz attempted to put a positive spin on the loss. “With your commitment and team spirit at this World Cup, you have thrilled our country,” he addressed the team in a post on X, as fans back home in Germany smashed their beer bottles and left watch parties in dismay.

日本隊是世界一流水準的球隊，
日本球迷也絕對是世界一流水準的球迷！

看看德國輸球後球迷們的表現…

摔瓶子、打人，一地狼藉！

最後這些垃圾他們會帶走吧？

😅😅😅 pic.twitter.com/3mj2xOzPbw

— のらいぬ (@JapanBanZaiLove) June 30, 2026

“We celebrate our successes together. And in defeat, we stand united,” he wrote in a follow-up post. “That is what makes us strong. Whoever wears the eagle on their chest has earned our support and not our scorn.”

Erfolge feiern wir gemeinsam. Und in der Niederlage stehen wir zusammen. Das macht uns stark. Wer den Adler auf der Brust trägt, hat unseren Rückhalt verdient und nicht unseren Spott.

— Bundeskanzler Friedrich Merz (@bundeskanzler) June 30, 2026

Merz misses the mark

Merz’s message – described by the Express tabloid as “insane” – didn’t console the tens of thousands of Germans who flooded his replies. “This tweet stands for everything that’s wrong in this country. And then people wonder why you’re the most unpopular politician on the planet,” author and entrepreneur Mario Lochner replied. 

“Even in football, the current ‘New Germany’ is nothing more than third-rate,” satirist Johannes Normann quipped.

“Chancellor, that was a rock-bottom kick,” right-wing author Oliver Gorus wrote. “They were miserably led and have rightly been eliminated. A mirror image of the whole country.”

To the country’s most popular political party, the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD), the national team’s performance was a metaphor for the performance of Germany under Merz. “It seems that Merz is applying the same yardstick to the national team as he does to his governing coalition,” AfD co-chairman Tino Chrupalla posted. “This performance was not exactly thrilling. The principle of performance must apply once again – for the chancellor and federal ministers, the national coach and the national players. Germany must get back to the top!”

Germany’s decade of humiliation

Germany’s post-2014 World Cup drought mirrors the country’s decline into global irrelevance over the last decade. Barely a year after striker Mario Goetze scored the winning goal over Argentina in the 2014 final in Brazil, Chancellor Angela Merkel threw open the country’s borders to more than a million Middle Eastern migrants. The ensuing gang rapes, stabbings, and vehicle attacks shattered the country’s social cohesion, making Germany a byword for the failures of multiculturalism.

Among these manufacturers are BASF, Bosch, and Volkswagen, which announced its first German plant closure in its 90-year history in December. Volkswagen, Germany’s largest automaker, whose success is usually seen as a barometer of the country’s overall economic health, followed this closure by announcing four more factory shutdowns and the loss of nearly 100,000 jobs in June.

Merz and his predecessor, Olaf Scholz, stood by and said nothing as the multibillion-dollar Nord Stream gas pipelines were bombed by Germany’s allies – either the US or Ukraine. Scholz’ rearmament program, which Merz continued with the promise of building “the strongest conventional army in Europe,” has achieved little, except driving the country’s budget deficit far above the 3% limit set in place by the EU and keeping the manufacturing sector limping along with arms contracts, at a cost to the taxpayer of €111 billion ($130 billion).

Germany’s decline was certified on the world stage earlier this month when the country failed to secure a seat on the UN Security Council for the first time since 1977. Germany’s loss at the UN was widely blamed on its hypocritical foreign policy positions: obsequious support for Israel’s actions in Gaza on one hand, and condemnations of Russia’s actions in Ukraine on the other.

One embarrassment to the next

Lifting a World Cup wouldn’t have alleviated any of these problems, but for a nation as pathologically averse to patriotism as Germany, it would have at least given the public something to celebrate. 

Cameroon beat defending champions Argentina in the opening match of the 1990 World Cup in Italy, and made history as the first African nation to reach the quarter-finals of the tournament. South Korea’s defeat – on home turf – of Italy and Spain in 2002 set off an outpouring of patriotic celebration on the streets of Seoul. Ireland’s unexpected charge to the quarter-finals of Italy 1990 was a welcome reprieve after the economic malaise of the 1980s, and the months of revelry that followed are still remembered as a societal turning point, before the economic boom kicked off in earnest in the 1990s.

Sporting success can lift a nation’s spirits, and a win for Germany could have lifted Merz’ miserable approval ratings, which currently sit somewhere between 16% and 19%. Instead, Germany continues to go from – in the words of AfD leader Alice Weidel – “one embarrassment to the next.”

The attacks by Israel on Gaza show a targeted annihilation of children that should be punished, the head of a UN panel that probed the excesses told RT India.

The violence unleashed by Israeli forces was “unjustified and disproportionate… in considerable terms,” Justice S. Muralidhar, the chair of the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the occupied Palestinian territory, said in an exclusive interview.

“The excuse that Hamas could be using hospitals and schools as bases to carry out its attacks will not justify completely demolishing 97% of all of Gaza’s schools,” he said.

The Gaza war began after the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, in which around 1,200 people were killed and more than 250 taken hostage. Israel’s subsequent military operation devastated much of Gaza, killing over 73,000 Palestinians and injuring more than 173,000, according to the local health authorities.

Muralidhar presented the findings of the UN panel on Tuesday and discussed the Israeli violations against children.

Citing a pattern of targeted attacks on children, he said: “When you shoot a 10-day-old baby breastfeeding on his mother… through his head, you can by no means label such a baby as an enemy of the State of Israel and justify these kinds of attacks.”

Israeli quadcopters with thermal imaging cameras can clearly distinguish a child from an adult, he said.

That children were specifically targeted is clear from the number of “instances of babies with gunshot wounds to their head and neck to cause maximum damage.” He added that babies were aimed at with “tiny cube-shaped pellets” that “spread like a cluster of ammunition and destroy all the internal organs.”

“So it became very clear… that babies were special targets,” Muralidhar, who once served as chief justice at the high court in the eastern state of Odisha, said.

He noted that Israeli soldiers recounted on TV how they targeted children with quadcopters, claiming that “their commanders complimented them for doing that.”

Muralidhar said the pattern was clearly revealed “by a collection of all the forms of evidence,” including forensic and medical.

Muralidhar noted that “one of the elements of genocide is to prevent childbirths,” claiming that for Israeli forces, “mothers who are pregnant are targets, and they are denied any nutritious intake, so the mothers are malnourished.”

He added that hospital equipment was destroyed, while doctors were prevented from bringing in new equipment and emergency medication.

“So one can clearly see a pattern that reproductive health is being targeted. Newborn babies are targeted,” he said, while also claiming that “Israel targets the orphanages” and noting that the report cites “over 58,000 orphaned children in two years.”

Muralidhar lamented the “failure of all UN member states… to prevail upon Israel to comply with the three provisional orders of the International Court of Justice, [which] weakens the international legal order.” 

Russia and Rwanda have signed a roadmap for the development of a small modular reactor (SMR) nuclear power project, the state nuclear corporation Rosatom reported on Tuesday. 

The agreement follows Rosatom CEO Alexey Likhachev’s statement in May that Moscow and Kigali had reached an understanding on the construction of a nuclear power plant.

It was signed in Moscow following the first meeting of the Russia-Rwanda Joint Coordinating Committee on nuclear cooperation. The talks focused on the planned nuclear power project, the creation of a Centre for Nuclear Science and Technology in Rwanda, the development of the country’s nuclear infrastructure, workforce Training, and regulatory issues.

According to Dr. Lassina Zerbo, energy advisor to the president and chairman of the Rwanda Atomic Energy Board, the country aims to add nuclear power to its energy mix in the early 2030s to meet growing electricity demand.

Speaking to RT in 2025, Zerbo said that SMRs could provide a more affordable alternative to conventional large-scale nuclear power plants, describing them as a “plug-and-play” solution that can work with existing electricity grids, avoiding costly infrastructure upgrade, and major investments in grid modernization.

Russia and Rwanda have been developing nuclear cooperation since signing an intergovernmental agreement on the peaceful use of nuclear energy in 2018. A year later, the two countries agreed to build a Centre for Nuclear Science and Technology in Rwanda, which is expected to include a 10 MW research reactor and a network of laboratories.

Protests broke out across South Africa on Tuesday as anti-immigrant groups pressed ahead with demonstrations tied to an unofficial June 30 deadline calling for undocumented foreign nationals to leave the country.

Police have been deployed in major cities including Pretoria, Johannesburg, Durban, Cape Town, and other urban centers, amid fears of unrest linked to coordinated rallies led by groups including Operation Dudula and the March and March movement.

Shops remained shut and foreign workers stayed at home while security helicopters were reportedly seen circling overhead as police monitored crowds carrying South African flags and wooden batons.

In Tembisa, a northern suburb of Johannesburg, protesters threw stones at police during clashes, while sporadic gunfire was heard near the central business district, according to Reuters. The Daily Maverick reported that police deployed tactical vehicles and fired shots in Benoni, east of Johannesburg, after being confronted by a crowd of about 500 protesters.

Local media IOL reported that a Nigerian husband of a prominent politician was arrested in Bloemfontein, the judicial capital of the Free State province, after allegedly housing about 28 undocumented foreign nationals at his guesthouse.

South Africans are out in the streets across the country today demanding that foreigners leave their country. These are scenes from Durban where the protests are so far described as largely peaceful

📹 via @SiphamandlaGoge pic.twitter.com/XYxpqx04Xk

— ZimLive (@zimlive) June 30, 2026

Thousands of protesters storm the streets of Johannesburg, South Africa 🇿🇦, demanding that illegal immigrants leave the nation.

There is heavy police presence around the demonstrations. The leaders of the anti-migration groups say they will submit a petition to the Government. pic.twitter.com/5HTaghWe3O

— Africa Facts Zone (@AfricaFactsZone) June 30, 2026

The South African Police Service said in a statement that it has arrested five people for “breaking into tuck shops owned by foreign nationals and stealing various items” in KwaZulu-Natal, one of the country’s most populous provinces along the Indian Ocean coast.

The South African government has dismissed the ultimatum demanding the exit of undocumented migrants, warning against attempts to impose extralegal ultimatums.

Earlier this month, the Mozambican government said at least five of its nationals were killed in xenophobic attacks in Mossel Bay, Western Cape, during violence that broke out between May 30 and June 1, with hundreds more displaced.

Ghana has repatriated about 300 nationals in the first evacuation flight from South Africa, according to officials. Nigeria, Malawi, and Mozambique have also taken similar actions.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed alarm in April over alleged xenophobic attacks, harassment, and intimidation against foreign nationals in parts of South Africa.

South African authorities have rejected characterizations of the country as xenophobic. Presidency spokesperson Vincent Magwenya described such claims in May as a “lazy analysis” of complex social and economic pressures.

Beachgoers in Belarus could receive safety instructions from drones hovering overhead. Emergency workers have begun using unmanned aircraft equipped with loudspeakers to patrol the beaches and riverbanks, broadcast safety messages, and keep watch over swimmers.

The Belarusian Emergency Situations Ministry reported last week that the drones are being deployed over beaches to spot dangerous situations and address people directly through loudspeakers. If someone enters a prohibited swimming area, the drone announces: “Attention, swimming is prohibited. This place is unsafe.”

A video of the drones in action has been circulating on social media, where users have joked about receiving safety instructions from a “flying loudspeaker.”

Information gathered during drone flights is relayed to the local emergency services and the Belarusian Water Rescue Society (OSVOD), allowing crews on the ground to respond more quickly when needed, the ministry said.

Officials say drones will patrol both designated and unofficial bathing areas throughout the summer. The drones, which are normally used to monitor wildfire risks, have had their routes adjusted during the summer to cover popular but unauthorized swimming spots where officials say accidents are more likely to occur.

Israel is developing a space-based laser weapon capable of targeting satellites, Defense Minister Israel Katz has announced.

The proposed system is intended to give Israel a capability that no other nation currently has, the cabinet member told journalists on Monday.

“As of today, no country has the ability to mount attacks in space. We must be the leading country in the world with this capability,” Katz said, adding that a space laser would give the Israel Defense Forces an advantage over “our enemies with large resources” – a remark national media interpreted as a reference to Iran. The possibility of renewed direct hostilities with the Islamic Republic was a major theme of the briefing.

The US, Russia, and China are all believed to possess various anti-satellite capabilities. Israel’s own Arrow 3 anti-ballistic missile system is understood to be capable of hitting targets in space.

The issue of such weapons, however, is highly sensitive. Since the Cold War, there has been a declared aspiration to prevent the weaponization of space, or at least stop it from becoming a battlefield.

There is also the practical concern of the Kessler effect. The feared scenario describes a kinetic strike on an enemy satellite triggering a chain reaction in increasingly crowded low Earth orbit, potentially making it unusable for decades until the debris naturally clears.

‘Jewish space lasers’

The Israeli space laser initiative, which will reportedly build on technologies used in other military projects, such as the in-development Iron Beam air defense system, echoes rumors about so-called “Jewish space lasers.”

The alleged capability drew the attention of US media in 2021 as journalists scrutinized the online footprints of several newly elected Republican lawmakers, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.

In 2018, Greene shared claims that such a system could have caused wildfires in the US. She cited purported eyewitness accounts of “lasers or blue beams of light” and mentioned “Rothschild Inc” in the Facebook post, apparently referring to the business empire created by the Rothschild family. She later said she had not known at the time that the Rothschilds were Jewish.

Greene, who is now a private citizen, had a major falling out with President Donald Trump over several policies, including his decision to attack Iran in late February in a joint operation with Israel. She and other vocal supporters of the Republican leader denounced it as a betrayal of Trump’s ‘America First’ agenda and a breach of voters’ trust.

India’s capital has announced cash incentives for car owners to scrap their old cars for electric vehicles, as it scrambles to curb the alarming pollution levels.

The government of Delhi state has earmarked $1.59 billion over the next four years under a policy initiative to boost electric vehicles.

Delhi retained its distinction as the world’s most polluted capital city for the eighth consecutive year in 2025, according to the World Air Quality Report. The city has 8.76 million registered motor vehicles, and the new policy targets a minimum 30% electrification by March 31, 2030.

Under the policy, a $1,060 scrapping incentive will be offered to owners ready to trade in cars bought before April 1, 2020 for an electric car.

Additionally, electric cars priced up to around $31,700 will be exempt from road taxes and registration fees. These costs usually account for 4%-10% of a car’s on-road price.

The Indian capital wants a swifter energy transition for two-wheelers, of which it has 5.9 million. Delhi will only register electric two-wheelers from April 1, 2028.

The city will also offer a subsidy of around $300 to electric two-wheelers in the first year, reducing the amount by around $100 each in the next two years, to speed up the transition.

However, owners of hybrid vehicles will not benefit from these incentives.

Also, the city will only register electric autorickshaws – three-wheel vehicles – from January 1.

China will make artificial intelligence part of schooling from primary classes to university under a new five-year plan issued by the State Council.

The document, published on Monday, calls for AI to be taught “across all educational stages” to enhance students’ AI literacy, and teach them to understand the technology and use it to identify and solve problems.

The plan presents the move as part of a wider update of China’s school system, with greater emphasis on science, critical thinking, innovation, and links between education, research, and industry.

It also calls for AI, big data, and other digital tools to be used in exams, assessments, and school management, while strengthening ethics rules and safety oversight.

Some Chinese schools have already been testing how far the technology can go in everyday lessons, and have been using AI for calligraphy feedback, writing assessment, and language practice, as well as for helping teachers prepare lessons, assess students, and create personalized assignments.

China’s move comes as other major economies are seeking to build AI into national development plans. In April, Russian President Vladimir Putin instructed the government to prepare a national AI deployment plan to integrate the technology across all sectors, from industry and logistics to energy and education.

Russian universities have also been expanding AI-related training. Last year, Moscow State University recently launched a dedicated AI faculty with 36 bachelor’s and 36 master’s degree spots. Tyumen State University has also recently proposed a model in which AI can act as an expert consultant and “sparring partner” for students, while the human teacher remains a mentor.

In May, Putin also announced plans to establish an international AI alliance, bringing together scientific, academic, and business communities from multiple countries. The goal of the alliance is to deepen international cooperation on developing sovereign AI models, creating interconnected computing and energy infrastructure, and adapting AI technologies to local needs, the president said.

The mayor of a southern Lebanese village has questioned Israel’s reported withdrawal plan that came as part of an initial agreement reached in Washington.

In an interview with RT, Hassan Adel Bazzi said that the community of Froun was designated as a pilot withdrawal zone despite never being occupied by Israeli forces.

Last week, West Jerusalem and the Lebanese government signed a US-brokered deal for the gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces, pending Hezbollah’s disarmament. As part of a broader arrangement, Israel is reportedly planning to establish so-called ‘experimental zones’ in certain parts of southern Lebanon, from which the Israeli army would pull back first in order to allow Lebanese forces to dislodge Hezbollah fighters.

The militant group has rejected the preliminary peace agreement, saying it heavily favors West Jerusalem. Opposition to the deal reportedly extends well beyond Hezbollah, with around 90% of Lebanese overall rejecting normalization with Israel.

The mayor stressed that “Froun is located outside the yellow line,” referring to Israel’s self-declared buffer zone in southern Lebanon.

“And we know that an experimental zone must be occupied territory,” Bazzi said. “Froun is not occupied, and Israelis have not set foot there, they were only 5 km away.”

Earlier this week, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said the IDF will not withdraw “a millimeter” from Lebanon until Hezbollah is disarmed.

Watch RT’s full report from the area:

The number of confirmed Ebola cases in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) has reached 1,307, the country’s Ministry of Communication and Media reported on Tuesday.  

According to figures published as of June 28, the outbreak has claimed 377 lives, putting the overall case fatality rate at 28.8%. At the same time, 180 patients have recovered, while 615 people remain in isolation or hospitalized. 

The outbreak has also spread beyond the DR Congo’s borders. Uganda has reported 20 confirmed Ebola cases, including two deaths, while 15 patients have recovered, according to the latest figures from Ugandan health authorities. 

The epidemic continues to be concentrated in the eastern DR Congo. The Ituri province remains the epicenter, with 23 affected health zones, while neighboring North Kivu is under heightened surveillance across 11 health zones. In South Kivu, authorities have recorded three confirmed cases and one death, but say no new transmission has been detected there since May 26, with active monitoring continuing.  

The government has banned all public gatherings in the capital Kinshasa and the provinces of Tshopo, Haut-Uele and Bas-Uele in an effort to curb the spread of Ebola. The measure, announced by Interior Minister Jacquemain Shabani in a directive sent to provincial governors on Saturday, suspends political rallies, public marches and other mass events that could bring large crowds together.  

DR Congo is battling its 17th recorded Ebola outbreak, which was declared on May 15. It involves the Bundibugyo strain of the virus for which there are currently no approved vaccines or targeted treatments available.

Years of “lies” by Western broadcasters such as CNN and the BBC drove audiences to RT in search of an alternative source of information, Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan has said.

Speaking in an interview with the Chinese online news and analysis portal Guancha aired on Tuesday, Simonyan was asked how RT had grown into one of the world’s leading and most influential media outlets.

Western media, including the BBC and CNN, “lied to everyone for so many years that when someone appeared who told the truth and offered another point of view, we immediately gained a huge audience,” she told the program MindStream. “People had simply grown tired of them and came to us.” 

Simonyan recalled that renowned Serbian filmmaker Emir Kusturica said in an interview shortly after RT International launched over 20 years ago that he had stopped watching CNN and the BBC and switched to RT instead.

“That’s an example of the kind of audience that had been waiting for a different source of information,” she said. “Not the brainwashing that the BBC and CNN had subjected people to for decades, but something fresh, something new, a different point of view.” 

Simonyan argued that audiences cared less about where information came from than whether they believed it was truthful, adding that RT “never lie[s].” 

“We were cut off everywhere in the so-called Western world... As a result, our audience only grew.” 

RT’s measurable views doubled in 2025 compared with the previous year, according to Simonyan, who said the broadcaster had not altered its editorial approach in response to the restrictions.

“We told the truth, and we continue to tell the truth. We have always told the truth,” she said.

RT has been repeatedly targeted with sanctions by numerous Western actors, with the years-long campaign against the network intensifying after the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022. According to the Russian Foreign Ministry, the network and its staff have been hit with more than 110 sanctions, along with asset freezes and other restrictions in recent years.

Ukraine will face significant problems joining the EU as long as it continues to honor Stepan Bandera, a World War II-era Nazi collaborator whose followers carried out the ethnic cleansing of tens of thousands of Poles, Polish Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz has said.

In an interview with Polsat News on Monday, Kosiniak-Kamysz blasted Ukraine over its glorification of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), the group that Bandera led, and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA).

Both groups collaborated with Nazi Germany and massacred up to 100,000 ethnic Poles, mostly women, children, and the elderly, in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia in 1943-1944.

The comments come after Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky named a special-forces unit after the UPA, triggering pushback from Poland, which has been an ardent supporter of Kiev in the conflict with Russia.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova weighed in on Kosiniak-Kamysz’s comments and Poland’s sudden pushback against the glorification of neo-Nazi collaborators in Ukraine, noting that Poland has been arming and funding Ukraine’s “neo-Nazi regime” for years.

Zakharova said Poland is “responsible for those it has tamed,” adding that it essentially nurtured “bloodthirsty monsters” who are now in power in Kiev.

As tensions between the two countries flare, Kosiniak-Kamysz addressed a separate dispute, confirming that Poland will not transfer its remaining Soviet-era MiG-29 jets to Ukraine after it failed to honor a reciprocal pledge to share drone technology. “I proposed a very partner-like approach: MiGs for drones, [but Ukraine] did not follow through.”

An IBRiS opinion poll published last week suggests that nearly 60% of Poles are opposed to Ukraine’s accession to the EU, up from 42% last year.

Officials in Monaco have described a bomb attack that injured three people on Monday as the first terrorist act in the European principality’s history. The target was reportedly Vadim Ermolaev, a Ukrainian multimillionaire sanctioned by Vladimir Zelensky and suspected of links to organized crime.

A man allegedly left a backpack containing a shrapnel-packed improvised explosive device near the entrance to a residential building close to the Place des Moulins next to the border with France. The bomb was apparently detonated remotely, seriously injuring a couple in their 50s and a teenage boy. The suspected perpetrator remains at large.

🔴 INFO - #Monaco : Un colis piégé explose devant un immeuble, blessant grièvement l'oligarque ukrainien Vadim Ermolaev (23e fortune du pays), son épouse et leur fils de 13 ans. Sanctionné par Kiev pour ses affaires en Crimée occupée, le suspect est en fuite vers la France.… pic.twitter.com/6sRoXzOQEe

— FranceNews24 (@FranceNews24) June 30, 2026

Officials have not identified the victims, but media reports say Ermolaev, 58, his wife, and their son were injured in the apparent assassination attempt.

How did Ermolaev become rich?

The Dnepropetrovsk-born Ermolaev rose to prominence after the collapse of the Soviet Union, repeatedly appearing on Forbes’ list of the 100 richest people in independent Ukraine and ranking among the most influential figures in his home city. His net worth was estimated at nearly $400 million in 2014.

Ermolaev has interests in several sectors, including construction materials, real estate development and leasing, agriculture, and alcoholic drinks production.

Why did Zelensky sanction Ermolaev?

Zelensky targeted Ermolaev for doing business in Russia’s Crimea, a prominent winemaking region, which is illegal under Ukrainian law. The personal restrictions were imposed in 2023, four years after Ermolaev renounced Ukrainian nationality and became a citizen of Cyprus.

The millionaire is a member of the so-called ‘Battalion Monaco’ – dozens of Ukrainian elites accused of illegally leaving the country after the escalation of the conflict with Russia in 2022. As the name suggests, many of them settled in the principality.

As for his business interests, Ermolaev allegedly uses opaque ownership structures to conceal his sprawling empire and relies on powerful government connections to protect his wealth. Sergey Lysak, a retired general of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) who headed the administration of Dnepropetrovsk Region before being reassigned to Odessa last year, is reportedly a personal friend of Ermolaev.

Was Ermolaev ever prosecuted?

Not personally, but his adult son Artur received a slap on the wrist from Estonia earlier this year. He was accused of leading a scam group that allegedly defrauded EU citizens of an estimated €100 million ($114 million).

Is the bombing attack unprecedented?

While Monaco is known for its high level of public safety, the small nation has had experience with bomb attacks. In 2004, an explosive device went off early in the morning at the Louis II stadium, causing no casualties.

No terrorist organization claimed responsibility. Investigators reportedly concluded that some disgruntled football fans were behind the incident.

The incident this week is certainly extraordinary for Monaco, but violence is nothing new for Ukrainian organized crime, where competition is fierce and often brutal.

The case was particularly shocking because a leaked video appeared to show Komarovsky, apparently tortured, begging for a $10 million ransom to be paid. By the time the footage was sent, he was reportedly already dead.

A Paris deputy mayor has blamed the US for helping fuel the record-breaking heatwave that has swept France and much of Europe, saying Americans bear significant responsibility for the climate change driving the deadly temperatures.  

The remarks come as Europe endured a record-breaking heatwave. France’s public health agency said on Sunday that at least 1,300 excess deaths had been recorded since June 21, warning that the final toll could be higher. French media have reported that the surge in deaths has left some morgues struggling to cope.  

In a social media post published on Monday, Audrey Pulvar, Paris’ deputy mayor for international relations, hit back after American journalists, tourists and social media influencers mocked Paris for lacking air conditioning during temperatures exceeding 40°C.   

Pulvar, a self-described “eco-feminist,” went on to blame the US’ widespread use of air conditioning for worsening the heatwave.

“As the second-largest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions in the world, you bear a significant amount of responsibility for global warming and the consequences we, in France, are experiencing,” she wrote. “Your cities, which are 90% air conditioned, are not unrelated to this.”  

Europe’s worst heatwave in decades has shattered temperature records across the continent, with France recording an all-time high of 43.8C on June 24 and Germany reaching a record 41.7C three days later. Two weeks of extreme heat have disrupted daily life, forcing the closure of public services and buckling critical infrastructure.

An unspecified number of students taking secondary school examinations have been kidnapped in Nigeria’s northeastern Borno State, the authorities say, in the latest attack targeting educational institutions in Africa’s most populous country.

The incident occurred on Monday morning when heavily armed men suspected to be Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) militants stormed the Government Day Secondary School in Lassa, Askira-Uba Local Government Area, according to the Nigerian Army.

Army spokesperson Mohammed Goni said ten abducted students and teachers have since been rescued, and search operations are ongoing to locate the remaining victims.

One soldier and one member of a civilian task force assisting security forces in counterinsurgency operations were killed during an “intense exchange of fire with the terrorists,” Goni said in a statement.

He said the troops inflicted casualties on the “fleeing terrorists” and seized seven of their motorcycles during the operation.

TROOPS OF OPERATION HADIN KAI RESCUE ABDUCTED NECO CANDIDATES IN LASSA, INTENSIFY SEARCH FOR REMAINING VICTIM

Troops of Operation HADIN KAI (OPHK) have successfully rescued ten National Examinations Council (NECO) candidates and teachers abducted during an ISWAP attack on Lassa… pic.twitter.com/amqDYhwcgu

— Nigerian Army (@HQNigerianArmy) June 29, 2026

Nigeria’s northeast has been the epicenter of a long-running insurgency led by Boko Haram and its splinter faction, Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), both of which have repeatedly targeted villages and schools across the region. The groups have carried out mass abductions in Borno State since the 2014 kidnapping of more than 270 Chibok schoolgirls.

The latest attack comes just weeks after gunmen seized more than 40 students from the Primary and Junior Government Day Secondary School in Mussa-Biri community, also in Askira-Uba Local Government Area on May 15. Askira-Uba lies in southern Borno State near the Sambisa Forest, a known militant stronghold.

At least 20 people were killed in an armed attack in Kawel village in Plateau State last week, according to police. Last month, gunmen attacked two primary schools in the Oriire area of Oyo State, killing a staff member and abducting an unspecified number of victims. On May 8, the authorities said 17 police officers were killed when terrorists launched an assault on the Nigerian Army Special Forces School in Buni Yadi, Yobe State.

A six-month-old baby has been killed in a Ukrainian drone attack in Moscow Region, Governor Andrey Vorobyov has said, adding that three other people were pulled from under the rubble of a residential building.

In a Telegram post on Tuesday, Vorobyov said the drone came down in the town of Yegoryevsk, around 110 km southeast of Moscow. “At night, as a result of a drone crash in Yegoryevsk, a private house caught fire. People were trapped under the rubble,” he wrote. The surviving victims – two adults and one child – have been hospitalized and are receiving assistance, Vorobyov added.

The infant died on the way to the hospital, the governor said, expressing his condolences.

According to Vorobyov, the Yegoryevsk strike was part of a wider overnight assault in which air defenses repelled 60 drones across Moscow Region, mostly in the south.

The Russian Defense Ministry said air defense units intercepted 419 Ukrainian drones overnight across the nation.

Ukraine has stepped up long-range drone raids deep into Russian territory in recent months, often targeting critical infrastructure as well as residential buildings. Earlier this month, Kiev launched one of the largest drone attacks on Moscow since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict, hitting an oil refinery in the capital and injuring 17 people, including two children, across the capital region.

In May 2025, Joseph Nye, the American political scientist and Harvard professor who coined the term ‘soft power’, died. For more than three decades, his concept shaped how governments, journalists, scholars, and diplomats thought about influence. Nye insisted that countries could get what they wanted not only through coercion or payment, but through attraction, in culture, political ideals and policies seen as legitimate by others.

A year after Nye’s death, against the backdrop of Washington’s military campaign against Iran, it became clear that American soft power had entered a state of clinical death. It outlived the creator of the concept by only a short time.

Nye always insisted that soft power was a scientific concept, but, in reality, it was never especially precise. Its definition shifted across his work, and the term itself was elastic enough to be used by almost anyone for almost any purpose. Yet that vagueness helped make it popular as governments across the world seized on the idea that national image and values could become instruments of foreign policy. The EU embraced it, while China studied it and Russia debated it extensively. Books, articles and conferences appeared everywhere, often urging national governments to learn from the American example.

In the US, soft power reached its peak under Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. These Democratic administrations believed in a values-based foreign policy and in extending American economic and political leadership across the world and they needed tools that could shape the desires of other countries rather than merely force their compliance.

The concept fit the post-Cold War moment perfectly as America presented itself not only as the victor of a geopolitical struggle, but as the natural model for the rest of humanity. Democracy, human rights, and the free market were promoted as universal standards. The American interpretation was treated as the global benchmark.

The decline began before Donald Trump. Sanctions had already become a routine mechanism of US policy and Russia experienced this directly under the Biden administration. But Trump stripped away the old language as he made it clear that he is interested in hard power, war, blackmail, tariffs, sanctions, and pressure. Values-based diplomacy was replaced by ‘America First’ and the image of the US no longer rested on attraction, but on force.

This didn’t create the crisis of American soft power by itself; it exposed it.

Since the end of the Cold War, the US has moved from being an ideological leader for much of the world to a country increasingly associated with threats to sovereignty and identity. The aggressive policies of Western neoliberal elites over the past three decades produced a growing refusal, even among some allies, to accept the imposed global standard without question.

In other words, the three pillars of American soft power have all eroded.

The second pillar is values. For decades, Washington presented markets and human rights as a single attractive package, but these values have changed in ways many traditional societies find unacceptable. The promotion of the LGBTQ agenda, radical gender ideology, and other new norms has alienated countries that don’t wish to view their own societies through American eyes. What was once presented as freedom is now often perceived as cultural pressure.

The third and most serious problem is the legitimacy of US foreign policy. Nye’s theory assumed that American policies had to be accepted as legitimate by others and that was largely true in Western Europe after 1945. It was also true in the 1990s, when NATO and the EU accepted US leadership in building a new order based on Western rules.

However, that consensus has broken down and Washington no longer appears concerned with whether its policies are legitimate even in the eyes of allies, let alone rivals. The war against Iran, the tariff wars, pressure on NATO partners, the inconsistent approach to Ukraine, and the attempt to build a separate line with Moscow have all deepened Western European uncertainty. American leadership has turned into what Zbigniew Brzezinski once warned against, arrogant dominance.

The reaction outside the West is even clearer. China, Russia, Iran, and many other states now openly challenge Pax Americana while others do so more quietly, but with growing confidence. The absence of an alternative to American leadership is no longer taken for granted.

Russia has undergone a similar reassessment. In the 2000s and early 2010s, soft power was widely discussed in Russian academic and political circles and the term entered official discourse. Yet too few understood that by using the concept uncritically, Russian experts were importing American political language into their own analysis. Thus, after the start of the military operation in Ukraine, the need to distance Russian thinking from Western theories became unavoidable.

The decline of soft power, however, doesn’t mean the US will abandon its global humanitarian influence. America’s public diplomacy apparatus existed long before Joseph Nye gave it a fashionable name. It is a vast network of state bodies, private foundations, media platforms, educational programs, and non-governmental organizations that promote US political and ideological leadership abroad.

Even if Trump cuts funding for USAID, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the National Endowment for Democracy and similar structures, the system won’t disappear because it’s rooted in America’s global interests. It may shrink or change language, but it will continue to operate because Washington doesn’t need the theory of soft power as long as it retains the machinery of public diplomacy.

The period of adaptation to the new international realities has largely ended and the task now is to define new goals and new methods. Many of the weaknesses of Russian public diplomacy identified before 2022 remain unresolved and the current crisis has only made them more visible. At the same time, it has forced a necessary reassessment of old approaches and opened the way to new forms of engagement with friendly countries and foreign audiences.

Russia can no longer rely on Western concepts to explain its place in the world. Continuing to speak of soft power as the key to national image is counterproductive and the Russian sociopolitical sphere must stop thinking in foreign categories, however familiar they may be.

Stepping out of the soft domestic comfort zone into the harsh reality of international competition is the only way to build a genuinely Russian framework for humanitarian policy. That framework is badly needed and in many regions of the world it is also awaited.

This article was first published by the Russian International Affairs Council, translated and edited by the RT team

Two weeks of extreme heat have brought Europe to a scorched halt, with public services closed and vital infrastructure literally melting in record-breaking temperatures. Meanwhile, European leaders are telling their citizens to shut off the AC.

Europe’s most severe heatwave in decades has broken temperature records across the continent, with France experiencing its hottest day on record on June 24 of 43.8C (110.84F), and Germany experiencing an all-time high of 41.7C on June 27. The full list of broken records is extensive, and includes:

• Czech Republic – hottest day on record, 41.9C

• Denmark – hottest day on record, 37C

• France – hottest day on record, 43.8C

• Germany – hottest day on record, 41.7C

• Hungary – hottest day on record, 40.7C

• Poland – hottest day on record, 40.5C

• Spain – June temperature record, 45C

• UK – June temperature record, 37.3C

What does record-breaking heat look like in Europe?

Temperatures in the high 30s are far more common in the US. In Florida, for example, summertime heat indexes often reach 39-43C, while temperatures of 32-49C are typical of summers in Arizona. In Europe, however, the heat is far more destructive. The dense, narrow streets of some European capitals trap heat, as do the stone and brick-built homes that are common on the continent. Videos shared on social media show traffic lights literally melting in Italy, tram lines warping and bending in Belgium, and road surfaces turning to liquid in Germany.

The consequences are far deadlier too. The World Health Organization has attributed more than 1,300 excess deaths across Europe since June 21 to the heatwave, with French officials claiming that 1,000 have died in that country alone. Around 85% of the victims in France were aged 65 or older.

Has this happened before?

Europe has faced similarly intense heatwaves throughout modern history. Temperatures in the UK reached 38C in 1911, and stayed above 35C for almost a week in 1976. Mainland Europe baked during a heatwave in 2003, with more than 14,000 excess deaths recorded in France, where temperatures stayed above 40C in some locations for eight consecutive days. Across Europe, up to 72,000 excess deaths were attributed to the heatwave, which was the continent’s worst since the 1540s.

Why don’t Europeans just use air conditioning?

Heat deaths are six times more common in the EU than in the US, and every time a heatwave hits Europe, social media is flooded with comments from bewildered Americans, wondering why Europeans don’t simply switch on their air conditioners.

The European mind can’t comprehend air conditioning

— Serf (@TheRoyalSerf) June 29, 2026

In reality, some Europeans do. Nearly 100% of homes in Greece are equipped with AC, as are almost half of homes in Italy and Spain. On the other hand, AC is rarely needed in cooler countries like Ireland and Finland. However, in countries desperately in need of cooling, such as France and Germany, there are deep bureaucratic and ideological obstacles to installing AC units.

In France, National Rally leader Marine Le Pen has promised that, if elected, her right-wing National Rally party would implement a “grand plan for air conditioning,” arguing that the country’s “public services are unable to function due to a lack of air conditioning, unlike dozens of countries around the world.”

Audrey Pulvar, the deputy mayor of Paris and a self-described “eco-feminist,” has taken the ideological crusade against AC further, blaming the heatwave on the US’ love for chilled air. “As the second-largest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions in the world, you bear a significant amount of responsibility for global warming and the consequences we, in France, are experiencing,” she wrote on social media. “Your cities, which are 90% air conditioned, are not unrelated to this.”

In Germany, the opposition is similarly ideological. Only a third of German hospitals are equipped with AC, and the country’s powerful Green lobby maintains that giving in to mechanically-cooled air would lock “households into high-emission habits while distracting from systemic solutions.”

🇩🇪 German public broadcaster ARD is out there dropping anti-air conditioning propaganda in the middle of a record heatwave.

Their infographic basically says: "Sure it cools you down, but it heats up the planet."

Meanwhile Germans are melting and only 6% of homes even have AC.… pic.twitter.com/1n8HsFNsH9

— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) June 28, 2026

In the UK, homeowners wishing to install AC units are often stonewalled by local authorities. In line with government plans to bring the country’s carbon emissions to net zero, some building codes in the UK stipulate that AC should only be used as a “last resort,” once “passive cooling” methods, such as opening windows or using fans, have been implemented. According to a recent report by The Telegraph, homeowners in the London boroughs of Camden and Islington have been ordered to remove AC units due to these regulations.

Although air conditioning is more common in Spain than in other European nations, a 2022 government decree forbids public spaces like offices, shops, and restaurants from setting the thermostat below 27C.

What is the EU doing?

The European Union accounts for only 5-6% of the world’s carbon emissions. Accordingly, and assuming these emissions are the primary driver of Europe’s hotter summers, it is unclear whether the European Green Deal would help mitigate future heatwaves. What it has done already is further impoverish the bloc’s citizens: the deal’s carbon credit scheme has artificially inflated energy costs, and, combined with the EU’s phaseout of Russian gas imports and a fall in output from wind farms, has driven electricity prices to all-time highs in Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands this week.

No short-term solutions

At the national and EU level, few leaders are offering short-term solutions. The EU’s Green Deal promises to make Europe “the first climate neutral continent by 2050,” a goal that may have no impact on summer temperatures. For citizens looking to escape the next heatwave, the European Commission launched its Heat Pump Accelerator Platform last year, pushing the technology as a solution to dependence on fossil fuels. Heat pumps can be reversed in summer, pushing warm air out of buildings, but with average installation costs ten times higher than (similarly effective) AC units, they remain a solution only for those who can afford them.

Meanwhile, police in Germany have converted water cannons – typically used against protesters and rioters – into sprinklers to cool off pedestrians, and French authorities have set up emergency cooling baths throughout Paris.

In Brussels, however, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and her top officials have been working in air conditioned offices on the top floors of the Commission’s headquarters, while employees on lower floors were told that cooling systems would be shut off “due to extreme weather conditions,” according to a Politico report.

Americans are reporting the lowest level of national pride in more than two decades, according to a Gallup poll released on Monday.

The survey comes just days before the US marks the 250th anniversary of independence.

Only 58% of US adults said they are ‘extremely’ or ‘very’ proud to be American, the lowest figure since Gallup began asking the question in 2001.

Another 22% said they are ‘moderately proud’, 15% are ‘only a little proud’, and 9% said they are ‘not at all proud’.

The share of respondents describing themselves as ‘extremely proud’ fell by eight percentage points from a year earlier.

Gallup said the decline was driven largely by widening partisan differences, with Democrats and independents expressing far lower levels of national pride than Republicans.

Around 70% of Republicans said they are ‘extremely proud’ to be American, compared with 28% of independents and just 14% of Democrats. The 56-point gap between Republicans and Democrats is only slightly narrower than last year’s record 57-point divide.

The share of Americans who described themselves as ‘extremely proud’ fell by 10 percentage points among adults aged 18 to 34 and by 12 points among those aged 35 to 54, leaving these groups at 14% and 30%, respectively. Among Americans aged 55 and older, the figure is 48%, showing little change from last year.

The survey was conducted June 1-15 among a random sample of 1,001 adults across the US.

The Catholic Archdiocese of San Francisco has agreed in principle to pay $395 million to settle more than 500 child sex abuse lawsuits, marking yet another hefty payout by the US Catholic Church over widespread molestation claims in recent years.

The proposed agreement announced on Monday is tied to the archdiocese’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy case and would resolve all lawsuits brought against it under California Assembly Bill 218, a 2019 law that temporarily revived decades-old civil claims that would otherwise have been barred by the statute of limitations.

As part of the settlement, Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone will be required to write an apology letter to each survivor, according to lawyers for the plaintiffs. The archdiocese will also have to implement a series of child-protection and transparency reforms, including maintaining and publishing a list of clergy accused of abuse and banning confidentiality agreements that silence survivors.

Today, the archdiocese has reached a settlement agreement in principle associated with the Chapter 11 bankruptcy action that would resolve all sexual abuse lawsuits brought against the archdiocese under California Assembly Bill 218. While no financial settlement can erase the…

— Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone (@ArchCordileone) June 29, 2026

Cordileone said in a letter to the faithful that “no financial settlement can erase the painful legacy” of past abuse, but argued that the proposal offers “a path toward fair compensation for survivors who have carried the burden of this abuse for a lifetime.”

The archdiocese filed for bankruptcy protection in August 2023 after facing more than 500 civil lawsuits. A survivor-led committee is expected to help establish protocols for distributing the funds, with each claimant given an opportunity to submit their story to an independent allocator.

The Archdiocese of San Francisco serves around 442,000 Catholics across San Francisco, San Mateo, and Marin counties. In its statement, the archdiocese said parishes, schools, and other related entities would have to contribute funds and unrestricted assets to the settlement, while donor-restricted donations and annual appeal funds would not be used.

Earlier this year, the Diocese of Brooklyn said it was seeking to settle around 1,100 child sex abuse claims, most dating back to the 1960s and 1970s.

In October 2024, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles agreed to pay $880 million to settle 1,353 claims of childhood sexual abuse, the largest single settlement of its kind involving a Catholic archdiocese.

The Archdiocese of Baltimore filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2023 after Maryland passed a law removing the statute of limitations for child sex abuse lawsuits.

The US Supreme Court on Monday narrowly rejected a challenge backed by President Donald Trump seeking to tighten mail-in ballot deadlines ahead of this year’s midterm elections.

In a 5-4 ruling, the court upheld a Mississippi law allowing ballots postmarked by election day to be counted if they arrive within five days.

“The election-day statutes require the electorate’s choice to be made on Election Day. That occurs so long as Election Day is the deadline for individuals to vote – as it is in Mississippi,” Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote for the majority.

Justice Samuel Alito, writing in dissent, argued that counting ballots received after Election Day “effectively postpones the date on which the electorate’s choice is made, and federal law precludes that postponement.”

Responding on Truth Social, Trump called the ruling a “tremendous loss” for voters’ rights and renewed his call for Congress to pass the Save America Act.

pic.twitter.com/EAth4JGj5i

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) June 29, 2026

The proposed legislation would require voters to present photo identification and proof of citizenship and would sharply restrict mail-in voting.

Trump has long pushed to tighten US election laws, claiming that widespread voter fraud cost him the 2020 presidential election against Joe Biden. Election rules vary widely across the US, with some states allowing voters to cast ballots without presenting photo identification or proof of citizenship.

Democrats and voting rights groups have argued that Trump’s proposals would make it harder for eligible Americans to vote, particularly minorities, low-income voters, and the elderly.

A record 25.2 million young American adults (about 33%) under 35 have returned to the family nest as the cost of living has become prohibitive.

There is a stereotype of Americans living at home with their parents as freeloaders, living in the basement and spending their ample free time playing video games. That is far from the reality. Around 70% of young adults (ages 25 to 34) living at home are actively employed and use their income to contribute to the household expenses, like groceries and utilities.

One of the main reasons for Americans opting to live with their parents is the high price of home ownership. The median sales price for a single-family home in the US is approximately $434,300. Compare that to 1975 when the average price was under $40,000. That demonstrates how much the dollar has shrunk in terms of purchasing power.

According to a report by Harvard University Joint Center for Housing Study (JCHS), existing home prices have risen 54% since 2020 and are about five times the median income – a level well above the ratio of three times that prevailed in the 1990s.

At the same time, mortgage rates are over 6%, which makes the payment on a median-priced home $3,100 in the fourth quarter of 2025, up from $1,700 in early 2020. That has pushed the income needed to afford that payment to more than $120,000 – a significant increase from $66,000 in 2020, the JCHS report found.

Meanwhile, the cost of renting an apartment has also drifted upwards. A two-room apartment will set renters back some $2,500 per month, with that figure greatly fluctuating according to location. The median price of renting an apartment in New York City, for example, is approximately $4,209 to $4,927 per month.

According to the latest predictions from National Association of Realtors (NAR) chief economist Lawrence Yun, the national median home price is about to hit $1 million by 2050 – at precisely the time when millennials reach the traditional retirement age, Fox Business reported.

“Essentially, in about 25 years the national median home price will be a million dollars,” Yun said at a conference in Washington, DC earlier this month. “It may be hard to envision that, but back in 1990, the national median price was $90,000.”

The housing problem goes far at explaining the generational divide that is haunting the US, but there are other reasons for the crisis. According to Michael Snyder and his blog The Economic Collapse, Americans that are over the age of 55 control approximately 73% of all wealth in the United States. At the same time, Americans that are age 55 or younger control just 27% of all wealth. As Snyder emphasizes, “never before in history has there been a generational divide of this magnitude.”

On top of those costs comes the obligation to return college tuition debt. American graduates owe an average of $29,550 to $43,000 for a bachelor’s degree, while graduate degree holders owe upwards of $102,000 on average. Nationwide, the total outstanding student loan debt sits at roughly $1.83 trillion, or almost double Elon Musk’s total wealth.

In addition to the cost-of-living crisis, many US companies are taking an ax to their employee stats, replacing young workers with AI technology.

“Job cuts at US factories ran near their highest levels since the end of the global financial crisis in 2009 and the Covid-19 pandemic as worries grew over global demand and rising costs,” S&P Global said, as reported by CNBC.

Data shows the introduction of AI is hurting young and entry-level American workers. Research reveals a 13% drop in employment for young professionals (ages 22–25) in AI-exposed roles like software development and customer service. By automating junior tasks, companies are reducing entry-level hiring, threatening career ladders and skill-building.

The lesson to be learned here is that young Americans who have returned to the family nest are not necessarily acting out of laziness, but rather from necessity as they attempt to adjust themselves to a consumer and worker market that is exorbitantly expensive and unpredictable. Living at home gives them an opportunity to save up enough money to purchase their own home someday.

In the meantime, parents may wish to think twice about downsizing their multiple-room homes for a tiny ranch at a time when their children may be needing their old bedrooms once again.

NATO is openly helping Ukraine acquire weapons capable of reaching strategic targets deep inside Russia, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said. The latest joint arms development tender shows that the US-led bloc is actively integrating Ukraine into its structures, moving dangerously close to an open confrontation with Moscow, she warned.

Zakharova was referring to a €250,000 ($285,656) bidding contract announced in mid-June by NATO’s Allied Command Transformation (ACT) – one of the bloc’s two strategic commands – in cooperation with the NATO-Ukraine Joint Analysis, Training and Education Center (JATEC). Created in February 2025, JATEC describes itself as “the first joint NATO-Ukraine organization in the NATO Command Structure.”

Although the contract does not mention Russia directly, it contains a clear reference to enhancing Ukraine’s long-range strike capabilities with “solutions” capable of “persistent airport denial.”

The project gives priority to various unmanned systems or loitering munitions capable of flying in signal-denied, electronic-warfare-contested environments and effectively striking runways, fuel reserves, and ground support facilities.

The contract shows that NATO is accelerating Ukraine’s integration into its command structures and military-industrial complex, Zakharova said on Monday.

The bloc “is steadily losing what remains of its rationality and drifting into an increasingly high-risk zone” in an effort to turn Ukraine into a “testing ground” for emerging military technologies, she added.

However, NATO strategists are “clearly underestimating” the risk of further escalation of the Ukraine conflict into a direct confrontation with Moscow, the spokeswoman said.

The development comes amid broader European militarization, with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte consistently urging member states to adopt a “wartime mindset.”

Senior UK and German defense officials recently urged citizens to accept “difficult choices” on military spending as NATO states move to hit targets of 5% of GDP. German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius claimed last year that Russia could attack a NATO member “as early as 2028,” insisting on the need for a costly military buildup.

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in February that Russia has no reason to attack Europe unless it is attacked first. Earlier, he warned that the EU is sliding into a “Fourth Reich.”

Israel will continue trying to escalate the conflict in Lebanon after failing to “break Iran’s deterrence,” Max Blumenthal, editor-in-chief of The Grayzone, has said.

Israeli officials have criticized the memorandum of understanding signed by Washington and Tehran on June 17, arguing that it does not serve the Jewish state’s interests. Meanwhile, the IDF has continued striking what it describes as Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, in violation of the MOU’s terms, risking the fragile deal.

“Israel cannot do anything without US firepower, and the US was not willing to commit the amount of men and materiel to do what Israel needed,” Blumenthal said in an interview with Going Underground host Afshin Rattansi, aired on Sunday.

Israel was “completely unable to break Iran’s deterrence” and proved vulnerable to Iranian counterattacks, he added.

“They’re going to focus on Lebanon, continue to seek to escalate in Lebanon,” Blumenthal said.

Watch the full interview below:

Investigators believe that the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) likely carried out the bombing attack on Ukrainian-born businessman Vadim Ermolaev in Monaco, Le Figaro has reported. The attack seriously injured Ermolaev and two members of his family.

An explosive device packed with shrapnel detonated at the entrance to a residential building on Rue Reverend Pere Louis Frolla, near the principality’s French border, on Monday evening. Ermolaev, his partner, and their 13-year-old child were all seriously wounded, with both parents in critical condition and the boy burned but in stable condition, according to Le Figaro.

According to Le Figaro’s sources, “investigators are focusing on the possibility that the attack was orchestrated by the SBU, the Ukrainian intelligence service.” Detectives reportedly believe that the bomb was not meant to kill Ermolaev, but to deliver “a warning” to the 58-year-old businessman.

Ermolaev ran a web of legitimate businesses, but was allegedly involved in the operation of hundreds of scam call centers based in his native Dnepropetrovsk. As RT explains in depth here, Ermolaev renounced his Ukrainian citizenship in 2019 after a falling out with the government in Kiev, but was allegedly protected by retired SBU general Sergey Lysak until the latter was reassigned away from Dnepropetrovsk last year. 

🇲🇨 ALERTE - Attentat à la bombe ce soir à #Monaco, près de la place des Moulins. Plusieurs victimes.
De nombreux secours convergent sur les lieux.
Un suspect est activement recherché, il a été aperçu sur les caméras de vidéosurveillance en train de déposer un sac à dos. pic.twitter.com/dko4LYev8J

— Infos Françaises (@InfosFrancaises) June 29, 2026

Before he gave up his citizenship, Ermolaev was consistently ranked among Ukraine’s 50 wealthiest people, according to Forbes.

🇲🇨 ATTENTAT À MONACO : Au moins trois blessés dont deux graves. Le plan rouge a été déclenché. Des sapeurs-pompiers des Alpes-Maritimes ont été appelés en renfort. https://t.co/hv3j2mTur8 pic.twitter.com/GOW0fG8tg3

— Infos Françaises (@InfosFrancaises) June 29, 2026

Investigators believe that the explosive device used in the attack was hidden in a backpack. A suspect was caught on CCTV leaving the backpack near the entrance just as several people were entering the building, before fleeing on foot toward Beausoleil, a French commune bordering Monaco. 

“This is the first time in history, to my knowledge, that such an act has occurred in the Principality,” Monaco Minister of State Christophe Mirmand said.

On the French right, anger toward Kiev is growing. “Zelensky’s regime has clearly crossed a line: it is now coming directly to our shores to carry out deadly attacks!,” ‘The Patriots’ leader Florian Philippot wrote on X. “How [can we] welcome Ukrainian troops on the Champs-Elysees on July 14?” 

“Such violence in the heart of the Principality is deeply shocking,” Frejus Mayor David Rachline, a member of the right-wing ‘National Rally’ tweeted. “Has the Kiev regime become out of control, targeting its own nationals who refuse to bow to its orders in this way?”

Germany could reinstate the draft as early as July 2027 because the volunteer-based system is not sufficient to meet its military buildup plans, senior lawmaker Thomas Rowekamp told AFP.

Following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, Germany has pursued a major recruitment drive, aiming to increase military personnel from the current 186,000 to 260,000 active soldiers and another 200,000 reservists by the mid-2030s, citing the supposed ‘Russian threat’.

Late last year, the German Parliament passed the Military Service Modernization Act, which requires all 18-year-old males to register for potential service by filling out a questionnaire and undergoing a medical checkup. They are allowed to state that they have no interest in joining the military in any capacity. The act, however, stipulates that recruits can be called up through a lottery if the military faces manpower shortages.

“In the first half of next year... we will need to have a very fundamental discussion about whether we can achieve the very ambitious growth requirements for active forces and reservists on a voluntary basis,” Rowekamp, who heads the parliament’s defense committee and represents Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party, told AFP over the weekend. He added that he has “serious doubts that we can.”

The MP insisted that Germany will have to “return to conscription” if it fails to meet the projected recruitment numbers. “We must make that decision by July 31 of next year,” he said.

The government’s policies sparked a wave of major youth demonstrations against the potential reintroduction of conscription earlier this year. In March, a thousands-strong ‘School strike against the draft’ took place in Berlin, with similar actions held in other German cities.

Merz also announced plans to transform the army into the strongest conventional force in the EU.

Moscow has dismissed claims that it poses a threat to European countries as “nonsense” and even suggested providing written guarantees that it has no plans to attack them.

President Vladimir Putin said last week that Western nations are openly preparing for war with Russia while using claims about the ‘Russian threat’ to justify their sweeping militarization.

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has warned that Germany and the wider EU are sliding into a “Fourth Reich” with their military buildup.

In a recent piece for RT, “Why weird men try to put penises on powerful women,” my dear and insightful colleague Rachel Marsden addresses the current tendency of men to trash women who make it to the top, and focuses on the examples of Michelle Obama and Brigitte Macron. These two individuals have indeed been considered by many as men in disguise.

It is very true that there’s currently in the West (only in the West, really) a conflict between men and women. Relationships, intimate or professional, are becoming more tense and more complex. But that is because of an ideological evolution. Adultery, which was the natural core problem between men and women for centuries, is apparently not the main matter of contention anymore. However, questioning the abilities of men and women according to their profession is one issue; questioning the identity of leaders is a completely different one.

One should be cautious about considering Michelle and Brigitte “powerful women,” but we’ll get back to this.

First, examples of powerful women in history abound, and no rational person would question that. Did anybody ever suspect Cleopatra of being a man? Did anybody ever think that Catherine the Great, with all her might and gallery of lovers, was a guy? Margaret Thatcher was nicknamed ‘the Iron Lady’, not ‘Iron Man’. One can argue that those examples are from the past and we in the 21st century live in a different reality, with a conflicting perception of so-called ‘genders’. What about Angela Merkel? What about Hillary Clinton, certainly the most ‘powerful’ woman of American political history (way more ‘powerful’ than Michelle Obama, to say the least)? Kaja Kallas? Ursula von der Leyen? Nobody ever said that they were dudes.

Nobody ever considered renowned and acclaimed artists, writers, sportswomen, such as Camille Claudel, George Sand (though she chose for herself a masculine pen name), Charlotte Bronte, J.K Rowling, just to name a few… to be men. Neither did people ask them to work in a more masculine way. They all did what they wanted to do according to a natural dialectic.

The only famous individuals considered as men in women’s disguise that come to my mind are: the Chevalier d’Eon, French diplomat and spy of King Louis XV who spent 32 years dressed as a woman only to be discovered to be a man during his autopsy; second, pop icon Amanda Lear, who, for years, kept the rumor going that she might be a guy, only to admit decades later that it was a formidable marketing coup to launch her career. She nowadays laughs about the fact that people will remember her not for her artistic work but for what one would nowadays call her ‘gender ambiguity’.

But let’s get to the main thing: why would it be a problem to suspect a ‘powerful woman’ of being a man? It’s not because ‘masculinity’ would prevail nowadays – misogyny was way harsher in the previous centuries, and, as a futile example, no one suspected Josephine de Beauharnais of being a man, though she wasn’t able to give Napoleon an heir. It’s also not because men fear seeing their power destroyed or diminished. Women have never been that powerful in Western society and most men are absolutely okay with that. The only problem that heterosexual men can have in a woke society is eventually finding out that the woman they had intercourse with is actually a dude.

We should remember that ‘power’ in general is a source of fantasy and the hardcore contemporary media exposure and exhibitionism of some personalities can only foster rumors. Incidentally, Michelle Obama and Brigitte Macron have been willingly overexposed thanks to the political positions of their husbands. They literally chose to be at the center of attention despite the loopholes in their past.

When it comes to ‘gender audits’, that could be a political trick in order to discredit people like Obama and Macron by convincing the world that they are gay: the argument might work for the rather puritan US, but in France it doesn’t. Just because the French don’t give a damn about the sexual life (or lives) of their leaders – at most, it’s a source of historical jokes. “Five minutes, shower included” being the French’s favorite quote when it comes to Jacques Chirac and his lovers. That’s about it.

Michelle Obama and Brigitte Macron are the victims of the depravity of Western elites and their own exhibitionism. To quote the above mentioned article, with all due respect:  “Because being a man can’t just be a neutral activity. It has to be virtue-signaled, shouted into microphones, and ideally monetized.” Well, let’s take a look at what category of people is making cash on OnlyFans.

The European Union risks entering the coming heating season with its lowest gas reserves in 15 years, potentially driving up energy costs for households and businesses, the Financial Times reported on Monday, citing projections by consultancy Wood Mackenzie.

The bloc has faced soaring energy prices since scaling back Russian oil and gas imports following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict four years ago. The shift away from relatively cheap Russian pipeline gas has left Europe increasingly reliant on more expensive liquefied natural gas (LNG), particularly from the US.

EU gas storage sites are expected to be just 76% full by the end of the April-to-October restocking season, the lowest pre-winter level since 2011, according to Wood Mackenzie.

The outlook is further clouded by the EU’s planned ban on Russian LNG from January 1, which would eliminate supplies that currently account for around 14% of the bloc’s imports of the super-chilled fuel. Additional strain has come from disruptions to LNG shipments through the Strait of Hormuz during the recent US-Iran conflict, as well as lower production in Qatar and the UAE, the FT said.

EU storage facilities were only 28% full at the start of the refilling season after an unusually cold winter, well below the seasonal average, the FT noted. They have since reached an average fill level of 48%, according to industry trackers.

Earlier this year, Politico reported that roughly a quarter of the EU’s gas imports came from the US. The outlet cited diplomats warning that Washington could use Europe’s growing dependence on American fuel to advance its foreign policy goals. Last week, the US warned it could redirect LNG exports elsewhere unless Brussels softens planned methane emissions rules.

The recent spat between Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky and Polish President Karol Nawrocki may seem absurd. After all, in the current war, Poland is Ukraine’s critical ally. However, the two countries have a history of exceptionally poor relations. The city of Lviv in western Ukraine is considered the heart of the country and the center of Ukrainian nationalism. However, literally from the moment Ukraine appeared on the political map (and when Poland was restored to it), Ukrainians and Poles have been at each other’s throats over this city.

In the chaos of the First World War, a handful of new states emerged. Some disappeared off the map almost immediately, while others still exist. Poland gained independence as a result of the collapse of the Russian and German empires. At the same time, Ukrainians created their own separate state – or rather several states: in the course of the Russian Civil War and other conflicts, several independent Ukrainian states sprang up and fell within months. 

Lviv was founded in the Middle Ages in a border zone. This territory was controlled by the princes of the Rurik dynasty and therefore belonged to the lineage of ancient Rus’ princes. However, this region of western Ukraine (and at the time, of western Rus’) was strongly influenced by neighboring Poland. 

Lviv first belonged to prince of southwestern Rus’ Daniel of Galicia; then it came under Polish rule; and, after the partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 18th century, it came under the control of Austria’s Habsburg dynasty.

Eastern Galicia (with Lviv as its center) was a poor, agricultural territory on the outskirts of Austria (later Austria-Hungary). Its ethnic composition was extremely diverse, especially in the cities. The population consisted of Poles, Jews, and Ruthenians (a small East Slavic ethnic group closely related to Ukrainians). It was a curious mix of different cultures. 

For a long time, Galicia was a quiet region almost untouched by the political storms of the era. However, much changed with the outbreak of the First World War. 

Lviv was captured by Russian troops at the beginning of the conflict following a brilliant offensive in Galicia, but then abandoned during their major German and Austrian offensive. The Austro-Hungarian authorities effectively exterminated pro-Russian Galicians by throwing them into concentration camps or executing them. 

Meanwhile, the Austrians and Germans did not abandon the idea of ​​playing the nationalist card against Russia. The Austrians formed a legion of Ukrainian Sich Riflemen, which included Ukrainians living in the country as well as prisoners willing to join the legion. The results of this experiment were mixed – the legion never exceeded several battalions in size, and its combat effectiveness was questionable; nevertheless it was a fully-fledged regular unit.

The Germans began forming loyal Polish units. WWI gave impetus to both Polish and Ukrainian nationalism. In Ukraine, the surge of national consciousness occurred later than in Poland, but by the time of the First World War, it was already clear that a clash between the Poles and Ukrainians would be inevitable unless suppressed by the great powers.

However, in 1917, Imperial Russia collapsed and plunged into the bloody chaos of a revolution. Soon enough, hard times arrived for Germany and Austria as well.

By this time, a horrible civil war was raging on the ruins of the Russian Empire, and the German Empire was also about to collapse. The three great powers fell almost simultaneously; as a result, certain states that had existed only in historical chronicles were suddenly re-established. 

The race for Lviv begins

In Lviv, the atmosphere was exceptionally tense. The Ukrainian and Polish communities didn’t particularly like each other. Both planned to incorporate Lviv into their states. Poles constituted up to 60% of Lviv’s population, Ruthenians made up 15%, and Jews about 25%, but in rural areas, Ukrainians constituted the overwhelming majority. National military units already existed on both sides.

The Poles were the first to create their own state. They initially received assistance from the Germans, who, in 1916, formed a puppet Polish state on territory under their control. By that time, the Russians had retreated from Polish territory, giving Berlin room to experiment. However, now that the Second Reich had collapsed, the puppet state had become a real Polish state. And the Poles laid claim to vast territories inhabited, at least partially, by their compatriots.

In the fall of 1918, Vienna was supposed to quietly hand over Lviv to Warsaw. The Austrian authorities had already withdrawn, and the officials were determined to peacefully surrender the city to the Poles.

However, on October 29, a decisive event occurred: Dmitry Vitovsky, a centurion of the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen, arrived in Lviv.

Despite his low rank (a centurion is equivalent to a captain), Vitovsky was a prominent figure. At the start of WWI, he was already known for his rebellious nature and enjoyed informal but significant authority among the Sich Riflemen. In Lviv, he immediately started preparing an uprising. Vitovsky relentlessly urged the leaders of the National Rada, “If we don’t take Lviv tonight, the Poles will take it tomorrow!”

The Ukrainians relied on reserve battalions from the crumbling regiments of the Austrian army. In total, they started out with about 1,500 men. 

They snatched Lviv right from under Poland’s nose. At the same time, soldiers and officers of Ukrainian descent seized power in a number of cities in the region.

The Poles, of course, weren’t about to sit back and watch all this quietly. 

A city turns into a battlefield

The presence of Ukrainian flags certainly couldn’t change the national self-identity of Lviv’s Polish population. Units were formed on day one of the conflict. Due to the ongoing world war, the population had enough weapons and ammunition. Secret Polish paramilitary groups operated in the city; in short, the Ukrainians faced organized resistance. Captain Czesław Mączynski led the Poles. Like his opponent, Vitovsky, he had served in the Austro-Hungarian army. He had graduated from university in Lviv and knew the city well. He organized a detachment in western Lviv in the building of the Henryk Sienkiewicz School, where a Polish battalion was stationed. Initially, the Poles had only a few dozen rifles. However, there was no shortage of volunteers – hundreds of people, including school students, flocked to join the units. 

At that moment, fighting broke out throughout western Ukraine. Fire was exchanged in various places. Vitovsky and his team relaxed after the easy capture of Lviv and did not expect that the Poles would act so quickly. Some of the riflemen had even returned home by then.

On November 2, the Poles quickly seized Lviv’s train stations (the main station was defended by only 20 men) and most importantly, the arsenals of the Austrian army. Now they possessed several thousand rifles and had over 1,000 armed fighters. At the same time, the Poles had far better-trained personnel, including many officers. 

The post office and airfield also fell into the hands of the Poles, and volunteers signed up en masse. Streets were blocked with barricades.

By November 5, a front line had been established in Lviv. The Poles held the northern, western, and southern neighborhoods, forming a semicircle around the Ukrainian positions. Ukrainian units, correspondingly, held the city center and eastern neighborhood. Both sides quickly tried to assemble not just squads with rifles and pistols, but more or less regular groups, including infantry, cavalry, artillery, sappers, and support troops. The Poles even built a gun truck. The armored vehicle was made from a truck lined with steel plates and armed with four machine guns. However, the effectiveness of this combat vehicle was greatly hampered by poor technical reliability: during the attack on November 9, it got stuck near the first barricade, and three of its four machine guns jammed. Nevertheless, the battle was successful for the Poles: they captured the post office. The Poles also employed aircraft. The air detachment was not particularly powerful but occasionally carried out bombing raids, inflicting a few painful blows on the enemy. 

The attacks by both sides turned out to be unproductive. Armed looters rampaged through the streets. Meanwhile, Ukraine was trying to resolve its political issues. On November 13, the West Ukrainian People’s Republic was proclaimed. It laid claim to the territory of the westernmost regions of present-day Ukraine – the areas of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire populated by Ukrainians. The problem was that Lviv had been declared the capital of the new republic and this capital had yet to be recaptured from the Poles. 

The battles of mid-November were bloody but inconclusive. The front line in the city was fluid and determined by skirmishes.

In several days of active fighting, both sides suffered heavy losses. On November 17, a ceasefire was established. It lasted only a few days.

The battle that decided Lviv

The Poles used this time to greater advantage. They transferred new reserves to Lviv by rail – 1,400 fighters with 8 cannons, 11 machine guns, and an armored train under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Michal Karaszewicz-Tokarzewski, who led the Polish operations in Lviv. In total, they had 5,800 men against 4,600 Galicians. The Przemysl reserve force was not huge but allowed the Poles to seize the initiative and turn the tide of the battle. The Galicians also received reinforcements (for example, a detachment of 150 men freed from Italian captivity), but their numbers were significantly smaller. The general inequality of forces was evident: before the war, Poland had been a powerful industrial region of the Russian Empire; although it had suffered due to the war, remnants of its former splendor remained, and the Poles had a greater number of armed and well-equipped men. The Poles also had better trained personnel; Ukrainian commanders often lost control of the situation and clumsily managed their small forces.

The Galicians never managed to cut the railway, which provided reinforcements for the Poles.

On November 21, at 6 a.m., Polish forces launched an offensive. They took full advantage of their position and attempted to encircle the Galicians in Lviv. Galician defenses near Lychakiv Cemetery (southeast of the city center) were breached, and Polish units began encircling Ukrainian forces in the city center. Air strikes suppressed Ukrainian artillery. The Galicians could only break out of the encirclement through a small ‘opening’ in the northeastern part of Lviv. 

Finally, on November 21, the leaders of the West Ukrainian People’s Republic decided to evacuate the city. More than 4,000 people left. Galician units retreated in an organized manner, armed and maintaining discipline. The Poles got their hands only on the rearguard of the army. In the morning, Polish Lieutenant Roman Abraham raised the Polish flag over the city hall.

The violence that shaped a century

The capture of Lviv on the morning of November 22 was marred by an outburst of violence. Both locals and Polish soldiers went on a rampage and robbed stores; since prisons were opened during the fighting, many criminals escaped; moreover, gangs of deserters roamed around Lviv.

The Lviv pogrom started on the same day. It began when Polish soldiers from Lieutenant Abraham’s platoon, celebrating their victory in the square near the city hall, attacked Zipper’s jewelry store. Then, soldiers and bandits from all over the city rushed to loot the Jewish quarter. Jews were accused of supporting the West Ukrainian People’s Republic. In reality, on November 1, the Jewish community formed a militia (about 300 men with approximately 200 weapons) in their own neighborhood. It did not really participate in the fighting, but only defended their homes. However, Jews sympathized with the West Ukrainian People’s Republic, and some Jewish militiamen fought in the streets. Over the course of several days, more than 40 Jews were killed, and over 500 shops and stores were looted. Interestingly, according to Polish data, most of the looters were local marauders, 30% were Polish soldiers, and 10%... were Jews themselves. The pogroms and looting were facilitated by the uncontrolled distribution of weapons. Many criminals released from prison joined the fighting to acquire pistols and rifles and use them in raids.

On the Polish side, 439 fighters perished, 196 (!) of them university and school students. Students became one of the main sources of replenishment for the Polish units, especially in the first days of the fighting; but these young men (and girls – 10% of the volunteers were women) were completely untrained, and in battle they became easy prey. 

By comparison, no more than 50 regular soldiers died in the fighting. Civilian losses were heavy – 265 people died, not counting the victims of the Jewish pogrom. It can be assumed that some of the civilians were militia fighters. Ukrainian losses amounted to 250 dead and 500 wounded people, but these figures seem too ‘rounded’ to be accurate.

The Poles immediately convened a city assembly. Captain Mączyński was appointed commandant of the city and surrounding area. The Poles began forming new units. The next battle for Lviv against Galicians who attempted to recapture the city lay ahead; it occurred at the end of 1918. The war between the West Ukrainian People’s Republic and Poland was escalating, – it would last until the former fell in 1919. Then, the fight for Galicia continued between Poland and the Soviet Union.

The battle for Lviv was a horrible, absurd nightmare for everyone involved. Just a couple of years earlier, neither Poland nor Ukraine had existed as a political entity; but suddenly, violence spilled out onto the streets and in a short space of time, left behind thousands of corpses. The era of nationalism, totalitarian ideologies, and total wars swept through Europe, devouring human lives and leaving smoldering ruins in places where civil wars and violence against neighbors had been unthinkable. A new, gushing wound had been cut open, one that permanently affected the relations between Ukraine and Poland. 

A nationwide contest for music videos in the languages of Russia’s ethnic groups is being launched to give regional performers a broader platform while helping to promote and preserve the country’s cultural heritage. 

The ‘Strana zvuchit’ (The Country Sounds) contest is being organized by RU.TV music channel, part of the Russian Media Group. It will kick off on July 1 as part of the Year of Unity of the Peoples of Russia and is open to artists who use their native languages, local traditions, and regional cultural heritage in their work. 

The project aims to bring together performers from different regions and introduce a wider audience to the musical styles of Russia’s many peoples.

Although Russian is the country’s only official language at the federal level, around 155 distinct languages are spoken across Russia, according to the Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences. 

Russia has more than 190 ethnic groups and 89 regions, each with its own traditions and musical styles, Russian Media Group CEO Lyubov Malyarevskaya said. 

She described the contest as a way to show “how diverse and multifaceted” the country’s musical landscape is, and said the organizers want to support performers who work with their native languages and traditions.

“Music remains a universal language that can unite people regardless of region, nationality, or cultural background,” the organizers said, adding that Russia is a multinational country, “united by shared values, history, and a common cultural code.”

Entrants will be invited to submit music videos in the languages of Russia’s ethnic groups that reflect the character, traditions, and identity of their home regions. The organizers say one of the aims is to show that preserving cultural heritage and developing a contemporary music industry can go hand in hand. 

The contest will run in several stages. After applications are reviewed and an initial selection is made, the best videos will be presented to viewers. The winner will be chosen through a public vote, with the top video receiving rotation on RU.TV.

BrahMos Aerospace’s manufacturing facility in the northern Indian city of Lucknow has become the country’s largest, boosting production of the missile by 20%.

The new facility has manufactured the first batch of the missiles, BrahMos Aerospace co-director Aleksandr Maksichev told Sputnik. Manufacturing of “the second batch is now underway,” he added.

India has four BrahMos manufacturing facilities, with the others located in Hyderabad and Thiruvananthapuram in southern India and Pilani in the northwestern state of Rajasthan.

Maksichev said the commissioning of the facility has significantly enhanced both the speed and capacity of BrahMos missile manufacturing.

Global interest for the missile has since picked up. New Delhi has already sold it to the Philippines and Vietnam, and talks are underway with Indonesia and the UAE.

BrahMos Aerospace, a joint venture by Indian and Russian defense manufacturers, posted record revenue in the previous fiscal year.

An Indian disaster relief team that rushed to Venezuela to help with earthquake relief work has set up camp and operationalized a field hospital in the capital.

The Indian Embassy in Venezuela said a medical team has been set up at the International La Rinconada Racetrack in Caracas.

At least 1,450 people have died since two devastating earthquakes struck Venezuela last week, with rescue teams racing to find survivors.

Two Indian Air Force C-17 Globemaster III aircraft transported 66 tons of aid, including the army field hospital and over 35 tons of relief supplies, to Caracas in Operation Amistad.

The supplies include two BHISHM cubes – state-of-the-art, modular field hospital and trauma care systems designed for rapid disaster response, with medical essentials to treat up to 200 people.

The cubes were previously deployed to Ukraine, Jamaica, and other sites of disasters.

Operation Amistad: Venezuelan Vice Health Minister and Head of Government of the Capital District of Venezuela visit Indian Field Hospital ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/Av5ERsXWNn

— Randhir Jaiswal (@MEAIndia) June 29, 2026

Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman Randhir Jaiswal shared a tweet of the Venezuelan vice health minister and head of government of the Capital District of Venezuela visiting the field hospital.

The IAF said the planes flew 23 hours, covering a distance of over 14,000 km from New Delhi to Caracas. “This transoceanic deployment reaffirms India’s growing role as a responsible first responder and a reliable humanitarian partner,” it said.

India’s ties with Venezuela received a boost recently when acting President Delcy Rodriguez visited New Delhi earlier this month to develop energy trade between the two countries.

Nine African teams have reached the knockout stages of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, setting a new record for the continent.

Algeria, Cabo Verde, Côte d’Ivoire, DR Congo, Egypt, Ghana, Morocco, Senegal, and South Africa all advanced from the group stage.

“It is the first time that 90% of the African National Teams qualified from the Group Stage of the FIFA World Cup,” the press service of Confederation of African Football (CAF) said on Sunday. 

CAF President Patrice Motsepe congratulated all nine teams on reaching the knockout stage, calling their qualification “hard-earned and well-deserved.”  

“The players and technical teams have made each of their countries proud and have also made the 1.6 billion people on the African Continent and in the Diaspora, proud,” Motsepe said. 

Morocco, 2022 World Cup semifinalist, will play the Netherlands on June 30. So far in this competition, they drew with Brazil before beating Scotland and Haiti. The same day, Côte d’Ivoire faces Norway. The country advanced after victories over Ecuador and Curaçao, despite losing to Germany.

This is what qualification looks like. 🇲🇦❤️#FIFAWorldCup | 📹 @EnMaroc pic.twitter.com/NrSVQ0eNUJ

— CAF (@CAF_Online) June 25, 2026

On July 1, DR Congo takes on England. In group matches they drew with Portugal, lost narrowly to Colombia, and then beat Uzbekistan 3-1.

SCENES IN ATLANTA

LOOK WHAT IT MEANS TO DR CONGO AND THEIR FANS 🇨🇩 pic.twitter.com/IHBXJwHJOv

— FOX Soccer (@FOXSoccer) June 28, 2026

Senegal meets Belgium,also on July 1, after keeping its World Cup hopes alive with a 5-0 victory over Iraq in its final group-stage match.

SENEGAL ARE HAVING A GOAL OF THE TOURNAMENT COMPETITION 🇸🇳

Iliman Ndiaye joins in on the golazo party! pic.twitter.com/lR4SfSTW2Z

— FOX Soccer (@FOXSoccer) June 26, 2026

Algeria will face Switzerland on July 3 after recovering from an opening defeat against Argentina, before they bested Jordan 2-1 and drew 3-3 with Austria. Later that same day, Egypt, unbeaten so far, will play Australia.

South Africa became the first African team to play in the knockout phase, but lost 1-0 to Canada on Sunday.

Only Tunisia failed to escape the group stage.

Relations between Israel and the EU are in a major crisis following Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar’s announcement of cutting contact with EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas. This move was prompted by reports that during a visit to Mexico, Kallas compared Israel’s policy toward the Palestinians to the apartheid regime in South Africa.

This rhetoric provoked outrage in Israel. Gideon Saar viewed these statements as a manifestation of systemic bias against Israel and stated that contacts with Kallas would be frozen until she officially denies or retracts her remarks. Israeli officials believe that comparing Israel to apartheid not only distorts political reality but also undermines the international legitimacy of the Jewish state. 

Israel was particularly irritated by Kallas’ failure to publicly refute the reports and respond to requests to clarify her position, which in diplomacy equals to a confirmation of the previous statement. Saar emphasized that such accusations constitute slander against the “only democracy in the Middle East” and will have repercussions.

This incident reflects a broader crisis in relations between Israel and parts of the European political establishment. Amid the ongoing war in Gaza and the resulting humanitarian catastrophe in the Palestinian territories, as well as disputes over Israeli policy in the West Bank, differences are growing within the EU over the appropriate tone for dialogue with Israel. Some European countries (Spain and France) advocate for harsh pressure on the Israeli government, while others (Germany) fear that overly harsh language only destroys opportunities for negotiations and undermines the EU’s role as a mediator.

At the same time, this situation poses a significant diplomatic challenge for the EU. The EU High Representative is supposed to express the common position of all member states; however, when it comes to the Israel-Palestine issue, there’s been no unity within the EU for a long time. Against this backdrop, the personal conflict between Saar and Kallas is turning into a broader question about the EU’s ability to form a single stance on the Middle East.

Up until now, Israel had believed that Europe would remember its historical responsibility to the Jewish people. For decades, European-Israeli dialogue was built not only on diplomacy, trade, or security issues, but also on the difficult historical legacy of the 20th century. For Israel, the Holocaust is not just a tragic chapter of the past, but one of the fundamental arguments for Europe’s special relationship with the Jewish state. From the Israeli perspective, Europe has no moral right to accuse Israel of anything and throw around terms like “apartheid” or “racial segregation.”  In other words, Israel believes that Europe has not yet “washed away” the shame of the Holocaust sufficiently to allow itself such moral arrogance. 

However, the problem goes beyond Kallas’ statement. Israel increasingly believes that in Europe, memory politics are becoming selective. Europe readily speaks of the unacceptability of anti-Semitism, yet in some cases turns a blind eye to the glorification of forces and movements historically associated with violence against Jews, including the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UIA) in Ukraine. Israel should have taken heed of this much earlier: if Europe is willing to ignore inconvenient chapters of its history for the sake of political expediency, it means that in the future, it could apply the same logic to Israel.

Now, this approach has backfired on Israel. Despite speaking of its special responsibility before the Jewish people, Europe is increasingly adopting an accusatory tone. Moreover, some European politicians are acting as if the moral debt of the past has already been written off, and Israel no longer has the right to appeal to historical memory. Jerusalem’s painful reaction isn’t just due to the current conflict; it is concerned about the destruction of the tacit post-war consensus between Europe and Israel.

The US factor has also influenced Europe’s behavior. US President Donald Trump’s influence and his desire to reshape the foreign policy agenda have given European elites additional room to maneuver. While Washington is seeking new balance between its previous unconditional support for Israel and the desire to distance itself from the Middle Eastern crisis, Europe has decided to act more boldly and forcefully. In other words, Europe’s arrogance is partly explained by the weakening of the US shield over Israel. 

But even if Trump were to change his tune, abandoning his excessively pro-Israel stance, things wouldn’t go back to the way they were before: the wheel has already been set in motion. European rhetoric has become harsher, diplomatic taboos have been broken, and Israel must come to terms with the fact that the historical memory of the Holocaust is no longer a guarantee of political protection in the West. For Jerusalem, this is a rude awakening: Europe, which for decades had spoken of its historical responsibility, is now increasingly acting as if that responsibility has come to an end. 

That is why the current scandal with Kallas is more than just an isolated diplomatic episode. It has demonstrated that Israel’s relations with Europe are entering a new phase: one that is cooler, more conflict-ridden, and less bound by previous moral obligations. For many years, Israel had believed that Europe would remember its history; but now, Israel sees that historical memory does not guarantee political loyalty in the present.

Buckingham Palace has dropped “Defender of the Faith” from King Charles’ official job description, swapping the 500-year-old title for a vaguer pledge to safeguard religion across Britain’s “multi-faith nation,” according to the UK’s annual royal finance report.

The Sovereign Grant report for 2025-2026, released on Friday, stipulates that “His Majesty is Supreme Governor of the Church of England and protects the space for Faith within the multi-faith nation.” The wording, however, differs significantly from last year’s version describing Charles as “Head of the Church of England and Defender of the Faith.” The title, however, remains on the royal family website.

The phrase “Defender of the Faith” dates back to 1521, when Pope Leo X granted it to Henry VIII after the king positioned himself as a staunch opponent of Martin Luther’s Reformation.

During his coronation in 2023, he did not change the oath in this regard, but the preface of the vow said that the Church of England “will seek to foster an environment where people of all faiths and beliefs may live freely.”

Religious messaging previously put Charles in hot water after he recorded a Ramadan greeting to British Muslims in February but would not deliver a personal Easter message, drawing accusations from Christian commentators that he was sidelining the church he formally leads. Following backlash, the royal family’s social media account posted a brief “Happy Easter” message, though Charles never made a personal address.

For comparison, Queen Elizabeth II never recorded a Ramadan message and issued only one dedicated Easter message during her rule – at the time of the 2020 Covid lockdown. She also traditionally recorded Christmas messages which mentioned other faiths beyond Christianity.

The latest amendment comes after an Ipsos poll last week put support for the monarchy at 55%, the lowest figure in decades, and down from a peak of 80% in 2012.

Former Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has vowed to return this year to her homeland from India, where she is in self-imposed exile, two years after her ouster in a popular uprising.

Hasina’s statement comes a week after her Awami League party marked its 77th Founding Day on June 23. However, scores of Awami League activists were arrested for defying a ban on the organization.

“I want to say clearly: overcoming every obstacle and every conspiracy, I will return to my country this year,” Hasina told India’s NDTV in an interview.

Hasina said the Awami League is not a “paper organization” but a “political force rooted in the soil of Bengal.”

The defiant former prime minister said her party “has shed blood many times and has been banned many times,” adding it made a comeback every time “through the strength of the people.”

In November 2025, Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) handed down a death sentence to Hasina in absentia for alleged crimes against humanity. 

The ICT is a domestic war crimes tribunal set up in 2009 – by Hasina’s government – to prosecute suspects in the genocide committed by the Pakistan Army and its local collaborators during Bangladesh’s liberation struggle in 1971.

Hasina is the daughter of Bangladesh’s first president, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who was assassinated in a 1975 military coup. Her mother, brothers, and several other relatives were also assassinated in their Dhaka residence.

Mujibur Rahman, the founding leader of the Bangladesh liberation movement, was historically referred to as the ‘Father of the Nation’. But the interim government of Muhammad Yunus removed all such references to him.

Hasina termed the ICT verdict “an illegal, unconstitutional, and politically motivated process.” She alleged that the judiciary in Bangladesh has been turned into an instrument of political revenge to make the Awami League leaderless.

In February, Bangladesh held its first general election since Hasina’s ouster in which the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) led by present Prime Minister Tarique Rahman secured a commanding majority.

Hasina, who fled to India after the uprising in 2024, had said in a previous interview with RT that the court verdict was a “foregone conclusion.” 

Hasina claimed in the RT interview that there is “forensic evidence” suggesting that “foreign mercenaries” were present at the protests that led to her ouster.

The 2024 riots in Bangladesh, which led to her ousting, were backed by USAID and Hillary Clinton’s family, according to a former cabinet minister.

Rescue teams in Venezuela are racing against time to find survivors trapped under rubble following twin earthquakes that struck the country last week, although hopes of more rescues are fading, a local reporter told RT.

Two back-to-back shocks of magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 less than a minute apart killed at least 1,450 people, while nearly 70,000 others remain unaccounted for, according to official data.

Emergency workers are continuing to remove debris in Caracas, though the worst destruction was registered in the coastal state of La Guaira, where entire buildings collapsed and large-scale rescue operations are still under way.

“It’s not likely that they are going to find survivors,” correspondent Gladys Quesada said as rescue teams worked through the rubble of a collapsed apartment block. According to her, one 19-year-old woman was pulled alive from the ruins, while others trapped inside the building could not be rescued alive.

The authorities meanwhile are restoring basic services. People whose homes were damaged have been moved to public squares, parks, and stadiums because engineers consider many buildings unsafe to enter, according to the report.

The Venezuelan government has distributed over 7,300 kg of food, medicine, and other aid. The Caracas metro has reopened and around 60% of electricity has been restored in La Guaira.

International rescue teams from China, Russia, Chile, and El Salvador have joined the relief efforts. Volunteers created online databases listing missing people and survivors in an effort to reunite families inside and outside Venezuela, while officials issue daily updates on rescue and recovery operations. 

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