Vladimir Zelenksy’s decision to name a commando unit after Ukrainian Nazi collaborators is evidence that his country is “not ready to become part of the European family,” Polish President Karol Nawrocki has said.

Under a decree signed on Tuesday, Zelensky granted the title ‘Heroes of the UPA’ – the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, the armed wing of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) – to the Special Operations Center North, saying the move is aimed at reviving the “historic traditions of the national army.”

Speaking to reporters on Friday, Nawrocki condemned the move as an attempt to rehabilitate figures responsible for wartime atrocities, saying Warsaw cannot remain indifferent to the glorification of the UPA. He also called for Zelensky to be stripped of the Order of the White Eagle, Poland’s highest state decoration.

The move has drawn widespread criticism. Former Polish Prime Minister Leszek Miller called Zelensky’s decision “a spit in the face of Poles.”

Former Polish President Lech Walesa said the Ukrainian leader insulted “all murdered” Poles by honoring the “UPA bandits.” Walesa withdrew his support for Zelensky following the state reburial of OUN leader Andrey Melnik in Kiev on Sunday, saying: “In response, I have publicly removed the Ukrainian flag from my chest.”

Ukrainian nationalists killed an estimated 100,000 Polish civilians in what is now western Ukraine from 1943-44. The massacres remain a major source of tension between Warsaw and Kiev.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry condemned the decision to honor Melnik, saying there is “no place for ignoring historical truth and the memory of the victims murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators.”

Slovak MEP Lubos Blaha called Zelensky’s move “an open admission of fascism.” Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev accused Zelensky of kneeling before “Nazi scum,” and Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stated that honoring a Nazi collaborator exposes the Kiev regime’s “true essence.”

Last year, in an extensive piece on the Eurasian Charter of Diversity and Multipolarity in the XXI Century, published by Russia in Global Affairs, I argued that external interference in the affairs of Eurasian countries has consistently prevented their successful and independent development. I traced this pattern from the Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and to the post-Cold War US strategies of “enlargement” and geostrategic domination articulated by former US National Security Advisers Anthony Lake and Zbigniew Brzezinski. 

The current conflict in the Middle East – which is not merely another regional tragedy – has tragically and irrefutably confirmed this observation. This conflict is the latest violent proof that external actors cannot manage Eurasian security. Once again, we have witnessed the familiar pattern: unilateral intervention in violation of international law, disregard for local realities, attempts to pit neighbors against each other, and the pursuit of strategic interests that have nothing to do with the wellbeing of the nations caught in the crossfire. The result, as always, is more death, more displacement, and a deeper erosion of any hope for regional stability.

Regrettably, the architects of these policies have not learned the lessons of the Balkans, Iraq, Afghanistan, or Ukraine. They continue to believe that military force, unilateral sanctions, and political manipulation can reshape Eurasia according to their own blueprints. And every time they fail, but only after causing immense suffering to the people on our continent.

For Eurasian countries, the message could not be clearer. We cannot rely on external guardians to provide our security. We cannot wait for a “benign international liberal order” to return, because such an order never truly existed in practice – it was never liberal, it was hegemonic. And we certainly cannot afford to remain passive while others attempt to determine the future of our continent. What we need – urgently – is our own solution, forged by us and for us. We need Eurasian solutions to Eurasian problems.

The core lesson of the current Middle East conflict, as well as of every other failed external intervention in Eurasia over the past three decades, is this: only an indigenous, inclusive, and consensus-based security architecture can work. The CSCE succeeded during the Cold War precisely because it was a genuine forum for dialogue between the two camps that respected each other’s existence. The OSCE failed when it became an instrument for one group of participating states to impose its will on others. 

What Eurasia needs instead is a new approach, grounded in the principle that has been invoked since the 1975 Helsinki Final Act but never truly implemented: the indivisibility of security. No country in Eurasia should seek its own security at the expense of others. No external power should be allowed to play one Eurasian state against another. And no regional conflict should be treated as an opportunity for geopolitical gain.

This is precisely what the Eurasian Charter of Diversity and Multipolarity in the XXI Century is supposed to offer.

As I argued in my piece from 2025, the Charter would not be directed against any country or groups of states. It is envisaged as a constructive, indigenous, collective, inclusive, and comprehensive effort. It will seek to establish a pan-Eurasian security architecture based on the norms and principles of the United Nations Charter. It will cover not only security, but also economic cooperation, humanitarian exchanges, and civilizational dialogue. It will welcome all Eurasian states, from Lisbon to Manila in principle. 

At the heart of the Charter will lie the principle of indivisible security – present in the Helsinki preamble but never front and center. This time, it must be. But we must go beyond invocation. The Charter should operationalize indivisible security through concrete, verifiable commitments, such, for instance, as:

1. No state may join a military alliance whose membership criteria systematically exclude other Eurasian states without multilateral consultation.
2. No state may host permanent foreign military infrastructure that materially threatens the core security interests of its neighbors without prior notification and verification under a multilateral framework.
3. All disputes between participating states should be subject to mandatory consultation through the Charter’s institutions.
4. Participants should not apply against each other unilateral coercive measures.

These should be the points for negotiation. They should translate the principle of indivisible security from a noble slogan into an operational framework. 

As a result, no Eurasian country should feel threatened by another’s legitimate security arrangements. No conflict in Eurasia should be resolved by force or by external diktat. And no country should be forced to choose between competing blocs.

From discussion to action

For nearly three years, the idea of the Eurasian Charter has been discussed in international forums, bilateral consultations and academic publications. The concept has attracted growing interest, and many Eurasian states have expressed support in principle. But discussion, however valuable, is not enough.

The Republic of Belarus and the Russian Federation, as cosponsors of the initiative, have prepared a concrete roadmap to move from discussion to formal negotiation. That roadmap is set out in a non-paper that has been shared with our Eurasian partners. Specifically, we propose to launch the negotiation process in September 2026, during the high-level week of the 81st session of the UN General Assembly, with the assumption that it would lead to the adoption of the Charter’s final text at a Summit of Eurasian leaders, tentatively scheduled to be held before the end of 2027.

We understand that some may view the Charter with skepticism. Some may fear that it is directed against them. They may believe that their existing alliances and partnerships are sufficient. Others may simply be waiting to see how the process unfolds. 

To these hesitations, I would like to offer three observations.

Second, the external conditions that have supported European prosperity and security are rapidly changing. The United States is deprioritizing Europe as is affirmed in its 2025 National Security Strategy. The era of unlimited free trade and cheap resources is over. Europe’s demographic, economic, and migratory challenges are mounting. No external power will save Europe from these trends. But cooperative action within Eurasia surely will.

Third, and most importantly, the cost of nonparticipation is growing by the day. Non-participation carries a different cost: the loss of a voice in shaping the rules that will govern this continent for decades. Every state that sits at the table helps write the final text. Every state that stays away accepts rules written by others. We say this as a fact of diplomatic life. If you choose to stand outside the emerging Eurasian order, you will not be able to stop it. You will simply forfeit your seat at the table while others shape the future of the continent where you live.

We have seen what indigenous cooperation can achieve. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s quiet containment of border tensions in Central Asia, ASEAN’s resilience despite great-power competition, the Collective Security Treaty Organization’s rapid consultations during the 2022 crisis in Kazakhstan – these are not perfect models. But they are ours. The Charter seeks to scale these lessons continent-wide, learning from both the successes and the failures of every Eurasian security experiment.

The time for discussion has passed. The time for hesitation has passed. The events of 2026 have sounded an alarm that no responsible country can ignore.

Eurasia needs a new security architecture – one based on indivisible security, mutual respect, and genuine partnership. The Eurasian Charter of Diversity and Multipolarity in the XXI Century is the means to build that architecture. And September 2026 in New York is the moment to begin.

I call upon all Eurasian states to join us in launching this historic process. Let us prove that we can shape our own destiny.

UNESCO has presented its Global Education Monitoring Report 2026, which makes it possible to see how far the international community has advanced in achieving one of the key Sustainable Development Goals: the universal inclusion of school-age children in primary and secondary education systems.

It turns out that in the 1990s and 2000s, most countries of the world recorded high rates of growth in school participation, but after 2015 these gains slowed almost everywhere.

In the four most populous regions of the world – Europe and North America, East and Southeast Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Sub-Saharan Africa – the growth of children’s participation in school education has stopped over the past ten years. Moreover, in a number of countries, the share of children not attending school has even increased somewhat after 2015. Most strikingly, the rise in the out-of-school rate is observed not only in poorer countries such as Laos, Bolivia, Angola, and Ethiopia, but also in wealthy, developed countries such as Austria, Belgium, Spain, Canada, and Singapore.

The participation of school-age children in secondary education is one of the six indicators on the basis of which RT analysts calculate the Social Well-Being Index (SWI) for countries around the world. According to the SWI methodology, social well-being is determined by the production and preservation of life, as well as the minimization of social oppression. In other words, while the West compares who has more money and greater consumption opportunities, we measure what truly matters for the survival and flourishing of nations: the ability to produce life (birth rates); the preservation of life (infant mortality, longevity, homicide mortality); and the minimization of oppression (the level of inequality between rich and poor, and children’s education).

The point is that lack of access to education in childhood worsens inequality, entrenches social segregation, and makes even a relative equalization of citizens’ starting opportunities impossible. Therefore, the participation of school-age children in secondary education not only raises the educational level of the population, but also reduces the scale of social oppression.

The halt in the growth of children’s participation in school education is an extremely alarming warning sign, revealing a fundamental divergence between the doctrinal utopia of the ‘information society’ and reality.

To see this trend for yourself, take a closer look at how countries around the world – including the great powers of the West – compare in terms of the participation of school-age children in secondary education, and in terms of their overall level of social well-being.

Germany’s implementation of EU sanctions against a pro-Palestinian journalist whom Brussels has accused of fueling discord on Russia’s behalf has descended into “totalitarian madness,” German opposition politician Sahra Wagenknecht has said.

Wagenknecht has called for financial restrictions imposed on Huseyin Dogru and his Berlin-based family to be lifted. On Tuesday, Dogru said Comdirect bank had frozen the assets of his elderly mother, citing what it described as a “control relationship over the funds by [her] son.” His wife’s bank account was targeted in March, while his father is reportedly under investigation by the authorities.

“This is how dictatorships treat opposition figures,” the left-wing BSW party founder told Berliner Zeitung on Thursday.

EU portrays pro-Palestinian advocacy as serving Russia

Dogru is a Turkish-German journalist who previously worked with the media outlet Redfish, which received funding from Ruptly, a video agency Western governments have labeled as being part of Russia’s “propaganda” infrastructure.

The EU imposed personal sanctions on Dogru in May 2025, accusing him of “systematically spreading false information about politically controversial topics, with the intention of sowing ethnic, political and religious discord” in Germany and claiming that his work aligned with Russian objectives.

‘Civil death’ without charges

The German financial restrictions severely limit what Dogru, a father of three young children, can legally do to support his family. He is barred from carrying out donation-funded journalism or accepting solidarity aid, as the government considers such payments an attempt to circumvent sanctions. His assets have been frozen, with only around €500 ($590) per month permitted for expenses. His travel has also been restricted.

Dogru’s supporters say he has effectively been subjected to a “civil death” despite no formal charges being filed against him. A campaign urging the EU to lift the sanctions was launched last week on the anniversary of their introduction.

Ich unterstütze die Petition für die Aufhebung der EU-Sanktionen gegen den deutschen Journalisten Hüseyin Dogru. Journalismus ist kein Verbrechen!https://t.co/KJQ5b6Dgnw

— Sahra Wagenknecht (@SWagenknecht) May 21, 2026

Wagenknecht is among the signatories of the petition, which argues that Dogru is facing state censorship in violation of the German constitution and EU laws.

After Western governments made combating what they call “Russian disinformation” a major policy priority, Moscow argued that the campaign reflected an attempt to preserve narrative control amid the rise of alternative online media.

Hungary will not supply weapons or military equipment to Ukraine, the country’s newly elected prime minister, Peter Magyar, said on Thursday shortly after meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in Brussels.

Magyar’s center-right Tisza party defeated Viktor Orban’s Fidesz last month, securing a two-thirds parliamentary majority. EU officials, who had previously criticized Orban as a Kremlin-friendly politician, voiced support for Magyar ahead of the election and were widely seen as expecting him to roll back many of the previous government’s policies.

Magyar, however, is far closer to Orban politically than the former prime minister opponents would like to admit. “I informed the Secretary General that Hungary is not supplying weapons or military equipment to Ukraine,” Magyar said in a post on X.

Hungarian Foreign Minister Anita Orban, a member of Magyar’s Tisza party, had previously said Hungary “stands for peace” and rejects sending either troops or weapons to Ukraine.

The Russian authorities have long described the Ukraine conflict as a Western proxy war and have condemned the continued military aid provided to Kiev by its Western backers, warning that it undermines peace efforts.

Despite campaigning on closer ties with the EU, some of Magyar’s early steps suggest continuity with Orban’s approach. He has opposed fast-tracking Ukraine’s EU membership and kept Hungary out of the bloc’s latest Ukraine funding initiative.

Earlier this month, Hungary restored a ban on Ukrainian agricultural imports after the new government “accidentally” allowed the restrictions to lapse. Brussels has argued that such bans are illegal because trade policy falls under EU authority. Last year, the European Commission reportedly considered legal action against member states over similar measures, though none has followed.

The US is deliberately causing hunger in Cuba as part of its economic strangulation of the island, City University of New York professor Danny Shaw has said in an interview with RT’s Rick Sanchez.

Speaking on the Sanchez Effect show, Shaw, an ethnography scholar, discussed his recent visit to Cuba and argued that the US is the main cause of the instability.

“US foreign policy for 67 years now has done everything to disrupt the Cuban economy, any sense of social and economic harmony,” Shaw said.

“The State Department, all these different agencies, the CIA, they know exactly how many calories Cubans have access to, and every day it’s less,” he added. “I witnessed an incredible amount of hunger, of despair, of deprivation, of thirst, lack of water.”

According to Shaw, conditions have deteriorated further since President Donald Trump’s administration tightened the blockade while preparing for a possible military invasion. He claimed that in some respects the shortages in Cuba have become worse than those in Haiti, another Caribbean country marked by prolonged instability and economic hardship.

Watch the full interview.

US President Donald Trump is set to escalate Washington’s economic pressure campaign on Cuba in an attempt to force regime change, Axios reported on Friday, citing sources. The island is already enduring near-total fuel starvation and daily blackouts stretching up to 20 hours.

The US has thus far opted for a phased campaign designed to choke Havana, but which avoids a direct military invasion, several unnamed officials told the outlet.

“The best way to describe it is ‘accelerationism,’” one senior official said, referring to the philosophy of hastening societal collapse. “But we don’t want to kill off the regime just yet. There’s a method to this. It’s in stages.”

Another official noted that even if Trump wanted to launch an invasion, he would prefer it to be over in less than 48 hours. Otherwise, “it’s a quagmire in the making. This could get messy,” he explained.

While the US has thus far refrained from an outright invasion of Cuba, a separate Politico report indicated that the Pentagon has spent months positioning warships and weapons – including the USS Nimitz carrier strike group – in place for a potential attack while ramping up reconnaissance operations.

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla warned this week that any military attack would trigger a “bloodbath” and the death of thousands of Cubans and Americans alike.

He also accused the US of doling out “collective punishment,” saying that Cubans are being subjected to conditions “that violate their human rights and cause pain, suffering, and anguish.”
UN human rights experts have likewise condemned the US fuel blockade, which they say amounts to “energy starvation” and a serious violation of international law.

Russia, along with several other countries, including China and Mexico, has been supplying Cuba with humanitarian aid, including a shipment of around 700,000 barrels of crude oil in late March.

Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket exploded during a preflight static fire test on a launchpad in Cape Canaveral, Florida on Thursday.

Jeff Bezos’ company said “an anomaly” occurred and that all personnel were safe.

Footage from a live stream shows the rocket erupting into a massive fireball.

The aerospace company was preparing for the fourth launch of its heavy-lift rocket, which features a reusable first-stage booster.

According to CBS News, the mission, tentatively scheduled for next month, was intended to launch 48 satellites for Amazon’s Leo internet service. The satellites were not aboard the rocket at the time of the incident.

A drone crashed into an apartment block in eastern Romania near the Ukrainian border on Friday, injuring two people, emergency services said.

According to the regional emergency services department, a drone carrying explosives struck the 10th floor of the building, sparking a fire. Around 70 residents were evacuated.

Catalin Sion, a spokesman for the Galati emergency services, said two people were hospitalized with minor injuries, while two others were treated for panic attacks.

Firefighters, police officers, and a bomb squad are working at the scene.

A video posted on social media purports to show the moment of the strike.

Reports of several people injured, some seriously, following the impact of a Russian one-way attack drone tonight on a residential building in Galați, Eastern Romania. pic.twitter.com/2dQO0Qxfgd

— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) May 28, 2026

The Romanian Defense Ministry later released a statement claiming that the drone originated from Russia and was involved in strikes in Ukraine. Moscow has not yet commented on the matter.

Several suspected Ukrainian drones have veered into the airspace of the Baltic states in recent months. On May 7, a UAV damaged four empty oil storage tanks in eastern Latvia near the Russian border. Moscow has accused the Baltic states of allowing Ukraine to use their airspace to conduct strikes deep inside Russia, which the NATO members have denied.

Russia has warned that deploying additional US troops near its borders would be unacceptable, after Washington pledged to send more soldiers to Poland.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at a press briefing on Thursday that reducing the number of US personnel stationed in Europe would be a “rational, justified, and long-overdue” step toward stabilizing what she described as an “imbalanced” security situation created by NATO policies.

Deploying more US troops in the region, on the other hand, would place them within striking distance, Zakharova added.

She said the move would only increase tensions in Europe and compel Russia to respond with “military-technical measures.” Zakharova accused NATO of pushing the continent toward a “suicidal” conflict.

Around 10,000 American service members are currently stationed in Poland, most of them on a rotational basis, while around 80,000 are deployed across Europe. Poland shares a border with Russia’s Kaliningrad Region, an exclave on the Baltic Sea.

Trump has frequently accused NATO members of failing to spend enough on defense and recently announced the withdrawal of 5,000 troops from Germany amid a dispute with Berlin over the war with Iran.

President Vladimir Putin has said Russia has no intention of attacking NATO members unless it is attacked first. Russian officials have accused the West of “reckless militarization” and cited NATO’s eastward expansion as one of the causes of the Ukraine conflict.

On Thursday, Sergey Naryshkin, the head of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, said NATO is “de facto preparing for a large-scale military conflict in the east.”

The FBI has seized gold bars worth tens of millions of dollars from the home of a former senior CIA official, according to court documents and a joint statement from the two agencies.

The warrant at David Rush’s residence in Virginia was carried out last Monday, but details of the case only surfaced ahead of a hearing scheduled for Friday in federal court in Alexandria.

Rush has been charged with defrauding the US government, according to court records. In an affidavit, the FBI alleged that he misled his employer, identified only as a government agency, about his academic background, his length of service in the US Navy, and his status as a trained military pilot – all of which were factors in determining his compensation. The agent who submitted the affidavit noted that the limited information was being provided to establish probable cause for a separate search warrant.

The subsequent raid on his home uncovered “approximately 303 gold bars, each of which weighed approximately one kilogram,” with an estimated value of $40 million, as well as $2 million in cash and 35 luxury watches. Many of the watches were Rolexes, according to the FBI.

Few details disclosed about CIA gold operation

According to the affidavit, Rush applied to the agency twice in 2006 and was hired after a third application in 2009. He made the false claim he was a naval pilot instructor in 2018, as he was being considered for a promotion.

The testimony does not explain whether the CIA failed to double-check his background on multiple occasions or knowingly paid him more than he could claim based on his actual record.

Ex-CIA official David Rush is putting former convicted Senator Bob "Gold Bars" Menendez to shame.

I was able to find his booking photo on @ABC

We're going to need a lot more information on what he was doing with $40M in gold bars and how he got those security clearances. https://t.co/TpfidziqNv pic.twitter.com/b9t1Vvid5d

— Kristi L. Talmadge (@KristiTalmadge) May 28, 2026

It also remains unclear what CIA assignment would have required over 300 kilograms of gold, what investigators believe Rush intended to do with the assets, or when his employment ended.

In a joint statement, the CIA and FBI said the intelligence agency identified “potential violations” during an internal review and then alerted federal investigators, who have the mandate to operate on US soil. No charges related to the gold trove have been filed so far.

Gold as criminal loot

Gold bars are a familiar symbol of hidden wealth in fiction, but they are relatively uncommon in modern criminal cases, except in investigations involving large criminal networks with the connections needed to move and store bullion.

A notable exception was the case of former New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez, who resigned in 2024 after the FBI accused him of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes, including gold. He was sentenced the following year to 11 years in prison.

Gold bars and other valuable items have also frequently appeared in corruption investigations involving current and former Ukrainian officials, according to law enforcement agencies.

India has a “crazy love” for Israel and shares a “unique relationship” with the Jewish state, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at the Jordan Valley Conference on Thursday, describing New Delhi as one of West Jerusalem’s strongest supporters.

Israel is currently facing “problems with delegitimization in the world, but not in India,” the prime minister said, praising ties with what he called a “huge power.”

Israel has faced international condemnation in recent years over its military campaign in Gaza. Critics of West Jerusalem have argued that Israeli operations in the Palestinian enclave, launched in response to the 2023 Hamas attack, amounted to genocide.

India and Israel formally established diplomatic relations in 1992, although New Delhi recognized the Jewish state in 1950, just a few years after its creation. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said relations between the two nations date back thousands of years, noting that “Jewish merchants traveled across sea routes that connected the Mediterranean with the Indian Ocean” to reach India.

During his visit to Israel in February, Modi praised what he called a “strong defense partnership” between the two countries and said New Delhi and West Jerusalem were also working on an “ambitious Free Trade Agreement.” India has reportedly signed arms deals with Israel worth $8.6 billion this year alone.

Netanyahu thanked New Delhi for standing “by Israel’s side” in the wake of the 2023 Hamas attack and described India as an “Asian ally” of the Jewish state.

After the US and Israel launched strikes against Iran earlier this year, New Delhi expressed concern. Speaking with Netanyahu in March, Modi called for an early cessation of hostilities and said the safety of civilians should remain the top priority.

Former US First Lady Jill Biden has said she thought her husband was having a stroke during his disastrous 2024 debate with Donald Trump. The remarks have revived scrutiny of Joe Biden’s decline and the efforts by his inner circle to defend his fitness for office.

Speaking to CBS on Wednesday, Jill Biden said she was “frightened” as the then-81-year-old president stumbled through the televised debate in June 2024, appearing to lose his train of thought and struggling to respond coherently.

“I’d never seen Joe like that before,” she said, adding that she thought at the time: “Oh, my God, he’s having a stroke. And it scared me to death.”

The debate triggered panic among Democrats and renewed allegations of mental decline, which were long denied by the Biden administration. It also prompted Democratic Party leaders to pressure Biden to step down as their presidential candidate in favor of Vice President Kamala Harris.

Jill Biden’s comments also cast new light on her own reaction immediately after the debate when she praised her husband, saying: “Joe, you did such a great job answering every question! You knew all the facts.”

The moment was widely mocked in the media, with some accusing her of treating the president like a “toddler.”

Critics also alleged that Jill was unwilling to acknowledge the scale of her husband’s deterioration and that she maintained a tightly controlled environment around him.

Several explanations have since been offered for Biden’s performance. His son Hunter Biden blamed sleeping pills, while others pointed to exhaustion, over-preparation, illness, or broader concerns over age-related impairment.

Conservative media seized on Jill Biden’s new account. Breitbart mocked the contrast between her recent comments and praise in 2024, calling the interview acknowledgment that critics of Biden’s fitness were right all along.

Left-leaning coverage has been more sympathetic, with The Guardian presenting the statement as a traumatic personal moment during a brutal campaign collapse rather than proof of deliberate deception.

Israel has intensified its attacks on Lebanon, striking Beirut for the first time since a ceasefire took effect last month. RT journalist Ali Rida Sbeity has reported from the scene that residents of the crowded southern suburb received “no warning” before the attack. 

Israeli fighter jets struck an apartment building in Choueifat, a densely populated district near Beirut’s international airport, on Thursday afternoon. The IDF described the raid as “targeted” but provided no further details, while Israeli media claimed the attack was aimed at a senior Hezbollah figure. 

Sbeity described the attack as “very precise,” adding that residents who had returned to the area after weeks of relative calm were caught off guard because it came “without any warning.” 

He also reported heavy drone activity over Beirut following the strikes, with several UAVs flying at low altitude above the capital and its southern suburbs. “People here know that if they [Israel] have a target, or what they call an assassination operation, it will happen without any warning,” he said. 

The strike came as Israel widened its military campaign in southern Lebanon. On Wednesday, the IDF issued mass evacuation orders across parts of southern Lebanon and declared the area near the border “a combat zone.” 

At least 16 people were reportedly killed and dozens more wounded in Israeli strikes overnight. The overall death toll since the war with Israel escalated on March 2 has surpassed 3,269, with more than 9,800 injured, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry.   

The lDF launched a military operation against Hezbollah just days after the US-Israeli attack on Iran. Lebanese and Israeli military officials are set to hold security talks in the US on Friday. Hezbollah has dismissed the talks, while Tehran has made an end to the war in Lebanon a condition for its own Pakistan-mediated negotiations with Washington.  

The United Nations has added Israel to its list of parties accused of sexual violence in conflict zones, Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon said on Thursday, denouncing the move as a political attack and accusing the organization of spreading “blood libels.”

While the designation has not yet been formally announced by the organization, Israel’s official UN account said on X that the chief of staff to Secretary-General Antonio Guterres had informed Danon of the decision “to place Israel and its security services on the UN’s blacklist regarding sexual violence in conflict zones – the same list as Hamas’s October 7 terrorists.”

Danon said on X that Israel had submitted evidence, documents, and detailed responses to every claim, and had invited UN representatives to examine the allegations on the ground, but that they “chose not to do so.”

In a video address, he described the decision to include Israel in the Conflict-Related Sexual Violence (CRSV) report as “outrageous,” accusing Guterres and his team of spreading “lies against Israel.”

The Israeli Foreign Ministry has also decried the “shameful and absurd UN decision,” accusing the organization of “long-standing, institutionalized hostility toward Israel.” The ministry confirmed that West Jerusalem will sever all ties with Guterres’ office and will “wait until a new UN Secretary-General is appointed.”

The blacklist designation follows a series of sexual assault allegations against Israeli forces and prison authorities. The New York Times recently published a report detailing allegations of sexual violence by Israeli soldiers, settlers, interrogators, and prison guards against Palestinians.

Earlier this week, Australian activists detained during Israel’s interception of the Global Sumud Flotilla also accused Israeli forces of rape, sexual assault, beatings, humiliation, and torture.

On Tuesday, the Canadian government demanded an independent investigation into Israel’s “appalling” treatment of the activists and said it had provided West Jerusalem with evidence of abuse against detainees, expecting “those responsible to be held accountable.”

Israel has denied the accusations, insisting it treats detainees appropriately.

This week, as UK Labour’s destructive leadership contest intensified, former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair staged a remarkable intervention in which he single-handedly sought to save the party from political oblivion.

Blair’s dramatic intrusion into Labour politics took the form of a 5,600-word essay – in which he denounced Keir Starmer, criticized leadership contenders Andy Burnham and Wes Streeting, and, more importantly, set out a radical political manifesto that he believes the Labour Party must adopt if it wishes to remain a viable force in UK politics.

The fact that Blair felt the need to act in this unprecedented manner – since resigning as prime minister in 2007 he has rarely intervened in UK politics – is, in itself, indicative of the severity of the existential crisis that has recently engulfed the Labour Party.

In his essay, Blair accuses the party of having lacked a credible policy program for decades – and he is especially critical of the Labour left, referring pointedly to “the infinite capacity of the Labour Party for self-delusion.”

Blair rightly claims that Starmer has “no coherent plan for the country” and describes Burnham as a good junior minister when he served in Blair’s own cabinet – faint praise indeed – but is brutally dismissive of his Corbynite economic agenda. Blair is also critical of Streeting for lacking policy coherence and for wanting to re-join the European Union. These criticisms are perfectly valid, and Blair is correct to refuse to endorse any of the talentless contenders for the Labour leadership.

Blair, who has never suffered from false modesty, then proceeds to set out his personal agenda for Labour’s political salvation – which he grandiosely terms his “ten-point plan.”

It appears that Blair, who believes that God has guided his political maneuverings in the past, has this week cast himself in the role of Labour’s savior – with his ten-point plan apparently being a secular version the ten commandments, that will lead Labour into the promised land where electoral success awaits it.

Blair’s plan is a remarkable political manifesto for a former Labour prime minister to have drafted – although it is fully in keeping with Blair’s own globalist prejudices and elitist worldview.

Blair describes his plan as a “radical centrist” political agenda, and he urges Labour to:

• completely embrace AI and facilitate its implementation by doing all it can to assist Big Tech corporations;
• promote cheaper energy by abandoning net zero and the green energy agenda, and fully exploit Britain’s coal and gas reserves;
• engage in a fundamental restructure of the welfare system by cutting pensions and incapacity and mental health benefits;
• reduce corporate taxes;
• reduce the minimum wage, wind back workers’ rights legislation, and National Insurance contributions by employers;
• spend less money on the NHS;
• take drastic action – “whatever it takes” – to put an end to illegal migration;
• abandon plans to re-join the European Union – on the grounds that Britain would do so from a position of weakness, and, more to the point, that the EU is opposed to advancing the interests of AI and Big Tech; and
• commit to fully supporting America’s foreign policy agenda.

Blair’s program, in essence, seeks to re-establish Britain as a sovereign nation state, with a revived economy based upon the free market and radical technological innovation – free from the constraints of the welfare state, net zero ideology, as well as EU and international agreements and obligations – and cravenly committed to support America’s foreign wars.

This, of course, is a deeply conservative agenda – not a centrist one – as the ultra-right-wing former Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg has gleefully pointed out this week. He has described Blair’s ten-point plan as a “manifesto for the right,” urged Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch to adopt it immediately, and praised Blair for revealing himself to be nothing less than “an authoritarian Tory.”

Interestingly, neither Burnham nor Streeting responded to Blair’s conservative policy program by enunciating a coherent counter program of their own.

There is, of course, no possibility of Labour adopting Blair’s ten-point plan – or, indeed, any viable political agenda that may result in them staying in power for long. The current Labour leadership is so inept and divided that it is incapable of formulating or agreeing upon any coherent, let alone credible agenda – hence both Burnham and Streeting’s wishy-washy and vague recent policy pronouncements.

In any event, Blair’s plan would only result in electoral disaster for Labour – because it would drive working class Labour voters in the northern “red wall” seats into the waiting arms of Reform, and cause more progressive Labour voters in the south-east to flee to the Greens and the Liberal Democrats in droves.

That Blair should have put forward a conservative elitist political manifesto should come as no surprise. Rees-Mogg, like Blair a politician of religious conviction, sees Blair as “the one sinner who has repented.” That, however, is to misunderstand Blair – who has not repented of anything.

It must be remembered that Blair – unlike Gordon Brown – never had any genuine connection with the Labour Party of the 1980s, or, more importantly, the trade union movement.

Blair created the modern Labour Party in the 1990s – together with Peter Mandelson, now sadly of blessed, if fading memory – and he was always a determined opponent of the left wing of the party.

Indeed, one motive for his intervention this week may have been to destroy Burnham’s chances of becoming prime minister. Burnham once sat in Blair’s cabinet – at that time wearing Armani suits – and it is difficult for even a political Pope to forgive an apostate, especially one who, decades later, adopts the heresy of Corbynism.

Blair has always been something of a pragmatist, and his recent about-face on net zero simply reflects the fact that the green energy titans have recently been displaced in the West by the Tech Giants as the rulers of the new technologically based global economy.

Politically, the tech titans are all authoritarians – witness the totalitarian screeds of Peter Thiel, the mentor of J.D. Vance, and Elon Musk’s support initially for Reform, and more lately (Nigel Farage does not appreciate being dictated to) for the even more right-wing Restore Party. This probably explains, at least in part, Blair’s recent shift to the political right.

It may also be relevant that Blair’s think tank, the modestly named Tony Blair Institute, receives substantial funding from the powerful Big Tech corporations.

On one issue, however, Blair has remained absolutely consistent – his unwavering support for America’s wars of foreign aggression. From Kosovo to Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Gaza, Blair has always been an enthusiastic warmonger, and ultra loyal supporter of whoever happens to reside in the White House at any given time, no matter what political party has elected that esteemed personage to that high office.

In this week’s essay, Blair took time out to pointedly condemn Starmer for failing to provide support for Trump and Netanyahu’s ill-advised and failed war with Iran – incidentally, one of the very few principled decisions ever taken by that now unfortunate lame-duck prime minister.

What then has been the effect of Blair’s extraordinary political intervention this week? I suspect not much – other than to intensify the existing divisions and chaos within the terminally moribund Labour Party.

Prior to this week the Labour Party had thrown up one unimpressive “savior” – Andy Burnham – and now it apparently has two rescuers determined to save it from political oblivion. 

But any credible political party with a viable future has no need of even one “savior” – and only a party in its political death throes could create two such misguided and politically redundant redeemers as Burnham and Tony Blair.

Vale the UK Labour Party.

The heads of two leading artificial intelligence companies have offered sharply different forecasts on whether the technology will trigger mass job losses. The split comes as as Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, and other tech giants continue large-scale layoffs tied to AI restructuring.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said on Tuesday that AI is unlikely to trigger a global “jobs apocalypse,” admitting that he had been wrong about how quickly the technology would eliminate white-collar jobs.

“I’m delighted to ⁠be wrong about this, I thought there would have been more impact on entry-level white-collar jobs being eliminated by now than ​has actually happened,” Altman told Commonwealth Bank of Australia CEO Matt Comyn.

Altman said OpenAI had been “roughly right” about the technological development of AI since the launch of ChatGPT in 2022, but “pretty wrong” about its social and economic effects, arguing that many jobs still include an irreplaceable “human part.”

Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah, on the other hand, has warned that there is “a real possibility that AI will displace human labor at very large scale.”

Speaking at the Vatican during the presentation of Pope Leo XIV’s AI encyclical on Monday, Olah said supporting those displaced by AI would become “a moral imperative of historic proportions.” He also warned that AI development is concentrated in a handful of wealthy nations, with no mechanism to ensure the gains are shared globally.

The split comes as major US tech firms continue cutting jobs while pouring vast sums into AI infrastructure. The Financial Times reported last month that Meta and Microsoft could cut up to 16,000 employees as both companies face rising AI-related costs. Earlier, Amazon announced roughly 30,000 layoffs across two rounds linked to restructuring and its AI push. Oracle has also reportedly laid off around 30,000 people worldwide.

Meanwhile, US polling published in March showed that Americans increasingly view artificial intelligence as a threat to their livelihoods and that nearly 80% of respondents fear the government has no plan to protect workers from AI-related job losses.

Last year, US Senator Bernie Sanders predicted that AI could wipe out nearly 100 million white- and blue-collar jobs in the US over the next decade.

Russia is setting a “trap” for the EU by encouraging member states to decide who should represent the bloc in direct talks with Moscow, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas has claimed.

EU officials have for months complained that US-Russian negotiations on the Ukraine conflict have left Europeans sidelined. However, the 27-member bloc has still failed to agree on who could speak for its interests in possible direct negotiations with Moscow, which were cut off after the escalation of the conflict in 2022.

“I find that it is a trap that Russia wants us to walk into, that we discuss who talks to them, and they are already picking who is suitable and who is not,” Kallas told reporters on Thursday ahead of an informal meeting of EU foreign ministers in Cyprus.

Kallas also vowed to keep pushing for restrictions on the Russian military to be included in any Ukraine peace deal. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov refused to address the demand, saying he does not “comment on idiotic statements.”

Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky is treating the US as a “piggy bank” and is feeding Washington with “propaganda” to get more US-made air defense systems, Republican Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna has said.

On Wednesday, Zelensky received Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal and Democratic Congressman Jim Himes in Kiev, saying that Ukraine is grateful to the US and President Donald Trump for what he called “strong bipartisan support.”

During the talks, Zelensky said Kiev had a “significant need” for air defense missiles, adding that he had sent a letter to the White House and Congress with a wish list. Earlier, Axios reported that Zelensky had asked for an “urgent supply of Patriot interceptors,” with the Ukrainian leader himself saying last month that the missiles are “in such a deficit, it could not be any worse.”

Luna also recalled that Trump has been pushing for a negotiated settlement to the conflict, but Zelensky is “the ONLY person holding out on the deal.” “The war CANNOT continue,” Luna added.

Under the Trump administration, Ukraine has been procuring US-made weapons mainly through the PURL initiative, a NATO-backed mechanism under which Kiev’s backers fund shipments for Ukraine. Zelensky has praised the scheme, but said it does not fully cover shortages.

In March, Zelensky claimed that the US was pressing Ukraine to withdraw from Russia’s Donbass as a precondition for any post-conflict American security guarantees. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, however, dismissed the claim as “lies.”

An albino buffalo in Bangladesh nicknamed “Donald Trump” because of its blond tuft and resemblance to the US president has been spared from sacrifice during the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha after a last-minute government intervention.

The nearly 700-kg animal had already been sold for ritual slaughter and was being prepared for the Muslim festival when authorities stepped in after viral videos and selfie-seeking crowds turned it into an unlikely celebrity.

The rescue was reported on Wednesday by multiple outlets. Bangladeshi Home Minister Salahuddin Ahmed ordered officials to stop the sacrifice, refund the buyer, and relocate the animal.

The pale-skinned buffalo from Narayanganj near Dhaka became a social media sensation after videos highlighted its cream-colored forelock, which many Bangladeshis said looked like Trump’s trademark hairstyle.

Crowds traveled daily to the farm to pose for photos as clips of the animal spread widely online.

Residents gathered in the Jijira area on Wednesday hoping to catch a glimpse of the buffalo before Eid festivities, only to find authorities had already removed it. Footage published by local media showed the animal being led away with ropes and loaded onto a pickup truck as early visitors looked on. Some reports said the buffalo was taken to the national zoo in Dhaka while others said it might be returned temporarily to the farm where it was raised.

Albino buffaloes are extremely rare in Bangladesh because of a genetic condition that reduces pigmentation leaving them with pale skin and light hair.

Germany is drawing up a law that would force former soldiers to attend regular military exercises, as Berlin pushes ahead with its militarization campaign, Der Spiegel reported on Wednesday. Moscow has denounced the EU’s military buildup as being aimed against Russia and a ploy to distract the public from deepening domestic crises.

According to the draft Reserve Strengthening Act seen by the German outlet, all men and women who have performed less than one year of voluntary military service and are under 45 will be required to take part in military exercises either two weeks a year or every two years.

Those who served for more than a year, or who enlisted as career or temporary soldiers, could be compelled to participate until the age of 65, the paper says.

The proposed bill is the latest move in Germany’s sweeping military buildup, with Chancellor Friedrich Merz vowing last year to turn the Bundeswehr into “the strongest conventional army in Europe.” 

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius has set a goal of 265,000 active troops and 200,000 reservists by the mid-2030s, while Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said on Friday that the government will spend more than 4% of the country’s GDP on defense this year. Germany’s total military spending in 2026 will stand at around €108 billion ($125 billion), up from €86 billion in 2025.

Germany has justified the costly militarization campaign by citing Russia and claiming that Moscow will remain “the greatest security threat for Europe” for the foreseeable future. Germany and other EU countries have also speculated that Russia could attack NATO in Europe within several years – a claim dismissed by Moscow as “nonsense.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said the EU’s militarization drive will only destabilize the continent, stressing that Moscow views it as “aggressive” posturing. Russia has also accused European governments of using propaganda to turn it into a “model external enemy” to justify the continent’s internal problems.

Germany is concerned about a potential flood of Ukrainian immigrants from Poland after Warsaw sharply reduced social benefits, Bild reported on Wednesday, citing a confidential report by the German security authorities.

Germany and Poland have accepted the largest numbers of Ukrainian refugees in the EU since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022, according to Eurostat data.

Germany was hosting around 1.3 million people under temporary protection as of March 2026, accounting for more than 29% of the EU total. The number in Poland was around a million, or more than 22% of all Ukrainians granted protection across the bloc.

“The content of the new regulations [in Poland] is primarily aimed at placing Ukrainian nationals on the same footing as third-country nationals,” the report seen by Bild stated. “In addition to free access to healthcare and social services, the right to free accommodation is also being abolished,” it added.

Earlier this year, Warsaw approved legislation gradually phasing out the Special Act on Assistance to Ukrainian Citizens, introduced in March 2022 as an emergency response to the escalated conflict. The act created a unique legal regime granting Ukrainians rights nearly equal to those of Polish citizens and access to extensive financial and social benefits.

Germany has also taken steps to tighten support rules for Ukrainians, including plans to reduce welfare payments for new arrivals.

German officials have increasingly emphasized labor market integration and faster employment for refugees. In November, Chancellor Friedrich Merz warned that the employment rate among Ukrainian refugees living in Germany is unacceptably low.

Russian Parliament Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin said in 2024 that the issue of Ukrainian refugees was becoming an increasing challenge for Europe and could develop into a new migrant crisis.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said it targeted a US airbase in the region on Thursday in response to new strikes, marking the second armed clash between the rivals this week.

The latest confrontation began with reports of explosions shortly after midnight in Iran’s southern port city of Bandar Abbas, which is home to a naval base.

In a statement to the media, a US official said American forces shot down four Iranian kamikaze drones that “posed a threat around the Strait of Hormuz” and had also struck a ground control station in Bandar Abbas that “was about to launch a fifth drone.”

The official described the actions as “measured, purely defensive, and intended to maintain the ceasefire.”

The IRGC later released a statement saying it targeted a US base involved in the earlier strike on a site near Bandar Abbas Airport. “The aggressor bears full responsibility for the consequences,” the statement said.

The hostilities followed US “self-defense” strikes on Iranian naval vessels and sites in the southern Hormozgan province on Monday. Tehran denounced the attacks as a gross violation of the ceasefire reached on April 8.

Although US officials indicated this week that the sides are close to reaching a preliminary peace agreement, there are no signs that either Washington or Tehran is willing to compromise. Both countries have accused each other of setting unacceptable terms.

Australia could host American nuclear weapons at some point, Russian Security Council Secretary Sergey Shoigu has warned. Washington is also eyeing Japan and South Korea as deployment options, he told a Russia-ASEAN meeting on Wednesday.

The US military could deploy Typhon missile systems in southwestern Japan for the Valiant Shield and Orient Shield joint exercises as early as next month. The systems are specifically designed to fire nuclear-capable Tomahawk missiles. The Japanese embassy in Moscow has stated that the Typhon system would be “stored” at a US base in Japan after the drills, claiming that this does not amount to “permanent deployment.”

“Japan and the Republic of Korea are preparing to host American nuclear weapons on their territory,” Shoigu told the Russia-ASEAN security meeting. “Such weapons could also end up on the territory of Australia because of its participation in the AUKUS partnership.”

Canberra joined the AUKUS security pact with the US and UK in 2021. Under the deal, the US agreed to provide the Australian Navy with the nuclear technology needed to produce and operate Virginia-class submarines. The Australian Submarine Agency maintains that its acquisition of nuclear-powered undersea vessels does not breach the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

A bill was introduced in the US Congress last month that would oblige President Donald Trump to create a task force to explore potential avenues for creating a NATO-like structure in the Asia-Pacific and assess their feasibility. Tokyo called for such a bloc as early as in 2024.

Both Moscow and Beijing have previously expressed concern about potential NATO expansion into Asia. In October, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused NATO of seeking to turn the entire Eurasian continent into a “fiefdom” aimed at “containing China, isolating Russia,” and confronting North Korea.

The US is making unacceptable demands during negotiations with Iran after failing to defeat the country militarily, Ali Bagheri, the deputy secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, has told RT.

Bagheri, who served as foreign minister from 2021 to 2024, spoke to RT in Moscow, where he attended a security conference and met with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Georgy Borisenko.

He argued that the “excessive demands” made by the US demonstrate that officials in Washington are “detached from reality.”

Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz to ships from “hostile countries” in response to US and Israeli airstrikes and has since insisted on its right to regulate traffic and collect tolls. Bagheri said the conflict shows that the status of the strait is vital to Iran’s security.

“Iran, like other independent countries, believes in peace through dialogue and negotiations. The US does not believe in peace through diplomacy. It believes in peace through force, aggression, and barbarism,” he said.

Iran fired drones and missiles at Gulf states hosting US bases during the conflict, arguing that the strikes were carried out in self-defense.

Although US officials indicated this week that the sides are close to reaching a preliminary agreement, there are no signs that either Washington or Tehran is willing to compromise. Both countries have accused each other of setting unacceptable terms.

Former US President Bill Clinton should not have been impeached for his affair with Monica Lewinsky, but for lying in an earlier sexual harassment case, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has said.

Gingrich led the 1998 impeachment of Clinton, in which ‘Slick Willy’ was charged with – and acquitted of – lying under oath and obstruction of justice. The charges centered on Clinton claiming that he “did not have sexual relations with” White House intern Monica Lewinsky, which he did.

Speaking to New York Post columnist Miranda Devine on Tuesday, Gingrich said he now considers the decision to impeach Clinton over the Lewinsky affair to be “a mistake.”

“I think it was a mistake because the real problem wasn’t Lewinsky,” he said. “The real problem was he had committed perjury in a case involving sexual harassment while he was governor. In fact, he was stripped of his law license in Arkansas after he left the presidency, and for five years couldn’t practice because he clearly committed a felony.”

The focus of the impeachment on Clinton’s sex life, rather than his “felonies… trivialized” the process, Gingrich told Devine.

Ultimately, Clinton saw out the end of his second term, and Gingrich was forced to resign after the Republican Party lost seats in the 1998 midterm elections. Gingrich later admitted that he was having an affair with a Congressional staffer during the impeachment saga.

Earlier this month, the New York Times interviewed dozens of lawmakers and staffers, concluding that sexual harassment “is still rampant among Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill and often goes unaddressed.” Two prominent lawmakers – Representatives Eric Swalwell and Tony Gonzalez – have resigned this year over inappropriate relationships with staffers.

President Donald Trump has suggested that the US would attack its ally Oman if it attempts to seize control of the Strait of Hormuz, which has effectively been closed since the US and Israel launched attacks against Iran in February.

According to Reuters, Trump made the remarks after Iranian state TV reported that it obtained an unofficial draft agreement that would reopen the vital waterway, with Iran and Oman jointly managing maritime traffic.

“No, the strait is going to be open to everybody,” Trump told journalists during a cabinet meeting on Wednesday. “We’ll watch over it, but nobody’s going to control it. That’s part of the negotiation that we have.”

Oman, a key US ally, mediated talks on Iran’s nuclear program until they were suspended by the conflict.

Iran and Oman lie on opposite sides of the narrowest part of the Strait of Hormuz, which normally handles around 25% of global seaborne oil trade and 20% of liquefied natural gas (LNG) shipments.

Iran closed the route to ships from “hostile nations” following the US-Israeli airstrikes, while the US declared its own blockade of Iranian ports in April. Tehran has since insisted on its “sovereign right” to manage traffic through the strait and collect tolls.

Iran’s peace terms reportedly include demands for reparations, the withdrawal of US troops from the region, and an end to Israel’s wars in Lebanon and Gaza. The US has demanded that Iran completely dismantle its nuclear program, which Tehran insists is entirely peaceful.

Dan Greaney, the Simpsons writer who foresaw Donald Trump winning the White House decades in advance, has announced his own 2028 bid for presidency.

The Simpsons’ longtime writer and producer wrote the ‘Bart to the Future’ episode, broadcast in March of 2000, in which an adult Lisa Simpson appears as “America’s first straight female president,” who inherits a “budget crunch from President Trump.”

In a video on social media on Tuesday, Greaney, dressed as a prophet in a loose robe and large fake beard, accuses Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance, and “billionaires, careerists and cowards in both parties” of turning their backs on America’s founding principle “that all men are created equal.”

“The government is supposed to work for everyone. Democracy for all, accountability for all, prosperity for all. We must restore this,” he says.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Dan Greaney (@dangreaneyusa)

“Wait, I am a lawyer,” he says, announcing that he would run for president of the United States on the platform “America for All.”

According to his campaign website, the self-styled “progressive Republican” supports fighting influence-buying, improving transparency in US politics, making housing more readily available, and expanding universal health care.

Students are being taught that black people cannot be racist towards white people as part of an educational initiative aimed at, yes, countering racism.

According to teaching materials adopted by a group of Sheffield schools and introduced by Notre Dame High School, teenagers are explicitly taught: “Black people can be racially prejudiced towards a white person which is wrong and totally unacceptable. However, this is not racism. Racism is racial prejudice plus power. In the UK, white people hold the cultural power.”

In a lesson plan on “being anti-racist in our actions” for children aged seven to 11, a portion of the curriculum is devoted to “empathy building” including “privilege”.

It says: “In Britain, white people are likely to be privileged by the colour of their skin. This privilege arises because they are much less likely to be affected by racist behaviour, including bias, discrimination and verbal and physical abuse.

“Privileged people have a responsibility to reduce racism by: being aware of it; improving their own language and behaviour; challenging their friends’ language and behaviour; reporting incidents of racism; providing support to those who have been harmed by discrimination.”

The initiative pushes the idea that all white people enjoy “white privilege,” despite the fact that this is glaringly untrue. There are large segments of the white population that are impoverished and discriminated against on a daily basis. At the same time, many white people are the target of violence largely due to the color of their skin. In short, the term is highly divisive and unjustly generalizes and alienates disadvantaged white communities.

In a question-and-answer section that seems to accept that all of this is the consequence of racism, students are asked: “What is happening? Why is this an example of racism? If race isn’t real, how do you explain this? Has the concept of race led some people to believe that some groups of people are different to others?

“Are certain racial groups being treated differently? Are there other possible explanations for this?”

But is this treatment of black people simply the result of racism and skin color? Or is it more due to the realities on the ground which show that, per capita, black people are more prone to commit crimes than white people? Could it be that it is the black crime rate that largely causes racism against black people? This is not to suggest that racism doesn’t exist, or that there are no police officers who unfairly target black citizens, but crime statistics don’t lie.

In order to resolve the problem, society needs to get to the root causes of black crime, which include economic inequality that black people disproportionately suffer from. Until we reach that day, reckless school lessons like the ones being introduced in the UK risk inciting violence against white people, and thankfully there are British politicians who are able to see the inherent dangers of teaching materials like these.

She said: “It is deeply alarming that children as young as seven are being exposed to divisive identity politics in schools under the banner of ‘anti-racism education.’

“These materials teach children that black prejudice against white people cannot be described as racism, present contested concepts like ‘white privilege’ as unquestionable fact and encourage pupils to see themselves primarily through the lens of race.

“It is hugely damaging and exactly the kind of Left-wing ideological nonsense that should be nowhere near our classrooms.

“Labelling children by race and teaching them to focus on what divides them will only foster resentment and deepen division.”

Parents in the United Kingdom are beginning to push back against an educational system that seems more interested in indoctrinating students with critical race theory than providing a solid education. Children should not be spending their childhood thinking about their peers’ skin color or whether racism against white people exits. In reality, when left to their own devices, children do not place any importance on other children’s skin color and play happily together. It is only when meddling ideologues intervene that children begin to believe there is a problem.

Israel carried out heavy strikes across southern Lebanon after declaring the entire area a “combat zone.” RT witnessed the evacuations ahead of the bombardment.

Wednesday’s escalation came after Israel Defense Forces (IDF) issued evacuation orders for several areas ahead of what it described as strikes on Hezbollah targets. Maps published by the IDF earlier in the day marked large sections of the Lebanese Tyre region for evacuation, and military spokesman Avichay Adraee warned that all areas south of the Zahrani River were considered a “combat zone.”

Reporting from Lebanon’s Tyre District, RT journalist Ali Rida Sbeity said residents had begun fleeing the city, noting that many had “stayed throughout the war, even at its peak and after the ceasefire, but now they are taking this road toward Saida and Beirut, seeking safer areas.”

In a statement posted hours later on X, the IDF claimed that it had struck military buildings, command centers, and launch sites allegedly used by Hezbollah in the Bekaa Valley and southern Lebanon. The military claimed that around 550 Hezbollah-linked targets had been hit since the beginning of the week, adding that operations around Tyre were ongoing.

צה"ל תקף מבנים צבאיים, מפקדות ואתרי שיגור בבקעא: מתחילת השבוע הותקפו כ-550 מטרות של ארגון הטרור חיזבאללה בלבנון

לאורך היום, צה"ל תקף בבקעא ובמספר מרחבים בדרום לבנון מבנים צבאיים, מפקדות ואתרי שיגור בשימוש ארגון הטרור חיזבאללה.

תקיפת המפקדות בצור נמשכות גם ברגעים אלו pic.twitter.com/E0qkGQ3Knt

— צבא ההגנה לישראל (@idfonline) May 27, 2026

Lebanese media reported strikes on several southern towns, including Deir Amas, Braiqaa, Srifa, and Toura. The Lebanese army said one of its soldiers had been killed near a military position in the Bekaa region.

The intensified bombing comes amid indirect talks between the US and Iran, with Tehran asserting that Israel must bring a halt to its military operations against Hezbollah if the ceasefire with Washington is to be extended. US President Donald Trump has previously said that Israel should only engage in “surgical” military strikes in Lebanon.

According to Lebanon’s Health Ministry, at least 3,213 people have been killed and 9,737 wounded since Israel launched its military operation against Hezbollah following the US-Israeli attack on Iran in late February.

Senior figures within Germany’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) are allegedly discussing the possible ousting of Chancellor Friedrich Merz due to his record-low approval ratings, according to German media reports.

According to Bild, talks about potentially “swapping” Merz for another chancellor are reportedly taking place within the party’s top ranks, including among regional leaders such as Hendrik Wust of North Rhine-Westphalia, Boris Rhein of Hesse, and Michael Kretschmer of Saxony.

Wust, who leads Germany’s most populous state, has also been floated by Bild, Focus, and Die Welt as a potential replacement for Merz. Several outlets have described him as Germany’s third most popular politician and the highest-rated CDU figure, while Merz was recently named the world’s most unpopular political leader in a public opinion survey.

Eckart Lohse, head of the parliamentary editorial office at FAZ, wrote on Wednesday that even CDU members who don’t openly oppose Merz now “consider the chancellor weak” and speak of “a palpable feeling of unease.”

Other outlets, including Bild and Focus, have described the reported talks about removing the chancellor as “rumors,” stressing that no concrete plans have emerged so far.

Since taking office in May of 2025, Merz has stepped up support for Ukraine and accelerated Germany’s rearmament drive. He has pledged to make the Bundeswehr Europe’s “strongest” conventional army, citing what he describes as a growing Russian threat.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly dismissed claims that Moscow plans to attack NATO countries as “nonsense,” accusing European leaders of using the narrative to distract their citizens from domestic problems.

Merz has also urged Germans to work more, describing the country’s welfare model as outdated and unsustainable. By mid-April, his disapproval rating had climbed to 76%, with just 19% of Germans satisfied with his performance.

“Significant fractions” of Pope Leo XIV’s recent encyclical on the dangers of artificial intelligence were actually written by artificial intelligence, analyst Linch Zhang claims.

In the 42,000-word ‘Magnifica Humanitas’ (Magnificent Humanity), the pontiff warned of the growing, state-like power of Silicon Valley, the immorality of autonomous weapons, and the dangers of allowing AI to “construct a new Tower of Babel” and reduce human beings to “a resource to be used and exploited.”

Despite its appeal for AI to be regulated and “disarmed,” large portions of ‘Magnifica Humanitas’ show some telltale signs of being written by AI, Zhang claimed in a blog post on Tuesday.

Running the text through AI detector Pangram, Zhang found that some paragraphs were “essentially 0% AI,” but others were between 40% and 100% AI-written. All four of Francis’ encyclicals registered as entirely human-written, as did writings by Popes Benedict XVI and John Paul II. Pangram also flagged the Italian version of the encyclical for AI, suggesting that artificial intelligence was not just used to translate the document.

When Zhang’s experiment was repeated by The Verge, roughly 46% of the encyclical was determined to be written by AI.

The specific LLM (large language model) used to craft the text was likely Anthropic’s Claude, Zhang claimed, citing his own familiarity with Claude and its overuse of certain words such as “genuinely.”

The fact that certain paragraphs appear completely free of AI suggests that “some senior Vatican officials heavily used AI assistance for this encyclical and many (probably including Pope Leo himself) didn’t,” Zhang wrote.

“My tentative hypothesis is that Pope Leo does not approve of the AI usage in encyclicals, and plausibly was not even aware of significant AI usage in his own encyclical,” Zhang concluded.

The Vatican has not commented on Zhang’s claims. Nor has Anthropic, whose co-founder, Christopher Olah, delivered an address alongside the Pope on Monday.

The EU could temporarily deny future member states’ veto rights in order to prevent them from interfering with the bloc’s foreign policy, the Guardian reported on Tuesday, citing EU sources.

The idea is reportedly being discussed as Brussels seeks to bring new members in before the end of the decade, while avoiding the kind of internal roadblocks that the likes of Hungary and Slovakia have put up to impede EU military and financial support for Ukraine.

According to the newspaper, the European Commission is now considering a plan under which new entrants would not automatically receive the power to block foreign policy decisions or other matters requiring unanimity, such as taxation. The measure could apply for several years after accession, four EU sources told the outlet.

The proposal to restrict veto rights was reportedly brought up during treaty negotiations with Montenegro, which has been negotiating accession for 14 years and is hoping to become the EU’s 28th member by 2028. It is currently considered the frontrunner among the bloc’s nine official candidate countries.

If the ban is ultimately included, Montenegro’s treaty could later serve as a template for other candidates, the Guardian claimed, noting that the measure is “legally borderline” and would have to be time-limited to avoid creating second-class EU members.

A number of EU officials have since called for abandoning the bloc’s unanimity principles, with German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul stressing that an EU with over 33 members could not continue operating under rules designed for a smaller bloc.

Former EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has similarly argued that unanimity has made the bloc irrelevant in international politics, calling for a smaller core group of members to be established that would make decisions on EU policy.

However, critics of this push have accused Brussels of using the Ukraine conflict and enlargement debate to centralize power at the expense of national sovereignty. Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico has warned that abolishing veto rights on fundamental EU issues would be “the beginning of the end” for the bloc.

Spanish police have searched the headquarters of the country’s ruling Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) in a graft probe involving alleged influence-peddling and irregular party financing.

According to local media, investigators from the Civil Guard’s elite Central Operative Unit (UCO) entered the party’s Madrid offices on Wednesday to obtain evidence of suspected illegal financing. 

The case is reportedly centered on former PSOE member Leire Diez; several former party officials and businessmen are also said to be under scrutiny. Diez is accused of attempting to influence graft investigations and discredit members of Spain’s anti-corruption police unit, allegations she denies.

PSOE, which is led by Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, said it would cooperate fully with investigators and hand over any requested information but has denied any attempt to conceal evidence.

Sanchez, who is in Rome for talks with Pope Leo XIV, told reporters there had been “a lot of fake news” and insisted the party “will act decisively, as we always have.” He also warned against politicizing judicial investigations and rejected opposition calls for snap elections, saying he could not call a vote for “partisan interests” but only “for the general interest of the citizens.”

Sanchez, who has led Spain since 2018, has emerged as one of the EU’s most vocal critics of Israel’s war in Gaza and the US-Israeli military escalation with Iran. He has pushed for limits on arms sales to Israel and refused to allow American forces to use Spanish bases for operations linked to strikes on Iran, saying Madrid would not be “complicit” in the conflict – moves that have heightened tensions with Washington and West Jerusalem.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has slammed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the destruction of Gaza, warning that Muslims may soon teach him a “lesson.”

Erdogan made the remarks during Eid al-Adha celebrations in his hometown of Rize, where he called for Muslim unity and putting pressure on Israel.

“What is happening in Palestine, in Gaza, gives us a special stance, a special vigil this Eid. God willing, this tyrant Netanyahu will soon learn the lesson he deserves from the Muslims of the world,” he said, according to Anadolu news agency.

The comments came days after Israel detained hundreds of activists from a Gaza-bound flotilla, which had departed from Türkiye carrying humanitarian aid and pro-Palestinian campaigners seeking to challenge Israel’s blockade of the enclave.

Erdogan branded the interception “piracy and banditry.”

Erdogan has been among the most vocal critics of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza since it began in 2023, accusing Israel of “genocide” and “state terrorism” against Palestinians, while comparing the Israeli government to Nazis at times.

In July of 2024, ten months into the conflict, Erdogan said Türkiye could act against Israel “just like” it did in Libya and Nagorno-Karabakh, which was widely interpreted by Israeli media and officials as a threat of military intervention.

Israeli officials have increasingly portrayed Türkiye as a regional threat. Following Erdogan’s 2024 remarks, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz compared the Turkish leader to Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, warning him to “remember what happened there and how it ended.”

Earlier this year, former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said Turkey could become Israel’s leading regional adversary, making it the “next Iran.”

Has also pointed to the economic links between the two countries, noting that Türkiye provides transit for Azerbaijani oil to Israel, which reportedly meets up 60% of the Jewish state’s crude oil needs.

North Korea has tested newly-developed missile launch and tactical cruise missile systems equipped with precision AI guidance, KCNA state news agency reported on Wednesday.

The drills, carried out on Tuesday, assessed the power of a tactical ballistic missile’s specialized warhead and the reliability of an AI-guided 240mm artillery rocket, as well as the accuracy of a new AI-guided tactical cruise missile, the agency said.

The new North Korean cruise missile’s “tactical cruising shell” has a combination of autonomous navigation and TERCOM (terrain contour matching) navigation systems, as well as “an AI terminal guidance function” that could allow Pyongyang to precisely hit targets at a distance of up to 100 km, KCNA said. With systems like these, artificial intelligence steers the munition towards its target in the final stages of flight.

The firing control and automation systems on the three tested launch vehicles have been updated for the “conditions of modern warfare,” North Korean leader Kim Jong-un said at the test, according to KCNA.

The main task of Pyongyang’s armed forces and defense science sector is to defend North Korea’s sovereignty and guarantee its economic and political development “with powerful war deterrence,” he said.

Various countries, including the US and Russia, have been increasingly focused on integrating AI into their military systems.

AI is also being integrated into Russia’s administrative and defense sectors, Russian President Vladimir Putin said last month. Putin instructed the government to develop a national plan to deploy its own “fully sovereign” AI solutions in all areas, including security and national defense.

After February 28, 2026, relations between the United Arab Emirates and Iran entered a new phase of escalation, one in which the old formula of cautious pragmatism effectively stopped working.

Formally, Abu Dhabi declared its neutrality in the war which the US and Israel launched against Iran, and emphasized that it was not providing its territory, airspace, or its waters for strikes against Iran. However, the course of the war quickly showed that Tehran no longer believed such statements. The UAE remains a key US partner in the Persian Gulf, a participant in the Abraham Accords with Israel, and an important financial and logistical hub within the Western infrastructure in the region. For that reason, in Iran’s perception, the Emirates increasingly look like a participant in an anti-Iranian coalition.

The central symbol of the dispute remains the issue of Abu Musa, Greater Tunb, and Lesser Tunb, the three islands located near the entrance to the Strait of Hormuz. Iran established control over them in 1971, shortly before the creation of the UAE. The Emirates have since regarded the islands as occupied territory and have demanded that the dispute be resolved through negotiations or international arbitration. For Iran, the matter is closed, since Tehran considers the islands part of its own territory. For the UAE, it is an unhealed wound from the birth of the federation and a constant reminder of its strategic vulnerability before a larger neighbor. Today’s discussions about a possible military scenario around the islands are perceived as a direct return to the most painful issue in Emirati-Iranian relations.

A veneer of neutrality

Before the current war, Abu Dhabi tried to be on good terms with everyone. It needed to preserve trade with Iran, ensure security through the US, develop technological and defense cooperation with Israel, and, in its public rhetoric, avoid direct involvement in the conflict. But after the US and Israel attacked Iran, that balance began to collapse. Media reports appeared about secret contacts between Israeli officials and the UAE leadership at the height of the war. CBS News reported that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had made a secret visit to the UAE and met with the country’s president, Mohammed bin Zayed.

According to the channel, the meeting took place in late March, after the current military escalation had already begun. The Israeli side treated the visit as a fact, while the UAE publicly denied the reports. That discrepancy itself became an important political episode, damaging the image of Emirati neutrality and giving Iran another argument for accusing Abu Dhabi of hidden coordination with West Jerusalem.

Israeli military assistance

Axios, citing Israeli and American officials, reported that Israel had sent the UAE an Iron Dome air defense system and military personnel to operate it – later confirmed by US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee. For the UAE, this cooperation can be explained as a defensive necessity, since the country found itself under the threat of missile and drone strikes. For Iran, however, the logic looks different. Tehran perceives this as the integration of the UAE into Israel’s military infrastructure in the Gulf.

Officially, Abu Dhabi can argue that the matter concerns only the protection of civilian infrastructure. But war erases the boundary between defense and participation. Every air-defense system, every group of foreign military specialists, every exchange of intelligence, and every closed meeting with Israeli leaders can be seen as part of a single front. It shows that UAE-Israel ties after the Abraham Accords are no longer limited to diplomacy, trade, and technology. Under wartime conditions, those ties acquire direct military-strategic significance.

American presence

Iranian representatives claimed that the CIA and US military structures were operating from UAE territory or using Emirati infrastructure in operations against Iran. It’s difficult to verify the truth of these statements, but in wartime the statements themselves become part of the conflict. Tehran uses them to justify pressure on the UAE and to portray it as a platform for US and Israeli activity. Abu Dhabi, for its part, has found itself in a difficult position. If it openly acknowledges deep coordination with Washington and West Jerusalem, it becomes a direct target for Iranian retaliation. If it denies everything while remaining part of the US security system and receiving defense assistance from Israel, its neutrality looks increasingly unconvincing.

The financial factor

For decades, Dubai has remained one of the most important external hubs for Iranian business, including trading companies, exchange houses, intermediary structures, and payment channels through which Tehran partially circumvented sanctions. Amid the war, unconfirmed reports appeared that the UAE, either shortly before the current escalation or already during the conflict, had restricted Iranian financial channels, frozen Iran-linked assets, or participated in closed arrangements involving the movement of billions of dollars. The most reliable open-source evidence points to a broader pattern of intensified pressure. The US imposed new sanctions on the Iranian exchange house Amin Exchange and a network of related entities, including companies in the UAE, Turkey, China, and Hong Kong, which Washington said helped Iranian banks conduct transactions in ways that circumvented restrictions.

For Iran, this is yet another front in the war. Even if the UAE explains tighter financial controls as a requirement of the sanctions regime and as a way to protect its own banking system, the political timing turns such steps into part of the pressure on Tehran. In peacetime, Abu Dhabi could play the role of an intermediary between the reality of sanctions and the realities of living next to Iran. In wartime, that gray zone quickly becomes a field of accusations. If the Emirates close financial channels, Iran sees it as participation in economic warfare. If they leave the channels open, the US increases pressure on Abu Dhabi and demands greater discipline in sanctions enforcement.

The situation was further complicated by allegations that US officials were encouraging the Emirates to become more actively involved in the campaign and to consider the possibility of seizing one of the Iranian islands in the Persian Gulf. True or not, the very fact that such reports appeared shows that the island dispute may once again be used not only as a historical Emirati grievance, but also as an instrument in the US and Israeli military strategy against Iran.

This is where the UAE may find itself under pressure from both sides. On the one hand, the US and Israel badly need regional actors to join their campaign against Iran. Without the participation of Gulf states, the war remains an external operation by Washington and West Jerusalem that causes discomfort even among Arab states that fear Iran. If regional actors take part in the pressure on Tehran, however, it creates the appearance of a broader coalition and reduces the political cost for the US and Israel. The UAE specifically has a modern military, ports, intelligence infrastructure, financial leverage, ties with Israel, and its own territorial dispute with Iran, making it especially important for this strategy.

On the other hand, Iran views any deepening of Emirati involvement as grounds for retaliation. Strikes on infrastructure, threats to shipping, accusations that Emirati territory is being used, drone attacks, and pressure through allied networks in the region show that Tehran is prepared to transfer the cost of war onto its neighbors if it considers them part of a hostile framework. The UAE said drones had struck near the Barakah nuclear power plant and pointed to their origin from Iraqi territory, immediately linking the incident to the wider network of pro-Iranian forces in the region. For the Emirates, this is an extremely dangerous situation. Their cities, ports, airports, energy infrastructure, financial system, and reputation as a safe haven all depend on stability. Even limited involvement in the war could strike at the very foundation of the Emirati development model.

A slippery slope

As a result, UAE neutrality is becoming an increasingly unstable construct. Abu Dhabi does not want to enter the war openly, yet it also cannot fully distance itself from the US and Israel, because those ties provide missile defense, military support, and strategic insurance against Iran. This duality makes the UAE from a potential arbiter of the crisis into one of its most vulnerable participants.

The main danger for Abu Dhabi is that it could be dragged into the conflict not by one abrupt decision, but through a series of gradual steps. Financial discipline against Iranian networks, then deeper US-Israeli defense coordination, then visits and closed consultations with Israeli officials, then participation in securing the Strait of Hormuz, then discussion of the disputed islands as a possible lever of pressure against Iran. Each individual step can be presented as defensive, technical, or forced. But taken together, they may lead to a situation in which the UAE is no longer merely near the war, but inside it.

German regulators plan to force social media platforms such as X to boost government-approved “reliable” media outlets in their algorithms, according to leaked documents. The US government has vowed to respond over what it sees as pressure on American tech firms.

In a draft ‘Digital Media State Treaty’ seen by Apollo News, the heads of Germany’s 14 state media regulators have outlined plans to boost the visibility of “public value media” on social media platforms such as X and TikTok.

In order to combat “disinformative, polarizing, or merely attention-grabbing content,” the regulation would force platforms to alter their algorithms to prioritize content from mainstream news sources, such as Germany’s ARD and ZDF broadcasters. Content will be ranked by its “timeliness, relevance to the public’s interest in information, and journalistic context,” and will appear accordingly in users’ feeds, the draft states.

If adopted, the regulation will likely apply to all major social media platforms. However, Elon Musk’s X has been singled out by Thorsten Schmiege, who chairs the Conference of Directors of the State Media Authorities. Speaking to the Frankfurter Rundschau earlier this month, Schmiege criticized Musk for stripping away much of the X’s speech restrictions when he purchased the platform in 2022.

“Content moderation was very responsible back then,” he said, adding that he aims to make it “economically necessary” for X to reintroduce its prior censorship policies.

X is an American platform, and any algorithmic changes would influence what kind of content Americans are exposed to. “A key force at play here is foreign governments’ desire to control who commands credibility, even on American platforms,” US Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy Sarah Rogers wrote on X on Wednesday. Asked whether the State Department would push back against the draft treaty, Rogers responded “stay tuned.”

Europe claims that its lawsuit against X over bluechecks is about consumer deception: that if the ☑️ merely means “user paid,” the platform should not suggest some other imprimatur. But a key force at play, here, is foreign governments’ desire to control who commands… https://t.co/d86sGOUV2j

— Under Secretary of State Sarah B. Rogers (@UnderSecPD) May 27, 2026

The EU fined X €120 million ($139 million) in December for violating its Digital Services Act (DSA), a sweeping censorship bill adopted in 2024. Brussels argues that X’s blue checkmark system for paid subscribers constitutes “deceptive” advertising, claiming that accounts with the checkmarks have not been “meaningfully verified.”

Musk and some senior members of President Donald Trump’s administration have accused the EU of unfairly singling out X for punishment over its refusal to censor political speech.

“The European Commission’s $140 million fine isn’t just an attack on X, it’s an attack on all American tech platforms and the American people by foreign governments,” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said at the time. Rubio sanctioned former European Commissioner Thierry Breton and four pro-censorship activists in response.

The newly elected Scottish Parliament has supported a formal request to London for permission to hold a new referendum on independence.

Scottish voters rejected the previous attempt to leave the United Kingdom during a 2014 referendum, which unionist politicians described as a “once in a generation” opportunity.

The latest push has been strengthened by recent elections in Scotland and elsewhere in the UK, boosting regional pro-independence movements and delivering a major setback to the Labour Party.

How strong is Scotland’s push to quit the UK?

The independence movement was only modestly weakened by the result of the 2014 vote and gained renewed energy after Brexit, which most Scottish voters opposed in 2016.

In the parliamentary election held earlier this month, the pro-independence Scottish National Party (SNP) and Scottish Greens won a combined 73 seats in the 129-member chamber, creating the largest-ever bloc at Holyrood in favor of breaking up Britain.

What is a Section 30 order?

Although the Scottish Parliament was granted lawmaking powers in 2016, those powers remain restricted. Section 30 allows the British parliament to temporarily or permanently transfer additional authority to Holyrood, including over constitutional matters.

The mechanism has been used more than a dozen times since the Scottish parliament was established in 1999. In 2015, for instance, it was used to give 16- and 17-year-olds the right to vote in local and Scottish elections.

The 2014 independence referendum was authorized in 2012 through the same procedure. The Edinburgh Agreement also allowed younger Scots to take part in that vote.

Will London approve Scotland’s request?

Not if the Labour government’s public statements are any indication.

After this week’s vote, Downing Street urged the Scottish government to focus “on the issues that really matter – economic growth, the cost of living, and public services.” It argued that, unlike before the 2014 referendum, there is currently no public consensus in favor of indyref2.

Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar has accused Swinney of being driven by an “obsession” with independence, while Scottish Conservative leader Russell Findlay echoed that criticism. Liberal Democrat Alex Cole-Hamilton dismissed the vote as “performative,” and Reform UK’s Malcolm Offord sought to distance his party from the issue, describing the Holyrood debate as “groundhog day.”

Could Starmer be pressured to change course?

Swinney has challenged Westminster to show that “this is a voluntary Union” by allowing Scots to decide once more whether they want to remain in the post-Brexit UK.

There has been speculation that Starmer could step down as Labour leader, but his political vulnerability does not necessarily advance Scotland’s independence ambitions, judging by the conduct of previous prime ministers.

Conservative leader Boris Johnson rejected then-Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s request for a Section 30 order in 2022, even as his own cabinet was nearing collapse. His predecessor, Theresa May, also refused to authorize indyref2 in 2017.

The US has declined to condemn Russia over its warning about upcoming strikes on military-linked sites in Kiev in retaliation for Ukraine’s deadly attack on a college dormitory.

On Friday, Ukrainian drones struck an education facility in the Russian town of Starobelsk, killing 21 people, mostly young women, and injuring more than 60 others. Moscow has denounced the attack as a war crime and a deliberate terrorist act. Kiev has dismissed the accusation as “pure propaganda,” with its Western backers refusing to hold Ukraine accountable despite ample evidence of its involvement.

On Monday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called US Secretary of State Marco Rubio to warn of “systematic and consistent strikes” on Kiev’s military facilities and “decision-making centers” while urging foreign nationals to leave the capital.

The statement, however, conspicuously did not mention the US.

Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Rubio likewise refrained from leveling any accusations, saying only that Kiev had “been a very dangerous place now for a number of years.” 

Under the Trump administration, the US has acted as a key intermediary in Russia-Ukraine talks, although the process froze up amid the Iran war. In March, Vladimir Zelensky claimed that Washington was pressing Ukraine to withdraw from Donbass as a condition for providing post-conflict security guarantees – something Kiev has categorically been opposed to.

Rubio, however, dismissed the Ukrainian leader’s comments as “a lie,” insisting that the US was not “advocating” for Moscow but rather only relaying its stance.

A Palestinian man has told RT that Israeli forces locked him in a coffin-like box for over two weeks after he refused to become an informant, amid mounting allegations of abuse in Israeli detention facilities.

Iman Nabhan said he was held in “an iron container with a wooden box inside it,” where his hands and feet were tied. He claimed that during his detention, Israeli personnel fed him through a hole and let him out for just one minute whenever he needed to use the toilet.

“It seemed they wanted to make me feel like I was dead so they could get whatever information they wanted,” Nabhan said. “I stayed inside that coffin for 15 days. I felt like I was alive in a dead body.”

The former prisoner said Israeli forces tried to pressure him into collaboration by offering money, foreign travel, and medical treatment opportunities for his mother, all of which he refused.

The testimony comes as Israel faces growing accusations over the treatment of Palestinians and pro-Palestinian activists in its custody. Earlier this week, Australian members of the Gaza-bound Global Sumud Flotilla accused Israeli forces of rape, sexual assault, beatings, humiliation, and torture after they were detained and deported.

Ben-Gvir, who oversees Israel’s prison system, has repeatedly taken a hard line on Palestinians, championing legislation mandating hanging for those accused of terrorism, and claiming that detainees should receive “the minimum of the minimum” in food.

The Israeli minister has also dismissed Palestinian nationhood outright. In November, he claimed that “there is no such thing as ‘Palestinian people’.”

The recently appointed commander of Hamas’ military wing, Mohammed Odeh, has been killed in an airstrike in Gaza, the Israeli authorities have claimed.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) continue to carry out attacks on specific targets in Gaza despite a US-brokered ceasefire being in place in the Palestinian enclave since October 2025.

The announcement of Odeh’s assassination comes 11 days after the killing of his predecessor, Izz al-Din al-Haddad.

The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement on Wednesday that Odeh “was responsible for the murder, abduction, and wounding of many Israeli citizens and IDF soldiers.”

According to the statement, the slain Hamas commander was in charge of the armed group’s intelligence staff during its incursion into Israel on October 7, 2023, which resulted in around 1,200 people being killed and 250 others taken hostage. Since then, 85 captives have died, with the rest being returned to Israel.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Wednesday that Odeh was “sent to meet his partners in the depths of hell.”

“We pledged to eliminate everyone who led the October 7 massacre... They are all marked for death, everywhere,” Katz wrote on X.

Hamas hasn’t yet confirmed the death of its military chief, but Palestinian media reported that he was killed together with his wife and sons.

Gaza’s civil defense agency said at least seven people were killed in Israeli strikes on Tuesday, including five in a single attack near the Maghazi refugee camp in the central part of the enclave.

The US Department of Energy has selected a number of private companies as potential recipients of weapons-grade plutonium, including one where Energy Secretary Chris Wright served on the board before joining the administration of President Donald Trump.

The US government holds roughly 50 metric tons of fissile material recovered from dismantled nuclear weapons at highly secure sites. The Trump administration said last year that it intended to expand the Surplus Plutonium Utilization Program by allowing private companies to manufacture energy-dense fuel for advanced small reactors, with 20 tons of plutonium earmarked for transfer.

On Tuesday, the Department of Energy named five firms chosen for “advanced negotiations” under the plan, among them Oklo Inc., a California-based small-reactor developer that Wright helped run before his confirmation as energy secretary in February 2025.

Oklo said it would use US plutonium in partnership with the European company newcleo. CEO Jacob DeWitte said the initiative “creates a pathway to use existing surplus material as bridge fuel for advanced reactors to bring more reactors online sooner.”

The other companies named by the government are Exodys Energy, SHINE Technologies, Standard Nuclear, and Flibe Energy. The Department of Energy said access to plutonium supplies would help private partners attract investment.

Plutonium transfers will make Trump’s ‘rich buddies happy’

The plan to place weapons-grade plutonium – a dangerous material requiring strict handling and security controls – in private hands has drawn opposition from some US lawmakers, who have warned of safety and proliferation risks.

Critics also argue that the program encourages other countries to view plutonium in spent nuclear fuel as a valuable resource rather than hazardous waste, creating incentives to extract and stockpile it.

Since 2025, the US has attacked Iran twice over the claim that Tehran cannot be trusted to run a civilian nuclear industry and not try to weaponize it. The crisis remains unresolved, while the global economic fallout from disrupted maritime traffic in the Persian Gulf continues to mount.

US hooked on foreign nuclear fuel

The peaceful reuse of Cold War-era fissile material was once a central element of US-Russian cooperation. Under the HEU-LEU program, Russian weapons-grade uranium sufficient for around 20,000 warheads was converted into reactor fuel before the agreement expired in 2013.

A similar plutonium arrangement was signed in 2000, but was suspended in 2016 after being roughly 70% completed, as bilateral ties deteriorated following the US-backed armed coup in Ukraine.

In 2024, the US banned imports of Russian low-enriched uranium, presenting the move as part of its sanctions policy and an effort to revive America’s domestic enrichment sector, which had weakened during decades of abundant imported fuel, including under the HEU-LEU program. However, waivers are available until 2028.

In January, the Department of Energy announced plans to invest $2.7 billion over ten years in enrichment services.

Former US President Joe Biden is suing the US Department of Justice (DOJ) in an effort to block the release of interviews he gave to his ghostwriter, which later became part of a special counsel investigation into the mishandling of classified documents.

According to the Daily Intelligencer, the records include 70 hours of audio recordings and transcripts of conversations between Biden and ghostwriter Mark Zwonitzer, recorded while Zwonitzer was working on Biden’s 2017 memoir.

The recordings were obtained by special counsel Robert Hur, who was appointed to investigate whether Biden had unlawfully retained classified documents at his home after serving as vice president under Barack Obama from 2009 to 2017.

In May, the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, filed a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act seeking access to the files. Biden’s lawyers argue that releasing them would violate his privacy.

“Every American, including a sitting or former vice president, has a right to privacy in the personal conversations he has within his own home,” the lawsuit said, according to the Washington Post.

Hur wrote that Biden’s memory appeared “significantly limited” during both the 2017 interviews with the ghostwriter and later interviews with the special counsel. He further argued that, if the case went to trial, Biden would likely present himself to a jury as “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”

Concerns about Biden’s declining health played a major role in the 2024 presidential campaign. He withdrew from the race following a disastrous televised debate with Donald Trump, who ultimately defeated Biden’s Democratic replacement, former Vice President Kamala Harris.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX pressured the Pentagon into paying higher rates for Starlink satellite connectivity used by US kamikaze drones during the Iran war, Reuters reported on Tuesday.

The dispute reportedly centered on the Low-Cost Uncrewed Combat Attack System (LUCAS), a cheap loitering munition used by the US military. According to Reuters, SpaceX argued that the military had been paying about $5,000 for connection per terminal while effectively using a higher-tier service priced at $25,000 per month.

In March, Musk tweeted that the use of Starlink in weapon systems violated the company’s terms of service, adding that military operators should instead use Starshield, a separate network designed for government use.

It is a violation of commercial Starlink terms of service to use the terminal for weapon systems. This applies to all users and is shut down when discovered.

There is a separate network called Starshield, which is operated by the US government. This is not under SpaceX control.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 2, 2026

In practice, however, the systems remain closely intertwined, with Starshield relying on the broader Starlink network of roughly 10,000 low-Earth-orbit satellites, according to Reuters.

While the Pentagon denied breaching its agreement with SpaceX, Reuters reported that company executives later pressed officials to pay higher rates for the service. The Pentagon ultimately agreed, nearly doubling the original $30,000 price tag for each LUCAS drone.

SpaceX “certainly has the US government over the barrel,” Clayton Swope, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Reuters.

Some Pentagon officials, including Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg, have become increasingly uneasy about the leverage SpaceX presently holds over military operations, according to the outlet. Yet the Pentagon is reportedly considering purchasing more than 3,500 additional Starshield subscriptions in a deal that could generate hundreds of millions of dollars annually for SpaceX ahead of its planned IPO next month.

Calls for separation in Canada’s oil-rich province of Alberta have invited comparisons with Brexit from Prime Minister Mark Carney, who warned against the move and described it as a “dangerous bluff.”

The western province is set to hold a public vote in October on whether to remain part of Canada or move toward a formal referendum on independence. The vote, announced by Alberta Premier Danielle Smith last week, follows a petition drive by the pro-independence group Stay Free Alberta, which submitted more than 300,000 signatures calling for a referendum on separation.

Commenting on the developments, Carney told reporters on Monday that Canada was “absolutely stronger together.” Referring to Smith’s plan, he described the move as a “very dangerous bluff,” drawing parallels with Britain’s 2016 vote to leave the EU.

“I saw first-hand what happened in the United Kingdom when the view was, vote for this, it’ll be soft, and then we’ll negotiate,” said Carney, who served as governor of the Bank of England during the Brexit campaign. “They’re still 10 years later trying to undo what people didn’t think they were voting for but what they ended up having,” he added.

While Smith has said she supports a “united Canada,” she has defended the vote as a way for Albertans to express their views on the province’s future.

Alberta is one of Canada’s most important energy-producing regions and has long been at odds with the federal government over environmental regulations, taxation, and pipeline access. Separatist sentiment has been fueled by claims that Ottawa has held back the province’s resource economy, though polling suggests full independence remains a minority position. 

The agreement has drawn criticism from officials in the neighboring province of British Columbia, as well as indigenous groups and environmental activists, who have accused Carney of abandoning his climate commitments.

The Alberta debate also comes as Canada remains locked in a trade dispute with the US following Donald Trump’s return to office in January. Canada has faced sweeping US tariffs on its goods, while Trump has repeatedly referred to the country as “the 51st state.” Carney has previously warned Washington against interfering in Canada’s affairs, including discussions around Alberta’s future.

Iran has accused the US of violating the ceasefire after American fighter jets struck targets in Hormozgan province in the south of the country.

On Monday, US Central Command said American forces had carried out “self-defense strikes” on missile sites and naval vessels which Washington alleges were attempting to mine the Strait of Hormuz. According to Iranian media, several Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) naval speedboats were targeted, and at least three sailors were killed in what was the largest military clash with the US since the May 7 strikes in southern Iran.

Seyyed Majid Mousavi, commander of the IRGC Aerospace Force, said the attack constituted a breach of the fragile truce reached on April 8.

“The IRGC Aerospace Force is ready to deliver a decisive and rapid response and carry out the orders of the respected commander-in-chief,” he added.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry released a statement condemning the “gross violation” of the ceasefire and saying that Iran would hold the US “responsible for all the consequences resulting from these aggressive and unjustified actions.”

The strikes came after US officials hinted that the two sides were close to a breakthrough in negotiations, which had stalled over disagreements regarding Iran’s nuclear program, sanctions, and the future status of the Strait of Hormuz. Iran’s chief negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, returned from talks with Qatari mediators in Doha on Tuesday.

Tehran had earlier said the US must regain the trust of the Iranian people after Washington and Israel launched attacks on Iran on February 28 during Omani-mediated talks.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Tuesday that finalizing an agreement could take “a few more days.” The outcome of the talks, however, remains unclear, as US President Donald Trump reiterated on Monday his demand that Iran relinquish its enriched uranium stockpile – a condition Tehran has previously rejected.

Ten of the 19 migrants slated to be placed in foster homes or children’s care in Kent, England turned out to be adults, The Sun reported on Monday.

Kent is the primary arrival point for migrants crossing the English Channel in small boats. Illegal crossings remain a hot-button issue, fueling anti-immigrant sentiment alongside a string of high-profile criminal cases linked to migrants. Nearly 1,000 undocumented migrants crossed into the UK in small boats over the past five days alone, according to government data.

A group of migrants in Kent County Council care was reassessed last year after staff raised concerns about their age, The Sun reported, citing government data released under freedom of information laws.

“This puts children already in foster or children’s homes in danger,” UK Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said. “We have seen absurd cases where illegal immigrants, including a Sudanese man with a receding hairline and facial hair, pretended to be children when they were clearly adults.”

The situation will “get worse now Labour’s Borders Act has passed, which no longer allows illegal immigrants to be treated as over-18 if they refuse to take an age-assessment test,” Philp added.

The number of adult migrants posing as children has quadrupled over the past decade, reaching more than 1,000 last year, the Daily Mail reported, citing Home Office data.

The US has “no responsibility” to intervene in the management of the Strait of Hormuz, located nearly 11,000 km (6,835 miles) from its borders, University of Tehran political communication professor Foad Izadi has told RT.

The strategic waterway has become a major sticking point in US-Iran peace talks, with Washington maintaining a blockade on Iranian ports and Tehran establishing control over naval traffic and charging for passage through the strait.

“The US has no responsibility in this part of the world. The US is a coastal state to the Gulf of Mexico… almost 11,000 kilometers away,” Izadi told RT in an interview on Tuesday, insisting that only Iran has the responsibility to “provide security” in the Strait of Hormuz.

“Australia, Canada, Denmark, Turkey, they all collect fees for countries that are members of the UNCLOS… They call it pilotage fees,” he said, adding that some charges are imposed for “environmental reasons.” Countries like Türkiye, which isn’t a signatory to the convention, “just call it passage fee,” he said.

Izadi stressed that there is “no legal prohibition” on Tehran from doing the same.

“Since Iran wants to be friendly, they are going to do what Australia and Canada and Denmark are doing already,” he said.

Watch the full interview below:

Know what I’m getting really sick of as a Canadian? Harmful deferentiality towards the US that persists despite all the “elbows up” rhetoric.

In the latest example, an Air France fight took off from Paris, heading for Detroit. Do you see anything Canadian in that at all? Canada does!

The airline had royally messed up and let a passenger board from the Congo, the current global headquarters of Ebola. American authorities refused to let the plane land in their territory since they had recently banned all passengers from the Congo, specifically due to the viral outbreak. So, Canadian authorities let the plane land in Montreal. Then they let everyone off and put the passenger in question on the next flight back to Paris.

Why couldn’t they have done all that in Detroit? Is a plane considered to be inside a country the moment it decides it has feelings about the flight? No passenger is technically inside any country until they go through customs anyway. Why did they have to dump it all on Canada? I’ll tell you why. Because they had a choice, and Canada is far too nice.

The answer should have just been “no.” Not “no, but let us convene an interagency working group to explore the emotional implications of saying no.” Just “no.” No getting into the intricacies of Ebola infection risk or whose fault it all is, either. Or whether the guy is actually infected or not. Forget dedicating any bandwidth to any of that.

Perhaps Canada figured that it was doing its buddy, France, a favor, saving it from its own vetting screwup. Again, not Canada’s problem. Let them fight it out with the US. Tell France to threaten to just land the plane on Lake Erie and wish them luck.

Canada needs to stop doing any and all favors for America that aren’t a net benefit.

It wasn’t that long ago that American authorities told Canada to arrest and hold the daughter of Huawei’s founder, Meng Wanzhou, the CFO of the Chinese company herself at the time, on a US extradition request as she transited through Vancouver airport. Canada complied – and was rewarded with a massive diplomatic headache lasting years, having inserted itself in a tug-of-war between Washington and Beijing. The kind that comes with the satisfaction of having ‘helped’ and the administrative burden of proving that you didn’t cause the problem in the first place. The allegations that made the mess Canada’s problem related to violations of American anti-Iranian sanctions by the Chinese multinational, despite Canada not even having any of its own sanctions against her or Huawei.

Anyone in France knows that Washington routinely uses criminal charges as a weapon of economic warfare to target foreign executives of companies they want to buy or pressure for criminal charges. It’s the blueprint that enabled General Electric to get its hands on the French nuclear know-how of Alstom, for example.

And what thanks did Canada get for any of these accommodations? Tariffs. Insults about being useless – except as a 51st state. And constantly being told by Trump that it’s freeloading if it doesn’t blow its defense budget on-demand in the US.

And if that hasn’t stunk up the country enough, the US also recently said that it planned to open more federal drug enforcement offices in Canada. “From a DEA perspective, we’re keeping our eye on Canada,” DEA chief Terrance Cole said at a recent US Senate hearing. “We’re going to open two more offices in Canada, proposed for ‘27.” Lemme guess. There’s a huge fentanyl problem in Alberta. Near an oil pipeline. Am I close? Because there sure as heck isn’t one that directly affects the US from Canadian territory. What do you think this is? A flop house?

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has proven that Canadians have passive aggression in abundance. Telling Trump off in various ways that are intellectual enough to not get picked up by the American president’s finely tuned insult-sensitive radar as they sail over his head. Arguably the most obvious example being Carney’s speech in Davos a few months ago, basically saying that the era of US-led hegemony is over and everyone knew that the notion of it being a net benefit to citizens of the countries that kowtowed to it was a lie that leaders have all long known about but insisted on sticking with anyway.

Canada is no longer a footnote in someone else’s policy agenda. It is drafting its own, at long last. What remains unfinished is the transition from having an agenda to behaving like it is allowed to use it without prior permission. The doormat has only really been pulled halfway out. Go ahead and give it a good yank once and for all, guys. It will hurt a lot less than the alternative.

China is restricting overseas travel for leading AI specialists from companies including Alibaba and DeepSeek, as Beijing pushes for greater self-reliance in artificial intelligence, robotics, and semiconductors, Bloomberg has reported.

Citing anonymous sources, the outlet claimed on Tuesday that Chinese authorities have begun requiring advanced AI researchers, executives, startup founders, and engineers to obtain approval before traveling abroad.

The measures – which Beijing has neither confirmed nor denied – reportedly reflect growing concerns over protecting strategically important technologies. According to Bloomberg’s sources, the government now views top AI talent as a national-security asset, placing them under restrictions previously reserved for nuclear scientists and senior executives at state-owned firms.

Last month, Chinese regulators blocked Meta’s planned $2 billion acquisition of Manus, a Chinese AI startup that relocated to Singapore in 2025. Two Manus executives were reportedly barred from leaving China during a probe into the deal, as Beijing simultaneously tightened restrictions on US investment in the country’s tech sector.

For Beijing, placing export controls on talent is a logical next step after slowing the export of other elements in the AI supply chain. In two rounds of restrictions last year, China blocked the export of 14 rare earth minerals critical in the manufacture of high-tech military equipment. It also banned exports of the semiconductors that power AI supercomputers and data centers, as well as the tools used to refine them.

China extracts at least 60% of the world’s rare earth metals and processes around 90%. By restricting their export, Beijing is attempting to even the playing field with the US and its partners, which have sought to exclude China from the supply chain, while gaining valuable leverage against Washington in trade negotiations.

China’s current five-year-plan, which lays out the country’s development objectives through 2030, calls for taking “extraordinary measures” to develop self-sufficiency in semiconductors, AI, and advanced manufacturing.

Iranian Armed Forces operational command Spokesman Ebrahim Zolfaghari has recently announced that Iran intends to charge fees for the use of undersea cables passing through the Strait of Hormuz. While this news didn’t come as a surprise, it certainly heightened tensions surrounding the digital infrastructure of the Persian Gulf.

Since May 18, the Persian Gulf Strait Authority has controlled the situation in the Strait of Hormuz. This new body was established by the Supreme National Security Council of Iran and is responsible for monitoring compliance with the maritime rules set by Tehran. It was created in response to the US-initiated naval blockade that began in April.

The entire Strait of Hormuz, including its underwater infrastructure, is now viewed by Tehran as part of its jurisdiction and an area of its strategic control. 

Even before the current escalation, however, discussions about undersea internet cables in the Strait of Hormuz had surfaced in Iranian media. The topic first emerged in July 2019 during a broadcast on the state-controlled IRIB television and radio network. At that time, an expert claimed that a disruption of cables in the Strait of Hormuz could potentially affect up to 70% of the world’s internet traffic.

While this figure seems exaggerated – since the global web has backup routes and much of the transit between Europe and Asia relies on other pathways like the Red Sea, Egypt, and the Mediterranean – the statement itself is quite significant.

Even if global internet service isn’t paralyzed in the event of major damage to the cables, countries in the Arabian Peninsula would face severe communication disruptions, reduced bandwidth, increased latency, and failures of digital services.

Back in 2019, the Arab nations dismissed these warnings as fanciful Persian tales. But they may have been wrong. 

The expert opinion expressed in 2019 was not an official statement by the Iranian government about an intention to cut the cables. It only pointed to the potential vulnerabilities of the cables in the Strait of Hormuz and the international ramifications in case of a significant regional escalation. Thus, already at that time, Iran viewed the undersea digital infrastructure in the Strait of Hormuz as a potential tool for strategic leverage.

For Iran, subsea digital infrastructure now serves as a new lever alongside oil, tanker traffic, ports, and energy logistics. However, there is a fundamental difference between pointing out vulnerabilities and physically destroying the cables.

In 2026, Iran returned to the topic of undersea internet cables, raising the issue to a new level. On April 22, Tasnim news agency, which is linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), published a report mapping the cable and cloud infrastructure of the Persian Gulf. Essentially, this served as a warning that Tehran may view the Gulf states’ digital infrastructure as part of the conflict zone. The report emphasized that the Gulf monarchies rely on maritime internet routes much more heavily than Iran itself does. 

In May 2026, this idea evolved into a more developed political and economic concept. Iranian state media started pushing the narrative that Iran could charge foreign tech companies for utilizing the undersea cables that run through the Strait of Hormuz. This was not merely a question of fees; it also entailed regulatory oversight, requiring operators and major technology firms to adhere to Iranian regulations, as well as efforts to monopolize cable maintenance and repair services. 

From a military perspective, Iran has the capability to threaten cable infrastructure: the Strait of Hormuz is quite shallow, maritime traffic is dense, and the cables are physically vulnerable to damage. Most damage to subsea cables occurs not from sabotage but from anchors, fishing gear, and navigational errors. Thus, there is a real possibility that these cables may become damaged. When it comes to physical interference rather than a precise cyberattack, the vulnerabilities of such infrastructure are evident.  

Economically, Iran can assert its right to charge for the use of subsea cables within its maritime jurisdiction. According to international maritime law, coastal states have the authority to regulate the installation and maintenance of such infrastructure near their shores. This is why Tehran views the cables not just as  part of an international communication network but as an object under its control.

The political ramifications of such actions or the deliberate severing of cables would be substantial for Iran. Such a move would likely be perceived by the US, the Gulf nations, and major tech companies not as a ‘symmetrical response’ but as an attack on critical international infrastructure.

Moreover, executing such an operation discreetly would be exceedingly difficult for Iran, as the area is under constant military surveillance, and any blatant act of sabotage would give Tehran’s adversaries ample reason for a severe retaliatory response. For this reason, attempting to physically cut cables in the Strait of Hormuz would be an extremely risky maneuver for Iran, and would effectively escalate the conflict to a new level.

The security of these cables cannot be ensured without military force. The cable infrastructure is extensive, runs along the seabed, and is physically exposed. However, as recent months have shown, neither side is eager to place their military vessels at risk. 

Repairing damaged cables presents its own set of challenges. Restoring a severed cable necessitates the deployment of specialized ships to the area and that their safe operation is ensured. In the context of military tensions, this quickly transforms from an engineering issue into a political and military one.

Without Tehran’s direct or at least tacit consent, repair efforts in the strait may prove impossible. This situation turns the threat of damage to the cables into a tool for leveraging power, since in addition to the disruption of traffic, the repair process may be complicated. 

Damage to undersea cables in the Strait of Hormuz could impact not only internet speed but also the region’s connectivity with major global IT platforms. A significant portion of the digital infrastructure, including cloud services, data centers, corporate platforms, and financial systems, relies on international data transmission routes.

Disruptions in communication with Southern Europe – home to major data centers for AWS, Microsoft, and other cloud service providers – could be particularly sensitive. If data traffic from the Gulf countries needs to be urgently redirected through alternative routes, the process would put additional strain on other parts of the network. Consequently, users might experience delays, reduced speeds, unstable service quality, and interruptions in access to cloud platforms.

Predicting which specific services will suffer the most is nearly impossible in advance. Information about land-based communication lines, backup routes, and actual traffic redistribution schemes is typically not publicly available. Therefore, the repercussions will depend not only on how many cables are affected but also on how swiftly operators can reroute the traffic.

On a global scale, services like Telegram are unlikely to cease functioning entirely. However, in certain Gulf nations, this would cause problems: messages may be delayed, the connection could become unstable, and in the event of serious damage to several cables, access to specific services might be temporarily disrupted. 

It is most likely that instead of actually damaging the cables, Iran will use the threat of such a possibility as a lever of influence. It suffices for Tehran to mention the possibility that these cables could become targets. This already alters market behavior: operators factor in added risks, repair ships proceed more cautiously in the conflict zone, Gulf countries reevaluate backup routes, and investors assess the region’s vulnerabilities not just in terms of oil but also digital infrastructure.

Meanwhile, the consequences of physical damage to the cables would differ based on the region. This wouldn’t cause a global internet blackout; there are alternative routes in place, and transit between Europe and Asia relies on various paths. However, for the Gulf states, the impact would be far more severe, affecting banking operations, cloud services, data centers, logistics, and digital government platforms. The greatest danger lies not in a single incident, but rather in a prolonged disruption and a situation in which repair ships would not be able to operate safely in the conflict zone. 

Undersea cables remain primarily a means of strategic coercion for Iran – a way to demonstrate that responses to blockades or military pressure could extend beyond the oil market to digital infrastructure as well. Physically cutting the cables would be a last resort, possible only done in the event of significant escalation – however, in the logic of its current pressure strategy, it wouldn’t be the most rational move for Iran. 

Nine countries have withdrawn from a Czech initiative aimed at jointly procuring artillery ammunition for Ukraine, according to Czech President Petr Pavel. The scheme has been plagued by underinvestment since its inception.

Some 18 countries, including Canada, Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands, signed up to partake in the initiative when it was announced by Pavel in 2024. At the time, Western manufacturers were unable to meet Kiev’s appetite for ammunition, producing 1.3 million shells in a year, while Russia was able to make 4.5 million at a quarter of the cost.

“The initiative is still working, but the new difficulty is that only about nine member states are contributing financially,” Pavel told the Financial Times on Tuesday. “This initiative has been delivering up to 50% of all large caliber ammunition to the Ukrainians, so in this sense it cannot be replaced easily by anything else.”

Pavel refused to say which countries had pulled out of the initiative, although an unnamed Western military official told the Financial Times that Germany and some Nordic nations were among those still participating.

Ukraine has faced a shortage of artillery shells since early 2022, with Russian gun crews carrying out as many as five times more fire missions than their Ukrainian counterparts, and Ukraine’s then-Defense Minister Rustem Umerov pleading for supplies to alleviate the “shell hunger” in early 2024. The Czech initiative failed to even the score, and by the end of 2025, Ukrainian forces had replaced artillery with one-way attack drones in most battlefield situations, Russian military sources told RIA Novosti in November.

As the primacy of artillery declined on the battlefield, support for Ukraine declined in Prague. Since his election last year, Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis has audited the ammo initiative, and cut all use of Czech funds for the program, which he said lacked transparency and funneled billions of dollars to unknown beneficiaries.

While Babis has kept the scheme running with Prague playing the role of non-contributing intermediary, “some countries now feel that it is strange to pay for something that is not even properly supported by the ruling politicians of the lead country,” a Western official told the Financial Times.

US federal agents have used tear gas against protesters outside the immigration detention center in Newark, New Jersey after days of unrest.

The rally was held on Monday in solidarity with detainees reportedly staging a hunger strike at the Delaney Hall facility.

A sweeping immigration enforcement campaign launched by US President Donald Trump shortly after taking office has led to thousands of arrests across the country. Public support for the crackdown has steadily declined, with most Americans saying the tactics used by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) go too far, becoming increasingly violent and, in some cases, deadly.

Videos circulating online show federal agents using pepper-ball projectiles to disperse the crowd. Democratic US Senator Andy Kim can be seen standing between protesters and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents surrounding a detained individual as an armored vehicle is passing by.

@njdotcom

Federal agents fired upon protesters outside Delaney Hall in Newark using what appeared to be pepper balls following days of unrest at the privately run ICE jail. U.S. Sen. Andy Kim can be seen in the video standing between protesters and ICE agents during an arrest. Kim later said he was caught in a cloud of pepper spray in the melee. 🎥 Jelani Gibson

♬ original sound - NJ.com | New Jersey News

Kim later told local media that he was caught in a cloud of pepper spray in the melee. Another video circulating online show mutual aid volunteers pouring water into Kim’s eyes while he holds an ice pack in his hand.

The DHS said in a statement later on Monday that no one was “directly struck by pepper ball projectiles.” The agency noted that “rioters obstructed law enforcement from exiting” the facility and officers “issued multiple lawful verbal commands for rioters to clear the area.”

Посмотреть эту публикацию в Instagram

Публикация от Veronica De La Cruz (@veronicadelacruztv)

According to protesters, inmates at Delaney Hall had organized the hunger strike against inhumane conditions, including poor-quality food and subpar medical care.

US Representative Rob Menendez, New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill, and other Democratic New Jersey officials are demanding that the facility be shut down over the complaints. The officials visited the detention center over the weekend, where eventually members of New Jersey’s congressional delegation were allowed to enter.

The US has told NATO’s European members that it will reduce its military contributions to the bloc as Washington’s military planners set their sights on China, Der Spiegel reported on Tuesday.

Delivered by senior Pentagon adviser Alexander Velez-Green at a confidential NATO meeting in Brussels last week, the message from Washington marks the latest step in US President Donald Trump’s slow disengagement from Europe.

Trump has reportedly drawn up a “naughty and nice” list of NATO members based on their support for his policies, and earlier this month announced that he would withdraw 5,000 US troops from Germany.

The US will cut the number of fighter jets available to NATO by a third, and significantly reduce the number of strategic bombers and warships, the newspaper reported. NATO will also receive no American submarines or drones, leaving its European members to provide this hardware themselves, Velez-Green reportedly said.

It is unclear how many – if any – US troops will be pulled from the NATO Force Model.

The announcement reportedly shocked the Europeans at the meeting, who had predicted more minor and gradual cuts. Now, Der Spiegel claimed, the US expects them to have a plan in place to fill the gap before the bloc’s annual summit in Türkiye this July.

At a meeting in Sweden last week, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told NATO foreign ministers that “there are going to be eventually less US troops in Europe than there have historically been.

“We have obligations in the Indo-Pacific; we have obligations in the Middle East; we have obligations in the Western Hemisphere,” Rubio told reporters, adding that the US wants to position its forces to fight “a two-front conflict” if necessary.

While Rubio maintained that “these are not political decisions,” Trump has explicitly politicized the deployment of US troops in Europe. After pulling American service members from Germany amid a spat with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, the US president announced that he would send an additional 5,000 troops to Poland, “based on the successful election” of conservative President Karol Nawrocki.

A Georgian court has jailed two Ukrainian nationals for smuggling military-grade explosives into the country.

The men were sentenced to seven and ten years respectively after being convicted by the Tbilisi City Court of illegally acquiring, storing, transporting, and selling hexogen as well as smuggling the explosive material into Georgia.

In September 2025, Georgian security services discovered 2.4 kg of hexogen – known as RDX and described by the authorities as a “high-powered explosive stronger than TNT” – hidden inside a Mercedes-Benz truck with Ukrainian license plates. The vehicle had reportedly entered Georgia through the Sarpi crossing from Türkiye, having traveled via Romania and Bulgaria.

Investigators said the explosives were destined for a residential building in Tbilisi’s Avlabari district. Although the truck driver reportedly claimed the shipment was headed to Russia as part of ‘Operation Spiderweb 2’, Georgia’s security service said the evidence pointed only to the Tbilisi address.

The ruling came as Russian FSB chief Aleksandr Bortnikov accused Ukraine of turning into “Europe’s largest hub of weapons and ammunition trafficking” and being a driver of instability across the post-Soviet Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Speaking on Tuesday at a meeting of CIS security agencies, Bortnikov said the West had transformed Ukraine into a “testing ground” for new weapons and military artificial intelligence systems.

The comments echoed earlier statements by Russia’s UN envoy, Vassily Nebenzia, who told the Security Council in April that weapons supplied to Ukraine were ending up in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, and claimed “one in three assault rifles” used by extremist groups came from Ukraine.

The Canadian government has called for an independent investigation into Israel’s “appalling” treatment of activists aboard the Gaza-bound flotilla.

Prime Minister Mark Carney said Monday that “the protection of all civilians and respect for human dignity must be upheld everywhere, at all times,” according to a government readout of his call with Israeli President Isaac Herzog.

Canadian Foreign Minister Anita Anand said Israel’s denial of consular access to detainees violated the Vienna Convention, an international treaty requiring countries to allow detained foreign nationals to contact their diplomatic officials. Ottawa had provided West Jerusalem with evidence of abuse and expected “those responsible to be held accountable,” she wrote on X on Monday.

The diplomatic clash follows Israel’s interception of the flotilla in international waters on May 18-19 and the detention of hundreds of activists attempting to deliver aid to Gaza. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir later released footage showing detainees kneeling with their hands restrained behind their backs while he mocked them on camera.

Canada appears to be the first government to formally call for an independent investigation into the detentions, while multiple countries have condemned the interception of the flotilla and allegations of abuse against activists.

Canada’s response is particularly notable, given its longstanding support for Israel. Ottawa recognized Israel shortly after its creation in 1948, has frequently backed it diplomatically at the UN, and has developed extensive trade, security, and intelligence ties over decades. Former Prime Minister Stephen Harper famously told Israel’s parliament in 2014: “Through fire and water, Canada will stand with you.”

Western spy agencies are intending to use Syrian militants as a proxy force against Iran, Russian Federal Security Service chief Aleksandr Bortnikov has said.

The jihadists, who fought for Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) and other terrorist groups, are being moved from their detention facilities in Syria to special camps in Iraq, Bortnikov said during a meeting of the security chiefs from the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) in Russia’s Irkutsk Region on Tuesday.

“The history of Islamic State began with similar Iraqi prison complexes under the protection of Western coalition intelligence agencies,” he stressed.

The CIS was established in 1991, following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, to promote economic, political and security cooperation between members. It currently includes nine nations: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, Moldova, and Uzbekistan.

The actions of Western spy agencies also pose a danger to the members of the organization as the released militants, “include individuals from CIS countries who fought in the Islamic State and other terrorist groups and later ended up in Syrian prisons,” Bortnikov warned. They can be used not only across the Middle East, but also in their home countries, he added.

Indirect negotiations are currently ongoing between the US and Iran amid a fragile truce, which was established in early April after a month of intense hostilities initiated by the Americans and the Israelis. Meanwhile, Tehran continues to prevent the ships of Washington’s allies from sailing through the Strait of Hormuz, which accounts for some 25% of the global crude oil trade, while the US maintains its own blockade of Iranian ports.

On Monday, Iran’s top negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi reportedly arrived in Doha for talks with Qatar’s prime minister on a potential peace deal with the US.

However, both sides downplayed hopes of a swift breakthrough, with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio saying that Washington was willing to give diplomacy a chance before deciding whether to deal with Iran in “another way.”

China has warned against “bloc confrontation” after officials from the Australia-India-Japan-US ‘Quad’ grouping met in New Delhi.

Beijing said on Tuesday that any collaborative effort should contribute to regional ​peace, stability, and prosperity.

“We also ​do not support the formation ​of exclusive cliques or bloc confrontation,” Chinese Foreign Ministry ‌spokesperson ⁠Mao Ning said at a press briefing. “No cooperation should undermine ​mutual trust and cooperation ​among regional countries.”

Beijing’s response came as the foreign ministers from India, Australia, Japan, and the US met in New Delhi.

The meeting, chaired by India’s S. Jaishankar, was attended by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong, and Japanese Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi.

Addressing the press alongside FM @SenatorWong of Australia, FM Toshimitsu Motegi of Japan and @SecRubio of USA after Quad Foreign Ministers’ Meeting.

🇮🇳 🇦🇺 🇯🇵 🇺🇸 https://t.co/cL7nb50X2u

— Dr. S. Jaishankar (@DrSJaishankar) May 26, 2026

Jaishankar said the bloc’s focus will be on the Indo-Pacific, “which is the specific remit of the Quad,” Mint reported.

At the meeting, the Quad countries agreed to jointly ​build ⁠a port in the Pacific island nation of Fiji and signed pacts covering critical ⁠minerals ​and energy ​security.

They said the Quad Critical Minerals Initiative was aimed at “collaborating to secure and diversify critical minerals supply chains.”

“As four leading maritime nations in the Indo-Pacific, we are united in our conviction that peace and stability in the maritime domain underpin the security and prosperity of the region,” the countries said in a statement.

“We strongly oppose any destabilizing or unilateral actions that seek to change the status quo, including by force or coercion, which escalate tensions and undermine regional peace and stability” in the Indo-Pacific, the statement added.

The Quad grouping originated as a Japanese diplomatic initiative nearly 20 years ago but gained prominence with support from former US President Joseph Biden. However, current US President Donald Trump’s tariff wars have injected uncertainty into the group’s direction.

The Quad nations were expected to hold a summit in India last year, but that did not materialize. India was particularly hit hard by Trump’s punitive trade tariffs.

The Quad joint statement did not set a specific date for its next meeting. “We look forward to the next Quad Leaders’ Summit hosted by India later this year and the next Quad Foreign Ministers’ Meeting hosted by Australia in 2026,” it said.

The previous Quad summit was held in the US in September 2024.

CNN and the BBC should have visited the site of a deadly Ukrainian drone strike on a college dormitory in Russia’s Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR) if they say they distrust Moscow’s narrative about the attack, US journalist Rick Sanchez has said.

Kiev struck a teacher training college dormitory in Starobelsk with several waves of UAVs on Friday, killing 21 people – most of them teenage girls – and injuring 65 others.

Sanchez, who used to work for MSNBC, CNN, and Fox News, and now hosts the Sanchez Effect program on RT, was among some 50 foreign journalists from 19 countries who visited the site of the attack this weekend. CNN and the BBC rejected the offer to send correspondents on a trip to the LPR at the invitation of the Russian authorities.

The US journalist said that he came to Starobelsk and saw for himself that the Ukrainian claims that there were Russian military installations near the affected college and the dorm were false.

“I don’t believe the Russian Foreign Ministry, right? I want to hear it from the people there… And that’s why you come here. The BBC should have come here asking those questions. CNN should have come here asking those questions,” he said.

“How do you legitimately say, ‘I am a journalist’ if you don’t cover one story, but you cover another story?” he wondered.

RT senior correspondent Murad Gazdiev, who was among the journalists with whom Sanchez discussed the decision of the BBC and CNN not to visit Starobelsk, insisted that it was a “statement” on the part of the Western outlets.

They basically said: “we aren’t interested. We’re only interested in any potential civilian casualties on the side that we support. The side that we don’t support - screw them,” Gazdiev explained.

Irish journalist Chay Bowes, who hosts the Moscow Mules show on RT, noted that “the same money that funds the BBC, buys the weapons from the US now and hands them to this dictatorship in Kiev.”

The Czech government has approved tighter rules for Ukrainian migrants, including restrictions on residency rights and welfare benefits, amid concerns over alleged abuse of aid.

The Czech cabinet approved the legislation on Monday at the proposal of Interior Minister Lubomir Metnar, endorsing sweeping changes to seven Ukraine-related laws governing asylum and foreign residency. Officials said the measures were aimed at addressing concerns that Ukrainian refugees enjoyed advantages over local residents.

The Czech Republic, a country of 10 million people hosting around 385,000 Ukrainian migrants, has one of the EU’s highest refugee populations per capita, Metnar said. He added that EU discussions on extending refugee protections beyond 2027 could include limits for military-age men, as Ukraine faces shortages of soldiers.

“We are tightening the conditions for granting temporary protection, as we have in our government’s program statement,” Babis stated.

Under the proposal, Ukrainians receiving humanitarian aid would have to work, run a business, or actively seek employment through the Czech Labor Office. To qualify for payments, they would also need to spend at least 16 days each month in the Czech Republic. Children, students, and pensioners would be exempt.

The government also wants to strip temporary protection from migrants who spend more than 30 days outside the Schengen Area or are expelled over criminal or administrative offenses. The bill would tighten access to special residence permits and overhaul state-funded health insurance rules for Ukrainians under temporary protection.

Governments across Europe are increasingly scaling back support for Ukrainian refugees as pressure grows on welfare systems and public frustration over migration costs rises. More than 4.35 million Ukrainians are registered for temporary protection across the EU, according to Eurostat, while countries including Poland, Germany, and Hungary have already moved to cut benefits.

UPDATE: This story has been updated to reflect the police’s admission that the original image was altered with AI

A team of Thai police officers have gone viral after sharing a photo of themselves supposedly disguised as a female dance troupe while arresting a suspected drug dealer during a street festival. The operation is said to have taken place last week in the Tha Luang district in the central Lop Buri Province.

In a Facebook post last week, Tha Luang Police identified the suspect as Mekha Fa-wap-wap, who was detained on drug and illegal gambling charges. Police said they seized 53 methamphetamine pills, more than 200 plastic bags believed to be used for drug distribution, and a mobile phone allegedly linked to an illegal online slot-machine operation.

A photo attached to the post showed a team of mostly male officers in glittering dresses posing with the handcuffed suspect, prompting a wave of jokes from readers. “21 Jump Street at play,” one social media user wrote, referring to an American comedy film about undercover cops posing as high school students.

Since the story went viral, the Tha Luang Police Station has expressed gratitude on its Facebook page to those sharing the story.

On Wednesday, however, the station revealed that the image was actually altered with AI and shared the original photos from the bust, showing that the officers were actually dressed in plain clothes when apprehending the suspect.

Nevertheless, using disguises for a drug bust is not uncommon in Thailand, where police have repeatedly used theatrical tactics to catch suspects. In February, Bangkok officers dressed as a red-and-gold lion dance troupe during Lunar New Year festivities to arrest a man accused of stealing Buddhist artifacts.

“You cannot hide from the invisible, or from what you cannot see,” Bangkok police captain Lertvarit Lertvorapreecha told The Guardian in February, stating that “The fastest way of arresting someone is to surprise them, when they’re enjoying life, not knowing what’s going on around them.”

While the intricate operations have repeatedly gone viral both in Thailand and abroad, Thai police have stressed the goal of the operations is effective law enforcement rather than making social media content or gaining internet fame.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has told the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to intensify strikes against Hezbollah in Lebanon to deliver what he described as a decisive blow to the armed group.

The escalation could further complicate indirect talks between the US and Iran, as Tehran has stated that the Israeli military must end its operation against Hezbollah in order for a ceasefire with Washington to be extended. US President Donald Trump previously said Israel should only take “surgical” military action in Lebanon.

In a video message on Monday, Netanyahu insisted that Israel is “at war with Hezbollah” and that the country’s authorities “are not taking our foot off the gas.”

“On the contrary, I have instructed them [the IDF] to press the pedal even harder,” he said.

Hezbollah is “attacking us with drones… but what this requires of us now is to intensify the blows, increase the force,” Netanyahu stressed.

Netanyahu’s order came despite the ongoing ceasefire between the Jewish state and the Lebanese government in Beirut, which was agreed in mid-April after more than a month of fighting and was extended earlier in May.

The truce reduced the intensity of hostilities but did not stop them completely, with Israel continuing its bombardment of Lebanese territory and Hezbollah responding with UAV attacks.

Earlier on Monday, one IDF soldier was killed and another seriously wounded by a drone in southern Lebanon.

The development prompted far-right Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir to state that “it’s time for the prime minister to bang on Trump’s table and inform him that we are returning to war in Lebanon.” Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich insisted that for every drone fired by Hezbollah “ten buildings must fall in Beirut.”

Axios reporter Barak Ravid said on X on Monday that an unnamed US official had indicated that the Trump administration could support intensified Israeli attacks in Lebanon.

“Hezbollah has ignored repeated requests to stop firing… Israel will never be expected to passively absorb attacks on its forces and civilians. This is not the Biden administration,” the official said.

The number of Germans who believe Russia may launch a military attack on their country has fallen sharply since last year, according to a recent poll.

In recent years, senior German officials have repeatedly claimed that Moscow could pose a direct military threat to NATO by the end of the decade.

In an interview with the Süddeutsche Zeitung earlier this month, Germany’s top military officer, General Carsten Breuer, asserted that Russia could be ready for such a confrontation by 2029.

However, only 38% of Germans now consider an attack from Russia to be a plausible threat – down 14 percentage points from September of last year, Bild am Sonntag reported on Saturday, citing an INSA survey.

Half of respondents said they “are no longer afraid of a Russian attack at all,” according to the newspaper.

The poll also found that only 17% of those surveyed believe the German military would be capable of defending the country in the event of an attack, while 43% doubt the US would come to Berlin’s aid in such a scenario.

Despite mounting economic challenges and a widening budget deficit, Chancellor Friedrich Merz has pledged to turn the Bundeswehr into the “strongest conventional army in Europe.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly dismissed claims that Moscow plans to attack NATO as “nonsense,” accusing European leaders of using the narrative to distract their citizens from domestic problems.

Commenting on Germany’s military buildup last month, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova warned that the country’s rearmament could trigger a global tragedy comparable to World War II.

Police investigating a gunshot incident in Scottsbluff, Nebraska, discovered that the gunman in question was not, in fact, a man, but a dog that had accidentally pulled the trigger, injuring a passerby, local news has reported.

Officers were called to a store on Saturday and informed that someone had been shot by a shotgun, local news outlet KNOP reported. Upon arrival, they found a pickup truck with one of its doors blown out, suggesting that the weapon had been fired from inside the truck.

They discovered that the owner of the truck had left his dog in the backseat as he went into the store. The dog had moved from one side of the seat to the other, catching its paw on the trigger of a loaded shotgun. The blast ripped through the skin of the vehicle, and one pellet struck a woman sitting at a nearby traffic light with her arm hanging out the window of her vehicle.

The woman was taken to a hospital and treated for non-life-threatening injuries.

Last November, a Pennsylvania man was seriously injured when his dog jumped onto his bed and set off a shotgun that lay loaded on the mattress with its safety off.

Six months earlier, a similar incident took place in Memphis, Tennessee, when a pitbull terrier jumped onto his owner’s bed as he and his girlfriend lay there with a loaded firearm. The dog’s paw got stuck in the weapon’s trigger guard, police said, causing the gun to fire and a bullet to graze the man’s thigh.

In Kansas in 2023, a dog in the back seat of a pickup truck accidentally triggered a loaded rifle and fatally shot a man in the back.

US President Donald Trump has outlined his preferred options for disposing of Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile as negotiators meet for high-stakes talks in Qatar.

The US has demanded that Iran completely dismantle its nuclear program, while Tehran insists that uranium enrichment is its sovereign right. Iranian officials have denied seeking to develop nuclear weapons.

“The Enriched Uranium (Nuclear Dust!) will either be immediately turned over to the United States to be brought home and destroyed or, preferably, in conjunction and coordination with the Islamic Republic of Iran, destroyed in place or at another acceptable location, with the Atomic Energy Commission, or its equivalent, witnessing this process and event,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Monday evening.

On Sunday, CBS News, citing a senior US official, reported that Iran had agreed “in principle” to dispose of its enriched uranium. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei, however, said on Monday that the negotiations were focused on ending the armed conflict with the US. “At this stage, we are not discussing nuclear issues,” he said.

Axios and Al Arabiya reported that the draft agreement to be discussed in Doha includes a commitment to negotiate the fate of Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile over a 60-day period.

Iran’s top negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, said on Friday that Iran would “not compromise on its rights” as a sovereign nation. Iranian officials said ahead of the talks that the US needed to rebuild trust after launching airstrikes on Iran in late February, shortly after a round of Omani-mediated negotiations.

Several Democratic candidates vying for seats in the US Congress have accused their Republican rivals of protecting the wealthy and politically connected associates of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, referring to them as the “Epstein class.”

The party has sought to use the controversy as part of a broader push to regain control of Congress from the GOP.

While President Donald Trump has long accused the Democrats of having ties to Epstein, his administration has come under mounting criticism from both Democrats and some Republicans over its handling of the Epstein files. Critics have accused the Department of Justice of concealing key details through heavy redactions in materials released last November and January.

In the race for an Ohio Senate seat, Democrat Sherrod Brown has been airing a TV ad for weeks that accuses his Republican rival, Jon Husted, of receiving more money from Epstein associates than any other members of Congress.

“Husted’s taken over $116,000 from one of Epstein’s closest friends and co-conspirators,” the ad says, referring to billionaire Leslie Wexner, a longtime client of the disgraced financier.

“Last year, he took a maximum donation from him just weeks before voting to block the release of the Epstein files,” the ad alleges.

Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff has also repeatedly portrayed the Trump administration as part of a corrupt elite tied to the convicted sex offender.

“This is the Epstein class ruling our country,” Ossoff said at a rally in February.

Speaking to Axios, Republican National Committee spokesperson Kiersten Pels dismissed the Democrats’ criticism as “cynical political theater” from a “party with no message and no credibility.”

The Epstein files have also exposed growing divisions within the GOP. Outgoing Representative Thomas Massie, who joined Democrat Ro Khanna in advancing the Epstein Files Transparency Act, has suggested his push for disclosure put him at odds with Trump.

Last week, Massie lost a Kentucky primary to Trump-backed Republican Ed Gallrein, whose campaign received support from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC), and other special interest groups.

US fighter jets have struck Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) speedboats as explosions were heard near the port of Bandar Abbas.

The attack occurred on Monday as US and Iranian negotiators arrived in Qatar in hopes of advancing stalled talks.

According to SNN, the attack on the Iranian vessels took place south of Larak Island, in the narrowest section of the Strait of Hormuz, which remains under a dual US-Iranian blockade. At least three Iranian sailors were killed, SNN said.

Media outlets also reported a series of explosions in Bandar Abbas, home to an Iranian naval base.

The US Central Command (CENTCOM) later said in a statement that US forces had “conducted self-defense strikes in southern Iran today to protect our troops from threats posed by Iranian forces.” The statement added that the targets included missile sites and “Iranian boats attempting to emplace mines.”

Earlier, the US military had warned that it would intervene in response to Iranian attacks on ships transiting the strait.

Iran closed the vital shipping lane to vessels from “hostile countries” in response to the US and Israeli airstrikes launched on February 28. Last month, the US announced a blockade of Iranian ports.

The fragile truce reached between the US and Iran on April 8 has largely held, despite US President Donald Trump repeatedly threatening to resume the bombing campaign unless Tehran agrees to his demands.

Moscow has demanded the Czech Republic immediately release Metropolitan Bishop Hilarion detained in the country, branding the incident a “fabricated persecution” of the senior Russian Christian Orthodox hierarch.

The bishop was detained by Czech police on Sunday while traveling in a car from his parish church of Saint Peter and Paul in the resort town of Karlovy Vary. According to Hilarion’s press service, the law enforcement did not provide any solid reasoning behind the traffic stop, proceeding to search the car instead. The law enforcement recovered “four small containers with white substance” from the car’s trunk, believed to be illicit drugs.

“I have never had any connection to the illegal drug trade. Since I’m a clergyman, the very suggestion of such a thing is utterly false. I insist on a full, independent, and procedurally impeccable investigation of what happened,” the bishop said in a statement. 

According to the hierarch’s legal team, his car was searched without proper procedure, including witnesses and video recording. The law enforcement officers also allegedly went straight for its trunk and did not search the personal belongings of Hilarion and his driver. 

The Russian Orthodox Church has issued a similar statement, suggesting the incident was a part of a broader “intimidation” and “rabid spy mania” campaign against it waged by the Czech authorities. 

Bishop Hilarion has long held senior posts within the church hierarchy, including leading the Hungarian and Budapest Metropolises from June 2022 to late 2024. The hierarch was stripped down from the post amid sexual misconduct and lavish lifestyle allegations circulated by some media outlets at the time. While none of the claims were proven or led to any legal consequences, the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church formally reprimanded Hilarion over “the discrepancy between the nature of his relationships with his immediate circle and his way of life with the image of a monk and a clergyman.” 

China has successfully launched the Shenzhou-23 spacecraft, sending three astronauts to its Tiangong space station on a regular crew rotation mission. The crew will relieve their colleagues currently in orbit and continue long duration experiments aboard the country’s permanent outpost. 

RT correspondent Konstantin Rozhkov reported from the Jiuquan launch site in the Gobi Desert, where a Long March-2F rocket carried the spacecraft into orbit. He noted the parallels between China’s crewed program and Russia’s long track record with Soyuz flights, as well as the two countries’ enduring cooperation dating back to the 1990s, which has included training Chinese astronauts.

Watch more in RT’s report.

Every political and social order comes in two flavors: What its small elite and the minority exploiting it to the full want everyone to believe, and the reality that most of its members actually live in. The two never match, but this mismatch need not be a big problem. However, if the difference becomes too great and too obvious for too long, no order can continue unchanged.

None of the above is news. Keen observers have long understood that things get shaky when a majority loses their belief in – or at least passive acceptance of – the prevalent ideology (in the original meaning of the term, namely, as the elite’s imaginative story about reality, keeping the non-elites compliant).

In such a situation, things will change, but it is hard to predict how, exactly. An acute ideology-reality mismatch can lead to rebellion and, if the latter succeeds, revolution. Yet it can also make the elites ramp up their indoctrination or become more punitive, adding more direct compulsion to keep those below in line. There is always also the option of going to war with enemies abroad – real or, much more likely, invented – to distract from disunity at home. Finally, all of the above can happen in a messy sequence, or even at the same time.

Despite differences and tensions, the West does constitute some form of political and social order. In its elites’ ideology, as spread by their compliant mainstream media, it is a fairy-tale realm of political and economic freedom, combining representative democracy with free markets, the rule of law, individualism, and superior “values” to make the best of all possible worlds. In reality, obviously, it’s a dark zone of capitalist oligarchy with increasingly authoritarian tendencies. Not the Hobbits’ cozy Shire; rather Sauron’s domain under construction.

The September 11, 2001 attacks can be considered the evil Big Bang of our current iteration of mass manipulation, authoritarian power grabs in the name of “emergency” response, permanent warfare, and lying so intense it is sometimes hard to remember there is a truth. As the rebellious US ex-MAGA conservative Tucker Carlson has just reminded us, 9/11 was also accompanied – and preceded – by trading, for which the description “highly suspicious” is an understatement.

Democratic political representation and freedom of thought and speech are, at best, if not outright deceptions, then myths. That is, a messy hodgepodge of scraps of reality and large doses of invention. The rare scraps of reality are now diminishing ever further.

Concerning freedom, Britain under the widely hated Starmer regime, for instance, is a Zionist police state. It goes further than smearing and suppressing any action on behalf of the victims of Israel’s crimes, including genocide, as ”antisemitism”; it also condemns any statements of public solidarity with the victims. There is no rule of law worthy of the name: perfectly legitimate speech is prohibited as “terrorist,” the police harass political dissidents as well as the courts and their procedures. These themselves are unreliable (ask Julian Assange), and are brazenly bent out of shape to produce unfair trials and punitive sentences.

Regarding representation, take Germany, for instance: It now has a breathtakingly, historically unpopular government that is only even in place because the last election saw widespread and statistically bizarre miscounts which together acted – very un-randomly – to conveniently eliminate a whole new-left party (the BSW), and thus its voters, from parliament.

Even the most conformist inhabitants of the West, moreover, cannot close their eyes anymore to the empirical fact that conspiracies are all too real and exert great, heinous influence by vicious means. You cannot have both your masses soundly believing in the myth of fair popular representation and an Epstein scandal; it is proof of the massive over-representation of a very particular set of interests, and even foreign states, through networks of subversion and blackmail. The system may survive at first, but its base will be undermined by mass frustration and cynicism.

Today, the states of the West, in short, has much in common, and most of it is terrible. That is why we are observing one big trend across it now: In the words of the Wall Street Journal – not usually known for subversive dissidence – “Europeans are fed up and taking it out on their leaders.” Polls show massive discontent across NATO-EU Europe. And not only polls but real elections, too: Britain’s Starmer regime has just received a horrific drubbing in local elections that may well mark the impending end of the UK’s dysfunctional and unfair two-party system.

In a study rating the popularity of 24 leaders, the three worst performers were the heads of France, Germany, and the UK: The top tier of the NATO-EU Europe complex is held by its least popular rulers. But that doesn’t mean others are doing much better. The leaders of Italy, the Netherlands and Spain all have disapproval ratings between 55 and 57 percent.

But what would the West be without its “indispensable” leader? Peruse the Financial Times, another mainstream media outlet above any suspicion of rebelliousness, and you’ll find that there is unhappiness across the Atlantic: In the US, more than half of all voters disapprove of President Trump’s policies, too.

It is always tempting to focus on each case of malaise individually: here the German mess with its peculiar East-West tension and its comically self-pitying leader Friedrich Merz, for instance; there the French decrepitude with its constitutional design flaws and the raging narcissist Emmanuel Macron at the center; and there again, the British establishment’s traditional vassalage to the US combined with its perverse relationship to Zionism and genocidal Israel. In the case of America, it is, of course, the upcoming midterm elections that attract the most attention.

But what if we adopt a longer view? Where is all of this misery going? Again, more than one outcome is possible. Full disclosure: I find things desperate enough not to mind rebellion and revolution. But it would be foolish not to consider other scenarios, namely those that the Western elites would prefer: Increasing repression is an obvious fact already. Distraction by war abroad as well: those labeling the Israeli-American assault on Iran Operation Epstein (instead of ‘Epic’) Fury have nailed it. Berlin, being Berlin, naturally is gearing up to fight Russia directly (as opposed to “only” indirectly as it is now), and so is, alas, much of the NATO-EU complex. The future is unpredictable. Except for one thing: Change is inevitable. Don’t bank on it being for the better.

The Caribbean is beginning to smell like war. As Washington tightens its sanctions noose around Cuba, deploys additional military assets to the region, and increasingly resorts to the language of ultimatums, media outlets and policy circles have started seriously discussing the possibility of direct US intervention on the island. The trigger has not only been a fresh wave of accusations against Raúl Castro and the highly publicized appearance of the USS Nimitz carrier strike group off Cuba’s coast, but also the broader logic of escalation itself: an energy blockade, rhetoric about a so-called ‘drone threat’, and a growing perception that the Trump administration sees Cuba as the next target of its hard-power foreign policy.

While the US administration officially denies the possibility of a full-scale military operation, the trajectory of the crisis itself makes such a scenario difficult to dismiss. What might America’s steps look like if the confrontation enters a military phase? Would Washington limit itself to a targeted ‘surgical strike’, launch a large-scale air campaign aimed at crippling Cuban infrastructure, or attempt to achieve its objectives through a naval blockade and economic strangulation? Let’s examine the main scenarios for a potential US operation against Cuba, their military rationale, and likely consequences.

Setting the Stage

In 2026, US-Cuba relations have reached their highest level of tension in decades. An executive order signed by the US president on January 29, 2026, titled “Countering Threats Posed by the Government of Cuba,” formally classified Havana’s policies as a threat to US national security. Cuba remains on the list of state sponsors of terrorism, effectively cutting it off from much of the international financial system and severely restricting foreign investment. In this context, virtually any scenario is possible.

From Washington’s perspective, the groundwork for a military solution already exists. According to testimony delivered to Congress in March of 2026 by General Francis Donovan, commander of US Southern Command, combined regional forces continue operations against narco-terrorist networks using naval assets, aerial surveillance, and special operations units. The US naval base at Guantánamo Bay remains a critical platform for force projection in the region. Additional troops and assets could also be deployed from the continental United States. More than ten US warships and at least 10,000 American personnel are currently operating in the Caribbean.

SCENARIO 1: Limited ‘Surgical’ Operation

The first scenario that comes to mind resembles previous US actions against Venezuela: a limited ‘surgical’ operation aimed at neutralizing key leadership figures, command-and-control centers, and communications infrastructure. Such an operation would likely involve Tomahawk cruise missile strikes launched from US Fourth Fleet warships and submarines, MQ-9 Reaper drone strikes, and special operations raids.

What could the consequences be? The biggest concern would be the possibility of a disproportionate Cuban military response against the Guantánamo Bay base, as well as broad international condemnation of what many would see as a ‘policing operation’. In theory, even a limited strike could spiral into a far larger conflict, forcing Washington to commit additional troops and resources while becoming bogged down in ground combat around Guantánamo and deeper inside Cuban territory.

That risk is real. But there is also the possibility that a targeted operation could achieve its objectives with limited fallout – particularly if US Special Forces enjoy the same degree of operational success that they reportedly had in Venezuela.

The second scenario more closely resembles the joint US-Israeli strikes against Iran: a large-scale air operation designed to suppress Cuban air defenses, destroy military infrastructure, and demoralize the country’s armed forces and political leadership.

Such a campaign would likely involve strategic bombers, including the B-1B, B-2, and B-52H armed with JASSM cruise missiles and JDAM precision-guided bombs. Carrier-based aviation would also play a major role, with F/A-18E/F Super Hornets and F-35C fighters operating from aircraft carriers. Electronic warfare and suppression of radar and communications systems would be handled by EA-18G Growler aircraft.

How could Cuba respond? The island’s air defense network is still largely built around aging Soviet-era systems such as the S-75 and S-125, though some degree of modernization has likely taken place. Portable air defense systems would almost certainly be used extensively. The key question would be whether Cuban forces could maintain coordination and real-time target-sharing under sustained electronic and aerial assault. Under those conditions, the odds of successfully defending against a US air campaign would be slim – but not nonexistent.

For Washington, however, this option is likely less attractive. Unlike a quiet covert strike, a large-scale bombing campaign would be impossible to hide and would almost certainly provoke a far more intense global backlash.

The third scenario would unfold over a much longer period of time: a naval blockade combined with economic pressure aimed at forcing political change without direct military intervention.

In practice, elements of this strategy are already visible. One can expect an increase in the interception and detention of vessels attempting to deliver fuel and energy supplies to the island. From the US perspective, this approach is preferable because it does not require a major troop buildup and carries fewer risks of rapid escalation.

The problem is that Cuba has spent decades operating under conditions resembling a de facto blockade. It is far from certain that additional pressure alone would trigger meaningful political change, meaning Washington could fail to achieve its strategic objectives.

Other Possible Scenarios

Other possibilities cannot be ruled out. One example would be a so-called ‘humanitarian intervention’ justified by a severe crisis on the island. If Washington were somehow able to secure a UN mandate to protect civilians, American troops could arrive under the banner of humanitarian assistance.

But much would depend on how the Cuban population reacts. If the public rallies behind the government, a humanitarian mission could quickly evolve into a counterinsurgency campaign against guerrilla forces, triggering a broader escalation.

One of the key variables remains the position of the international community – particularly Russia and China. In theory, aggressive US actions against Cuba could spark a wider wave of anti-American sentiment across Latin America. Moreover, if Washington became trapped in a prolonged military operation on the island, it would almost certainly generate a strong domestic backlash against the Trump administration itself.

With the Iran crisis still unresolved, Trump is unlikely to want another major geopolitical headache right on America’s doorstep. What he needs is a quick, clean, and preferably bloodless solution. That makes either a symbolic diplomatic settlement – or a short, carefully contained military operation – the most likely outcome.

For now, all that remains is to watch the maps – and the clock.

Global peacekeeping operations have declined sharply amid geopolitical divisions and funding pressures, increasing the risk of further conflicts, according to a report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

A total of 78,633 international personnel were deployed in peacekeeping operations as of December 2025. This is the lowest figure recorded since at least 2000, down 49% from 2016 levels, SIPRI said on Monday. Deployments also fell by 17% year-on-year, marking the steepest annual decline of the past decade.

“If things continue in this way, we could see a dramatic weakening of multilateral conflict management and the near-complete sidelining of institutions like the United Nations, due to a perfect storm of funding, political and geopolitical factors,” said Jair van der Lijn, director of the SIPRI Peace Operations and Conflict Management Programme. The result is likely to be “more conflicts” with “even graver impacts on civilians,” he warned.

This new SIPRI map shows all currently active multilateral #PeaceOperations plus other conflict-management operations authorized and/or conducted by the @UN and regional organizations.

Explore the map ➡️ https://t.co/AgrgX2sM3a
New data out now ➡️ https://t.co/hdZCpgz0Wj pic.twitter.com/VxqjCPR2ZN

— SIPRI (@SIPRIorg) May 24, 2026

All ten top contributors of military personnel for multilateral peacekeeping operations came from the Global South last year, SIPRI said.

UN-managed missions have been particularly affected by the funding crisis, with several major donors failing to pay their contributions on time or in full, the report said. In July of 2025, UN peacekeeping operations faced a $2 billion shortfall – more than 35% of their total 2024-25 budget – forcing deep personnel cuts.

Personnel deployments to peace operations declined sharply to reach 78 633, just over half the number deployed in 2016 and the smallest number in at least 25 years.

Explore the visualizations ➡️ https://t.co/FBG95irwBn pic.twitter.com/akn9HOdV0B

— SIPRI (@SIPRIorg) May 25, 2026

SIPRI said growing political pressure is also affecting UN operations, noting that Washington has pushed for the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) to be withdrawn despite repeated violations of the Israel-Lebanon ceasefire. 

Pope Leo XIV has delivered a stark warning on artificial intelligence, claiming that the technology is aiding the “normalization of war” and transferring powers of life and death to unaccountable “technological actors.”

The American-born pontiff presented his warning on Monday in an encyclical titled ‘Magnifica Humanitas’ (Magnificent Humanity). In the 42,000-word document, Leo highlighted how the “growth of the military-industrial complex has become a defining feature of the current political landscape,” leading to “a troubling revival of war as an instrument of international politics.”

In this environment, “the development and use of AI in warfare must be subject to the most rigorous ethical constraints, to guarantee respect for human dignity and the sanctity of life and to avoid a race to develop such arms,” he continued.

Popes typically use encyclicals to lay out their teachings on the social issues of their times. Pope Leo XIII, who inspired the current pontiff’s name, addressed the industrial revolution and inequality between the ownership and working classes in 1891’s ‘Rerum Novarum’, for example, while Pope Francis tackled climate change in 2015’s ‘Laudato Si’.

NOW - Pope Leo XIV: "Artificial Intelligence needs to be disarmed." pic.twitter.com/kSxjSAWjmU

— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) May 25, 2026

Since his election last May, Leo XIV has repeatedly warned of the destructive power of technology, describing AI as a potential threat to “human dignity, justice, and labor” in an address to cardinals last year. His encyclical goes a step further, calling for a global treaty to “disarm” the technology in order to prevent it from “dominating humanity.”

The Pope takes on Silicon Valley

While the Pope did not address Silicon Valley defense contractors such as Palantir and Anduril Industries by name, he did highlight the shift in power from the state to “major economic and technological actors.”

Palantir has grown particularly powerful in recent years, with its AI-powered data analytics software used by the US military to choose targets in Iran, and by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to plan strikes in Gaza. In Iran, Palantir’s software reportedly selected a girls’ elementary school in Minab as a valid target, based on outdated, human-compiled maps. A missile strike on the school killed more than 160 schoolgirls on the opening day of the war.

The Pope condemned the growing automation of warfare, declaring it “not permissible to entrust lethal or otherwise irreversible decisions to artificial systems.” AI-enabled systems must retain a “chain of responsibility,” he wrote, adding that “those who design, train, authorize and employ technology must be held accountable for their decisions.”

The pontiff’s encyclical stands in stark contrast to a manifesto released last month by Palantir CEO Alex Karp, in which he declared that American technology companies have “an affirmative obligation” to aid the US military, called for the remilitarization of Germany and Japan, and argued that the West should not engage in “theatrical debates about the merits of developing technologies with critical military and national security applications.”

Leo has found some allies within the AI industry, however. Anthropic co-founder Christopher Olah met with the pontiff in the Vatican on Monday, telling an audience of senior church leaders that AI laboratories operate “inside a set of incentives and constraints that can sometimes conflict with doing the right thing,” and that regulating this industry is “a moral imperative of historic proportions.”

Feud with Trump

Olah and Leo have both run afoul of US President Donald Trump in recent months. Trump canceled the Pentagon’s contracts with Anthropic in February, after the company refused to allow its software to be used in mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons. Two months later, Trump launched a scathing rebuke of Leo, calling the pontiff “weak” over his opposition to the US-Israeli war on Iran.

The Pope has also condemned the ongoing remilitarization of Europe, warning that rearmament “depletes investments in education and healthcare, undermines trust in diplomacy, and enriches elites who care nothing for the common good.”

The European Union’s demands that Serbia adjust its foreign policy to align with Brussels amount to an attempt to govern the country “by email,” Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has said during his state visit to China.

Vucic, who arrived in Beijing on Sunday, was asked at a press conference about a recent Bloomberg report claiming that Belgrade risked crossing a red line set by the EU by embracing Chinese military technology for its armed forces.

“First they banned me from talking with the Russian Federation,” he replied. “Now they ban me from going to China, too. They might as well pen a wish list detailing who I can and cannot meet.”

Brussels’ approach to Serbia, an EU candidate country, leaves little room for its own government to make decisions, Vucic said.

The EU has been pressuring Serbia, a historic ally of Russia, to impose sanctions on Moscow and support Kiev if it hopes to join the bloc. The president sarcastically thanked Bloomberg for warning him that further investment in advanced Chinese weapons could further undermine Serbia’s accession prospects.

Vucic also criticized EU members for shifting from advocating free trade a decade ago to promoting protectionist measures aimed at weakening Chinese competition.

Serbia accuses EU of double standards

In a column published by Fox News last week, Vucic said Brussels is using pressure tactics to damage Serbia’s ties with the US.

According to Serbian parliament speaker Ana Brnabic, Belgrade sees the EU’s demands as unfair. Brussels has effectively frozen Serbia’s integration process since 2021, despite its own inspectors repeatedly confirming that the country is ready to move forward, she told Politico last Thursday.

“The whole world came to be very simplistic, black and white,” Brnabic said, arguing that Serbia is being held to a double standard.

“We saw, for example, tear gas and water cannons used against protesters in Albania – but no one said a word. And why is that? In my view because Albania has aligned 100%” with the EU’s foreign policy goals.

No snap election plans

Vucic traveled to China after the latest round of anti-government protests in Belgrade led to sporadic clashes with police on Saturday.

Нобеловци на Славији, деца ваша чедна, невина и наивна, ваша дика и ваш понос

ВЕЧЕРАС ТЕРОРИШУ ПОЛИЦИЈУ И РУШЕ БЕОГРАД!!! pic.twitter.com/MeyyYL1HMc

— Višnja Petrović 🍒 (@gdjica_visnja) May 23, 2026

The demonstration is part of a protest movement that began after the 2024 railway station disaster in Novi Sad, which left 16 people dead. The Serbian government claims the unrest is being incited by Brussels as part of a pressure campaign.

Београд 23. 05. 2026. pic.twitter.com/RhYIVsdhLF

— vlajcco8 (@vlajcco8) May 23, 2026

Vucic has rejected claims that hundreds of thousands of people took part in the protest, citing a law enforcement estimate that put attendance at fewer than 34,000.

Београд - 23. 5. 2026. pic.twitter.com/wk8iiNhswY

— Никола Мићковић (@NikolaMickovic) May 24, 2026

The president also dismissed calls for early resignation, saying he intends to serve until his second term ends next year. Vucic is constitutionally barred from seeking another presidential term, but could potentially run for prime minister in the future.

Beijing has refuted a Financial Times report that Chinese President Xi Jinping attacked Japan’s “remilitarization” during talks with US President Donald Trump earlier this month. 

Xi and Trump met in Beijing on May 13-15 during the first visit by a US president to China in nearly a decade. 

In a Monday article, the FT claimed that Xi “castigated” Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi for her country’s increased military buildup in “an intense diatribe.”

According to the British newspaper, Xi grew visibly animated when discussing Japan, catching US officials off guard because the issue had not surfaced in earlier talks with Chinese counterparts ahead of the summit. The outlet described the exchange as the most intense moment of the two-day talks.

China’s foreign ministry denied the report later on Monday. Chinese spokeswoman Mao Ning said accounts that Xi had criticized Takaichi during the summit “do not accord with the information available to the Chinese side.”

Takaichi held phone talks with Trump right after his trip ended. According to Kyodo, the prime minister later told reporters she had received a detailed account of Trump’s conversation with Xi, but refused to comment further.

Ties between Beijing and Tokyo have deteriorated over Japan’s growing military spending and tensions around Taiwan. China’s foreign ministry said on Friday that Japan’s defense budget jumped 9.7% in 2025, extending a 14-year streak of increases, and accused Japanese conservatives of steering the country toward “neo-militarism.”

Beijing, which under its One-China policy views Taiwan as part of China, says it seeks peaceful reunification but has warned it could use force if the island formally declares independence.

Last week, Russia reaffirmed its commitment to the One-China principle, recognizing Taiwan as an inalienable part of China, according to a joint Moscow-Beijing statement.

In late December, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also warned Tokyo against pursuing “accelerated militarization,” saying: “Our Japanese neighbors would do well to carefully weigh everything before making any rash decisions.”

Australian activists who were detained by Israel as part of the Global Sumud Flotilla that intended to deliver aid to Gaza have said they were raped and tortured while being held by Israeli security forces.

Israel intercepted some 50 yachts in international waters off Cyprus in mid-May, detaining 430 volunteers from 40 nations, who were attempting to break the naval blockade of the Palestinian enclave. They spent several days in detention before being deported.

The first of the 11 Australian citizens from the flotilla returned home to Melbourne late on Sunday evening, while others arrived in Sydney and Brisbane on Monday.

Documentary filmmaker Juliet Lamont said that she went through “absolute hell” during her four days in Israeli custody.

“I was dragged into a darkened container ship on a prison boat. I was sexually assaulted. I was beaten… I’ve looked into the eyes of the most soulless people in the universe, and nothing came back,” she recalled, as cited by Reuters.

“We were constantly kept in a state of different styles of torture, we just didn’t know which pain was coming next,” CoCo claimed.

Another volunteer, Sam Woripa Watson, said he was repeatedly kicked and punched by Israeli servicemen, suffering cheek bone and rib fractures as well as other injuries. He also claimed he witnessed fellow activists being tasered, shot with rubber bullets, and having stun grenades thrown at them.

“Overwhelmingly, the worst feeling is to hear that people that you love are being tortured and being raped around you in the same space and you have no power to do anything about it,” Watson said.

The Israeli military denied the accusations, insisting it has a procedure of “respectful and appropriate treatment of flotilla participants” and that it was not aware of any deviations by troops.

As a result of the March 2026 municipal elections, as many as 11 French cities came under the control of migrants. This is no exaggeration. First, that was the election agenda itself, formulated with utmost clarity by La Courneuve mayoral candidate Ali Diouara: “My issue is our own, the locals. And when I say ‘our own, the locals,’ I mean Blacks and Arabs.” Second, the new mayors from Mélenchon’s party have already announced a phased disarmament and reduction of the municipal police.

It is therefore no surprise that police unions are urging their colleagues to flee left-wing cities where people from the “migration” milieu have come to power. In the city of Saint-Denis, the head of the municipal police and all his deputies resigned, and more than half of the officers filed requests for transfers to other cities.

France already has the highest crime rate in Europe, while Paris holds the absolute lead in the frequency of robberies. And now that eight Paris suburbs have formally come under the control of migrant communities, the words “Welcome to Saint-Denis” no longer sound very welcoming in French.

During the recent Paris riots marking Paris Saint-Germain’s advance to the final of the UEFA Champions League, the rioters destroyed the ‘Living Together’ exhibition on Place de la Concorde. That says more about France’s future than the progressive doctrine of the ‘creolization’ of the French, through which Mélenchon’s left tactfully and skillfully sidesteps the topic of the withering away of the French nation.

An experiment has been carried out in France. The welfare state, created after the Second World War for the purpose of France’s national revival and still one of the best in the world, has, as a result of the French elite’s adoption and implementation of the globalist project, been turned into the largest incubator of culturally alien diasporas. These diasporas take social benefits for granted, but reject French patriotism as a relic of an incorrect and doomed civilization.

The course and results of this social experiment can be assessed using RT’s global Social Well-Being Index (SWI). While the West is locked in a measuring contest of who has more money and greater opportunities for consumption, we measure what truly matters for the survival and flourishing of nations: the ability to produce life (birth rates); the preservation of life (infant mortality, longevity, homicide mortality); and the minimization of oppression (the level of inequality between rich and poor, and children’s education).

In examining the French case, one must not only analyze the statistics but also anatomize the mainstream discourse. Because Michel Foucault’s thesis on the power of discourse is relevant everywhere, but most of all in France. To see how a France that no longer fights is feeling, look here.

EU leaders are losing their remaining credibility by condemning Russia’s retaliatory strikes against Ukrainian military targets while ignoring Kiev’s deadly drone attack on a college dorm in the Lugansk People’s Republic, former British MP George Galloway has said.

Ukraine struck a teacher training college dormitory in the Russian town of Starobelsk with several waves of UAVs on Friday, killing 21 people – most of them teenage girls – and injuring 60 others.

On Sunday, the Russian Defense Ministry said it had carried out a large-scale retaliatory raid involving hypersonic Oreshnik systems, as well as other missiles and drones, hitting command centers of the Ukrainian ground forces, military intelligence facilities, air bases, and defense industry enterprises. The ministry stressed that the bombardment was a response to terrorist attacks by Kiev and that no civilian facilities had been targeted.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, however, claimed that the Russian strike was a display of “brutality and disregard for both human life and peace negotiations.” 

In an interview with RT on Sunday, Galloway described Ukrainian strike as “murder most foul” and “an act of terrorism,” adding that “you would have expected any decent person, any right-thinking person, to condemn it unequivocally.”

The attack by Kiev was “so vast and so vile that any government in the world would have been forced to respond to it in precisely the way that Russia has done,” Galloway stated.

“Well, Macron actually condemned the retaliatory strike without reference to what it was a retaliation for. How’s that for French hypocrisy?” the former British MP, who hosts the ‘Mother of All Talk Shows’ (MOATS) program on YouTube, noted.

Speaking about von der Leyen’s criticism, Galloway recalled that European nations such as Britain, France, and Belgium have themselves suffered terrorist attacks in recent years.

Watch RT’s full interview with George Galloway below.

The UK, France, Spain, Italy, and Canda have rejected a proposal for NATO member states to spend 0.25% of their GDP on military assistance to Ukraine, The Telegraph has reported.

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte was hoping that mandatory funding for Kiev would be approved at the bloc’s summit in Ankara, Türkiye on July 7-8, The Telegraph said in an article on Sunday.

A NATO insider told the paper that Britain, France, Spain, Italy, and Canada “aren’t very enthusiastic about the idea.”

Out of the 32 member-states, the proposal was only supported by seven nations, all of which already spend 0.25% or more of their GDP on assisting Ukraine, The Telegraph said.

According to data from the Kiel Institute, the Netherlands, Poland, and the Nordic and Baltic countries currently spend 0.25% of their GDP or more on arming Kiev.

Mandatory funding had been intended to serve as a show of continued commitment to Ukraine by the bloc’s European members after American assistance to the government of Vladimir Zelensky ebbed significantly under US President Donald Trump, it added.

A British foreign office spokesperson told the paper that “the UK continues to engage with NATO allies on all proposals to ensure the alliance can best support Ukraine.”

Moscow has repeatedly decried Western aid to Kiev, saying that it will not prevent it from achieving its goals in the Ukraine conflict and only prolongs the fighting, increasing the risk of a direct clash between Russia and NATO.

Three Chinese astronauts have successfully reached the Tiangong space station, with one of them set to spend more than a year in orbit. This marks another step in Beijing’s preparations for a future lunar landing.

The Shenzhou-23 spacecraft launched aboard a Long March-2F rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert late Sunday.

Less than four hours later, following a rapid rendezvous and docking process, the crew, led by Commander Zhu Yangzhu, successfully reached the Tiangong space station, a name that translates as “Heavenly Palace.”

China launched three astronauts to the Tiangong space station aboard Shenzhou-23, with one expected to stay for up to a year, marking one of its longest missions https://t.co/s6HLiJW0Dj pic.twitter.com/VBnipDTB8k

— Reuters (@Reuters) May 24, 2026

Former Air Force pilot Zhang Zhiyuan and payload specialist Lai Ka-ying, a former Hong Kong police officer and the first person from the city to travel to space, were welcomed by the outgoing Shenzhou-22 team.

After a 3.5-hour flight, Shenzhou-23 docked with the China Space Station at 18:45UTC https://t.co/7V9RJU8BBm pic.twitter.com/safcfvjErg

— CNSPACE (@CNSpaceflight) May 24, 2026

The astronauts are expected to spend around six months aboard the orbital station, carrying out scientific experiments, maintenance work, and spacewalks. One crew member is set to stay twice as long to complete China’s first year-long mission in orbit.

Shenzhou-21 crew opened the hatch to welcome Shenzhou-23, marking China's 8th "space reunion" and the first time a Hong Kong astronaut joins the Tiangong family. pic.twitter.com/KlVF0tU1Mg

— Shanghai Daily (@shanghaidaily) May 25, 2026

The China Manned Space Engineering Office (CMSEO) said the Tiangong space station plays a key role in Beijing’s plans to place two astronauts on the Moon before 2030.

“We carry out the project of crewed lunar exploration under the established plan. We are not competing with other countries in space,” said the agency’s senior engineer Zhou Yaqiang. “When Chinese astronauts land on the Moon in the future, this will be a great feat for all of humanity.”

Moscow and Beijing have expanded cooperation in space in recent years, agreeing to establish a joint data center for lunar and deep-space exploration focused on the Moon and Mars. In 2021, the two countries announced the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) project, with Russia seeking to build a power station on the Moon to provide energy for the base within the next decade.

Once the darling of the Democratic Party, Tulsi Gabbard had a hard-earned reputation as a no-nonsense proponent of fact-based truth, which she assiduously incorporated into her eloquent defense of Constitutional due process and moral integrity when it came to the national security of the United States.

With a resume that boasts years of honorable military service, including a tour of duty in war-torn Iraq, Gabbard was a staunch advocate of looking out for the welfare of the men and women in the US military – whom she regularly referred to as her “brothers and sisters in arms.” She, as much as anyone, understood the age-old mantra, “if you lie, they die” when it came to the relationship between intelligence and troops in the field. She held herself to a high standard and applied that same standard to those she worked with.

Her appointment as the Director of National Intelligence was seen by many as a bright shining light of hope when it came to injecting fact-based truths into a Trump administration known to be loose with the facts. Her resignation this past week, ostensibly for personal reasons, is a great disappointment to those Americans who were looking to her for clarity and truth in a world that has degenerated into lie-fueled chaos.

Tulsi Gabbard was always somewhat politically inclined. In 2002 she followed in her father’s footsteps, running for and winning a seat in the Hawaii State Legislature, becoming the youngest woman ever to hold a seat there. Gabbard joined the Hawaiian Army National Guard shortly after winning office, and deployed to Iraq shortly thereafter, where she earned the Combat Action Badge in the performance of her duties. Gabbard’s tenure as a state legislature was cut short by her military service (she was not allowed to vote on issues while on active service), but in 2011, following a second tour of duty in the Middle East, Gabbard ran for and won a seat on the Honolulu City Council. Shortly thereafter, the Congressional seat for Hawaii’s 2nd Congressional District became vacant, and Gabbard threw her hat in the ring, winning handily. She was quickly seen as a rising star in Democratic national politics and was invited to speak at the 2012 Democratic National Convention.

As a US congresswoman, Gabbard served on several prominent committees related to national security, including Homeland Security, Armed Services, and Foreign Affairs. Her political profile was rising, and in 2013 she was appointed as the vice chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). Gabbard resigned from this position in 2016, during a contentious presidential primary campaign where she accused the DNC Chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, of favoring the candidacy of Hillary Rodham Clinton over that of Bernie Sanders. Gabbard went on to endorse Sanders in the primary (he lost). While many viewed her resignation as the political kiss of death, Gabbard’s reputation for integrity and courage was burnished, paving the way for her to enter the 2020 US presidential race.

The 2020 presidential campaign saw Gabbard’s willingness to challenge the conventional narrative regarding US national security priorities, especially when it came to America’s involvement in the seemingly endless wars in the Middle East, transforming her into a target for the mainstream American media, which had a record of supporting establishment candidates and promoting establishment narratives. Her visit to Syria in 2017 as a member of Congress became fodder for her political opponents and their mainstream media allies who sought to paint Gabbard – who had served in combat – as being sympathetic to Islamic terrorists and Middle Eastern dictators.

Gabbard became active on social media, starting her own podcast and frequently interacting with popular conservative media personalities such as Tucker Carlson. During this time, her resentment toward the Democratic Party came to a head, and in 2022 she announced she was going independent. As an independent, she began gravitating toward the policies and positions espoused by Donald Trump, between presidencies at the time, and came out in support of several pro-Trump candidates during the 2022 midterm elections. Gabbard’s star was rising among the ranks of pro-Trump Republicans and following a speaking appearance at the 2024 CPAC conference, Gabbard’s name was often mentioned as a possible Vice President selection for Donald Trump, who had thrown his hat into the ring for the 2024 Presidential race.

While Gabbard wasn’t asked to be Trump’s Vice President (that honor went to J.D. Vance), she and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. were brought into the campaign and played a huge role in bringing out a very substantive independent voting constituency for Trump, helping push him comfortably ahead of the Democratic Party nominee, Kamala Harris. In October 2024 Gabbard joined the Republican Party and, following Trump’s victory in November, was nominated by the president-elect for the position of Director of National Intelligence, America’s senior-most intelligence official.

Gabbard’s confirmation process was contentious, as Trump’s many political foes sought to embarrass the president by making political hay out of Gabbard’s past, highlighting her two meetings with Syrian President Bashar Assad in 2017 and her opinions on Russia. Many politicians from both parties accused her of failing to denounce Russia’s military operation against Ukraine, which commenced on  February 24, 2022, as well as her arguments about the root causes of the conflict, which many believed too closely aligned with those of the Russian government. Gabbard was particularly critical of US support for NATO expansion and Ukraine’s potential membership in NATO and believed that the military operation could have been avoided had the US simply not supported Ukrainian membership in NATO. Gabbard was likewise very critical of the US program to fund biological research at laboratories in Ukraine – a program many, including Russia, believe has a military offensive biological warfare aspect to it. She was labeled by her political rivals and the mainstream US media as a “darling of Russia’s state media,” a “Russia apologist” and a “Russian asset.” Gabbard’s supporters countered by emphasizing her long record of honorable military service and underscored the importance of new blood in the mix when it came to the work of the intelligence community, and ultimately Gabbard was confirmed by the US Senate and sworn in as the nation’s eight Director of National Intelligence, or DNI.

As DNI, Gabbard oversaw unprecedented transparency efforts, paving the way for the release of hundreds of thousands of pages of records tied to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, and the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. Gabbard also led the charge to conduct a sweeping internal review of the intelligence used by Barack Obama when accusing Donald Trump of colluding with the Russian government in the lead up to the 2016 US presidential election. This review resulted in the debunking of every claim of collusion, and uncovered evidence of criminal conspiracy which led Gabbard to refer former president Obama for prosecution.

Just a week before her resignation, Gabbard announced that her office would be investigating more than 120 biological laboratories abroad that were funded by US taxpayer dollars pursuant to President Trump’s executive order on so-called “gain-of-function” research. These investigations would not only target funding related to Chinese laboratories linked to Covid-19, but also the role played by US funding in Ukrainian laboratories believed by Russia to have been involved in offensive biological warfare research.

But Trump was, and is, a president unlike any other, and Gabbard quickly found out that telling the truth didn’t earn one the trust of the president – especially if the truth was inconvenient – but rather generated scorn as the president quickly viewed any dissent on his viewpoints as being little more than the manifestation of treachery and disloyalty. Her views on Iran directly contradicted the case President Trump was making regarding the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear program, prompting the President to opine that “She’s wrong” when it came to Iran – something no Director of National Intelligence wants to hear about the work being done by her charges.

Tensions over Iran led to much speculation that the president was seeking to remove Gabbard from her post. As such, the timing of her resignation has been seen by many as suspicious, although there is no doubting the human reality of her husband’s serious medical condition and her desire to care for him. In any event, the US has lost the services of a true patriot whose integrity proved to be both benefit and bane to the Trump administration.

US President Donald Trump has lashed out at critics of a still-unfinished peace deal with Iran, saying negotiations with Tehran are proceeding in an “orderly and constructive manner” but that he has instructed his representatives “not to rush” into an agreement.

Trump insisted that any deal reached by his administration would not resemble the Obama-era 2015 nuclear agreement, which he unilaterally abandoned during his first term and has described as “one of the worst deals ever made.”

“Our deal is the exact opposite, but nobody has seen it, or knows what it is. It isn’t even fully negotiated yet,” he wrote on his social media network Truth Social on Sunday. “So don’t listen to the losers, who are critical about something they know nothing about.”

Multiple hardline Republicans have criticized the rumored terms of the deal, with US Senator Lindsey Graham warning they would be a “nightmare for Israel,” Senator Ted Cruz calling them a “disastrous mistake,” and Senator Roger Wicker saying they could render the achievements of Operation Epic Fury “for naught.”

The draft also reportedly includes Iranian commitments never to pursue nuclear weapons and to negotiate over suspending uranium enrichment and removing its highly enriched uranium stockpile, though the method remained under negotiation, according to the New York Times and CBS News. Fox News reported that the deal was “95% there” as of Sunday, but negotiators were still haggling over “language.”

Iranian officials have not publicly commented on the reported terms, but previously said the focus of talks remained on ending the war, and that nuclear details were not being discussed at this stage. Fars news agency has also disputed Trump’s claim that the Strait of Hormuz would simply be “opened.”

The proposed MOU also reportedly states that the war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon would end. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly raised concerns about that provision and other parts of the draft during his call with Trump on Saturday.

The European Union’s top brass and the leaders of several member states have issued statements on the latest exchange of strikes between Kiev and Moscow that ignore the recent deadly Ukrainian attack on a college dormitory that preceded Russian retaliatory strikes.

According to the Russian authorities, 21 people, mostly teenage girls, lost their lives and 60 more sustained injuries after three waves of Ukrainian drones targeted the main academic building and dormitory of the Starobelsk Professional College in the Lugansk People’s Republic overnight from Thursday to Friday.

The Russian military responded early on Sunday by conducting a “massive strike” against military targets in Ukraine, including in Kiev, that featured the intermediate-range hypersonic Oreshnik system, Iskander ballistic missiles, Kinzhal and Zircon hypersonic cruise missiles, among other strike capabilities. The Russian Defense Ministry has reported that Ukrainian military command and control facilities, air bases, as well as defense industry enterprises were struck.

The bloc’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, has similarly spoken of a “political scare-tactic” on the part of Russia.

French President Emmanuel Macron, in turn, has vowed to double down on backing the Ukrainian leadership, with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz denouncing “this reckless escalation.” 
However, none of the said EU leaders mentioned the deadly Ukrainian UAV attack on the college dormitory in Starobelsk that served as the cause of Moscow’s retaliation.

Russia’s UN envoy, Vassily Nebenzia, previously accused Western diplomats of “turning a blind eye” to the crimes of the “neo-Nazi Kiev regime.”

Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Sunday that the BBC and CNN rejected Moscow’s invitation to visit the site of the attack, while Tokyo explicitly banned Japanese reporters from making the trip.

The US military on Saturday conducted a drill in the Venezuelan capital of Caracas that rehearsed a potential emergency and evacuation at its embassy.

The exercise, which had been authorized by the Venezuelan authorities, is the first US military drill held in the country after Washington kidnapped President Nicolas Maduro and his wife.

The drill involved two USMC MV-22B Osprey aircraft, which landed near the US Embassy, as well as naval vessels that entered Venezuelan waters in the Caribbean.

The US mission shared footage of the aircraft landing near the compound, stating the drill was a “military response exercise.”

“Ensuring the army’s rapid response capability is a key component of mission readiness, both here in Venezuela and around the world,” the embassy said.

En estos momentos se está llevando a cabo un ejercicio de respuesta militar estadounidense en la Embajada de los Estados Unidos en Caracas. Garantizar la capacidad de respuesta rápida del ejército es un componente clave de la preparación de la misión, tanto aquí en Venezuela como… pic.twitter.com/PpEwghap8r

— Embajada de los EE.UU. en Caracas (@usembassyve) May 23, 2026

The Pentagon’s activities triggered a small protest in the city as a few dozen activists gathered to condemn the exercise as a “humiliation” to the nation. The protesters were seen holding a Venezuelan flag on which the words ‘No to the Yankee drill’ were inscribed.

The kidnapping of Maduro effectively subjugated Venezuela to the US. The country’s interim authorities have actively cooperated with Washington since the raid. Maduro remains incarcerated in the US on multiple charges, including drug trafficking. He has strongly denied all the allegations, describing himself as a “prisoner of war.”

The US military has lost up to 30 MQ-9 Reaper drones since the start of the conflict with Iran, which accounts for nearly a fifth of Washington’s entire pre-war fleet and is valued at close to $1 billion, Bloomberg has reported. The bulk of them were destroyed or seriously damaged by Iranian fire, according to the outlet.

The MQ-9 Reaper is capable of conducting both reconnaissance and strike missions. A single drone is estimated to cost more than $30 million. General Atomics halted production of the model last year, although variants are still being manufactured for foreign customers.

In an article on Thursday, Bloomberg, citing an anonymous source, reported that “Iran has destroyed more than two dozen MQ-9 Reaper drones operated by US forces since the war began” in late February.

While many of the drones were downed by Iranian air defenses, others were lost on the ground as a result of missile strikes, as well as in accidents, according to Bloomberg.

Earlier this month, the Congressional Research Service – the nonpartisan research arm of the Library of Congress that works with open-source materials – issued a report named ‘U.S. Aircraft Combat Losses in Operation Epic Fury.’ The document, citing an unspecified “news article,” similarly estimates that the US military had lost 24 MQ-9 Reapers, plus one MQ-4C.

The tally features a total of 42 US aircraft, including four F-15E fighter jets, an F-35A fighter jet, an A-10 Thunderbolt II ground-attack aircraft, seven KC-135 Stratotanker refueling planes, as well as a helicopter.

Appearing before the House Appropriations defense subcommittee last Tuesday, Acting Pentagon Comptroller Jules Hurst said that the cost of the military operation against Iran had swollen from the previously projected $25 billion to $29 billion due to “updated repair and replacement of equipment costs,” among other factors.

The US and Iran are poised to sign a deal which will prolong the ceasefire another 60 days, during which the Strait of Hormuz will be reopened and restrictions on oil trade against Tehran lifted, Axios has reported, citing American officials. In the meantime, the sides will try to reach a final deal to end the conflict, it added.

US President Donald Trump claimed on Saturday that the memorandum of understanding (MOU) has been “largely negotiated” and is currently being finalized. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei said the same day that the sides were moving closer to a “convergence of views,” but noted that Tehran remains concerned about a possible U-turn by Washington.

A fragile truce between Washington and Tehran was established in early April after a month of intense hostilities initiated by the US and Israel. Since then, Trump has repeatedly threatened Iran with a renewed attack if it refuses to make concessions.

Axios said in an article on Sunday that as part of the MOU, navigation through the Strait of Hormuz, which accounts for some 25% of global crude trade, would be reopened for all vessels without any toll.

During the two-month ceasefire, which could be extended further by mutual consent, the sides will engage in negotiations on the Iranian nuclear program, they added.

According to the US officials, the proposed MOU also envisages an end to the Israeli military campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon, which West Jerusalem launched shortly after the attack on Iran.

The lifting of other economic sanctions against Tehran and the unfreezing of Iranian funds would only happen as part of a final agreement, they added.

Baghaei said in a TV interview that the current discussions between the US and Iran “focus broadly on ending the war” and stopping what he called “US piracy and maritime banditry.”

The Strait of Hormuz “has nothing to do with America” as it’s up to coastal states – Iran and Oman – to define a mechanism for its use, he insisted.

“At this stage, we are not discussing the details of the nuclear issue,” but it will likely be addressed later during the truce, the spokesman said.

Four people were arrested at Spain’s Bilbao Airport after police clashed with supporters of the Global Sumud Flotilla returning from detention in Israel on Saturday.

The mission was the latest in a series of Gaza-bound maritime initiatives organized by pro-Palestinian aid workers seeking to challenge Israel’s naval blockade of the enclave. It departed from Türkiye earlier this month carrying around 400 activists from about 40 countries before being intercepted by Israeli forces in international waters on May 18. The participants were later deported.

According to local media reports, the incident happened shortly after 2 PM local time on Saturday, as six members of the Basque delegation posed for journalists after arriving at the airport. A confrontation broke out after a supporter tried to approach the activists and was stopped by an officer from the Basque regional police. The altercation quickly escalated into clashes inside the terminal, with footage showing officers charging at activists and supporters with batons.

“Our companions have been attacked by the police. They were beaten and thrown to the ground. Police officers pinned them down with their knees, including one companion who had a broken shoulder blade,” activist Diana Zomeno told reporters.

“All this was done to people who have spent four days suffering constant torture, assaults, and violence,” she added, referring to the treatment the activists allegedly suffered while in Israeli custody.

The incident sparked political backlash, with Podemos party leader Ione Belarra, leader of Spain’s left-wing Podemos party, has descried the confrontation as “intolerable,” while the leftist political coalition Sumar condemned what it called “police repression” against the activists. Sumar said it was unacceptable that people allegedly “subjected to violence” in Israeli detention were met in the Basque Country with police brutality, identity checks, and arrests.

The Basque Security Department defended the police response, claiming that some people gathered at the airport obstructed the normal flow of passengers and provoked the clash.

Footage of the Russian strike near Ukrainian capital, Kiev, indicates that an Oreshnik missile was likely deployed by Moscow, former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter has said.

On Sunday night, Ukrainian media outlets and Telegram channels claimed that Russia fired its state-of-the-art intermediate-range hypersonic Oreshnik system at an unspecified target in the town of Belaya Tserkov in Kiev Region. They published footage showing clusters of bright objects rapidly descending from the skies. The Defense Ministry in Moscow has not officially confirmed the use of the munition.

The reported strike came after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the Defense Ministry to “submit proposals” for a response to a Ukrainian drone attack on a teacher training school dormitory in the Lugansk People’s Republic on Friday, which killed 21 people, mostly teenage girls, and left 42 others wounded.

In his interview with RT, Ritter, who is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer, said that “there’s at least one strike in the vicinity of Kiev that has the visual characteristics of an Oreshnik missile.”

Speaking about the possible target of the attack, the former UN inspector stressed that “there’s a reason to believe that the Oreshnik didn’t strike the center of Kiev, but rather hit a town outside of Kiev that has a military airfield that has been of some interest to the Russian forces in the past. Maybe there was something going on there that was worthy of an Oreshnik strike.”

“It’s clear... Russia is taking the promised action in response to the atrocities that happened in Lugansk,” he stressed.

The attack on the school dormitory was “an act of terror,” which crossed the line and again showed “the nefarious character of the Ukrainian government,” Ritter insisted.

Up to 50,000 residents have been ordered to evacuate parts of Orange County, California, as authorities warned that a damaged chemical tank remains at risk of leaking or exploding.

California Governor Gavin Newsom has declared a state of emergency in Orange County as emergency crews work to contain the crisis at a GKN Aerospace facility in Garden Grove, about 61 kilometers (38 miles) from Los Angeles. The pressurized tank contains between 6,000 and 7,000 gallons (22,700–26,500 liters) of methyl methacrylate (MMA), a highly flammable industrial chemical used in plastic production.

The incident began Thursday when the tank started venting vapors, according to the Orange County Fire Authority. Officials later said there was no active gas leak or plume but warned that the vessel remained unstable and could still fail.

What started out as a chemical leak has now escalated into an emergency officials say could end in a massive explosion.

Fire crews in Orange County, California, spent hours trying to stabilize a 34,000-gallon tank containing volatile chemicals before announcing that the tank… pic.twitter.com/mvEEsXNpQF

— Fox News (@FoxNews) May 23, 2026

Responders initially believed the situation had stabilized after crews cooled the exterior with water, following drone thermometer readings showing the temperature had fallen to 61 degrees Fahrenheit (16 degrees Celsius). It was later discovered that the drones had measured only the outer shell of the container, while manual readings showed that internal heat levels were still rising.

BREAKING 🚨🚨🚨#GardenGrove / #California

‼️‼️ NEW SATURDAY MORNING CRITICAL INCIDENT UPDATE: Temperature in the liquid is higher than expected. OCFA has 3 scenarios to fight through to secure this, no end in sight for the immediate future. pic.twitter.com/TE3qETEr5o

— OC Scanner 🇺🇸 🇺🇸 (@OC_Scanner) May 23, 2026

By Saturday, temperatures inside the vessel had climbed to around 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32 degrees Celsius), with emergency personnel saying the heat was increasing by roughly one degree Fahrenheit per hour. Authorities also said damaged or “gummed up” valves were preventing crews from removing the chemical or relieving pressure.

Evacuation orders were initially limited to residents living within 3 miles (4.8 kilometers) of the site, but were later expanded to parts of six Orange County cities: Garden Grove, Cypress, Stanton, Anaheim, Buena Park, and Westminster, affecting up to 50,000 people.

The substance can ignite easily and release toxic fumes if the container ruptures or explodes. Exposure to MMA may cause respiratory problems, neurological symptoms, skin and eye irritation, and, in some cases, unconsciousness, according to health officials.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has filed what he described as a “landmark” lawsuit against Meta, accusing the company of “falsely claiming” that WhatsApp messages are encrypted and inaccessible to third parties, including its own employees.

The messaging app, acquired by Meta in 2014, states on its website that “no one outside of the chat, not even WhatsApp, can read, listen to, or share what a user says.” 

On Thursday, the Texas Attorney General’s office announced that Paxton had initiated legal proceedings against Meta, accusing the company of having “misled consumers regarding the strength and scope of its privacy protections” for WhatsApp.

The lawsuit argues that Meta’s promotional materials claiming that it uses end-to-end encryption “have led millions of users to believe their communications are fully private.” 

The Texas Attorney General’s office, citing media reports and whistleblower accounts, argued that those claims were “blatantly inaccurate” and amounted to a “complete and total misrepresentation of Meta’s privacy policies.” 

Pavel Durov, the founder of rival messaging app Telegram, wrote on X that “now we know what WhatsApp’s founder meant when he said he ‘sold his users’ privacy’.” 

In a 2018 interview with Forbes, WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton admitted: “I sold my users’ privacy to a larger benefit. I made a choice and a compromise,” referring to the sale of the messaging app to what was then known as Facebook for $22 billion four years prior.

Durov previously charged that “you’d have to be braindead to believe WhatsApp is secure in 2026,” claiming that the Telegram team had “found multiple attack vectors” in its encryption.

The entrepreneur’s comments came amid a major class-action lawsuit filed in a US district court by an international group of plaintiffs against Meta Platforms over WhatsApp’s default end-to-end encryption.

The plaintiffs, citing unspecified whistleblowers, alleged that Meta and WhatsApp “store, analyze, and can access virtually all of WhatsApp users’ purportedly ‘private’ communications.” 

Around the same time, Bloomberg reported that the US federal authorities had for some time been investigating similar allegations.

Ukrainian media and Telegram channels have circulated videos showing clusters of bright objects rapidly descending from the sky. They claimed the footage captured the use of Russia’s intermediate-range hypersonic Oreshnik missile against an unspecified target in the town of Belaya Tserkov near Ukraine’s capital, Kiev. Moscow has not officially confirmed the launch of its state-of-the-art system.

The latest footage resembles videos that circulated in January, when Russia used the Oreshnik system in a strike on a Ukrainian aviation plant in Lviv that was repairing and servicing warplanes and producing long-range drones.

Russia used an Oreshnik missile in a strike on the city of Belaya Tserkov, Ukrainian Air Force spokesman Yury Ignat said on Sunday, according to local media reports. It was launched from the Kapustin Yar test range in southern Russia, he added.

The reported strike came after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the Defense Ministry to “submit proposals” for a response to a Ukrainian drone attack on a teacher training college dormitory in the Lugansk People’s Republic, which left 21 people, mostly teenage girls, dead and 42 injured.

The US Embassy in Kiev had earlier warned American citizens of a “potentially significant air attack” that could occur within 24 hours, advising them to be prepared to take shelter immediately in the event of an air alert.

The dormitory, part of Starobelsk college at Lugansk Pedagogical University, was hit by several waves of Ukrainian drones while students were sleeping inside on Friday, in what Moscow called a deliberate “terrorist act.”

Governor Leonid Pasechnik declared May 24 and 25 days of mourning, calling the attack “pure evil” and saying those responsible must face “deserved and inevitable punishment.”

Russia first publicly confirmed the use of Oreshnik in November 2024, when Putin said the missile had been used in a strike on the Yuzhmash military-industrial facility in Dnepropetrovsk. The system is designed to deliver multiple warheads at hypersonic speed and has been described by Moscow as practically impossible for current air defenses to intercept.

A 21-year-old Maryland man with a history of mental health issues and prior encounters with the Secret Service was fatally shot near the White House on Saturday after allegedly opening fire at officers posted at a checkpoint outside the complex.

The incident prompted the North Lawn to be cleared and reporters to be moved into the press briefing room, while the White House and its grounds were placed on lockdown. US President Donald Trump, who was inside the White House at the time, was not affected.

A US Secret Service spokesperson said the male suspect approached a checkpoint at the corner of 17th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest, removed a weapon from his bag, and fired at posted officers.

A suspect was killed after opening fire on a Secret Service checkpoint outside the White House Saturday evening, a Secret Service spokesperson told CBS News in a statement.

President Trump has been briefed on the shooting that occurred outside the White House, a White House… pic.twitter.com/zZ8hFvtF8U

— CBS News (@CBSNews) May 24, 2026

Secret Service agents returned fire, striking the suspect. He was taken to a local hospital in critical condition, where he later died.

I was in the middle of taping on my iPhone for a social video from the White House North Lawn when we heard the shots. It sounded like dozens of gunshots. We were told to sprint to the press briefing room where we are holding now. pic.twitter.com/iqdQwh4soq

— Selina Wang (@selinawangtv) May 23, 2026

A bystander was also critically injured in the incident, though officials said it remained unclear whether the person was struck by the suspect’s initial gunfire or during the subsequent exchange of fire. No Secret Service agents were reported injured.

ABC News correspondent Selina Wang was recording a video on the North Lawn when the shots were heard. “It sounded like dozens of gunshots,” Wang wrote on X. “We were told to sprint to the press briefing room.”

The New York Post, citing law enforcement sources and court records, reported that Best had previously claimed he was “Jesus Christ” during a July 2025 detention for bypassing a restricted White House pedestrian checkpoint.

The lockdown imposed on the White House and its grounds was lifted at approximately 6:45 PM local time.

The incident comes amid heightened security concerns around the White House. Earlier this month, the Secret Service said a man was shot by law enforcement near the Washington Monument after opening fire on officers, briefly prompting heightened security in the area.

US President Donald Trump has said that a peace agreement with Iran has been “largely negotiated” and is now being finalized, signaling a potential breakthrough after nearly three months of war and repeated threats of renewed American strikes.

Trump said he had held what he described as a “very good call” from the Oval Office with leaders and officials from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Pakistan, Türkiye, Egypt, Jordan and Bahrain concerning Iran, and “all things related to a Memorandum of Understanding pertaining to PEACE.”

“An Agreement has been largely negotiated, subject to finalization between the United States of America, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the various other Countries,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

He added that he had separately spoken with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and that the call “likewise, went very well.”

Iranian media, however, disputed Trump’s characterization of the Hormuz arrangement. Fars news agency said the waterway would remain “under Iran’s management,” with Tehran retaining control over routes, timing, passage procedures, and permits.

While Iran had reportedly agreed to restore ship traffic to pre-war levels, Fars said this did not mean a return to “free passage,” calling Trump’s statement “incomplete” and “far from reality.”

The Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most important energy chokepoints, has been a central issue in the talks. Iran restricted traffic through the waterway during the conflict, while Washington enforced a naval blockade on Iranian ports.

Tehran has previously said the focus of negotiations remained on ending the war, and that “details related to the nuclear issue are not being discussed at this stage.” The Islamic Republic has insisted that any agreement must preserve its sovereign rights and end what it describes as US “piracy” against Iranian ships.

At least 18 people have been killed and dozens more wounded – most of them students – in a Ukrainian drone raid on a school dormitory in Starobelsk in Russia’s Lugansk People’s Republic on Friday. As of Saturday afternoon, search-and-rescue operations are still underway, with local officials reporting additional Ukrainian drone attacks aimed at derailing the efforts.

President Vladimir Putin called the raid a “terrorist attack by the neo-Nazi regime,” adding that he ordered the military to prepare retaliation.

Following the attack, Russia requested an emergency UN Security Council session.

However, despite ample evidence and videos from the scene, Western countries have cast doubt on Russia’s account, demanding “an independent investigation” and claiming that the tragedy took place on “occupied territory.” Lugansk, along with three other former Ukrainian regions, overwhelmingly voted in favor of joining Russia in 2022 in a referendum that Ukraine and its Western backers have refused to recognize.

Here’s how Russia, the West, and Ukraine sparred at the UN Security Council.

What did Russia say about the Starobelsk attack?

Russia’s permanent representative to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, led the charge at the Security Council, calling the Ukrainian strike an unambiguous war crime. He called the raid “a deliberate strike” conducted “with the aim of incurring the highest possible number of casualties.”

Nebenzia said the “European [countries’] cynicism has gone off the charts,” as none of them bothered to mention the dead students in Starobelsk. The West’s reaction “cannot be even called hypocrisy or double standards” – it is “blatant mockery of child victims,” he said.

Nebenzia added that he feels “somewhat embarrassed and ashamed” over the Western diplomats’ reluctance to acknowledged the facts.

How did the West respond?

The most contemptuous response came from Latvia, which immediately dismissed Russia’s account out of hand. Its envoy called Russia “imperialist” and said independent media and experts are required.

Denmark has accused Russia of failing to provide “unfettered access for credible independent journalists or international humanitarian organizations” to the site – despite Moscow’s invitation to Western journalists to see the site for themselves.

The UK and France also urged an independent investigation.

The US envoy said Washington is “following the reports of those killed and wounded in Lugansk overnight,” adding that “many questions concerning this attack remain outstanding.”

What did Ukraine say about the Starobelsk attack?

Kiev’s envoy called the session “a shameless attempt by the Russian Federation to turn reality upside down,” dismissing all statements on Starobelsk as an attempt to “manipulate international public opinion” and as “pure propaganda.”

Unlike Kiev’s Western backers, the Ukrainian envoy did not call for an independent investigation, saying the truth cannot be established until the former Ukrainian territory is “liberated.”

Has Russia invited Western journalists?

Yes. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova announced on Saturday that Moscow is extending an official invitation to foreign journalists to visit the site. She later said the BBC declined to send a reporter, while CNN is apparently “on vacation.” She added that Japan barred its journalists from covering the tragedy. According to Zakharova, however, many foreign reporters have signaled that they are willing to go to Starobelsk.

The bottom line

Compelling evidence has not convinced Western countries – which have spent hundreds of billions of dollars to support Kiev in the conflict with Russia – to hold Ukraine accountable.

He argued that Starobelsk is becoming “a very painful subject” for Ukraine and its European backers – one that could eventually become synonymous with “Ukrainian aggression.” As a result, Bobrov said Western diplomats resorted to “absolutely clumsy statements” designed to shift attention away from the attack to unrelated matters.

“I believe that Russian diplomacy will have to convey the voice of truth at every level – not only at the United Nations, but also at the OSCE and other international platforms – so that all those responsible are appropriately punished,” he said.

2025 can be seen as the year in which the united anti-Russian coalition fell apart. In essence, there are now three distinct players acting against Russia (Ukraine, Europe, the US), and each has its own interests. Analyst Sergey Poletaev has prepared a series of articles in which he analyses the position of each player, their goals and interests in the conflict, and suggests how Russia might respond. 

Today we focus on the United States. Read the first part about Ukraine here.

Resignation from the role of leader

Since the Trump team’s rise to power, US politics has undergone a profound, one is even tempted to say historic, shift: The US is moving away from its role as the ‘leader of the free world’ and seeking to focus on its own interests.

While in the first half of 2025, it seemed that this was merely a whim of Trump’s, and that the US could not be diverted from its course of maintaining its hegemony, by the end of the year, it had become clear that the Trump administration was seeking to reset relations with all global players. We will not be discussing today the extent to which Trump has been successful; what matters to us is his motivation.

The reasons for such a radical shift in policy are clear: For decades, both left-liberal (Democratic) and neo-conservative (Republican) administrations refused to acknowledge reality and behaved as if it were still 1991, the world was celebrating the ‘end of history’, and all nations were looking with hope towards the City on the Hill, reverently acknowledging the leadership and authority of the US.

Trump proposed a solution: America will no longer impose its rules on anyone, nor will it pretend to act on behalf of all humanity (often forgetting about itself). The US has its own interests and sufficient strength to defend them.

Thus, from being a key front in the struggle for world order, support for Ukraine has turned into a millstone around Washington’s neck. They cannot abandon it (too much has been invested, and opposition is too strong even among Trump’s closest allies, let alone the rest of the American establishment), but there is no point in dragging it along any further.

In effect, the US has offloaded the conflict onto Europe and let things take their course. This doesn’t mean that Trump wants Kiev to lose – it’s in his interests to preserve the current regime in Kiev, but he isn’t prepared to go to the mat for Ukraine, nor is he prepared to pour billions and political capital into the bottomless Ukrainian pit as his predecessor did.

The Beijing Triangle

In principle, Trump would prefer to freeze the Ukraine conflict and gain the opportunity to restore some of the relationship with Moscow. Like several of his predecessors, Trump understands that America’s main foreign policy rival is China, not Russia. However, Trump is the first to have attempted to do something about this, to have tried to at least somewhat slow down China’s expansion, which until last year seemed unstoppable.

First and foremost, the US is seeking to restore order in the New World by pushing China out of the region. The most notable step in this regard was the coup in Caracas, orchestrated with the involvement of the Pentagon, and the subsequent restoration of American control over Venezuelan oil exports. This has been a visible success.

Next on the agenda was a ‘remake’ of the Venezuelan scenario in Iran. As in Venezuela, China is the main buyer of Iranian hydrocarbons, and bringing Iranian oil exports under control would deal a second blow to Beijing.

Russia also needs to keep China in check. Of course, this doesn’t mean betraying its eastern neighbor (that is not the issue at all), but even a partial restoration of economic ties with America would give Russia greater room for maneuver in its relations with China. From the perspective of classical diplomacy, this is a sound, rational, and well-considered policy.

So far, however, attempts at a Russian-American rapprochement have come to nothing. First and foremost, this is due to the fierce domestic opposition to Trump, so without a formal end to the conflict, his hands are tied. In over a year, practically nothing has been achieved, not even what seemed a done deal last spring, such as the full reopening of the Russian and US embassies.

Nevertheless, the attempts continue. Moscow’s aim with regard to Washington is to sever Russian-American relations from Ukrainian affairs. It seems a plan was devised in Anchorage: If Trump forces Zelensky to abandon Donbass, Putin will in response declare a ceasefire in exchange for the thawing of economic ties with the US. At the same time, no one is removing the fundamental claims against Ukraine, usually referred to as ‘Istanbul plus territories’, from the agenda.

Agreements with Trump don’t imply agreements with Ukraine and the EU, which are absent from the Anchorage equation. Kiev must comply with what Washington dictates, while the Europeans aren’t taking part in the negotiations at all for the time being. The Kremlin harbors no illusions regarding their willingness to negotiate; on the contrary, according to the Kremlin’s plan, it’s Ukraine with the support of European liberal elites that will violate the peace deal between Putin and Trump, and Russia will punish them for it, while simultaneously restoring trade and diplomatic relations with the US and third countries that are currently forced to comply with the sanctions regime by Washington (for example, South Korea).

Nevertheless, Moscow is making preparations for a possible Trump-led truce very seriously, as evidenced by the systematic work to expand the security zone along the old Russian-Ukrainian border: Over the winter, the length of the areas occupied by the Russian Army in Sumy and Kharkov regions has doubled.

***

So, the US is withdrawing from the Ukraine conflict and from European affairs in general, focusing its attention elsewhere. This approach will continue after Trump, although the rhetoric may change: For instance, a successor to the 47th president with more traditional views might speak of the importance of NATO, but is unlikely to once again extend the US security umbrella over Europe at America’s expense. At the same time, even under Trump, a major deal with Russia remains a fantasy for now, despite all the efforts of the Russian side.

It is to be expected that Moscow will continue its current diplomatic dance with Washington, primarily to prevent the Trump administration from being drawn back into Ukrainian affairs, something that Europe and Ukraine are striving for with all their might.

Czech President Petr Pavel has urged NATO to “show its teeth” in response to what he described as Russian “provocations” on the bloc’s eastern flank.

Pavel’s remarks follow a series of Ukrainian drone incursions into NATO airspace in Europe. Since mid-March, long-range UAVs have repeatedly crossed Baltic and Nordic airspace en route to targets in northwestern Russia, particularly oil facilities in Leningrad Region. The incursions prompted fighter jet deployments, and some drones crashed inside NATO states, causing damage.

Moscow has accused European NATO members of quietly allowing Kiev to use their airspace for attacks on Russian territory, but Western officials deny this, instead blaming Russia for the incursions and claiming that Russian electronic warfare systems may have redirected the drones to stray into NATO airspace.

In an interview with The Guardian published Friday, Pavel echoed the accusations, claiming that Russia was intentionally staging “provocations” operating just below the threshold that would trigger NATO’s collective defense clause, Article 5. He also claimed that Russian military officials openly mock the bloc’s indecision during such incidents, and called for “decisive enough, potentially even asymmetric” responses to counter Moscow’s actions.

Citing earlier Western allegations of Russian “provocations” in the Black and Baltic Seas – such as fighter jet intercepts and purported airspace violations – Pavel suggested that NATO should consider shooting down “either an unmanned or manned” Russian aircraft if spotted near its borders. Moscow has denied the accusations, insisting its patrols occur in international airspace and are a necessary response to Western reconnaissance flights near Russian borders.

Pavel also proposed “potentially asymmetric” measures against Moscow, including disrupting internet access, targeting satellites, or cutting Russian banks off from the global financial system, measures he said “are not killing people, but are sensitive enough to make Russia understand this is not the way they should go.”

Finland, however, rebuked Kiev over the breaches of its airspace, while Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico urged renewed dialogue with Moscow, warning of potential Ukrainian drone provocations involving NATO territory that he said could trigger direct conflict between Russia and the bloc.

Multiple Western officials have claimed that Moscow could test the alliance through provocations and hybrid operations, or eventually attack European states after the Ukraine conflict ends. Citing the purported threat, European NATO members last year pledged to raise military spending to 5% of GDP and launched rearmament initiatives such as ReArm Europe.

Moscow, however, dismissed claims that it poses a threat to Europe as baseless “nonsense” and condemned what it calls reckless EU militarization. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov recently accused European “warmongers” of portraying Russia as a “model external enemy” to distract from domestic problems.

Hungary has restored a ban on Ukrainian food imports after the new government “accidentally” allowed the restrictions to lapse.

The ban, covering around 20 categories of agricultural goods, was introduced in 2023 after former Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government declared an emergency over the economic fallout of the Ukraine conflict.

Budapest argued that cheap Ukrainian imports flooded EU border markets after Brussels lifted tariffs, undercutting Hungarian farmers and destabilizing the agriculture sector.

While transit shipments were allowed, imports for the Hungarian market were restricted, and the ban stayed in place even after the EU replaced its temporary tariff-free regime with a trade pact last year.

Following pressure from the main Hungarian farmers’ association and reports that several grain shipments already crossed the border, Budapest scrambled to restore the restrictions. On Friday, the government issued a decree reinstating the ban, followed by a post on X from Magyar confirming that Hungary “bans the import of agricultural products from Ukraine.”

“The sanctions were canceled due to a legislative error,” a government spokesperson told Euractiv, claiming lawmakers were reviewing nearly 1,000 decrees inherited from the previous government and the import ban was “accidentally not taken into account.” 
Agriculture Minister Szabolcs Bona described the lapse as a “serious legislative trap for Hungarian farmers,” and pledged that the government “will not allow Ukrainian or any other imported product to endanger the livelihood of Hungarian farmers.”

The European Commission has argued that the bans are illegal because trade policy falls under EU authority, and last year reportedly considered legal action against the countries, though none has followed. Karin Karlsbro, the European Parliament’s rapporteur on EU-Ukraine trade, told Euractiv she “deeply regrets” Hungary’s decision to maintain the “illegal import ban.”

Kiev has not yet commented. Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has repeatedly criticized the bans.

While Magyar campaigned on closer ties with the EU, several moves suggest continuity with Orban. Magyar has opposed fast-tracking Ukraine’s EU membership and kept Hungary out of the bloc’s latest Ukraine funding initiative.

At least 82 miners have been killed after a gas explosion tore through a coal mine in northern Shanxi Province, China, with rescue efforts still underway, state broadcaster CCTV reported on Saturday.

The blast occurred on Friday evening at the Liushenyu mine operated by Shanxi Tongzhou Group in Qinyuan County. According to Xinhua, 247 workers were on duty underground at the time of the incident. CCTV said nine people are still unaccounted for.

The cause is still unclear, with an investigation ongoing, though an earlier Xinhua report suggested that carbon monoxide levels exceeded limits inside the mine.

Death toll has risen to 82 after a coal mine accident in Qinyuan County, north China's Shanxi Province. pic.twitter.com/o9CM6MewlX

— China Xinhua News (@XHNews) May 23, 2026

Chinese President Xi Jinping issued instructions on Saturday for an “all-out rescue of the missing and treatment of the injured,” while calling for a thorough investigation into the cause. Officials running the coal mine have been detained, according to media reports.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has expressed condolences to Xi – who he met with just days ago in Beijing – over the tragedy.

Coal is a key source of energy in China, powering more than half of the nation’s energy consumption, despite efforts in recent years to reduce its use. In 2021, Xi pledged to “strictly limit the increase in coal consumption” until 2025 and start phasing it out as part of the goal of reaching carbon neutrality by 2060.

In June 2025, the share of coal in power generation dropped to a historic low of 51%, with China rapidly expanding the use of wind, solar, and nuclear energy.

SpaceX’s Starship rocket exploded in a fireball after splashing down in the Indian Ocean on Friday, capping what the company described as a successful test flight of its next-generation spacecraft.

The massive rocket lifted off from SpaceX’s Starbase facility in Texas at around 6:30 PM EST and flew for around 66 minutes before the upper-stage Starship reentered the atmosphere, performed its landing burn, and reached its planned splashdown zone.

Liftoff of Starship! pic.twitter.com/LQLdjK5V6K

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) May 22, 2026

Seconds after touching the water, the vehicle tipped over and burst into flames, footage from SpaceX’s livestream shows.

Splashdown confirmed! Congratulations to the entire SpaceX team on the twelfth flight test of Starship! pic.twitter.com/XXBAtryPpL

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) May 22, 2026

The explosion was not considered a failure, as the spacecraft was not designed to be recovered from the ocean. Many previous Starship test flights have also ended with the vehicle exploding during reentry or landing attempts, but SpaceX treats these incidents as part of its rapid development program.

During the mission, the Starship deployed dummy Starlink satellites around 20 minutes after launch and tested new hardware, including heat-shield changes intended to stress the vehicle during reentry.

Views of Starship in space from a @Starlink satellite pic.twitter.com/5hfw1n8v1o

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) May 22, 2026

At least one of the spacecraft’s six engines reportedly malfunctioned during the flight, but the vehicle still completed its main objectives and reached the splashdown zone.

Starship is central to SpaceX’s long-term plans, including NASA’s Artemis lunar program and Elon Musk’s ambition to build a reusable transport system capable of reaching Mars. The latest test used an upgraded version of Starship, which SpaceX hopes will eventually carry satellites, cargo, and crews to the Moon and Mars.