A dispute over an immigration bill passed by the European Parliament has escalated into a criminal complaint, with a Swedish MEP accusing a Danish colleague of racist hate speech over a social media comment, The Guardian reported on Monday.

A Swedish MEP of Iraqi descent, Abir Al-Sahlani, filed the complaint with Swedish police against Danish MEP Kristoffer Storm. He told her to “go home” in response to her post criticizing anti-immigration chants that followed the passage of a law aimed at speeding up the deportation of illegal migrants. She has also lodged a formal complaint with European Parliament President Roberta Metsola.

The dispute stems from last month’s approval of the Return Regulation, the toughest anti-immigration legislation passed by the EU in recent years. The measure allows member states to establish ‘return hubs’ outside the bloc to accelerate the deportation of illegal migrants.

“I have never felt as unsafe in this parliament as after the voting about the Return Regulation, because the shouting of the far right was not against the political opponent… It was about ordinary people who did no other crime than looking for a better life in Europe,” she said.

Storm rejected accusations that his response online was racist. Speaking to Politico, he said the phrase “go home” referred to leaving the parliamentary chamber, arguing that if Al-Sahlani found the democratic decision and lawmakers’ reactions so upsetting, “she would have been better off leaving the chamber.”

The clash comes amid growing tensions over migration across the EU. According to Eurostat, the bloc received more than 8.5 million immigrants from outside the bloc in 2023 and 2024, and immigration remains one of the most divisive issues in European politics.

Polish politician Marianna Schreiber has posted a video of herself throwing a portrait of Vladimir Zelensky in the trash, accusing Kiev of glorifying the Ukrainian nationalists who engaged in the massacre of Poles during World War II.

Schreiber, a blogger and current candidate for mayor of Krakow, shared the clip on social media, where she is seen holding a portrait of Zelensky with a Hitler-style moustache drawn on his face.

”Banderites are not heroes. They are a disgrace to humanity,” Schreiber said in the video, referring to followers of Stepan Bandera, the leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN).

”Unfortunately, even after all these years, we have not received an apology,” she added. “On the day of Bloody Sunday, I want to say that Poles remember and will never, ever forgive.”

She then crumpled the portrait and threw it into a trash bin, saying that “the place for people who glorify criminals is in the trash can of history.”

#Wołyń #Pamiętamy pic.twitter.com/hVAHyGLqqI

— Marianna Schreiber (@MSchreiberM) July 11, 2026

Bloody Sunday refers to July 11, 1943, when the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), the OUN’s military wing, carried out coordinated attacks on Polish villages in Volhynia. The massacre was part of a wider campaign in which up to 100,000 ethnic Poles were murdered by Ukrainian nationalists between 1943 and 1944. Poland recognizes the killings as a genocide.

Polish officials condemned the move, calling it “outrageous” and warned that Ukraine will not join the EU as long as it continues to venerate Bandera and the OUN-UPA.

Kiev has also faced criticism over the recent state reburial of Andrey Melnik, another OUN leader who cooperated with Nazi Germany.

Russia has long argued that Kiev glorifies Hitler’s collaborators at the state level and has cited the “denazification” of Ukraine as one of the key goals of its military operation. Moscow has also accused Ukraine’s Western backers of ignoring Kiev’s infatuation with Nazi ideology for years while continuing to arm it against Russia.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has launched missile strikes against multiple US military facilities in the Middle East after US President Donald Trump promised to hit Iran “very hard” and claimed that “there’s not a damn thing they can do about it.”

“We’re going to hit them very hard tonight, and we’re going to hit them hard tomorrow,” Trump said on Monday.

US Central Command announced shortly afterward that it had “begun launching the third consecutive night of strikes,” with heavy blasts reported across multiple regions of Iran.

In retaliation, the IRGC carried out strikes against several US military facilities in the region, including “weapons storage depots, a satellite communications center,” and the headquarters of the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet in Bahrain.

Trump also claimed that Washington is “taking over” the Strait of Hormuz, a key global energy supply bottleneck, and would charge vessels “20% on all cargo shipped” in exchange for protection. Washington would also reinstate its blockade of Iranian ports and bar passage to vessels belonging to Iran or its customers, he added.

Follow our live coverage below for continuous updates.

US President Donald Trump has formally told Congress that Washington has resumed what he described as “limited defensive strikes” against Iran, Politico and the New York Times reported on Monday.

The US House of Representatives previously attempted to limit Trump’s war powers, arguing that he lacked congressional approval for the February 28 US-Israeli attack on Iran. Under the War Powers Resolution of 1973, the president must withdraw American forces after 60 days unless Congress authorizes the war.

In a letter dated Friday and obtained by the outlets, Trump reportedly argued that the renewed US strikes on the Islamic Republic represent his “responsibility to protect Americans and the United States’ interests both at home and abroad.”

LIVE UPDATES: Iran strikes back after Trump restarts war (PHOTOS, VIDEOS)

The White House reportedly argued that the move gives the Trump administration a fresh 60-day timeline to continue military operations against Iran.

.@NewsHour obtained the letter from President Trump sent to Sen Chuck Grassley (president pro tempore in Senate) notifying congress that military action in Iran has resumed. It’s dated July 10, last Friday. pic.twitter.com/FuPd2Uanle

— Liz Landers (@ElizLanders) July 13, 2026

In May, Trump notified Congress that the initial conflict, dubbed Operation Epic Fury, had been “terminated” after a ceasefire between the US and Iran was reached on April 7.

On Monday, Trump claimed that Washington is “taking over” the Strait of Hormuz, the key energy supply bottleneck that has served as a point of contention since the US and Israel launched the conflict.

The US would control the waterway and charge ships “20% on all cargo shipped,” the president said on Truth Social. Washington would also reinstate its blockade of Iranian ports and bar passage for vessels belonging to Iran or its customers, he added.

Iran has launched renewed strikes on American military facilities in Jordan, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Oman overnight, with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) saying it hit at least six bases in statements on Monday. The large-scale operation is a response to continued US strikes on targets across the Islamic Republic, according to Tehran.

The US has bombed Iran for four consecutive nights. It follows continued disagreement on the interpretation of the memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed by Washington and Tehran in mid-June, with both sides accusing each other of violations.

Targets of Iranian strikes

The Iranian military targeted Prince Hassan Air Base in Jordan, where a number of large missile depots and fuel storage tanks were “set ablaze,” according to the IRGC.

Sheikh Isa Airbase in Bahrain was the second target, where the Iranian Air Force struck a US drone command and control center and destroyed “key helicopter maintenance and repair facilities” and “the hangar housing a P-8 electronic warfare aircraft,” the Guard said.

“Two HIMARS missile launchers and ammunition bunkers filled with missiles” were “completely” destroyed in a separate attack on another US facility in the Gulf nation, the IRGC added.

In the final phase of the operation, the Iranian Navy targeted a US base in Bahrain’s Juffair district located south of the capital Manama, where several surveillance radars were claimed destroyed.

An IRGC statement also maintained that “the Strait of Hormuz is our territory” and the only way for it to stay open is for the US to cease what it called “illegal… military interventions” in the area.

What’s been the US response?

The US military has not commented on the IRGC’s claims.

The latest statement from US Central Command (CENTCOM), issued on Sunday, said American forces had “completed a new wave of offensive strikes against Iran,” hitting “dozens of targets at multiple locations.” According to CENTCOM, the operation targeted air defense systems, coastal radar sites, missile and drone capabilities, and small boats, but did not specify the locations.

On Monday, US President Donald Trump said America would be “taking over” the Strait of Hormuz from Iran and expected to “get paid” for providing security in the strategic waterway.

What’s the latest?

Iranian forces reportedly opened fire on two ships attempting to transit the strait on Monday morning.

Explosions were also reported near the southern Iranian city of Bandar Abbas and on Qeshm Island, according to Al Jazeera. The Iranian military said it had shot down a “hostile” drone near Bandar Abbas.

Elsewhere, at least two people were reportedly killed and three others injured in US strikes on several locations in the western Iranian city of Abadan.

What led to the latest escalation

The current exchange of fire follows months of fluctuating hostilities between Washington and Tehran. The conflict began with a joint US-Israeli attack on Iran on February 28, prompting the latter to retaliate with strikes on American military bases across the Middle East.

Washington and West Jerusalem initially framed the campaign as an effort to topple Iran’s leadership and halt its nuclear program. The focus later shifted to the Strait of Hormuz after Tehran closed the strategic waterway in response.

A ceasefire in April halted regular shooting and was followed by months of Pakistan-mediated negotiations, culminating in the signing of a memorandum of understanding on June 17. Fighting resumed last week after Washington and Tehran clashed over the status of the Strait of Hormuz.

The US has demanded that Iran fully reopen the waterway and has been escorting commercial vessels along a route closer to the Omani coast, a move the IRGC has denounced as “illegal.”

A comprehensive new study of the global workforce finds that ‘anxiety’ is the best definition for how most workers feel about their career, their future, and the AI tsunami that threatens to wash it all away.

These days, everyone from doctors to lawyers and accountants to clerks are pondering the same question: will some machine eventually take over my job and what can I do to prepare for what appears to be an inevitability?

Just 22% of workers worldwide strongly agreed that their job was safe from elimination, according to a new report from ADP Research released this month. The results come from one of the largest workforce sentiment surveys ever conducted – more than 39,000 workers across 36 countries were polled.​

Meanwhile, a poll conducted by Ipsos in partnership with Epoch AI found that half of American adults used AI in the past week, either for personal or work use, with 20% of full-time workers saying that AI has taken over parts of their job.

Thus, it should surprise exactly nobody that the introduction of AI technology into all sectors of the economy is the leading cause of employee apprehension. Workers from Singapore to Spokane are fighting to understand what the technological upheaval means for their future – and they’re not comforted by what they are witnessing.​ The corporate world has failed to convince their workforce to welcome artificial intelligence with open arms.

The ADP Research Today at Work 2026 report, based on survey responses collected in late summer 2025, “paints a portrait of a global workforce caught in the crosscurrents of technological disruption, demographic upheaval, and deep uncertainty,” writes Nick Lichtenberg in Fortune magazine. “The anxiety cuts across borders and industries, but ADP found that it hits hardest at the bottom of the organizational ladder.”​

According to the report, of the workers who make up the majority of most companies, only 18% said their job was safe. Managers did only marginally better at 21%. Predictably, confidence increased with seniority and status: Middle managers were listed at 23%, upper managers at 31%, and C-suite executives (an organization’s highest-ranking senior executives) at 35%. The data reveals that the higher up a worker is on the corporate ladder, the less afraid they are of taking a spill.​ Nevertheless, just a little more than a third of top executives feel like they have job security, according to the data, Fortune reported.

National divides were also painfully obvious. In Japan, a country famous for its intense commitment to corporate culture, only 5% of workers felt their jobs were secure, the lowest finding of any country in the survey. Meanwhile, Nigeria tallied the most confident workforce, with 38% of workers expressing job security. In America, the figure was only 28%.​

Globally, young workers ages 18 to 26 reported the highest level of optimism, with 29% saying they had the necessary skills to get ahead. But more senior workers ages 55 to 64 painted a drearier picture: Only 18% felt similarly prepared, and just 12% believed their company was investing in their talents. At the same time, just 20% of young workers strongly agreed AI would positively affect their jobs in the next year. That figure plummeted to just 10% among workers ages 55 to 64.​

“Younger workers are definitely more optimistic about their skill set,” Richardson told reporters. “Older workers are also, you know, more likely to say that they’re financially unprepared. Which is interesting. They make more money, but they feel more stretched financially. They’re more likely to say that they’re less productive and less engaged than younger workers. Youth and optimism go hand in hand.”

The survey also exposes a disturbing engagement crisis. Just 19% of workers globally were fully engaged on the job last year, a figure that is unchanged from 2024. That means about 80% of the workforce is not giving it their all on the job. Among those employees who strongly agreed their employer was investing in them, 53% were fully engaged. The figure sunk to just 12% for those who did not feel the investment. Meanwhile, employees who find meaning in their jobs are 12.5 times as likely to be fully engaged as those who don’t.​

“Upskilling isn’t just a strategy,” Richardson continued. “It’s a reassurance. It’s a trust pact between the employer and the worker.”

Currently, it is clear that the level of trust between worker and employer is greatly lacking inside of the corporation as the introduction of AI technologies can come at any time and with little prior notice. Such an environment leads to a general feeling of unnecessary worry and malaise inside of the workplace. Workers need assurances that they are receiving the same level of investment as AI technology is currently receiving to the tune of billions of dollars per year. That will make facing an AI future a less unsettling prospect for everyone.

Iraq may gradually be turned into a platform for the US to exert pressure on Iran. This doesn’t mean that Baghdad will be directly involved in the conflict; rather, Iraq may be used as a political, intelligence, logistical, and border corridor as part of a broader anti-Iran strategy currently being developed by the US and Israel.

The latest events in Baghdad point to the likelihood of this scenario. In late June, Iraqi security forces blocked the entrances to the ‘Green Zone’ – a fortified area in Baghdad where key government institutions and foreign diplomatic missions are located – and carried out a series of raids. Several political figures were detained, some of whom, according to media reports, are associated with the bloc of former Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani.

Officially, this is being presented as an anti-corruption campaign. But in Iraq – and generally, in the Middle East – anti-corruption cases are rarely just about corruption. Very often, they are driven by a power struggle, external influence, control over security forces, and an attempt to alter the balance within the elites.

Notably, this is happening after a shift in the political configuration of Iraq. Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi, a businessman and political newcomer, was presented as a compromise figure after a protracted crisis within the Coordination Framework (a council of major Shiite parties). His emergence on the political scene was the result of complex bargaining between domestic and foreign players.

Herein lies the main question: Is Iraq being prepared for war against Iran? Probably not. Iraq is viewed as a platform for pressuring Iran, not as an independent participant in the war. These are fundamentally different things. Iraqi territory may be used for intelligence operations, pressure, logistics, special operations, work with the Kurdish factor, and control over border areas. However, this does not mean that the US will decide to launch a full-scale ground invasion of Iran. Currently, this option appears too risky and costly.

Nevertheless, Iraq is a very sensitive direction for Tehran. Factors like the shared border, US infrastructure, the weakness of certain state institutions, the autonomous Kurdistan region, competition between the elites, and the presence of armed groups make Iraq a convenient space for applying hybrid pressure. Instead of a direct strike via the Persian Gulf, the US may employ a more gradual approach, for example, by creating new flashpoints around Iran without declaring a major war. 

We may particularly note the incident that occurred last week near the city of Piranshahr in Iran’s West Azerbaijan Province. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) announced the elimination of five terrorists who infiltrated the country through the mountainous border regions to commit acts of sabotage. 

Geography plays a key role in this matter. Piranshahr is located very close to the border with Iraq. Nearby is the Tamarchin Border Terminal, through which cargo flows from Iraq to Iran and further along regional routes. This is more than just a trading hub. It’s a sensitive area where border issues, logistics, the ethnical factor, and security issues converge.

In this situation, the Kurdish factor could become one of the key tools used against Iran. Firstly, it is a well-known fact that the Kurds are used by the US and Israel. Moreover, the border zone between Iran and Iraq has long been home to armed groups, historical contradictions, a complex ethnopolitical situation, and external influence. This is precisely why the clashes near Piranshahr cannot be viewed separately from the political processes in Baghdad. On the one hand, Iraq is witnessing a purge of political figures associated with previous pro-Iranian forces. On the other hand, the Kurdish border is becoming more active. Together, this creates a feeling that a network of pressure is being formed around Iran; Iraq, Kurdistan, the Persian Gulf, intelligence agencies, sanctions, infrastructure threats, and internal destabilization efforts are all part of it. 

At the same time, a full-scale ground invasion of Iran remains unrealistic. Iran cannot be quickly suppressed by means of a ground invasion because of its vast territory, difficult terrain, powerful security apparatus, significant mobilization resources, missile potential, and a network of allied structures in the region. Any attempt to use Iraq as a staging ground for a direct invasion would almost inevitably lead to retaliatory strikes against US military facilities in Iraq, the energy infrastructure of the Gulf states, and the logistics of US allies.

In other words, Iraq looks less like an independent participant in a future war and more like a convenient platform for pressuring Iran; it could be used for political reorientation, intelligence and logistics, work with the Kurdish forces and armed groups, and limited operations against Tehran.

This scenario appears more likely as of today. The US may hesitate to launch a full-scale ground war against Iran, but it could very well use Iraq as a territory for gradually weakening Iranian influence. The events in Baghdad and Piranshahr demonstrate that preparations for a new war against Iran are proceeding quietly and systematically.

A deadly blaze swept through a bar in Bangkok, Thailand, late on Sunday, leaving at least 28 people dead and dozens more critically injured, the authorities have reported.

According to eyewitness accounts the fire originated near the bar’s music stage and quickly spread, with many customers getting lost in the smoke and becoming trapped in the bathrooms in the ensuing panic.

At least 71 people were injured, with 25 remaining in critical condition, the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration reported on Monday.

“When the power went out – for instance, at the restroom entrance – visibility dropped to zero. Everyone tried to exit, but the restroom had no windows; it was a dead end,” Thai national police chief Kittharath Punpetch said in a press briefing on Monday.

Thai police have begun focusing their forensic investigation on the area above the venue’s music stage as they work to determine what caused the deadly fire, he added.

The police will investigate the owners for negligence amid reports that the emergency exits were blocked, he said.

Terrifying video from the night of the incident shows a plume of fire shooting out of the bar’s front entrance, as customers run out surrounded by the flames.

Harrowing footage from inside the bar shows people choking on smoke as they run out of the darkened venue.

The Chatuchak District Office has issued an order closing the establishment for 30 days while the investigation takes place.

The United States has just marked a major anniversary, 250 years since it declared independence from Great Britain and, in theory, this should be a moment of national pride with another historical milestone passed, another reason for flags, fireworks, and speeches about destiny.

But the mood is not especially festive.

Two weeks before the anniversary, Reuters published a poll that captured the depth of American anxiety – and the numbers were grim. More than two-thirds (70%) of Americans no longer consider their country the greatest nation on Earth, while 64% believe American democracy is in danger. And 38% don’t believe the United States will survive another 250 years as a single country.

The answers split sharply along party lines, with Republicans still clinging more strongly to the idea of the exceptional country of prosperity and divine favor. Among Democrats, the mood is much darker and pessimism has become almost a worldview as the United States has arrived at its 250th anniversary in the middle of a profound crisis of belief.

In some ways, this resembles the crisis Soviet society experienced in the final years of the USSR. Of course, America never had an official state ideology in the Soviet sense and nobody in Washington promised to build communism at breakneck speed, but the US did have its own coherent vision of the future which it called the American Dream.

The first serious cracks appeared among millennials, the generation born between 1981 and 1996. Their parents got rich, bought homes, built savings, and traveled abroad, but they inherited student debt, unaffordable housing, unstable work, and the strange feeling that no matter how hard they run, the finish line keeps moving further away.

Older Americans told them the answer was simply to work as hard as they did, but younger Americans could see the numbers and how with comparable effort, earlier generations ended up far wealthier. 

So the old formula no longer worked and that undermined the idea of labor as an absolute virtue. If hard work no longer guarantees a decent life, then what remains? Freedom?

Americans are formally free in that they elect presidents and congressmen. Yet Congress is filled with elderly politicians who seem determined to change nothing and who often leave public life only when nature finally intervenes. Presidents speak beautifully on campaign trails, but once inside the White House, they usually follow the same old path so while the faces change, the machine remains and freedom, too, begins to look hollow.

Well, American society has developed two sharply different answers. The conservative right believes America can be saved by a return to pragmatism with a freer market, support for major entrepreneurs, ruthless efficiency in public spending, and a foreign policy less constrained by old ideological sermons about democracy and human rights. In this view, America must stop trying to lecture the world and start taking care of itself.

The progressive left believes the opposite, that the pillars of liberal democracy mustn’t be abandoned, but that the economy needs radical restructuring. National wealth, they say, must be distributed more fairly and big business, especially in the technology sector, is viewed with deep suspicion. The new villains are “tech feudal lords,” billionaires whose power appears to rival that of the state itself.

Both camps agree on one thing, that the current order is exhausted, but they simply disagree on what should come next.

Donald Trump was supposed to test the right-wing answer in practice and his supporters expected a revolution in a break with the old elite, a new economic nationalism, a government that would stop apologizing and start acting because he promised all of that.

But Trump’s presidency has shown the limits of his movement in that there’s not much of a system and Trump doesn’t think in historical categories, but in terms of Trump. If it were up to him, Washington would be filled not with a new national doctrine, but with golden ballrooms and monuments to his own greatness.

So now disillusioned by the right, America is glancing left, although the country doesn’t yet trust the left nationally. But locally, especially in big cities, voters are increasingly willing to experiment, with Zohran Mamdani, the openly socialist mayor of New York, an obvious example. This is no accident as the largest cities are where the contradictions of modern America are most visible in terms of housing costs, inequality, migration, crime, decaying infrastructure, and anger at remote elites.

If socialist policies succeed at city level, their supporters will soon claim they are ready for higher office.

And what will their opponents do then? They could accept defeat or they may decide that their America can no longer live under the same roof as the other America, which is the real question behind the anniversary. Not whether the United States has had a remarkable 250 years, because it has, but the question is whether it still has a common future.

Perhaps America will find a new compromise and perhaps it will reinvent itself again, as it has done before, but perhaps its two political tribes have already begun traveling in different historical directions.

If, over the next 250 years, US history follows that road toward a civilized or uncivilized split, it won’t be because Americans lacked flags or speeches, it will be because the country’s old promise stopped convincing its own people.

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

Germany will fund the purchase of 50,000 attack drones for the Ukrainian military, Reuters has reported, citing informed sources.

Ukraine has intensified its drone attacks on energy infrastructure and residential areas inside Russia in recent months amid continued setbacks on the front line, targeting the country with several hundred UAVs per day on average. Among other things, there has been an increase in incidents where FPV drones, including AI-guided models, have hit passenger buses and private vehicles.

On Wednesday, at least 11 civilians were killed and a dozen others wounded in drone strikes across Russia, according to local authorities. Moscow has responded to these attacks by launching large-scale missile and UAV raids against military-related targets in Ukraine.

The drone order made by the German government involves low-cost Shrike first-person-view UAVs, Reuters said in an article on Sunday.

Auterion CEO Lorenz Meier told the agency that the contract for the Shrike drones was worth about €90 million ($103 million) and that it had been bankrolled by “a European country.” Some of the UAVs have already been supplied to Kiev, and the rest are expected by the end of 2026, he said.

According to Meier, Auterion is providing software to at least 100,000 drones from various manufacturers this year, which are paid for by several Western governments and intended to be delivered to Ukraine. This includes a $50 million Pentagon contract for 33,000 UAVs that have already been supplied to Kiev, he added.

SkyFall confirmed Germany’s involvement in the deal when contacted by Reuters, but refrained from providing any further details. The defense ministries in Berlin and Kiev declined to comment.

Germany has been the biggest supporter of Ukraine in the EU since the escalation between Moscow and Kiev in February 2022, with the amount of military aid provided by Berlin amounting to some €55.5 billion ($63.4 billion), according to government data.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said last week that “it is high time Berlin put an end to the aggressive war [it is waging against Russia] by proxy of the Kiev regime.”

Slovakia was not the only NATO state that refused to participate in the bloc’s latest military aid package for Ukraine, the country’s president, Peter Pellegrini, has said.

During the summit in Ankara, Türkiye last week, NATO members pledged to provide Kiev with €70 billion ($80 billion) in military equipment, training, and other assistance this year and to sustain at least the same level of financial support in 2027.

In an interview with broadcaster TA3 on Sunday, Pellegrini rejected claims that Bratislava was alone in declining to contribute to the package during the gathering in the Turkish capital.

“That is simply not the case. The Hungarian Prime Minister [Peter Magyar] spoke clearly on this matter, stating that Hungary would not provide any military or financial aid to Ukraine. The Czech Prime Minister [Andrej Babis] expressed the exact same position right at the negotiating table and there were other prime ministers, who also will not participate in those 70 billion,” he said.

Overall, Pellegrini described the NATO summit as “constructive,” but expressed regret that it focused on boosting military aid to Kiev and strengthening its air defenses and the ability to hit targets deep inside Russia, while “very little, if any, time has been devoted to when and how to start diplomatic negotiations.” 

“There is no purely military solution to this conflict. If this continues, it will be a war of attrition for several years, in which thousands of innocent people and tens of thousands of soldiers will be dying every month,” Pellegrini said.

After Robert Fico returned as Slovak prime minister in October 2023, Bratislava halted military supplies to Kiev. It also consistently criticized EU sanctions against Russia and called for a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine conflict.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova last week described the NATO summit as “humiliating” for Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky.

“He once again rolled out his usual wish list, begging for missile and air defense systems… while touting Ukrainian military’s terrorist capabilities. NATO members offered no meaningful response to these appeals,” Zakharova argued.

US President Donald Trump has claimed that America is “taking over” the Strait of Hormuz from Iran, and will act as the “guardian angel” of the key waterway “and get paid for it.” Tehran has earlier declared the strait closed, blaming “hostile actions” by US forces.

Speaking by phone to ‘Fox & Friends’ on Monday, Trump said Iran was getting its “ass kicked” in the war against the US, asserting that the country’s navy, air force and missile capabilities had been “virtually annihilated” and listing senior Iranian leaders he said had been killed. 

He added that US troops were continuing to carry out strikes against Iranian targets after he declared a ceasefire with Tehran to be “over” this past weekend.

“We’re taking over the strait. They’ve got nothing,” Trump said, arguing that Washington should have dealt with what he called the Iran threat “47 years ago.” He accused successive US presidents of having been “tapped along” by Tehran without taking decisive action.

Control of the Strait of Hormuz – a vital route for global oil and liquefied natural gas shipments – has emerged as a major flashpoint in the Middle East conflict, which was triggered by a surprise joint US Israeli attack on Iran on February 28 which cost the life of the late Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and several members of his immediate family.

1/
Due to recent hostile actions by the US forces, passage through the #Strait_of_Hormuz is currently unfeasible. As soon as stability and calm are restored, all applications will be reviewed in accordance with the scheduled timeline, and the permitting process will resume.

— PGSA | نهاد مدیریت آبراه خلیج فارس (@PGSA_IRAN) July 13, 2026

Tehran has formally declared the strait closed, blaming “hostile actions” by US forces in a post on X on Monday by Iran’s Persian Gulf Strait Authority, which said passage would only resume once “stability and calm” are restored.

Regular exchanges of strikes stopped after a ceasefire in April, which led to the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on June 17. Hostilities have since resumed as the sides clashed over the interpretation of the MoU and the status of the strait. The US continued striking targets in Iran early on Monday, marking the fourth consecutive night of bombardment. Iran responded by firing missiles and drones at US military sites in Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, and Oman.

Under the MoU, Iran pledged to use “its best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels with no charge” during the 60 day period and to negotiate with Oman over “the future administration and maritime services” in the strait. Tehran has maintained that it has the right to regulate traffic, collect tolls and require ships to use a designated route. 

Washington has demanded that Iran declare the strait fully open and has been guiding vessels along a route closer to the Omani coast, which Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has denounced as “illegal.”

The first time I saw Boris Johnson, he was dangling in mid-air in a safety helmet, Union Jack flags fluttering above him and his polished shoes tucked awkwardly beneath him. He looked like Mr. Bean after being accidentally ejected from an aircraft.

I couldn’t believe that this was the new prime minister of Britain, so I checked other photographs, assuming it might be Photoshop. But it wasn’t, and there he was, sitting in the same office once occupied by Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher.

That image has stayed with me because it captured something larger and made me ask what’s happened to Britain’s political elite, and to Western Europe’s more broadly?

Britain has changed prime minister repeatedly in recent years, and each new arrival has seemed more insubstantial than the last and compared with the major figures of the past, many of today’s leaders look lightweight and strangely unprepared for the seriousness of the offices they hold.

Elsewhere in Western Europe, the picture is no better, such as Emmanuel Macron who looks the part in a well-cut suit, but appearances only go so far. The photographs from his youth, the theatrical poses and the carefully managed presidential image all speak to a politics increasingly dominated by presentation, while even scenes from his marriage, such as the now-famous footage of Brigitte Macron appearing to strike him on a government aircraft, would have been almost unimaginable in the eras of François Mitterrand or Valéry Giscard d’Estaing.

Russia Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s contempt for them is therefore understandable given he’s a career diplomat formed in a different political culture, one in which statecraft was supposed to involve discipline and a sense of consequence. Faced with Western Europe’s current political class, he sometimes sounds like a man struggling not to say what he really thinks.

The problem is that these leaders may be transient, but the consequences of their decisions are not and while governments change, the submarines, cruise missiles, armies, tanks and aircraft remain and so do the strategic commitments, sanctions regimes, broken relationships and accumulated risks created by politicians who may be gone within a few years.

So why has the quality of Western Europe’s political leadership declined so sharply? One major reason is economic as over the past three decades, the business world has become far more attractive to ambitious and capable young people than public service. A vice president responsible for government relations at a large corporation can earn €1.5 million a year, often with bonuses, stock options and a generous severance package and politics can’t compete with that.

An English friend once told me that a former schoolmate of his might one day become prime minister and this wasn’t fantasy. The man had attended an elite school, had been politically active from a young age and was moving through the expected stages of a serious political career.

Then business intervened as he was offered a position so lucrative that the uncertain prospect of becoming prime minister no longer seemed especially attractive and, thus, his political career faded, not because he lacked ability, but because the private sector valued that ability more highly.

Yet Kissinger didn’t fully address another part of the problem, which is the American role in selecting and shaping much of Europe’s political class.

A notable number of European leaders have studied in the United States, attended American-funded programs or received support from US-linked foundations early in their careers and these institutions don’t simply identify talented young people, but they help shape their worldview.

This isn’t necessarily a matter of direct recruitment by intelligence services, because that’s a more difficult and unreliable process. The method is subtler, as young politicians are introduced to networks and encouraged to adopt a particular understanding of international affairs.

The result is a loyalty filter and independent-minded people rarely flourish in such systems. Those who advance are often the most adaptable and the most willing to repeat the approved language. In other words, the process doesn’t necessarily select the strongest candidates, but it selects the easiest to shape.

There are occasional mistakes, particularly in Poland where American institutions sometimes underestimate the ability of Polish politicians to imitate the language expected of them while retaining deeply nationalist instincts. Washington is wary of genuine Polish independence, but its candidate pool is limited, so compromises are made.

Republicans have traditionally relied on industrial and corporate networks, while Democrats have been supported by finance, arts, law, and media. A promising politician may spend several years in business, earn enough to become financially secure, and then return to public life with a house, and investments, but in Europe, the mechanism is almost the reverse.

Public pressure is constantly applied to reduce politicians’ salaries and privileges as the argument is always that they should cost less and appear more ordinary. Meanwhile, corporations offer increasingly extraordinary rewards to anyone with intelligence and connections so the predictable result is reverse selection.

The most capable people leave, while the ambitious ones move into business, consulting, finance, or lobbying and those who remain are often ideologues, careerists, eccentrics, or mediocrities with nowhere more attractive to go.

This process is now difficult to stop and the prestige of political office has fallen too far, while the rewards available in the corporate world have become too large and too obvious.

Much of Europe is therefore left with leaders who often lack competence and historical perspective and while they occupy powerful offices, many seem unable to understand the scale of the responsibilities they have inherited.

The danger isn’t merely that they look ridiculous, it’s is that they govern states possessing vast economic and military power and when weak people inherit powerful machinery, the consequences can be anything but trivial.

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

Europe recorded more than 10,000 excess deaths last month which have been attributed to the ongoing heatwave, Reuters reported on Sunday, citing official mortality data.

Western Europe experienced its hottest June on record, with temperatures exceeding 40°C in parts of Germany, France, and Spain. Germany recorded a new national high of 41.7°C after breaking temperature records on three consecutive days, while France logged its hottest day ever, with temperatures reaching 43.8°C.

The prolonged heatwave has fueled wildfires, disrupted transport and infrastructure, and contributed to a rise in heat-related illnesses and drowning deaths across the region.

Figures published by EuroMOMO, a mortality monitoring network backed by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO), showed that more than 9,000 of the excess deaths occurred among people aged 65 and older.

“It is difficult to explain this high excess mortality by anything but the extreme heat,” he added.

The EuroMOMO data are based on national mortality statistics from 27 European countries for the week of June 22-28, when the heatwave peaked across much of Western Europe. Researchers told Reuters there were no other known major factors, such as Covid-19 outbreaks, that could explain the spike to 10,650 excess deaths.

Around 2,700 excess deaths were separately reported in England and Wales during May and June, according to estimates by Imperial College London, the Met Office, and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, as cited by Sky News.

France, Belgium, and the Netherlands recorded 3,700 excess deaths last month, Reuters reported.

Extreme heat can kill by causing heat stroke or exacerbating cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, with older people among the most vulnerable.

Henri Kluge, the World Health Organization’s regional director for Europe, warned last week that European countries must prepare for “more deadly weeks,” as another heatwave was already forming over the Atlantic.

At least 300 people were evacuated from a Paris suburb after weapons were found in a vehicle near a synagogue.

The suspicious vehicle was discovered on Saturday evening in the busy suburb of Sarcelles, north of the capital, which is home to one of the country’s largest Jewish communities. Police established a security cordon around the area, which includes a cinema and several restaurants, and evacuated nearby premises.

AFP, citing police sources, said officers recovered an assault rifle and a handgun from the stolen vehicle. Bomb disposal experts found no explosives.

Interior Minister Laurent Nunez described the rifle as a “military-grade weapon,” adding that it had been found near a synagogue in the Val-d’Oise department.

The French National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office opened an investigation into suspected participation in a “terrorist criminal organization” and preparations for a violent attack.

France, home to Europe’s largest Jewish population, has recorded a sharp rise in anti-Semitic incidents since the start of the Gaza War in October 2023.

The country recorded 1,320 anti-Semitic acts last year, triple the number recorded three years earlier. Such incidents accounted for more than half of all anti-religious offenses, despite Jews making up less than 1% of the French population.

In August 2024, an explosion outside a synagogue in the southern city of La Grande-Motte injured a police officer after two vehicles and the building’s doors were set on fire. A suspect was later arrested following a large-scale manhunt.

Speaking on Sunday at the unveiling of a statue honoring Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish army officer falsely convicted of treason in late 19th-century France, French President Emmanuel Macron warned of the resurgence of the “demons of anti-Semitism.”

Iran has warned that Arab states in the Middle East are legitimate targets for retaliatory strikes because they host US military bases.

The US continued striking targets in Iran early on Monday local time, marking the fourth consecutive night of bombardment. On Sunday, Iran responded by firing missiles and drones at US military sites in Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, and Oman.

In a statement carried by the media outlet ISNA late on Sunday, the Iranian Foreign Ministry condemned the “barbaric” US attacks and accused the Gulf monarchies of turning their countries into “an arena for its illegal and criminal war against the Iranian nation.”

“The neighboring countries are obliged under international law to prevent the aggressor from using their territory and facilities to carry out military aggression against Iran,” the ministry added.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei responded by arguing that Iran’s actions were justified. “Iran does not ‘attack.’ Iran’s strikes on US military bases and assets stationed in the southern Persian Gulf constitute a legitimate and lawful exercise of its inherent right to self-defense under international law,” he wrote on X on Sunday.

The war began with a joint US-Israeli attack on Iran on February 28. Regular exchanges of strikes stopped after a ceasefire in April, which led to the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on June 17.

Hostilities resumed recently as the sides disagreed over the interpretation of the MoU and the status of the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran declared closed to shipping in response to the US and Israeli strikes.

The US has launched a fourth round of strikes against Iran this week in response to attacks on commercial ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz.

The move has put further strain on the memorandum of understanding (MoU) the two countries signed on June 17. Since then, both sides have accused each other of violating the accord.

“At 5 p.m. ET today, US Central Command forces began launching additional strikes against Iran to continue degrading its ability to attack civilian mariners and commercial ships freely transiting the Strait of Hormuz. The Commander in Chief has directed the strikes to hold Iranian forces accountable,” CENTCOM said in a statement on X on Sunday. 

CENTCOM said several hours later that US forces had struck dozens of military targets, including air defense systems, radar sites, drone and missile facilities, and naval vessels.

Iranian media reported explosions in the southern part of the country, including in the port cities of Bandar Abbas, Sirik, and Jask, as well as on Qeshm Island.  Officials said at least eight towns were struck in Khuzestan, a coastal province bordering Iraq. The Iranian Foreign Ministry condemned the strikes as “war crimes,” according to the state outlet Press TV.

In response, Iran launched missiles at Bahrain, triggering air raid sirens. Smoke was reportedly seen rising from the headquarters of the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet and Isa Air Base.

🇮🇷🇧🇭 Reports of heavy explosions in Bahrain

Source: Middle East Spectator, @TabzLIVE on TG / Writer: Oliver pic.twitter.com/3mwRwX6ZTy

— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) July 13, 2026

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) claimed to have “completely destroyed” a Patriot air defense system at Ali Al Salem Air Base and a radar system at Ahmad al-Jaber Air Base in Kuwait.

The IRGC said on Saturday that it would keep the strategic Strait of Hormuz closed to all shipping until the US ends its “illegal interventions” in the region.

CENTCOM said US forces had struck more than 300 military targets over the previous three nights. On Sunday, Iran responded by launching missiles at five Gulf Arab states that host American bases.

The US and Iran have clashed over the interpretation of the MoU’s provisions regarding the Strait of Hormuz, which handles around a quarter of the world’s seaborne oil and LNG trade.

Under the agreement, Iran pledged to use “its best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels with no charge” for 60 days and negotiate with Oman over “the future administration and maritime services” in the strait. Iran has insisted that it has the right to regulate traffic and collect tolls, saying ships must pass through a designated route.

The US, meanwhile, has demanded that Iran declare the strait fully open and has guided vessels along a route near the Omani coast, which the IRGC has denounced as “illegal.”

A US federal judge on Friday awarded Hunter Biden $1.7 million in damages in a defamation suit against Patrick Byrne, former Overstock.com CEO and outspoken backer of US President Donald Trump. 

The lawsuit had been dragging on since 2023, when Biden brought Byrne to court over repeated claims that he sought an $800 million bribe from Iran during his father’s presidency. Byrne alleged that in exchange for the massive payout, Biden promised to get some $8 billion in Iranian funds unfrozen and to ensure a softer stance in nuclear talks with Tehran.

While Byrne has insisted he believed the allegations to be genuine, he failed to “provide to this court, throughout the course of litigation, any documentary evidence that could allow a reasonable person to believe the story to be true,” the judge said in his ruling. Moreover, the court found “ample evidence” indicating the defendant knew the claims were false but spread them nonetheless.

The claims disseminated by the defendant “went far beyond mere negligence,” and the former CEO acted with “intentional misrepresentation” and “conscious disregard,” continuing to spread the claims even after he was sued by Hunter and encouraging social media users to propagate them further. 

“The evidence is clear and convincing that [Byrne] has engaged in intentional misrepresentation with conscious disregard towards [Biden’s] rights,” the judge wrote in the ruling, which awarded Hunter $1.7 million in punitive damages.

Over the past years, Biden has been embroiled in assorted legal troubles and claims to have racked up a massive debt primarily stemming from court fees, even despite his father granting him a pardon for convictions on federal gun and tax charges in the last days of his presidency. Byrne is no stranger to controversy either, being one of the central figures of the scandal involving Russian gun activist Maria Butina, with whom he admitted to having an intimate relationship. Butina was ultimately convicted of “conspiring to act as an unregistered foreign agent” and expelled to Russia after serving a prison term. 

The affair prompted Byrne to step down from his executive role in 2019, with the businessman focusing primarily on political activism ever since. He has strongly supported US President Trump, including by backing the allegations that the latter was cheated out of the 2020 election win, as well as bankrolling legal efforts to challenge the outcome.

The Trump administration has served several New York Times journalists with subpoenas after the newspaper ran an article questioning the safety of the Air Force One jet donated by Qatar last year. The outlet has in turn accused the White House of attempting to suppress the freedom of the press.

On Thursday, the Times published an article claiming that the new presidential plane – dubbed by the media a “flying palace” and valued at around $400 million – lacks standard security features, including anti-missile defenses. Trump used it to travel to the NATO summit in Türkiye earlier this week.

However, the paper cited anonymous officials as saying that security flaws were the reason the US president abruptly swapped the new airplane for the old Air Force One on his return flight on Wednesday. The decision was supposedly made at the urging of the Secret Service.

According to the newspaper, shortly before the article was published, a senior FBI official reached out, asking that the piece be spiked on national security grounds. The official also reportedly pressed the newspaper to divulge its sources.

The paper described the development as an “extraordinary escalation in President Trump’s efforts to threaten and intimidate independent news organizations.” The writs reportedly were issued by US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Jay Clayton “in regard to an alleged violation of federal criminal law.”

“The appearance of federal law enforcement agents on the doorstep of news reporters should shock the conscience of any American who believes in the Constitution and the press freedom it protects,” NYT lawyer David McCraw stated.

Trump has repeatedly branded mainstream media outlets “crooked” and accused them of displaying bias against his administration.

The donation of the Boeing 747-8 to the US government by the Qatari royal family was announced last May. Commentators at the time noted that it could be the most expensive gift ever given to Washington by a foreign government.

Trump defended the move, however, writing on his Truth Social platform that “it is a ‘gift from a Nation’ to the US government ‘NOT TO ME’.”

In a statement last month, the US Air Force acknowledged that the “collective team made trades on some of the less commonly used mission sets” when clearing the Qatari-donated plane for operation.

Meanwhile, the US Air Force’s contract with Boeing for two new Air Force One jets has been plagued by delays and cost overruns. Originally scheduled for delivery in 2024, the customized 747-8 aircraft are now expected to arrive as late as 2028.

Lindsey Graham is dead. And if we were to apply the old Spartan and then Roman adage “about the dead, nothing but the good,” then this is where this text would have to end. 

Some readers may find this shocking or unkind. But it is a fact that there is no way to write about the intriguingly sudden end of the long-term US senator from South Carolina in a ‘balanced’ manner and stay honest.

Graham was an almost cartoonishly evil man and since he was also very powerful, his moral depravity made a big difference to the lives of all too many. Downplaying that fact out of misplaced piety would be perverse; it would mean to disrespect the many victims of perfidious and brutal US and, in fact, Israeli policies of vicious violence and outrageous injustice that Graham promoted with every fiber of his being for his whole political life.

During the Gaza genocide, when challenged specifically about the Israeli mass killings of civilians, including women and children, Graham launched into what can only be called a psychopathic rant comparing the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians with American warfare against Germany in Japan in World War II (an intriguing comparison in and of itself, but that is another matter) and drawing the conclusion that Gaza should be flattened, including with nuclear weapons. Gaza has been flattened, and to his dying day, Graham never showed an ounce of compassion for those slaughtered by his Israeli friends and did everything he could to support that slaughter.

Speaking of Graham’s obvious subservience to Israel, the senator was, unsurprisingly, also a great fan of going to war with Iran, tirelessly calling for attacking it as violently as possible. He spread the Orwellian lies that Iran was about to pose a nuclear threat to the US and that its ballistic missile arsenal was a tool of reckless aggression, all to produce domestic support for yet another criminal American war. Himself addicted to hiding his foul character behind a bigoted and utterly fake Christian piety, Graham compared Iran’s leaders to Hitler and called them “religious Nazis,” thereby not merely offending brave men towering above him in moral and intellectual terms, but also helping to drum up propaganda for murdering them.  

It is an irony of history or, maybe, divine justice that he lived just long enough to see the US follow his insane and corrupt advice and suffer a geopolitically catastrophic defeat for it. 

Yet Graham was a monster long before the Gaza Genocide and the US-Israeli war against Iran. He was obsessed with brutalizing as many other countries and societies as possible. He could not see an opportunity for a war and not do his worst to make it happen. Graham’s record of warmongering is so extensive that it is hard to reproduce it in its entirety. Just shortly before his end, he had been calling for more US violence in Cuba, Lebanon, Nigeria, Venezuela, and Yemen – apart, obviously, from his eternal compulsion to scream for, in effect, more dead Palestinians and Iranians.

There is no other way of putting it. Lindsey Graham was an infernally bad man. And he was a revolting man: his viciousness was glaringly obvious. Graham was not a complicated case, a conflicted character, a man of light and dark. He was among the closest to pure, unadulterated, and shamelessly brazen evil many of us will ever lay eyes on. 

That is why it is telling – but not surprising – to see who is lining up to let us know how much they’ll miss him, that they were buddies with him, or what a wonderful person he was. Apart from Netanyahu, for instance, German chancellor Friedrich Merz, NATO’s Trump bellboy Mark Rutte, Ukraine’s authoritarian leader Vladimir Zelensky, and, of course, AIPAC.

What these often abject condolences show is not merely the moral failure – polite term – of those who offer them. There is a more general and, in its way, worse point: Horrible as Graham was, he was also representative of the elites of the US and the West. Normal people would be ashamed to be seen with Graham, dead or alive; Western elites are boasting of their intimacy with him. 

Graham was explicit in displaying his genuine, sick joy in inflicting pain and misery on as much of the world as he could. Indeed, one way to describe him would be as an openly, enthusiastically sadistic imperialist. Graham was a depraved pervert of power who let it all hang out. But apart from his lack of filter, he was not an exception but typical. 

Graham was the ugly and all too realistic face of much of the West and its leaders in Washington. He is gone, everyone and everything else is still in place. 

Iranian drone strikes have destroyed a number of US HIMARS missile launcher systems in Kuwait, Fars news agency has reported. The outlet also said that three American officers were killed and several others wounded – a claim US Central Command (CENTCOM) has denied.

On Sunday, Axios journalist Barak Ravid reported, citing an unnamed US official, that Washington had carried out “a few strikes on missile and air defense systems,” as well as on Iranian Navy small boats, at several locations around the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran’s Press TV reported multiple explosions near Qeshm Island, sharing footage appearing to show smoke rising over the area. Qeshm is Iran’s largest island in the Persian Gulf and reportedly a key site for the country’s coastal defenses, radar systems, and naval assets.

BREAKING: Iran has just launched a large-scale surprise attack on Kuwait, with three ballistic missiles directly impacting US ATACMS ground-to-ground missile systems. Massive plumes of smoke rising. pic.twitter.com/jDliRlAAhp

— The Hormuz Letter (@HormuzLetter) July 12, 2026

Later in the day, Fars reported that Iranian forces had used drones to destroy the HIMARS launchers in Kuwait, which it said had been readied to fire on Iranian territory. The agency also said three ballistic missiles were fired toward Kuwait’s Al Mina area and a site housing a US ATACMS missile system, adding that US military assets in Bahrain, Qatar, Jordan, and Oman had also been targeted throughout the day.

Kuwait’s military confirmed that the country had come under attack but made no mention of the HIMARS claim or any American casualties, without pinning the blame on Iran. It said that three land border posts in the country’s north had been struck in a “criminal aggressive attack” that caused “material damage,” while a hostile drone hit an offshore drilling platform operated by the Kuwait Oil Company, injuring one worker.

The European Commission is officially recommending the termination of the EU’s €2 million ($2.28 million) grant to the Venice Biennale over the reopening of Russia’s pavilion. The country returned to one of the world’s most prestigious art festivals this year for the first time since 2022 despite Brussels’ sanctions and pressure on Italian authorities to exclude it.

The announcement was made by Henna Virkkunen, Executive Vice-President of the EU Commission for Democracy, on Saturday, who cited “a thorough assessment of the replies from the Biennale to justify the re-opening of Russia’s pavilion.”

“Culture in Europe – funded with taxpayers’ money – should promote and safeguard democratic values,” she wrote on X, claiming that Russia does not adhere to this standard.

Russia’s cultural exchange chief, Mikhail Shvydkoy, said that the pavilion would host “more than 50 young musicians, poets, and philosophers from Russia and other countries.” The show, titled “The Tree Is Rooted in the Sky”, he said, “is further proof that Russian culture is not isolated, and that attempts to ‘cancel’ it – undertaken for the past four years by Western political elites – have not succeeded.”

Ukraine separately imposed sanctions on individuals linked to running the pavilion, with activists, including members of the banned Russian punk group Pussy Riot, staging protests in Venice. The pavilion remained open during the preview days but closed for the remainder of the event, with organizers citing EU sanctions.

Biennale President Pietrangelo Buttafuoco refused to back down, accusing critics of censorship and narcissism. “The Biennale is not a court; it is a garden of peace. We cannot shut it down; we cannot boycott as an automatic response. We must discuss. We may disagree, and we do so forcefully,” he said in May.

Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini also criticized the EU’s push to defund the Biennale, saying that threats against Italian cultural institutions are “truly embarrassing.”

Shvydkoy branded the EU pressure as “disgraceful,” adding that “claims by the European establishment about being open to dialogue with Russia are empty.” He also accused Brussels of “blatant interference in Italian domestic politics.” 

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova argued that the EU is relapsing into “anti-culture, a condition that the West has been suffering from in recent years.”

Iran will not allow the US to violate the terms of the memorandum of understanding (MoU) with impunity, Tehran’s top negotiator Mohammad Ghalibaf has said.

On Saturday, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) announced that the Strait of Hormuz will be closed to all shipping until the US ends its “illegal interventions” in the region. The move follows the third wave of American strikes against Iran this week.

Tehran allowed traffic through the key waterway, which accounts for some 20% global crude trade, as part of the MoU, which was signed by the sides on June 17 in order to extend the ceasefire and allow for more time to reach the final settlement of the conflict.

In a post on X on Sunday, Ghalibaf, who is also the speaker of the Iranian parliament, warned the US that “the era of one-sided deals is OVER.”

“We told you: keep your word or pay the price. Reality is knocking,” he wrote.

The US Central Command (CENTCOM) said earlier that it launched its latest bombardment of Iran after Tehran “blatantly” attacked the Cyprus-flagged container ship GFS Galaxy in the strait.

The IRGC maintains that it targets such commercial vessels because they are traversing the waterway via a shipping lane near the Omani coast, which was “illegally designating” by Washington, instead of taking the route mapped out by Tehran.

Iran later retaliated for the US strikes by hitting the American military facilities in Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman with drones and missiles, according to the IRGC.

Among other things, a command center and hangars housing US MQ-9 Reaper drones at Prince Hassan Air Base in Jordan and a refueling facility for US aircraft carriers at the port of Duqm in Oman were struck, it said.

Western Europe is not being conquered by foreign armies. It is being dismantled by its own political elites. While millions of Europeans watch their countries change beyond recognition, the ruling class continues to celebrate the very policies driving that transformation.

The numbers alone should set off alarm bells across every EU capital.

According to demographic data compiled by Berlin’s Rockwool Foundation, the European Union’s foreign-born population has surged from around 40 million people in 2010 to approximately 64 million in 2025. Out of the EU’s total population of roughly 451 million, around 15% are now of non-EU origin. Even more astonishing, 7.3 million immigrants were added between 2023 and 2025 alone.

It is one of the fastest demographic transformations ever experienced.

The demographic revolution nobody voted for

The impact is concentrated overwhelmingly in Western Europe. Germany remains the primary destination, with its foreign-born population growing from around 10 million in 2010 to nearly 18 million today – already exceeding one-fifth of the country’s population. Similar proportions now exist in Spain, Belgium, Austria, and Sweden. Meanwhile, countries such as Poland remain at only around 2.6%, compared with the EU average of approximately 14%.

If anyone wants to see where Brussels intends to take the entire continent, they need only look at Spain.

On June 30, the application period closed for one of the largest legalization programs in modern European history. Hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants living and working in Spain became eligible to obtain legal status. The final number could ultimately exceed one million people.

Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez called the measure “an act of justice and a necessity.” Unable to secure parliamentary approval, his government amended immigration law by decree after previous attempts had stalled. He argues that Spain would lose 19% of its GDP by 2050 if migration were significantly reduced, while claiming that nearly half of Spain’s economic growth since 2022 has been driven by immigration.

Western Europe’s governing class increasingly speaks as if civilization can be measured solely by GDP.

Economic growth matters. But so do social cohesion, public trust, cultural continuity, and national identity. A nation is more than an economy. It is a shared history and a sense of belonging that cannot simply be imported.

Meanwhile, activist NGOs continue assisting illegal migrants in reaching Europe and navigating legalization procedures. Their supporters call it humanitarian work. The reality is different: a transnational political infrastructure that weakens national sovereignty, undermines border enforcement, and encourages further migration into Europe.

The price Europeans pay every day

The consequences are no longer abstract. Across Western Europe, citizens wake up almost daily to reports of knife attacks, gang violence, sexual assaults, riots, organized crime, and terrorist plots. These realities have become impossible to ignore.

Europe has also witnessed a deeply troubling resurgence of antisemitism. Jewish communities across the continent have reported sharp increases in antisemitic incidents, intimidation and threats, leaving many Europeans wondering how a continent that vowed “never again” now finds itself confronting hatred once more.

Yet citizens who raise these concerns are too often branded right-wing extremists instead of being heard.

Now another frontier is opening. France has begun debating whether non-EU foreign residents should be granted the right to vote and stand in municipal elections. Such a proposal would affect roughly six million people. Among others, Sweden, Finland and Luxembourg already permit many non-EU residents to vote in local or regional elections.

Mass immigration is no longer simply changing demographics. It is reshaping politics, culture, and ultimately the future character of European societies.

A wind of change in Brussels?

In June, the EU adopted its toughest migration line to date, seeking to increase deportations and establish detention centers outside the EU. Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Greece are already negotiating return hubs with third countries, largely in Africa, following Italy’s agreement with Albania.

When Brussels begins embracing policies it condemned only a short time ago, it is effectively admitting that the previous model has failed.

But these measures barely scratch the surface. Stopping tomorrow’s illegal arrivals does not undo decades of uncontrolled migration. It does not solve failed integration. It does not dismantle parallel societies. And it certainly does not restore public confidence that governments still control their own borders.

Whatever one thinks of the concept, its growing political momentum reflects a profound loss of confidence in the migration policies that have dominated Europe for the past decade.

‘Great Replacement’ as a matter of fact

Following the Remigration Summit in Porto this May, activists launched the Save Europe Act, the first patriotic European Citizens’ Initiative dedicated to stopping migration, strengthening Europe’s borders and protecting the ethnocultural identity of European nations.

The campaign has received support from figures including former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, VOX leader Santiago Abascal, Romania’s George Simion, Reconquête leader Éric Zemmour, and politicians associated with AfD, FPÖ and other patriotic movements. Millions of Europeans are demanding a fundamentally different course.

One of the central arguments advanced by these leaders is that the ‘Great Replacement’ is not a conspiracy theory but an observable demographic trend – and a political project.

The pressure coming from Donald Trump’s America has become one of the few external forces encouraging European leaders to rediscover the importance of borders, sovereignty and national identity.

Western Europe increasingly resembles a post-European political project, while much of Central and Eastern Europe continues to resist that trajectory, remaining more culturally homogeneous and more determined to preserve their historical identity.

The rest of the world understands this instinctively. China protects its borders. Japan protects its borders. India protects its borders. The Gulf states protect their borders. Every serious state recognizes that controlling migration is an essential attribute of sovereignty and security. Europeans should stop apologizing for expecting the same.

Equal partnerships instead of paternalism

At the same time, defending Europe’s borders should not mean turning away from the rest of the world. Europe should fundamentally rethink its relationships with Africa, Asia, and other regions. Instead of exporting liberal ideology, political social engineering and woke agendas, European governments should concentrate on helping partner countries tackle the objective drivers of migration: economic underdevelopment, insecurity, weak institutions, and the lack of opportunities that force millions to seek a future elsewhere.

Such cooperation should be based on mutual respect, not paternalism. Stronger African and Asian nations benefit everyone. Helping people build prosperous and secure lives in their own countries is more sustainable than encouraging the permanent loss of their youngest and most ambitious generations through mass migration. Europe should be a partner in development, not a magnet for demographic displacement.

The choice before Europe is therefore larger than immigration policy alone. It is a choice between a continent that governs itself and one that drifts wherever demographic and political currents carry it.

The demographic clock is ticking. Every year the numbers grow larger. Every year the political class asks Europeans to accept another exception, another amnesty, another compromise, another surrender.

There comes a moment when every civilization must decide whether it still possesses the confidence to preserve and develop itself. Europe is rapidly approaching that moment.

The US government has made its first payments to American personnel affected by the unexplained health condition known as ‘Havana Syndrome,’ the Pentagon has said.

The victims of the mysterious malaise have already received almost $3 million in compensation under the Havana Act of 2021, the Department of War said in a statement on Friday.

The department’s “commitment to mitigating non-kinetic threats remains absolute,” the statement read. The Pentagon will continue to improve care for those affected by ‘Havana Syndrome’ and “adapt to a dynamic operational environment,” it added.

The health condition got its name due to being first identified among US embassy staff in the Cuban capital, Havana, in 2016. According to the victims, its symptoms included headaches, dizziness, nausea, hearing loss, memory issues and difficulty concentrating.

Reports of American diplomats experiencing ‘Havana Syndrome’ have since emerged in China, Russia, Australia, the US itself and dozens of other countries, with over 1,500 cases registered globally.

There has been speculation about the malaise being the result of the deployment of an unknown microwave or electronic weapon. But a paper by the US National Intelligence Council last year said that most American spy agencies “assess that it is ‘very unlikely’ a foreign adversary is responsible” for the cases of the ‘Havana Syndrome.’

In 2024, The Insider, Der Spiegel and CBS’s 60 Minutes published a joint report, linking the health condition to the activities of a Russian intelligence unit.

At the time, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denounced the article as “nothing more than baseless, unsubstantiated allegation by the media.”

Republican US Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina has died at the age of 71, according to his official account on X.

Graham passed away on Saturday evening “from a brief and sudden illness,” a statement, published by the senator’s office on Sunday, read.

“Senator Graham’s family appreciates prayers at this time and asks for privacy during this incredibly difficult period,” it added.

Emergency services responded to a call for “cardiac arrest” at Graham’s Capitol Hill residence on Saturday night, NBC reported after obtaining the police scanner audio. The broadcaster also said that it has seen photos of paramedics carrying a person on a stretcher from the senator’s home to an ambulance.

Graham’s death comes a day after his return from Kiev, where he met with Vladimir Zelensky on Friday. The lawmaker, who was a strong advocate of US military assistance to Ukraine and a harsh critic of Russia, has visited the Ukrainian capital at least ten times in recent years.

In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump described the senator as “one of the greatest people and Senators I have ever known... He was always working, and was a true American Patriot.”

Zelensky said in a post on X that he was “deeply saddened” by the passing of Graham, who he called “a staunch advocate for bipartisan... support for Ukraine.”

“We remained in constant dialogue, and I will miss our conversations. We met twice in just the past week,” he wrote, adding that in recent weeks the senator had been working on “stronger sanctions against Russia.”

Graham, who was first elected to the Senate in 2002, has made name for himself over the years as one of the most prominent warhawks in Washington.

He famoulsy called for the asasination of Russian President Vladimir Putin after the esclatation of the Ukraine coflict in February 2022.

During an appearance on Fox News, the senator cited historic examples of plots to kill famous political leaders, including Julius Caesar and Adolf Hitler. “Is there a Brutus in Russia? Is there a more successful Colonel Stauffenberg in the Russian military? The only way this … ends, my friend, is for somebody in Russia to take this guy out,” Graham said, referring to Putin.

During his trip to Kiev the following year, the senator described the US military aid being sent to Ukraine as “the best money we’ve ever spent” because “the Russians are dying.”

Speaking about Graham last year, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the lawmaker was part of “the group of the most inveterate Russophobes” in the West. The senator had been on Russia’s list of extremists and terrorists since 2023.

US Congressman Ro Khanna has said that armed Israeli settlers detained him during his visit to a Palestinian village in the occupied West Bank, claiming that Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops sided with the settlers rather than helping his delegation.

Khanna, a progressive Democrat from California, has often criticized Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians and accused the US ally of committing genocide in Gaza, an allegation West Jerusalem denies.

According to the Hindu congressman, the incident occurred on Wednesday during a three-day fact-finding trip to examine the impact of the Israeli occupation on Palestinian communities.

He said masked Israeli settlers carrying US-made M4 rifles surrounded the van carrying him and his team as they visited the abandoned Palestinian village of Khirbet Zanuta, where they were inspecting a school that Khanna said had been destroyed by Israeli settlers.

“They block off the road. And then they call the IDF and the IDF is on their side, not on the side of the Americans,” Khanna said. The son of Indian immigrants, Khanna said the disturbing encounter made him “acutely aware of being brown.”

“I saw the arrogance in the eyes of those settlers, 21- and 22-year-olds with guns, laughing that they had detained us, the arrogance of those young IDF soldiers that my tax dollars are funding,” Khanna said, adding that the settlers and the soldiers had created “a toxic culture of oppression.”

Khanna, however, accused the Israeli government of “lying to cover up” for the troops and called for their arrest.

The incident came shortly after four Israeli settlers were arrested over an attack on a CNN crew and other journalists near the West Bank village of Sinjil, according to Israeli police. The reporters had been covering the first anniversary of the killing of Saif Musallet, a Palestinian American who was allegedly beaten to death by settlers in July 2025.

Israeli settlements on Palestinian land are illegal under international law. The UN has repeatedly condemned Israel for allowing the settlements to expand.

Politicians, journalists, and activists critical of Israel have been barred from entering the country or visiting the West Bank. In 2019, Israel blocked visits by US Representatives Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib. Last month, Palestinian American activist Linda Sarsour was prevented from traveling to Israel.

American journalist Tucker Carlson said earlier this year that he had been briefly detained and questioned at Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv after interviewing US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee. Israeli authorities said he had been subjected to routine security checks.

Two people were killed and at least six others were injured in a mass shooting at the Salsa on St. Clair street festival in Toronto, Canada, on Saturday evening.

Police received reports of an active shooter shortly after 8 PM and cordoned off the area. The suspects remain at large.

“A large police presence remains in the area as officers continue their investigation. Please continue to avoid the area and follow directions from emergency personnel,” police said.

Videos from the scene show people running for cover after gunshots rang out.

People RUNNING OFF after Mass Shooting in Toronto’s Salsa on St. Clair Festival 😳 https://t.co/hr4ChzLq5d pic.twitter.com/VdyfrTfJiL

— RTN (@RTNToronto) July 12, 2026

Another video shows paramedics treating the victims.

#BREAKING: Bystanders are left in shock after a shooting during a festival in Toronto left two people dead and three others injured. 🤕🚨#Toronto #Canada #BreakingNews https://t.co/7fbknyd9f0 pic.twitter.com/PBr46OpJCD

— The Globe & News (@TheGlobeNewt) July 12, 2026

Frank Barredo, deputy chief of police, later told a news conference that “this seemed to be an exchange of gunfire between two individuals targeting each other.” He added that two firearms had been recovered from the scene.

Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow said she was “disgusted and angered” by the shooting. “This was a reckless, despicable act of violence at a crowded festival,” she said.

Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, has vowed to avenge his father and predecessor, Ali Khamenei, who was killed in US-Israeli airstrikes on his compound in Tehran on February 28.

Khamenei made the statement after his father was laid to rest at the Imam Reza Shrine in his hometown of Mashhad on Thursday. More than 43 million people attended weeklong funeral ceremonies across Iran and Iraq, according to Iranian state media. Some mourners carried placards calling for the killing of US President Donald Trump, chanted “Death to America,” and threw stones at a billboard depicting Trump with a bullet aimed at his head. 

“We pledge that we will take revenge for the pure blood of the martyred leader and all the martyrs of these two wars from the criminal and disgraced killers,” Khamenei said in a statement read on state television on Saturday.

“Revenge is the demand of our nation and must certainly be carried out. Soon, the free people of the world will carry out a part of this divine mission,” the statement added.

Trump threatened on Friday to “completely decimate and destroy all areas of Iran” if Tehran attempted to assassinate him. Several US media outlets reported this week that Israel had warned Washington of what it described as a new Iranian plot against Trump.

The US and Israel killed dozens of senior Iranian officials and military commanders during the first weeks of their bombing campaign. Trump recently argued that the ceasefire, first reached in April, was effectively “over” as the two sides clashed over the interpretation of the memorandum of understanding signed on June 17.

The US carried out a third round of strikes against Iran this week in response to continued attacks on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran blamed the US for the “incidents,” accusing Washington of “illegally designating” a shipping route near the Omani coast. Tehran has insisted that all ships use the route designated by Iran.

The US has launched a third wave of strikes against Iran this week, shortly after the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said the strategic Strait of Hormuz would remain closed to all shipping indefinitely.

The resumption of hostilities has put the memorandum of understanding (MoU) the two countries signed on June 17 under even more strain. The agreement was intended to pave the way for a lasting ceasefire and allow more time to negotiate a peace settlement.

In a statement on Saturday evening local time, US Central Command (CENTCOM) said the new strikes were launched after the IRGC had “blatantly” attacked the Cyprus-flagged container ship GFS Galaxy, causing a fire in its engine room. One crew member is missing, CENTCOM said.

“The United States is imposing a heavy cost by continuing to degrade Iran’s ability to attack civilian mariners and commercial ships freely transiting the strait,” the US military added.

CENTCOM said US forces struck around 140 targets, including missile and drone sites, ammunition depots, and radar installations.

Iranian broadcaster Press TV reported strikes in the south of the country, including on the ports of Chabahar, Bushehr, and Sirik, which were also hit earlier this week. Air defenses were reportedly activated over Tehran.

Iran has responded by firing missiles at the Gulf states, with air raid alerts reported in Qatar, the UAE, and Bahrain. The IRGC said it had “destroyed” a command center and hangars housing US MQ-9 Reaper drones at Prince Hassan Air Base in Jordan. The IRGC added that it had targeted a support and refueling facility for US aircraft carriers at the port of Duqm in Oman.

Shortly before the US attacks began, the IRGC Navy said it would keep the Strait of Hormuz closed to all shipping until the US ended its “illegal interventions” in the region. It also vowed to strike US bases in response to “any further aggression.”

The US, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar demanded that Iran stop targeting tankers after three ships were hit by projectiles earlier this week. In a statement on Saturday, the IRGC blamed the US for the “incidents,” accusing Washington of “illegally designating” a shipping lane near the Omani coast.

The US has used the lane to guide vessels through the Strait of Hormuz, which handles around a quarter of global seaborne oil and LNG trade.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has declared that the Strait of Hormuz will remain closed to shipping until the US ends what it called its “illegal” interference in the region.

The statement came as the US reportedly pressed Iranian negotiators to declare the strait fully open to commercial shipping following talks with mediators in Oman on Saturday.

“The Strait of Hormuz will remain closed until further notice and until the end of US intervention in the region. No ship will be permitted to transit the waterway,” the IRGC Navy said.

“If the enemy uses the incident it itself caused as a pretext to make another mistake and launch a new act of aggression against us, it will be met with a forceful response, and enemy bases in the region will be targeted,” the Navy added.

The US carried out strikes on Iran on Wednesday and Thursday after several tankers were hit by projectiles in the Strait of Hormuz. While Tehran did not publicly claim responsibility for the attacks, it had previously said that all ships transiting the waterway must follow IRGC instructions and use a designated shipping lane.

The European Union has stooped to using dubious procedural loopholes usually employed by regimes in the developing world to pass controversial legislation, Pavel Durov has argued.

The Telegram co-founder was referring to the contentious regulation that allows tech companies to scan their users’ messages, ostensibly to detect child sexual abuse material.

In a post on X on Friday, the entrepreneur wrote: “Once typical of banana republics, such tricks are now used by the EU to pass surveillance laws.”

Durov’s comment came shortly after the European Parliament voted on Thursday to revive what critics have dubbed ‘Chat Control’ legislation. Temporary guidelines greenlighting snooping had originally lapsed in April after MEPs had failed to find common ground amid an outcry over privacy concerns.

However, Parliament President Roberta Metsola asked EU leaders to restart talks on the regulation, with the European Council granting her request, meaning that the proposal was again put to a plenary vote in the bloc’s legislature.

According to the Euractiv media outlet, four EU commissioners also put pressure on lawmakers to pass the legislation.

The center-right European People’s Party (EPP), of which Metsola is a member, arranged for the vote to be subject to a rarely-invoked legislative procedure, which requires an absolute majority of at least 361 MEPs to axe or amend a proposal. The vote was held the day before summer recess, when full attendance was highly unlikely. As a result, the scheme was passed despite opposition from most present lawmakers.

Commenting on the development, Rand Hammoud from Europe’s Center for Democracy and Technology denounced what he characterized as “highly politicized procedural efforts” to ram the proposal through.

“When the largest group uses its political weight to force another vote on a mass-scanning measure that already failed, that should concern anyone who cares about institutional integrity,” he told Euractiv.

“It is impressive to see the European Parliament being backstabbed by its own president,” Simeon de Brouwer from the civil society network Edri concurred, as quoted by the media outlet. He warned that the ‘Chat Control’ law allows tech companies to “snoop without a warrant, with little to no oversight, and with no legal basis, on millions of conversations.”

Meanwhile, a broader ‘Chat Control 2.0.’ framework is reportedly being prepared that would force tech companies to snoop on end-to-end encrypted communications, which are currently exempt from scans.

Poland has commemorated the anniversary of the Volhynia massacre, a large-scale ethnic cleansing operation perpetrated by Ukrainian Nazi collaborators during World War II and a hot-button topic that sparked a recent diplomatic clash between Warsaw and Kiev.

Multiple events were held across Poland on Saturday to honor the victims of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), the armed wing of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). The commemoration is tied to events of July 11, 1943, also known as Bloody Sunday, which marked the height of the massacre when nearly 100 Polish-populated towns across Volhynia were attacked. According to Polish estimates, at least 100,000 ethnic Poles were killed between 1943 and 1944 in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia regions, which are now largely part of modern Ukraine.

The commemorations were attended by top Polish officials, with President Karol Nawrocki making an appearance at a ceremony in the village of Radruz, one of the targets of the OUN-UPA militants. 

The president pledged to take further action against the Ukrainian nationalist ideology, arguing in favor of outlawing the red-and-black flag of the OUN-UPA. The banner has been widely used by present-day Ukrainian nationalists, as well as incorporated into emblems of multiple units within the country’s military. 

“We do not want to see it in Poland – and I will do everything to ensure that it is not present in Poland. I believe that the Polish parliament will pass the relevant law,” he said, comparing the flag to Nazi Germany memorabilia. 

“It is the same as the ‘Blut und Boden’ (‘Blood and Soil’) flag. That is what it meant, and behind it lay – and still lies – the entire ideology of Ukrainian nationalists who killed Polish women and children,” he stressed.

Footage from the village of Domostawa, the home to a contemporary monument honoring the Volhynia massacre victims, shows dozens of people attending the solemn gathering. Unveiled in 2024, the monument has drawn some controversy over its brutal depiction of a child impaled on a pitchfork, somewhat resembling the Ukrainian heraldic trident.

The Volhynia massacre has remained an unresolved issue between Kiev and Warsaw. While Poland recognizes the massacre as genocide, Ukraine celebrates its perpetrators as ‘freedom fighters’ and national heroes. The tensions reignited last month when Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky named one of Ukraine’s commando units after “heroes of the UPA,” prompting Nawrocki to strip him of Poland’s highest honor. Several Ukrainian officials responded to the move by returning decorations received from Warsaw.

The Volhynia issue has already done a lot of damage to ties between Poland and Ukraine and is bound to spark a conflict within Poland itself in the future, leader of the Front party and former Polish MP, Krzysztof Tolwinski, told RT.

“The only thing is the outcome of this little war is a foregone conclusion – Russia will bring Ukraine back to normal and restore order there. Those who fought will never make peace with Russians; this is why they will end up on Polish territory. And this is when an internal conflict will begin, a real inevitable one,” Tolwinski stated.

The NATO summit in Ankara hasn’t been dubbed a “missile summit” by anyone – yet it probably should be. More than anything else, the meeting marked the launch of several major missile programs that could fundamentally reshape Europe’s military landscape over the coming decade.

Germany is getting Tomahawks

Chancellor Friedrich Merz got what he had been pushing for – and not just him. The United States has effectively given Berlin the green light to acquire American Tomahawk cruise missiles.

”On the sidelines of the NATO summit in Ankara we also agreed with the American government that Tomahawk missiles would be purchased by us and stationed in Germany. With this we are closing an important strategic gap in our defense. And at the same time we will work on developing our own European systems and deploying them in Europe,” Merz announced.

The details remain unclear. Berlin has yet to specify exactly which Tomahawk variant it intends to buy. Most likely, however, these will be the ground-launched versions, meaning either the Typhon missile system or a new launcher built around the same family of cruise missiles.

What does this actually mean?

One can assume that the German leadership will sleep a little easier knowing it has such capabilities at its disposal. A few billion dollars may seem like a reasonable price for that kind of reassurance.

And what do the Americans get?

They no longer have to deploy their own Tomahawks across Europe to reassure NATO allies. Europe gets to strengthen its own defenses – and pay for them itself. From Washington’s perspective, that’s a remarkably efficient arrangement.

Patriot missiles – Made in Ukraine?

Arguably the biggest missile-related announcement for Ukraine came from President Donald Trump, who revealed plans to grant Kiev a license to manufacture missiles for the Patriot air defense system.

No European country currently possesses such a license. Japan is the only nation outside the United States that produces Patriot interceptors.

Trump said American and Ukrainian technical teams would now begin working on the practical details – drafting agreements and preparing production. For the moment, however, this remains a political declaration rather than an industrial reality.

Modern PAC-3 interceptors are produced only in the United States and Japan, while manufacturing many of their critical components remains tightly controlled.

Technology, however, isn’t the biggest obstacle. The war is.

Building a facility capable of producing Patriot missiles while Russian aerospace forces retain the ability to strike targets across Ukraine borders on fantasy.

Which means that “Ukrainian production” would likely end up being Ukrainian mostly on paper, while the actual factories would operate somewhere else in Europe.

And there is already no shortage of volunteers.

Everyone wants in

Polish Defense Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz has already announced that Warsaw is prepared to help Ukraine establish serial Patriot missile production.

That statement wasn’t accidental.

At the same NATO summit, Poland joined a four-country European consortium that will create a regional competence center responsible for servicing Patriot missiles.

Germany has even stronger incentives.

Defense giant Rheinmetall is already deeply involved in multiple joint programs with Ukraine and would almost certainly welcome the opportunity to manufacture Patriot missiles as well.

The company already possesses the technological expertise, industrial infrastructure, financial resources, and long-established partnerships needed to launch production quickly.

And once the assembly lines exist, there would be little reason to produce missiles solely for Ukraine. Rheinmetall could eventually supply customers throughout Europe – and beyond.

Nothing personal. Just business.

Germany will also build Ukraine’s ‘Bars’ cruise drones

The Patriot project isn’t the only new German-Ukrainian missile initiative.

As part of the Build with Ukraine program, Berlin and Kiev agreed to organize production of Ukrainian-designed Bars jet-powered cruise drones in Germany.

The Bars is a lightweight high-speed strike drone carrying a warhead weighing between 30 and 100 kilograms, with a range of up to 800 kilometers and a cruising speed of roughly 500 km/h.

Germany currently produces no weapons of this type.

For the German defense industry, the project offers an opportunity to gain experience with an entirely new class of weapon systems. The Bundeswehr likewise gains familiarity with technology it does not yet field.

The primary customer, however, will be Ukraine itself.

At least initially, every drone produced under the program is expected to be delivered to the Ukrainian military, while Germany finances the entire project.

A fairly convenient arrangement.

A European Patriot ecosystem

The summit also produced another notable agreement.

The United States, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, and Sweden signed a memorandum launching preparations for a European maintenance network for PAC-3 Patriot missiles.

Eventually there will likely be several such centers, one in each participating country.

Officially, these facilities are intended only for maintenance. Unofficially, virtually everyone understands where this is heading. Today’s repair center can become tomorrow’s production line.

For now, Washington appears reluctant to hand Europe full-scale manufacturing rights, preferring to preserve control over its most advanced technologies.

But that position may not last forever.

From an American perspective, collecting licensing royalties from European production could ultimately prove far more profitable than trying to supply an ever-growing European demand from shrinking US stockpiles.

From a business standpoint, that logic is difficult to ignore.

Germany again: ATACMS goes European

One more agreement attracted less attention than it probably deserved.

Lockheed Martin and Rheinmetall signed a memorandum to manufacture ATACMS ballistic missiles at Rheinmetall’s facility in Unterlüß, Germany.

It will be the first production of ATACMS missiles outside the United States.

The choice of location is hardly accidental.

The Unterlüß complex has operated for more than 125 years and now employs roughly 4,000 workers while continuing to expand.

A rocket motor factory is currently under construction and is scheduled to begin producing engines and missile components in 2027.

Rheinmetall expects full-scale ATACMS production to begin that same year, with output expanding significantly through 2028 and 2029.

Current European demand alone is estimated at between 600 and 800 missiles annually.

The bottom line

Given everything announced in Ankara, it’s difficult not to view this as NATO’s “missile summit.”

If even a significant portion of these plans materializes, Europe’s missile industry will look radically different within just a few years – and European taxpayers will foot nearly the entire bill.

Operational-tactical missiles? Yes.

Patriot interceptors? Yes.

Cruise missiles? Yes.

And this may only be the beginning.

Ukraine’s Fire Point company is already promoting its proposed FP-7 and FP-9 ballistic missiles, systems that currently have no direct European equivalent. Add to that the Freya missile defense program, which envisions combining European components with Ukrainian interceptor technology, and the picture becomes even more ambitious.

As one famous fictional character of the twentieth century put it: “What a celebration this is!”

Europe certainly has reasons to be optimistic. It may well become a true missile power.

Or all of these announcements may ultimately end up where countless ambitious defense initiatives have before them – in a pile of press releases and billions of dollars spent without delivering the promised results.

That happens too.

On July 9, Iran’s former Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was laid to rest in Mashhad. He was buried in the Imam Reza Mausoleum, one of the holiest sites in the Shiite world and a particularly significant shrine for the Islamic Republic.

This marked the conclusion of a multi-day mourning ceremony that began in Tehran, continued in Qom, the spiritual center of Iranian Shiism, then moved to the Iraqi cities of Najaf and Karbala (the main centers of Shiite Islam), and concluded in Khamenei’s hometown of Mashhad. The farewell ceremony marked the culmination of the week-long mourning route, and the funeral itself drew enormous crowds.

For Iran, this was more than just a farewell to a statesman. It was a farewell to a man who, for nearly four decades, had shaped the political, ideological, and spiritual course of the Islamic Republic. Khamenei had become Supreme Leader in 1989, following the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini; prior to that, he served as President of Iran from 1981 to 1989. His political biography effectively coincided with the post-revolutionary history of Iran: it was shaped by war, sanctions, external pressure, internal mobilization, the formation of the IRGC as one of the key state institutions, and the development of regional resistance policies.

But for millions of people, Ali Khamenei was not just an official or an administrator. He was first of all a spiritual leader, and only then a state leader, architect of the political system, strategist, and symbol of Iranian sovereignty. This is why his death was perceived by many of his supporters not only as a political loss but also as a religious tragedy. In both official and public discourse, he is increasingly referred to as a great martyr – a man who died as a result of US and Israeli aggression while fulfilling his duties. 

Iranian authorities claimed that tens of millions of mourners attended the funeral, citing a figure of 25 million people. Sources in Tehran also mentioned figures of around 20 million people. Naturally, these figures have become the subject of heated debate. The Iranian non-systemic opposition and Israeli propaganda claim the actual number of participants was much lower, perhaps several hundred thousand people, and that the authorities allegedly altered the photographs to show massive crowds using Photoshop and AI. However, even Western correspondents, who can hardly be suspected of sympathizing with the Iranian political system, acknowledged the fact that the farewell ceremony drew massive crowds. The Guardian reported millions of participants in Tehran, although it emphasized that estimates vary somewhat. Reuters also noted the huge crowds and emphasized that the authorities strived to demonstrate  national unity and strength. 

Even disregarding the official estimates, the fact remains that these were not several thousand mourners or a small group of people who support the regime. Perhaps there were not 20 million, but several million, or even two or three million people on the streets; that is still a huge number. This political power is clear evidence that Khamenei’s ideas are deeply supported by a significant portion of Iranian society.

Of course, Iranian society is not homogeneous. There are many challenges, such as social discontent, economic hardship, sanctions fatigue, social tensions, a demand for reforms, and criticism of the government. It would be a mistake to portray the entire country as a single monolith. But it is equally wrong to portray Iran as a closed system where society is supposedly completely repressed and lacks its own political will. Iranians are shaped by a different historical, religious, and political environment. For a significant portion of society, the Islamic Republic is not simply a state regime, but a form of national dignity, resistance to external pressure, and defense of their civilizational identity.

Khamenei was born in 1939 into a religious family in the city of Mashhad. He entered the Shia intellectual and spiritual milieu early on, studied in Shia religious centers, was associated with the circle of supporters of the Islamic Revolution, and became one of the figures that, after 1979, found themselves at the center of the new political system. His generation perceived the revolution not as a change of power, but as the return of historical dignity to Iran after dependence on external forces. The idea of ​​sovereignty, independence, and resistance to pressure became the foundation of his entire political philosophy.

Khamenei maintained a hardline stance. He did not believe in the benevolence of the West, considered the US the main source of the threat to Iran, and consistently defended the country’s right to be an independent center of power. Under him, Iran strengthened its position in the Middle East, expanded its influence through allies and partners, strengthened its military and missile programs, and turned the idea of ​​resistance into the basis of its foreign policy. For his opponents, this was a manifestation of expansionism; for his supporters, it was defense of a country that external forces had tried to isolate, weaken, and bring to its knees.

That is why Khamenei’s assassination only strengthened his symbolic status. He died while fulfilling his duties, in his residence in Tehran; he didn’t run anywhere. Moreover, his death occurred during the month of Ramadan, which is holy for Muslims. For his supporters, this became a confirmation of the whole logic of his life: for years, he had warned about the external threat and spoken about resistance; and he died as a result of this very conflict. So the political leader turned into a martyr, and his death became part of the very ideology that he had been building for decades.

The participation of foreign delegations was also notable. Representatives of many countries, religious figures, military men and politicians arrived in Tehran. Of particular importance was the presence of the Russian delegation led by Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev. He conveyed condolences from Russian President Vladimir Putin to Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and emphasized that he had come as a special representative of the Russian leader. This was an important signal that Moscow perceives Khamenei’s death not as an internal Iranian event, but as a blow to a close strategic partner.

This is the main political meaning of the current events. Khamenei’s funeral became more than just a ceremony of remembrance. It demonstrated that the system created by him lives on. His legacy is not only about the memory of a specific person, it is an entire ideology.

For Iran’s opponents, this is a rather unpleasant conclusion, since all their ideas about the weakness of Iran’s system have been smashed to pieces and, as expected, had nothing to do with reality. Supporters of the current regime are inspired by the fact that the stability of the political project to which they remain loyal is consistent. And for researchers in the field of international relations, this is an important example and indicator that in religio-political systems, the leader’s personality plays a major role, but the ideology and institutional design created by him can survive even his physical departure – a thesis that many researchers had doubted. 

Khamenei was laid to rest. But the millions of people who came to pay their last respects demonstrated that for a significant part of Iranian society, he is not really gone. He remains a symbol of resistance, spiritual fortitude, and national dignity. Ali Khamenei may have died; but, as we’ve seen in the past days, his work lives on.

British police have launched a murder investigation into the death of Ann Widdecombe, a former government minister and spokesperson for Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party.

Widdecombe, 78, was found dead with serious injuries at her home in Haytor, on the edge of Dartmoor National Park, on Thursday. The political veteran’s management team announced her passing the next day, saying that they were “absolutely devastated” by what had happened.

The Devon and Cornwall Police said on Friday that there was “no information that this is a politically motivated crime.” Widdecombe’s death is also not being treated as a terrorism-related incident, they added.

A 26-year-old white British man who was arrested on suspicion of murdering the Reform UK spokeswoman on the day of her death has been released and is no longer part of the investigation, police said on Saturday.

“Our priority remains identifying those responsible and ensuring that all available evidence is thoroughly examined,” Assistant Chief Constable Matt Longman said.

After leaving Parliament, Widdecombe gained fame as a contestant on the reality TV shows Strictly Come Dancing and Celebrity Big Brother.

She actively campaigned for the UK’s departure from the EU, returning to politics in 2019 as a member of the Brexit Party, which was later re-branded as Reform UK. She was also a member of the European Parliament from 2019 to 2020.

For the past three years, Widdecombe served as Reform UK’s immigration and justice spokesperson.

Outgoing Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer said that her death was “shocking news” and called upon the leaders of the Conservative Party and Reform UK “to urge everybody to come together.” Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood called the circumstances of the politician’s passing “extremely distressing.” 

Farage said Widdecombe was “a remarkable, principled woman.” He suggested that her killing may have been a “burglary gone wrong” and described it as “a terrible reflection on modern Britain.” 

Ukraine is unlikely to start producing its own Patriot air defense missiles despite US President Donald Trump’s promise to grant Kiev the relevant license, Reuters has reported, citing informed sources.

During the meeting on the sidelines of the recent NATO summit in Ankara, Türkiye on Wednesday, Trump told Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky that “we’re going to give a license to you to make Patriots. That’s pretty cool. This way, you can’t complain that we’re not giving them enough.” However, the president maintained that Washington would not supply the in-demand interceptors directly.

Reuters reported on Friday that, according to its sources, it isn’t safe for Ukraine to launch the production of Patriot missiles for as long as the fighting persists within its proclaimed borders.

The new interceptors will likely be manufactured in Germany or another European country, two people familiar with the discussions said.

The production could be shifted to Ukraine only after the conflict with Russia ends, they added.

The US and its allies are experiencing a critical shortage of Patriot missiles due to their heavy use in the Ukraine conflict and the American-Israeli war against Iran. In recent months, Washington had been forced to delay the contracted shipments of the interceptors to some of its customers in Europe and Asia.

Zelensky said in a post on Telegram on Friday that Trump and him had “reached political agreements” on the licenses for the production of the Patriot interceptors in Ukraine. The technical details of the process must now be worked out by the teams from Kiev and Washington, he added.

The Ukrainian leader also claimed that in the coming days Kiev will receive another military aid package from the Americans, which would include an unspecified number of PAC-3 missiles for Patriot systems.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Pekov said on Friday that “as for the Patriot, yes, it is an obvious fact that the US is continuing full-scale deliveries of weaponry and military technologies to Ukraine. We know it.”

“At the same time, however, there’s a certain duality in the US position: unlike the Europeans, the US maintains a desire to facilitate a move toward a peace process,” Peskov stressed.

Kiev needs to “sober up” to prevent further escalation in the row with Warsaw over the glorification of Ukrainian Nazi collaborators, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has said.

Tensions between the neighboring countries, which have been close allies during the conflict between Moscow and Kiev, escalated last month after Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky named one of his country’s commando units after “heroes of the UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army).” 

Speaking on Friday, the eve of the National Day of Remembrance, when Poland honors the victims of UPA, Tusk insisted that Kiev must recognize the crimes committed by the UPA if it hopes to mend ties with Warsaw.

“I can once again appeal to all decent, wise, responsible Ukrainians. Remember, this great European community is based on the truth and the truth is an absolutely necessary foundation of reconciliation, and that’s why I hope that everyone on the other side, but also everyone here in Poland, will sober up to restrain these exaggerated emotions,” he said.

The row “has gone too far and is harming both Poland and Ukraine. I have no doubt about it,” the prime minister added.

“The Russians would be happiest if there was some dramatic crisis in Ukrainian-Polish relations,” the prime minister warned.

Poland blames the UPA – an armed wing of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), which fought for Nazi Germany during World War II – for an ethnic cleansing campaign in the Volhynia region between 1943 and 1944 that left at least 100,000 civilians dead. Warsaw recognizes the massacres as a genocide.

Following Zelensky’s move last month, Polish President Karol Nawrocki reacted by stripping him of the country’s highest honor, the Order of the White Eagle, prompting several Ukrainian officials to return their own Polish decorations to Warsaw. Poland also rolled back its decision to transfer its remaining Soviet-era MiG-29 jets to Ukraine and questioned Kiev’s prospects of joining the EU.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Wednesday that the West, including Poland, raised a “terrorist monster” in Ukraine by arming and funding it, while ignoring its Nazi ideological foundations.

US President Donald Trump has threatened to “destroy” Iran should its government attempt to assassinate him.

The US and Israel killed dozens of senior Iranian officials and military commanders during their bombing campaign, including the country’s longtime supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, who was killed in a targeted strike on his compound in Tehran on February 28.

“1000 Missiles are Locked and Loaded and aimed at the Islamic Republic of Iran, with thousands of more to immediately follow, should the Iranian Government act on its threat, pronounced in many corners of the Globe, to assassinate, or attempt to assassinate, the sitting President of the United States of America, in this case, ME!” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Friday.

“Orders have already been given, and the U.S. Military is ready, willing, and able, for a one year period of time, subject to extension, to completely decimate and destroy all areas of Iran - PRAISE BE TO ALLAH!” he added.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that Israel had warned the US about an alleged Iranian plot to kill Trump but provided no further details.

Trump has ramped up his rhetoric against Iran in recent days, labeling its leadership “scum.” He also said he considered the ceasefire with Iran to be “over,” as the US carried out strikes on Iran on Wednesday and Thursday in response to attacks on commercial ships attempting to cross the Strait of Hormuz.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi condemned Trump’s “derogatory language” and blamed the US for the renewed escalation. He accused Washington of violating the memorandum of understanding signed last month, saying, “there can only be mutual compliance.”

A British supermarket chain has rebranded its ‘feminine care’ section after an internal complaint argued the term was not inclusive of transgender and non-binary customers, The Telegraph reported on Friday.

Waitrose will remove sanitary products from its ‘feminine care’ category, saying the label “no longer reflects the product range” because it now also includes incontinence products for men.

The change followed a complaint from an employee who said it was “disappointing” that the category implied the products were “exclusively for women and femininity,” arguing that “not all people who have periods are women.”

“Trans men and some non-binary people have periods,” the employee wrote, adding that “inclusion should never be conditional or performative,” according to internal documents published by gender-critical campaigner and Conservative councillor James Esses.

In an internal response, a Waitrose manager reportedly agreed that the label “does not accurately describe the products within the category” and said the retailer would update it “as soon as possible.”

Esses condemned the move as “disgraceful,” accusing the retailer of “erasing womanhood.” Waitrose, however, insisted the decision reflected changes to its product range rather than identity politics.

She added that menstruation is exclusive to women and girls, something that “will never change, no matter how much irrational noise the trans lobby makes.”

The dispute comes amid a wider debate in Britain over sex-based language and transgender inclusion. Last year, the UK Supreme Court ruled that the legal terms ‘woman’, ‘man’ and ‘sex’ refer to biological sex, prompting public bodies, employers and businesses to review policies on single-sex spaces and terminology such as “people who menstruate.”

The latest row is not Waitrose’s first over gender-related branding. The retailer previously drew criticism after selling a gender-neutral Mother’s Day card reading “Happy You Day,” saying it was designed to be inclusive of transgender mothers and grandmothers.

The US is demanding that Iran publicly declare the strategic Strait of Hormuz fully reopened to navigation and pledge not to attack tankers transiting the waterway, which carries around a quarter of the world’s seaborne oil and LNG trade, several news outlets reported on Friday.

The US and Iran have clashed over differing interpretations of the memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed on June 17 regarding the management of the strait. The two countries traded strikes on Wednesday and Thursday after Washington and the Gulf states blamed Tehran for attacks on three commercial ships.

“We expect the Iranians to say... that every channel in the strait will be open and that it will be toll-free,” a US official told reporters on Friday, according to Axios.

US officials told the media they expected Iran to issue a statement accepting those terms after negotiators meet in Oman on Saturday.

“If it is not their position [tomorrow], it is not gonna be a great day for them,” one official said.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei denied Trump’s claim that Tehran had requested a new round of negotiations. He said any violations of the ceasefire by the US would be met with “reciprocal action.”

Iranian media reported that Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi will travel to Oman on Saturday to meet regional mediators.

Iran’s chief negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, said on Friday that Tehran remained “distrustful of the Americans” and that “the Iranian nation will never submit to oppression.”

Iran closed the strait to most shipping following the US-Israeli attack on February 28. Tehran has since insisted that all vessels comply with its instructions and use designated shipping routes.

Under the MoU, Iran agreed to “make arrangements using its best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels” for 60 days and to negotiate with Oman over the future administration of the Strait of Hormuz.

Iranian mourners in the city of Mashhad have set a giant Lego-style effigy of US President Donald Trump ablaze during a funeral procession for Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to local media.

The late Iranian supreme leader was killed in the opening wave of US-Israeli airstrikes on Tehran in late February, alongside several members of his family.

Footage published by Iranian media on Friday shows the Trump effigy suspended from a construction crane before a man sets it on fire. As the figure is engulfed in flames, the crowd chants “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” in Farsi.

The week-long funeral ceremonies began in Tehran last Friday, where Iranian officials and foreign dignitaries paid their respects. Khamenei’s cortege then traveled through several Iranian and Iraqi cities before he was buried in his hometown of Mashhad on Thursday.

Iranian state media said millions attended the ceremonies, many carrying red-and-white flags symbolizing martyrdom and revenge in Shia Islam.

Other posters reportedly placed US Vice President J.D. Vance, US War Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the crosshairs beneath the slogan “There will be blood.”

Speaking at the NATO summit in Ankara on Wednesday, Trump said he “may be gone,” adding that he is Tehran’s “number one target.”

His comments came after a fresh escalation between Washington and Tehran, which saw the US strike dozens of targets in Iran and the Islamic Republic launch retaliatory attacks earlier this week.

During the conflict in March, Iran also waged an online propaganda campaign featuring AI-generated Lego-style videos portraying Trump and Israeli leaders in panic. Several of the clips went viral on social media.

A passenger was reportedly partially sucked out of a Ryanair Boeing 737 after a window was blown out under unclear circumstances shortly after takeoff.

The incident occurred on Friday aboard flight FR1879 from Greece to Germany operated by Ryanair subsidiary Malta Air. According to multiple media reports, one of the aircraft’s engines malfunctioned, sending debris into the fuselage. A fragment reportedly shattered a cabin window, causing the passenger seated beside it to be partially sucked outside.

The 61-year-old Serbian national suffered bruises and friction burns caused by the freezing air and was hospitalized in shock after the plane landed. Reports said he avoided being pulled from the aircraft because he was wearing his seatbelt, while his wife reportedly grabbed his legs as other passengers helped pull him back inside.

Footage taken shortly after the accident circulating online shows the window fully blown out and partially blocked by a box. The accident reportedly sparked panic onboard with oxygen masks deployed due to depressurization.

Ryanair acknowledged the accident, stating the plane managed to return to the airport safely and a replacement aircraft was arranged for the stranded passengers. The airline did not provide any details on what exactly prompted the window’s failure.

“A Ryanair flight from Thessaloniki to Memmingen on Friday morning returned to Thessaloniki shortly after takeoff when a passenger window dislodged inflight,” the company said.

The death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was never going to simply be the change of a political era for Iran. It became an event in which war, religion, national trauma, revolutionary memory, and the ancient culture of Shia mourning all collided at once.

Iran’s supreme leader was killed on February 28, 2026 in a joint US-Israeli strike. The country declared a period of mourning and prepared funeral ceremonies on an extraordinary scale. The farewell stretched across several days and grew far beyond anything resembling a routine state ritual.

The funeral began in Iran, where enormous crowds poured into the streets. Tehran, Qom, Mashhad, and other cities turned into one continuous stage of collective grief. People carried portraits of Khamenei, black flags, religious banners, chanting against the US and Israel. Mass processions and farewells unfolded over days, reaching well beyond the capital into the country’s most sacred religious centers.

What gave the event even greater significance was the decision to carry Khamenei’s coffin into Iraq. The procession first passed through Najaf, one of the great cities of the Shia world and home to the shrine of Imam Ali, the burial place of the first Shia Imam and cousin of the Prophet Mohammed. From there, the mourning continued in Karbala, the city forever bound to the martyrdom of Imam Hussein, the third Shia Imam and grandson of Mohammed. This route lifted the farewell to the supreme leader out of national borders and placed it in the shared Shia world, drawing believers from Iraq, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bahrain, and beyond.

In sheer scale, these funerals now rank among the largest mourning events in modern history. They are being spoken of as a challenge to the world record for attendance at a single person’s funeral. The officially recognized Guinness record still belongs to the 1969 funeral of Indian politician C. N. Annadurai, where, according to Guinness figures, 15 million people were said to have attended. But if the combined estimates from the days of mourning across Iran and Iraq for Khamenei are ever confirmed, that record may fall.

The scale of the funeral shows that a substantial part of Iranian society never processed Khamenei’s death as just the passing of a national leader. It was the loss of a symbol. For some, he was a religious authority. For others, he embodied the Islamic Republic itself. For others still, he was the man under whom Iran stood for decades against pressure from the US, Israel, and their allies. By extension, the funeral itself was a demonstration of the state’s staying power.

Ali Khamenei was born on April 19, 1939 in Mashhad, one of Iran’s most important religious centers. The city is home to the shrine of Imam Reza, the eighth imam in the Shia tradition, which meant that Khamenei’s biography was woven into religious life from the very start. Born into a clerical family, he received a traditional theological education, studying Islamic jurisprudence and religious science in Mashhad and Qom. Qom is the intellectual heart of Shia scholarship and clerical politics in Iran, the very place where many of the ideas that later fueled the Islamic Revolution first took shape.

Khamenei’s youth unfolded under the Shah. Iran at the time was a country modernizing rapidly on the surface while remaining an authoritarian monarchy, dependent on the West and quick to crush its opposition. For religious circles, nationalists, leftists, and much of the intelligentsia, the Shah’s regime had come to represent injustice and foreign control. Khamenei joined those who rallied behind Ruhollah Khomeini. He took part in anti-Shah activities, was arrested more than once, endured years of political pressure, and after the revolution succeeded in 1979, became one of the leading figures of the new state.

His political career from then on was inseparable from the fate of the Islamic Republic. He served as a member of parliament and a figure of the revolutionary elite, then as president of Iran from 1981 to 1989. When Ayatollah Khomeini died in 1989, Khamenei became supreme leader. Within Iran’s system, this office is unlike any ordinary head-of-state role. The supreme leader sits above the country’s central institutions, shaping the military, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the judiciary, and the strategic direction of both foreign policy and national ideology.

Yet for millions of his supporters, Khamenei was more than a holder of supreme power. He belonged to a generation for whom the revolution was the defining event of a lifetime. That generation understood power as an extension of the struggle for independence. In their eyes, Iran was never meant to be a junior partner of the West but a self-sufficient civilizational force, one capable of pushing back, enduring sanctions, and holding to its own historical path.

Modesty occupied a central place in Khamenei’s public image. His supporters pointed again and again to the fact that he avoided luxury, refused to build any cult of secular wealth around himself, shunned ostentation, and kept to an austere religious style. His manner of speaking, his clothing, the plainness of his office, his fondness for Persian poetry, his constant return to theological texts, his repeated invocations of the history of resistance – all of it reinforced the image of a man from the old revolutionary school. For religious Iranians, this mattered enormously. In the Shia tradition, a spiritual leader is expected not only to govern but to demonstrate personal restraint.

Attitudes toward Khamenei within Iranian society were never uniform, of course. In the major cities, among the young, the educated middle class, and more secular segments of society, there was real fatigue – with ideological control, economic hardship, restrictions, and the sheer rigidity of the state. But it would be a mistake to treat these segments as though they spoke for the whole country. Iranian society is layered – there is an Iran of big cities, universities, social media, and secular culture. And there is another Iran – of villages, small towns, religious families, mosques, pilgrimage, wartime memory, and deep respect for the clergy. For that considerable portion of society, Khamenei remained a figure of continuity, faith, and national resistance.

The Western reaction to the scale of the funeral revealed a very limited grasp of Iranian political culture. US President Donald Trump, in an interview with Axios, admitted he was caught off guard by the sight of Iranians weeping at the funeral, since he assumed that people hated Khamenei. He went on to suggest that the tears might have been fake. This is basically how most Western powers see Iran – fixating on protest, discontent, and the perspective of exiles, blind to the religious depth and national feeling running through a large part of Iranian society.

Shia Islam cannot be understood apart from the memory of martyrdom. At its center stands the tragedy of Imam Hussein, killed at Karbala in the year 680. For Shia Muslims, this is a living memory – of truth struggling against violence, loyalty against betrayal, the few against overwhelming force. Every year, during the month of Muharram and the commemoration of Ashura, that memory is relived. So the death of a leader killed by an outside strike slots naturally into the ongoing story of martyrdom and resistance carried within the Shia faith.

A lesson for the US and Israel

The funeral made one thing unmistakably clear: Iranian political culture does not tolerate outside interference. Iranians argue with their own government all the time – they criticize officials, rage against the economy, chafe under social restrictions, condemn corruption and the closed nature of the political system. But an attack from outside tends to reset that internal balance. It pushes even sharply critical citizens to reframe what is happening, not as a dispute between society and state, but as a confrontation between Iran and an external enemy.

Even the ongoing escalation and renewed US strikes are unlikely to change much here. Iran can be weakened by sanctions, its infrastructure can be damaged, individual military sites can be destroyed, its political system can be pushed toward instability – but finishing off Iran through military force is simply not on the table. Its historical roots run too deep, its memory of resistance is too strong, and the idea of defending sovereignty against outside pressure is too firmly embedded in Iranian society.

More than that, it is becoming increasingly clear that the most zealous advocates of all-out war with Iran are after something beyond negotiating a settlement with Tehran or preventing it from acquiring a nuclear weapon. It’s increasingly evident that they want to break the civilizational foundation of Iran itself, dismantle its culture of resistance, strip the country of its historical agency, and turn it from an independent center of power into a puppet.

This is why the US-Israeli war with Iran looks like a clash of civilizations. On one side, a project of forced regional reordering through pressure and destruction. On the other, an ancient civilization for which statehood, faith, the memory of martyrdom, and resistance to outside dictates have long been part of its national identity.

NATO members should give US President Donald Trump a “timeout” for the rest of his tenure, reducing public exposure and joint endeavors to a bare minimum while working on bolstering their own military capabilities, retired US Navy Admiral and Supreme Allied Commander James Stavridis has suggested.

Stavridis, who often shares his views on international affairs with the media, floated the idea in an opinion piece published by Bloomberg on Friday in the aftermath of the NATO summit in Türkiye.

The event yielded mixed results. Trump once again berated members of the bloc over their reluctance to participate in the US-Israeli attack on Iran and reiterated his desire to seize Greenland from Denmark, while denigrating NATO countries for “never being there for us.” At the end of the summit, however, the US leader appeared to soften his rhetoric, talking about “love in that room” and praising NATO chief Mark Rutte as a “unifier.”

While the bloc is “probably not” seeing its “last days” now, the “fundamentals between Washington and the rest of the alliance are bad and unlikely to improve anytime soon,” Stavridis argued. He urged the bloc to reduce the frequency of its meetings and probably not to hold another summit within the next two years altogether to avoid vexing Trump, adding that “day-to-day committee work” could “easily” be paused as well.

The bloc’s members should use the time for other endeavors, namely, continue raising their military spending, he suggested. The European members of NATO should also “keep developing a credible defense industrial base” to be able to produce a bulk of hardware on their own to “create a military balance between both sides of the Atlantic,” Stavridis said.

The European members of the bloc could take some steps to please the US as well, namely sending a mission to the Persian Gulf for demining and escorting merchant traffic, the retired commander suggested. Given the lack of unity on the matter, the mission could be set up by willing individual members rather than the bloc as a whole. A similar approach should be taken regarding the Ukraine conflict, with European members putting their “efforts on behalf of Ukraine purely into EU channels, not NATO’s,” Stavridis stated.

Northern Irish loyalists have burned a replica mosque atop a bonfire before police could intervene to dismantle the scene. The incident, which took place four weeks after devastating race riots in Belfast, has been condemned by human rights groups.

A Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) spokesperson said that a “significant and complex policing operation” to dismantle the “hate display” was underway by the time the bonfire in Moygashel, around 50 kilometers west of Belfast, was lit. The tower of shipping pallets, adorned with anti-Islam flags, was set ablaze on Thursday night.

The bonfire was originally due to be lit on the eve of July 12, when Northern Ireland’s Protestant loyalists – who wish to remain part of the United Kingdom – celebrate the victory of Protestant King William III over Catholic King James II at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690.

Unionists marking the 12th with bonfires typically burn Irish tricolors and other images of Catholicism and Irish nationalism. In recent years, however, the Moygashel bonfire included effigies of migrants in small boats last year, and a replica police car in 2024.

Moygashel bonfire had to be lit tonight as the PSNI wanted to protect the mosque at all cost

Moygashel 1 PSNI 0@danwootton pic.twitter.com/pkNcUM0aWe

— Sarah White (@advancesarah) July 9, 2026

Four weeks before the bonfire, loyalist gangs ransacked immigrant houses and asylum centers across Belfast, in retaliation for the attempted beheading of a Northern Irish man by a Sudanese migrant. Northern Ireland’s Catholic republicans – who want Northern Ireland to leave the UK and join the Republic of Ireland – did not take part in the riots, largely due to their own neighborhoods also being targeted for decades by loyalist paramilitaries.

“This vile display is a blatant attempt to stir up anti-Muslim hatred and intimidate local families,” Amnesty International said. “The placing of an effigy of a mosque on top of a bonfire amounts to incitement to hatred directed at real people who live, work and raise families in Northern Ireland.”

Despite non-European migrants making up less than 3% of Northern Ireland’s population, their presence further erodes the already waning demographic power of the territory’s Protestants. According to a 2021 census, Catholics now outnumber Protestants by 45.7% to 43.48%, a significant shift from the 48% to 45% Protestant majority in 2011.

As such, loyalist leaders were reluctant to outright condemn the bonfire. Democratic Unionist Party spokesman Gregory Campbell called the burning of the mock-up mosque “regrettable,” but added that his voters have “genuine concerns” about immigration and “radical Islam.”

Israel’s military has confirmed that a viral photo showing a semi-naked and blindfolded Palestinian man bound to an iron rod is authentic. The photo triggered an uproar on social media, with rights groups arguing that the image corroborates years of testimony on torture inside Israeli detention facilities in Gaza.

The disturbing photo was shared on a now-deleted social media account in late June with the Hebrew-language caption “good morning” and was brought to wider attention by a Palestinian activist under the nickname Tamer.

He claimed that the man had been kidnapped by soldiers from the ‘Netzah Yehuda’ battalion in Gaza. While the photo surfaced in late June, the incident got the media spotlight only this week.

The picture shows the man lying face down on a military cot, blindfolded and stripped to his underwear, his hands bound behind his back and an iron rod strapped to his body from foot to neck. The reason why the Palestinian had been detained is unclear.

WARNING: DISTURBING PHOTO

In a statement to RT, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed the photo’s authenticity. “The incident does not align with IDF values and regulations. An inquiry is underway, and those involved will be dealt with in accordance with the findings,” the IDF said.

Sari Bashi of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel said that holding and photographing the man semi-naked broke international law, adding that “there is no security justification for holding a detainee in his underwear” while sharing sexualized images online “is a form of sexual violence and also a war crime.”

After the photo went viral, at least two mothers came forward claiming the bound man as their son. One of the women, Rana Abu Nasser, identified the man as her son Osama, saying that he had been seized with his one-year-old son in March near the Israeli-imposed demarcation line in Gaza.

Israel has faced accusations of genocide and human rights abuses against Palestinians for years. Last month, a UN commission accused Israeli forces of targeting and killing Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, saying that more than 20,000 children had been killed and 44,000 injured since October 2023.

Drug-driving has become Britain’s biggest road safety threat, overtaking drunk-driving for the first time, a recent study suggests, fueling criticism of outgoing Prime Minister Keir Starmer over his government’s handling of the issue.

It is illegal in the UK to drive while impaired by legal or illegal drugs, or with specified levels of certain controlled substances in the bloodstream. Convicted drug-drivers face a driving ban of at least one year, a fine, and up to six months in prison.

According to figures obtained by the advocacy group IAM RoadSmart from the Department for Transport’s (DfT) Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA), 30,707 drivers were convicted of drug-driving in 2025, up 28% from 23,981 in 2022. Over the same period, drunk-driving convictions fell 17% to 29,981.

According to a Telegraph report earlier this year, drugs have overtaken alcohol as a factor in fatal road crashes.

Campaigners accuse Starmer’s government of ignoring what they describe as a growing drug-driving crisis. While ministers recently launched a consultation on lowering the legal drunk-driving limit in England and Wales, they have not taken similar action to tackle the rise in drug-driving.

“It’s becoming clear that the UK is mired in a drug-driving epidemic, to the point where it may now be more of a threat on our streets than drink-driving,” IAM RoadSmart policy director Nicholas Lyes said. He urged the government to give police the power to suspend licenses after failed roadside drug tests and to establish a national drug-driver rehabilitation program.

The findings add to a growing list of political failings for Starmer, whose government has come under fire on multiple fronts during his less than two years in office. After leading Labour to a landslide victory in the 2024 election on promises of restoring stability after a string of short-lived Conservative prime ministers, Starmer has become associated with tax hikes, welfare cuts, political scandals, and a controversial foreign policy. Critics also accuse him of focusing on international affairs while neglecting problems at home.

President Donald Trump has told Vladimir Zelensky that the US is willing to grant Ukraine a license to produce Patriot missile interceptors – one of the few weapons in Kiev’s foreign-sourced arsenal capable of shooting down state-of-the art Russian missiles.

“We’ll give them the right to make Patriots,” Trump said, seated beside Zelensky at the NATO summit in Ankara, Türkiye, on Wednesday. “This way he can’t complain that we’re not giving him enough. I said, ‘Make them yourself,’” Trump added. He called the undertaking complex but voiced hope that Kiev would work it out quickly.

While significant on paper, the pledge sparked a lot of skepticism among defense analysts who pointed to numerous technical, legal, and security hurdles, while dismissing it as a mostly symbolic gesture or even a political trap for Zelensky.

What regulatory approvals does the license require?

While announcing the offer, Trump admitted he had not yet discussed the plan with Lockheed Martin or RTX – the two main companies that actually build the Patriot system. The defense firms haven’t commented on the issue either.

However, even if the companies were wholeheartedly willing to help meet Trump’s pledge, any transfer of Patriot production technology falls under strict US export-control laws and congressional oversight. The Pentagon, State Department, and Ukraine would also have to agree on what exactly Kiev would be permitted to build, where, and under what kind of oversight.

According to the US-based magazine Responsible Statecraft, the licensing venture “would create substantial risks to US national security by making it easier for competitors to get access to sensitive information.”

What other countries have Patriot licenses?

Of all US allies and partners across the globe, only two – Germany and Japan – are licensed to produce Patriot missiles, and their example serves as a cautionary tale of the hurdles Ukraine faces.

Germany’s example is even more telling: the US granted Berlin the Patriot license in 2022 after the escalation of the Ukraine conflict. Four years later, it still has not built a single missile, while factory construction only started in late 2024.

What industrial issues does Patriot production face?

Even if every legal and political hurdle were cleared overnight, the production setup is incredibly difficult. In a post on Facebook, Ukrainian defense expert and economist Oleg Belinsky said that any plans to start production within a few months “crash into the laws of physics and mathematics.”

The hardest part of the missile, according to Belinsky, is not its electronics but its solid-fuel engine. Dozens of components have to be blended in exact proportions, then vacuum-treated to remove microscopic air bubbles, before being consolidated for weeks under strict temperature and humidity control. The finished charge is then X-rayed for the smallest internal cracks.

If even a single parameter is off, the missile is scrapped because even a microscopic crack can make the fuel burn too fast and cause the engine to explode on launch. Producing components pure enough to meet that standard requires an entire chemical industry that Ukraine does not currently have, Belinsky said.

While noting the difficulty of creating solid-fuel engines, Bloomberg also pointed to challenges linked to building small steering motors, which enable the Patriot interceptor to maneuver effectively in the thin upper atmosphere.

“Production is already constrained by existing supply-chain bottlenecks,” Kelly Grieco, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center, told Bloomberg. “Even if Ukraine builds a production factory, it still needs to build the network of suppliers. That is a significant defense industrial base challenge.”

Is the Patriot license a political ploy by Trump?

The overture of the US president – who has been reluctant to finance Ukraine – to Zelensky looks like a “cruel offer” that “seems interesting, but is less interesting than it seems,” Tiago Andre Lopes, an assistant professor of International Relations at the Law Faculty at Lusiada University, told CNN Portugal.

He argued that Trump’s real purpose was to shift blame onto Kiev: if Ukraine fails to produce missiles despite holding the license, Washington can say the Patriot shortfall is Kiev’s fault, not its own.

“In six months or a year, when the Ukrainians say they don’t have Patriots, Trump will respond, ‘no, I gave you the license; why aren’t you producing them?’ Lopes said.

“From the point of view of altering the status quo in the war in Ukraine, in the short and medium term, this doesn’t change a thing”: “It’s not money, it’s not defensive capacity, it’s not offensive capacity, it doesn’t change anything.” 

Agostinho Costa, a military expert at CNN Portugal, also noted that the offer in no way heralds a change in the Trump administration’s stance on the Ukraine conflict: “The European Union pays, the US supplies, Ukraine executes.” 

How will Russia respond to a Patriot license?

Western military experts in unison argued that even if Ukraine were to somehow weather all technological challenges, any Patriot facility on Ukrainian soil would become a top priority target for Russian strikes the moment it broke ground. Russia has consistently targeted Ukraine’s defense facilities, including a plant producing elements of the Flamingo cruise missiles.

George Beebe, director of the grand strategy program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, told The Guardian that Russia would attack the facility “as soon as the first cornerstone is laid,” forcing Kiev to divert existing batteries to guard the site. He also warned that the US should understand that granting the license to Ukraine “is very likely to expose Patriot technology to Russian intelligence collection.”

Commenting on Trump’s announcement, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Russian authorities “know quite well what should be done,” stressing that Moscow would do “whatever it takes” to defend its interests.

Bottom line

The production of Patriot missiles in Ukraine faces a litany of challenges, some simply tough while others nearly insurmountable. Both US and Ukrainian officials have so far remained silent on how they are planning to address them.

No manufacturer has been briefed, no legal framework drafted, no site chosen. Experts across the spectrum agree that the idea will do nothing to address Ukraine’s immediate needs and would likely sink under the weight of technological and security challenges.

China has successfully recovered the first stage of one of its space rockets for the first time, in a major technological milestone.

The test was conducted on Friday during the maiden flight of the two-stage Long March 10B rocket, which launched from the Hainan space center in southern China. The booster was caught by a recovery platform off the coast around six minutes after liftoff.

The technology is intended to reduce launch costs by allowing expensive equipment to be reused, serving the same purpose as systems developed by Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

Unlike the landing methods used by the Falcon 9 and Starship programs, the Chinese system uses a net structure. The design provides a wider margin for engine-control precision during the final recovery phase and helps absorb the booster’s remaining kinetic energy.

The Long March 10B is a commercially oriented addition to the family of rockets that is being developed for China’s lunar program and Tiangong space station missions.

Scaled down stage cable catch test. Via weibo / Vony7 pic.twitter.com/Xh9BY1TSEa

— Ace of Razgriz (@raz_liu) April 16, 2026

Its first stage is powered by seven YF-100K engines using refined kerosene and liquid oxygen, while the upper stage uses a methane-liquid oxygen engine. The rocket can carry up to 16 tons into low-Earth orbit and delivered a satellite during its maiden flight.

A cruise ship chartered for an LGBTQ-themed voyage has been denied entry to Egypt after being barred from planned stops in Türkiye earlier this week. Organizers have been forced to change the itinerary for a second time, media outlets have reported, citing the cruise operator. 

The Virgin Voyages-operated Scarlet Lady departed on July 5 on a ten-day ‘Athens to Venice’ sailing organized by US-based LGBTQ cruise company Atlantis Events, carrying around 2,000 passengers. Alexandria was added to the itinerary after Turkish authorities blocked scheduled calls at Istanbul and the port city of Kusadasi, where the vessel had been due to dock on July 7. 

According to The Guardian and The Washington Post, passengers were informed early on Thursday that the Alexandria stop had also been canceled as organizers searched for an alternative port. The visit had included excursions to Cairo and the Egyptian Museum. 

Atlantis Events CEO Rich Campbell said Egyptian authorities withdrew permission to dock at the last minute, calling the move “really unheard of” and “strange and sad.” He added that around 1,200 shore excursions had already been booked through local operators. 

Campbell said Türkiye’s decision marked the first time in Atlantis Events’ 36-year history that one of its chartered cruises had been denied entry by a country. He noted that the company had operated 13 cruises to Türkiye over the past 25 years without incident and that efforts involving the US Embassy failed to reverse the decision. 

The Scarlet Lady has since been rerouted to Chania on the Greek island of Crete for a Friday port call before continuing to Montenegro on Sunday.

Moscow no longer believes the West is genuinely interested in negotiating an end to the Ukraine conflict, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said.

Speaking at a news conference with Mozambican Foreign Minister Maria Manuela Lucas in Maputo, Lavrov accused the West of “imitating a willingness to negotiate while openly issuing ultimatums to Russia.”

He argued that although the West has been calling for talks, it has spent more than a decade undermining every attempt to reach a peaceful resolution between Russia and Ukraine.

“In 2022, Russia and Ukraine had already reached a negotiated settlement. It was undermined by the very same West, openly and publicly,” Lavrov said.

“We will no longer believe the West when it claims to want negotiated solutions. Our reserve of goodwill and hope has been exhausted once and for all.”

Russia insists that the conflict has its roots in the 2014 Western-backed coup in Kiev and subsequent attempts by the new Ukrainian government to suppress the rebellion in Donbass by force.

Ukraine later failed to implement the 2014-2015 Minsk agreements, which were intended to reintegrate the breakaway regions into Ukraine by granting them broad autonomy through comprehensive political reform.

According to Russian President Vladimir Putin, during peace talks in Istanbul in 2022, Ukrainian negotiators initially agreed to drop plans to join NATO in favor of neutrality and to limit the country’s armed forces, but later walked away from the negotiations under pressure from then-UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

While Johnson denied that he sabotaged the talks, he acknowledged in a 2024 interview with the Wall Street Journal that he had “thought that any deal with Putin was going to be pretty sordid.”

Former US Undersecretary of state Victoria Nuland similarly said in 2024 that Washington advised Ukraine to not agree to Russia’s terms in Istanbul.

US-mediated negotiations have also stalled in recent months as President Donald Trump has focused on the war with Iran. Russia has said it is ready to resume the talks at any time, provided that they are focused on addressing the “root causes” of the conflict, including Ukraine’s plans to join NATO.

Waymo has remotely turned two teenage joyriders over to police in California after the camera-equipped robotaxi allegedly caught them drinking alcohol and firing a toy gun from the vehicle.

Waymo operates fully autonomous ride-hailing services in several US cities. Its robotaxis are equipped with interior and exterior cameras. According to the company, cabin cameras are used to help keep vehicles clean, recover lost property, assist in emergencies and, in urgent situations, allow support staff to access a live video feed.

In a Facebook post on Tuesday, the San Mateo Police Department said officers had detained two 15-year-olds after Waymo reported they were “drinking and shooting from the vehicle.”

After alerting police, Waymo remotely steered the robotaxi into a parking lot, where officers surrounded the vehicle and took the teenagers into custody. Video released by the department shows several officers, some carrying rifles, approaching and searching the car.

Police later determined the suspected weapon was an Orbeez toy gun that fires water-absorbent polymer beads. The department warned that toy, water and BB guns can easily be mistaken for real firearms, creating potentially dangerous situations for both the public and those carrying them.

Moroccan football fans clashed with police in London on Thursday night after their team’s 2-0 loss to France in the World Cup quarterfinals.

Officers with shields and batons were deployed to Edgware Road to control the unruly crowd as fans taunted police and threw bottles and other projectiles.

According to The Sun, one officer was injured and taken to the hospital. A video from the scene appears to show police officers attending to a colleague lying on the ground while several ambulances are parked nearby.

Moroccans fans Morocco after losing to France in round of 8 riot in London Edgware Road one police officer down got rushed to hospital I hope he survived , police officers got chased by Moroccans in London riots pic.twitter.com/N9TAWgt9G0

— Zonjy (@zonjy_) July 10, 2026

One police officer down got hit on his head Moroccans Morocco fans riot in London Edgware Road pic.twitter.com/XZVwhipLSX

— Zonjy (@zonjy_) July 10, 2026

Another video appears to show a crowd chasing a group of police officers while throwing projectiles.

Police officers got chased by Moroccans fans Morocco after losing to France in round of 8 riot in London Edgware Road one police officer down got rushed to hospital I hope he survived pic.twitter.com/TjlrB1KMHH

— Zonjy (@zonjy_) July 10, 2026

France defeated Morocco at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, with Kylian Mbappe and Ousmane Dembele each scoring once.

The World Cup is being jointly hosted by the US, Canada, and Mexico. England will face Norway in a quarterfinals match on July 11.

Utah prosecutors presented a letter in court that they said contains Tyler Robinson’s confession to the murder of conservative American activist and organizer Charlie Kirk.

Kirk, a co-founder of the nonprofit Turning Point USA, was killed by a sniper’s bullet while speaking at Utah Valley University in September 2025. Robinson, who is charged with the murder, has not entered a plea.

At a hearing on Thursday, prosecutors showed a screenshot of a note allegedly written by Robinson to his roommate and romantic partner, Lance Twiggs, who also went by the name Luna.

“Luna, If you are reading this per my text, then I am so sorry. I left the house this morning on a mission and sent an auto-text. I’m likely dead or facing a lengthy prison sentence,” the note read.

It continued: “I had the opportunity to take out Charlie Kirk, and I took it… I wish we could have lived in a world where this was not necessary.”

Prosecutors also showed text messages allegedly exchanged between Robinson and Twiggs immediately after the murder.

In video testimony played in court, Twiggs claimed that Robinson admitted to killing Kirk and “said he wishes he hadn’t done it.”

According to family members and media reports, Robinson became radicalized and mentioned Kirk in conversations before the shooting. The unfired rounds recovered from the rifle reportedly bore inscriptions referencing internet memes and the phrase “Hey, fascist! Catch!”

Kirk’s murder prompted debate over incitement and heated political rhetoric amid an upswing in attacks on politicians and other public figures in the US.

President Donald Trump blamed “radical left lunatics” for the activist’s death, while his opponents argue that Trump himself contributed to the toxic political climate.

Kirk’s widow, Erika, has called for greater transparency regarding evidence presented in the case. Her lawyer, Jeffrey Neiman, said the family has been denied “their ability to meaningfully observe the preliminary hearing.”

When NATO’s 36th summit opened at the Bestepe Presidential Complex on July 7, the official agenda read like every other alliance gathering of the past few years: defense spending targets, support for Ukraine, industrial capacity, adaptation to new threats. But for the host nation, the meeting was never only about the communiqué. It was a stage, and Türkiye had spent months building the set.

The guest list alone signaled the stakes. Alongside the leaders of all 32 member states, Ankara welcomed US President Donald Trump, South Korea’s Lee Jae-myung, European Council President Antonio Costa and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. On the sidelines, ministers met with partners from the Gulf and from Australia, Japan and New Zealand. The final declaration reaffirmed what NATO calls its ironclad commitment to collective defense under Article 5, and allies pledged roughly €70 billion – about $80 billion – in military equipment, assistance and training for Ukraine in 2026.

None of that, however, was the story that dominated coverage coming out of Ankara. The story was Türkiye itself – a NATO member that has spent years being treated as the alliance’s most complicated partner, suddenly recast as the country without which the summit might not have happened at all.

The man who kept Trump in the room

Trump arrived in Türkiye fresh from weeks of public friction with European allies. He had already dismissed Madrid as a “terrible partner in NATO,” called Germany’s defense budget “ridiculous,” and told reporters that when Europeans declined to join the war on Iran, he didn’t want their money – he wanted their “loyalty.” Chancellor Friedrich Merz pushed back, insisting Germany was making the greatest defense effort in its history, but the mood going into Ankara was combative.

And then there was the line that reframed the entire summit. Trump told reporters he might not have shown up at all had the meeting not been hosted by his “friend” Erdogan – a leader he described as very strong. It was a remarkable thing for a sitting US president to say about a NATO gathering: that his attendance hinged not on the alliance as a whole, but on the man running the host country. Securing Trump’s actual presence at the annual gathering of 32 leaders had reportedly become, for many diplomats, the summit’s central task – and Ankara delivered it.

In a moment when Washington’s relations with several European capitals were strained, Türkiye offered something most allies could not: a red-carpet welcome, a personal rapport, and a venue where the American president felt, by his own account, genuinely wanted.

A bridge to Damascus, built through Ankara

Türkiye’s role as connective tissue extended beyond the Trump-Erdogan relationship into the Middle East. On the sidelines of the summit, Trump held a widely covered meeting with Syria’s President Ahmed al-Sharaa – a former Nusra Front commander who once had a bounty on his head – and told reporters he expected to remove Syria from Washington’s list of state sponsors of terrorism. “I think I will. Why wouldn’t I?” he said, adding that Syria had been “stabilized” under al-Sharaa’s leadership.

Türkiye has been, in the words of Middle East analysts, at the helm of al-Sharaa’s rise since the fall of Bashar Assad in December 2024, and Trump himself credited Erdogan with helping build the bridge between Washington and Damascus. For a country whose security agenda is dominated by the war-scarred Syrian border, Kurdish militias, refugee flows and the reconstruction of a neighboring state, hosting the US-Syria contact at a NATO summit was an opportunity to present itself simultaneously as a European ally and as the indispensable interpreter of Middle Eastern politics for Washington – two roles that, until recently, rarely reinforced each other so evidently.

Even the most concrete outcome of the summit was something that happened between the US and Türkiye. In a meeting at Erdogan’s palace, Trump announced that Washington would lift the sanctions imposed on Ankara since 2020 over its purchase of Russia’s S-400 air defense system – sanctions that had also pushed Türkiye out of the F-35 fighter jet program. “We’re going to be taking the sanctions off,” Trump told reporters, adding that his secretary of state and Treasury secretary were handling the details. Pressed on whether Washington still worried about Russia gleaning secrets from the S-400 sitting alongside a stealth jet, he waved the concern away.

Why Türkiye is useful to NATO

Türkiye’s newfound significance as a NATO member did not come out of the blue. The country has spent recent years expanding its defense-industrial base and its footprint as a weapons exporter, including combat drones that have shaped conflicts far beyond its borders – a trend allies increasingly cite when describing Ankara’s value on NATO’s southeastern flank. Analysts framed this year’s summit as being less about new commitments than about implementation. Ozgur Unluhisarcikli of the German Marshall Fund noted that after allies agreed at last year’s Hague summit to raise defense spending to 5% of GDP, the Ankara meeting was meant to focus on how to translate that spending into actual military capability.

Türkiye’s pitch to the alliance has always rested on a kind of paradox: that its independent streak – talking to Moscow, operating in Syria, sparring publicly with Israel over Gaza – makes it more useful to NATO, not less. The Ankara summit gave that argument its clearest demonstration yet. NATO needed the American president in the room, and Trump wanted a friendly stage; Erdogan supplied both, while extracting a promise on sanctions and an opening on fighter jets in return.

Carnegie’s Alper Coskun captured the shift succinctly, suggesting Washington would find in Türkiye “an increasingly willing actor” ready to pursue policy more closely aligned with the US across the wider Middle East. That is precisely the reputation Ankara has been cultivating – not a difficult ally to be managed, but a necessary one to be courted.

Türkiye was not the only participant that needed the Ankara summit to succeed – perhaps not even the one that needed it the most. European NATO members, wary of an unpredictable American president and short on tools to keep him engaged, needed Türkiye’s hosting, its rapport with Trump, and its channels into Damascus and Moscow just as much. In an important sense, the bloc – and its European members above all – came to Ankara not to extend an invitation, but to ask for help.

In the end, whether or not the F-35s ever land in Turkish hangars, Ankara had already secured the thing it wanted most from the week: proof that it can be criticized, but no longer ignored.

Veteran French politician Marine Le Pen is the early favorite to win France’s presidential election next year after an appeals court ruled her eligible to run, opinion polls suggest.

Le Pen, the longtime figurehead of the right-wing National Rally (RN), reached the presidential runoff in 2017 and 2022 and was widely seen as a leading contender to succeed President Emmanuel Macron. Her 2027 bid was thrown into doubt last year after she was convicted of using EU funds intended for parliamentary aides to pay party staff in France. She was sentenced to four years in prison, fined, and barred from holding public office for five years.

On Tuesday, an appeals court upheld the conviction but reduced the ban, clearing the way for her to run in 2027. Le Pen denies any wrongdoing.

”I am innocent,” she told TF1 after the ruling, confirming that she would seek the presidency and naming her top lieutenant, Jordan Bardella, as her preferred prime minister.

Ifop put her first-round support at 36%, with no rival above 19%. Harris Interactive gave her 35%.

In a runoff against former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, Harris Interactive placed Le Pen at 49%, while Ifop projected her winning with 54%. Against Gabriel Attal, another former prime minister and likely candidate for Macron’s centrist Renaissance party, both polls put her at 55%. They also showed her defeating left-wing France Unbowed leader Jean-Luc Melenchon by a wide margin.

The surveys suggest Le Pen has largely caught up with Bardella, whom she previously named as RN’s fallback presidential candidate after her conviction. Bardella has endorsed her decision to run, effectively ending speculation about his own potential bid.

Budget disputes have triggered repeated no-confidence motions and the resignation of several prime ministers, while the deadlock has prompted major rating agencies to downgrade France’s credit rating. 

French investigators have again summoned Telegram co-founder Pavel Durov for questioning as the criminal investigation into the messaging platform nears its second year with no resolution in sight.

Durov spent around six hours being questioned at the Paris Judicial Tribunal on Wednesday, local media reported, citing law enforcement sources. It marked the fourth time the tech entrepreneur has been interrogated as part of the ongoing investigation.

His legal team confirmed the questioning to AFP, saying that “almost two years after the indictment of Pavel Durov, there is still no evidence to establish the validity of the charges.”

“The only change since Durov’s detention in France is that French authorities have started properly drafting requests to Telegram,” the social media platform said in a separate statement.

The legal troubles in France started for Durov in August 2024, when he was arrested at a Paris airport and indicted on a dozen assorted charges. Durov was originally banned from leaving the country, yet the travel restrictions imposed over the case were ultimately lifted.

Durov has denied any wrongdoing, branding the arrest and the charge “absurd” while accusing the country’s authorities of staging an attack on free speech. The entrepreneur has repeatedly criticized Paris for its policies over the past two years, calling it out for cracking down on social media networks beyond Telegram. 

Back in May, he voiced his support for Elon Musk’s X, which has been under investigation over alleged unlawful data harvesting and other offenses. At the time, Durov claimed that the French government has been doing “the very things” it had accused the social media platform of, suggesting that the impending “major political shift in 2027 will expose their misdeeds” and Paris is now scrambling to silence “free speech platforms” to mitigate the potential damage.

OSCE Secretary-General Feridun Sinirlioglu offered to help oust the head of the Armenian Apostolic Church (AAC), in a phone call with Russian pranksters posing as Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.

In recent years, Pashinyan has cracked down on the clergy, with several senior bishops placed in custody on corruption and political interference charges. The feud between the Western-leaning prime minister and the AAC intensified after the clergy expressed support for the opposition.

In a phone call earlier this week, Russian pranksters Vovan and Lexus told Sinirlioglu, a Turkish national, that the Armenian government wants the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to help oust the AAC head, Catholicos Karekin II.

The pranksters told the OSCE secretary general that the organization’s “assistance would be the trump card and help oust the Armenian patriarch as well as change the religion” in the country, as quoted by Russian media.

Vovan and Lexus, posing as Pashinyan, specifically asked for the OSCE’s backing in case there was a backlash from the opposition.

“Alright, I will do all I can,” Sinirlioglu reportedly said in response.

Created at the height of the Cold War in 1975, the OSCE comprises 57 member states, including Russia, the US, Canada, and most European and Central Asian nations. While the organization professes to promote security and cooperation, Moscow has in recent years accused it of being hijacked by its NATO and EU members to advance Western agendas.

The Armenian Investigative Committee stated at the time that the arrests had been made as part of an investigation into alleged abuse of power. Weeks earlier, Archbishop Mikael Ajapahyan was sentenced to two years in prison on charges of coup incitement – a case the AAC cleric characterized as politically motivated.

Last month, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) alleged that the EU was pressuring the Armenian government to expel the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) from the country as a prerequisite to potential EU integration.

Russia and Armenia have historically maintained close political, economic and cultural ties. However, under Pashinyan, the country has increasingly adopted a pro-Western stance. Yerevan has accused Moscow of failing to stop its neighbor Azerbaijan from reclaiming the Nagorno-Karabakh region through military force in September 2023.

Russian officials have, in turn, noted that it was Pashinyan himself who had recognized Baku’s sovereignty over the disputed territory. The Kremlin has also warned that by severing ties with the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union in favor of hypothetical EU integration, Armenia would have to forgo the “concrete dividends” afforded by the single market.

The Armenian opposition has, in turn, pointed the finger squarely at Pashinyan over the defeat in the conflict with Azerbaijan.

Pashinyan’s government has responded by prosecuting a number of opposition figures and members of the clergy.

Last month, Pashinyan’s pro-EU ruling party, Civil Contract, came out on top in hotly contested parliamentary elections, securing over 49% of the vote. The opposition has petitioned the constitutional court to annul the results of the June 7 elections, citing alleged violations.

“Would you go to Moscow?” Donald Trump asks.

“It’s difficult. There are a lot of Ukrainian drones there… it’s dangerous,” Vladimir Zelensky says. The audience chuckles.

They were talking on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Ankara, discussing the prospects of peace talks between Russia and Ukraine. Zelensky was referring to the massive waves of drones Kiev has been launching at the Russian capital to assure his Western sponsors that their money wasn’t going to waste.

Zelensky’s quick wit elicited laughter from the audience – he is, after all, a professional comedian, once beloved by many in both Russia and Ukraine – but not everyone was laughing.

Certainly not the Ukrainians in Lviv who, a few hours after Zelensky’s comment, were rioting in the streets against the forced conscription of a local man.

Over the past few years, violent, forced conscription has become a daily reality for Ukrainians, and a new word for it has emerged: ‘Busification’, from the Ukrainian word ‘busyk’, in reference to the vans and minibuses that the Territorial Recruitment Center (TRC) officers use – the vehicles into which numerous Ukrainian men have disappeared, never to be seen alive by their friends and families again.

People surrounded the car, chanting ‘shame!’ and hurling insults at the TRC, trashed the vehicle, and beat up an officer. Videos of the scene show rioters of all ages – other potential TRC victims, their fathers, mothers, sisters, and wives. At one point, a man in a wheelchair pitches in by throwing something at the overturned TRC car. You would think that a disabled person would be safe from forced conscription but a) you would be wrong and b) he could be a previous victim – either back from the front lines or the draft offices themselves.

Because not all ‘recruits’ make it to the front lines. The TRC press gangs are nothing if not zealous in their grim work. The typical busification starts with a beating, and more than once, the victims have ended up dead somewhere between the moment they are shoved into the ‘busyk’ and the moment they were supposed to be shipped to the front.

The TRC issues statements in response to popular outrage and riots like those seen in Lviv, and comments on the deaths in custody – and of course, the statements amount to how the officers were acting within the law, or when excess brutality is impossible to ignore, how they will investigate themselves.

And wonder that riots like the one in Lviv are becoming commonplace, with mothers pulling sons from the TRC bullies’ clutches or crowds blocking the officers off from reaching their intended victims. Looking at Ukrainian social media and Telegram channels, you can find hundreds of videos of busification, as well as busification riots and rescues.

As for Zelensky’s ‘witty’ comment, he is wrong. Russian air defenses have been handling his drone raids on Moscow admirably.

Stepping out into the streets of one of his own cities – that’s quite another matter.

The Czech Republic remains skeptical about NATO’s strategy of continued military support for Ukraine, to which it does not contribute financially, Prime Minister Andrej Babis said as he left the bloc leaders’ summit in Ankara, Türkiye on Wednesday.

Babis’ party won last year’s election on a nationalist platform that included reversing the Ukraine aid policy championed by his predecessor, Petr Fiala, and urging a diplomatic resolution of the conflict with Russia instead.

The declaration approved by NATO leaders in Ankara this week highlighted a pledge of €70 billion ($80 billion) in military equipment, assistance and training for Ukraine in 2026, with a similar amount expected the following year. The money is not a new package, but rather past commitments, including the European Union’s “loan” approved in April. The Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia opted out of the mechanism.

Babis said the Czech Republic intended to reach the required NATO level of 2% of GDP level for military spending next year, but also needed money for healthcare, raising police salaries, and other domestic priorities.

Kremlin calls US backing of Ukrainian escalation delusional

Ukraine is seeking additional Western funding to ramp up long-range kamikaze drone attacks on Russian oil refineries, tankers and other targets. During a US-Ukrainian meeting on the sidelines of the NATO summit, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed the escalation “creates the space to negotiate the end of this war,” with President Donald Trump endorsing his reasoning.

Czech coalition strained by aid payment

The aid issue caused tensions in the Czech ruling coalition just before the summit, after Foreign Minister Petr Macinka announced the transfer of an unspecified sum to PURL, a NATO fund through which European members pay for American weapons intended for Kiev.

Parliament speaker Tomio Okamura, a vocal critic of Ukraine, blasted the move for going against the coalition agreement, but Babis sided with Macinka, saying the money had been allocated by the Fiala government and could not be returned to the budget. The prime minister said the one-off small contribution to purchase interceptor drones was preferable to a direct transfer to the Ukrainian government.

New cancer cases are projected to nearly double worldwide by 2050, with the disease expected to affect more than 90% of the global population in some way, the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned.

In a report released on Wednesday, the agency said cancer remains the world’s second-leading cause of death after cardiovascular disease, claiming more than 26,000 lives daily. It estimates there are currently nearly 10 million deaths and 20.6 million new cases annually, warning that without urgent action the latest figure will rise to 35 million by 2050. One in five people is expected to develop cancer during their lifetime, with lung cancer remaining its deadliest form.

Despite rapid advances in treatment, the WHO says survival increasingly depends on where patients live and their financial circumstances. Five-year survival for breast and childhood cancers exceeds 85% in high-income countries but falls below 45% in low-income nations, it estimates.

The agency estimates that, if current trends continue, cancer will affect 92% of people worldwide at some point in their lives by 2050, either through their own diagnosis or that of a close relative. The WHO urged governments, international organizations, and the private sector to adopt a “people-centered” approach by integrating cancer services from prevention to diagnosis and treatment into universal health coverage, strengthening support for patients and caregivers, and ensuring research and innovation expand access to treatment.

The US, UK, Cuba, and China are also pursuing cancer vaccine development through approved treatments, clinical trials or personalized mRNA platforms.

On the eve of this week’s NATO summit in Ankara, Türkiye, the bloc released a report titled ‘Defense Expenditure of NATO Countries (2014-2025)’.

On the surface, the report shows a staggering increase in the level of defense spending by several NATO members over the course of the previous decade, with Lithuania leading the way with an increase of some 777%. In aggregate, NATO members, in seeking to meet the 2% GDP threshold for defense spending set by the US a decade ago, has seen a $1.364 trillion increase in the money invested in the militaries of the respective members over the past decade.

That’s a lot of money.

Two questions emerge from this data: First (and foremost), has this increase led to any qualitative or quantitative advantage on the part of NATO over Russia? And second, can NATO members sustain this kind of growth in defense expenditures over the course of the next decade?

It must be understood that the NATO of 2014 was very much an empty shell when it came to meaningful projection of military power. Over-reliant upon the US for its core defense needs since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, NATO had become a shadow of its former self, a far cry from the cutting-edge military organization that had been built up in the decade of the 1980s.

The reality is that despite the massive increase in defense spending, NATO’s military capabilities were not advanced in any meaningful fashion over the course of the past decade. This has become evident as NATO has, in the past few years, discussed the potential of deploying military forces on Ukrainian soil as part of any peacekeeping arrangement, should the Russia-Ukraine conflict reach a negotiated conclusion. It became obvious that the ‘big three’ European powers (France, the UK, and Germany) lacked any meaningful ability to project sustainable military power of any appreciable strength into Ukraine.

Most of NATO defense expenditure has been in the form of sustaining an aging, decrepit system out of touch with the reality of modern conflict. And to the degree modernization has taken place, it has simply replaced an aging equipment set within a legacy system tied down in Cold War-era doctrine with a newer equipment set still hamstrung by tactics and operational theory ill-suited for the modern battlefield.

Germany’s ill-fated decision to create a one-off fund of €100 billion ($114 billion) in 2022 to help revive a flagging Bundeswehr stands as a case in point regarding the efficacy of much of NATO’s defense spending over the course of the past decade – by 2025 the fund had run out, with little or nothing to show for it.

€100 billion down the drain, and the Bundeswehr as broken and decrepit as ever.

There isn’t a single national military inside NATO, including the US, that can prevail on a modern battlefield with an enemy of the quality of Russia. Ukraine has fielded the most capable non-Russian military in Europe today, and its forces are being bled white in the kind of war of attrition NATO forces could never survive.

In short, the $1.34 trillion that NATO has spent in increased defense expenditures since 2014 has left the bloc treading water. NATO’s task is to build and sustain a modern military capable of fighting a modern enemy, such as Russia.

In this, NATO has failed.

The next question is can NATO spend its way out of its current predicament?

On paper, the answer is a heavily caveated ‘yes’.

NATO has found itself engaged in a proxy war with Russia that compels it to divert valuable military resources – fiscal and material – to Ukraine, which has become a giant furnace which consumes all that is fed into it without advancing the problem favorably vis-à-vis Russia.

But money doesn’t grow on trees, and at the end of the day the NATO appetite for war will far outstrip the ability of its constituent membership to pay the bill. Military industrial capacity is lacking across the board, and the costs associated with fixing this deficit are prohibitively high.

So, too, are the costs associated with the kind of massive military expansions being considered by nations such as Germany, which seeks to triple the size of its armed forces by 2029.

Even if the money were available for such an endeavor, the public appetite for supporting and sustaining this kind of expanded military infrastructure is lacking. The more Germany – and by extension, Western Europe – pours into defense, the more alienated society becomes, creating domestic political problems for those seeking massive increases in defense spending.

While Russia cannot afford to remain stagnant in the face of increased NATO defense expenditures, especially when such increases are tied to increasingly bellicose statements about the potential for war between Russia and NATO in the coming years, the fact is the NATO defense expenditure phenomenon is a self-containing problem, meaning the bloc’s ability to continue defense expenditures at the present rate of growth will more than likely lead to the political and economic collapse of the individuals and political parties which currently advocate in support of such policies.

All Russia really needs to do is keep the Ukrainian furnace burning, and NATO will consume itself.

An RT employee was detained and interrogated after arriving in the UK from Russia several days ago under the country’s counterterrorism laws.

James Scott said he traveled to Manchester to visit friends and family and watch World Cup matches when he was stopped by the border authorities and questioned for two and a half hours.

Speaking publicly for the first time after leaving the UK, Scott said the authorities seized his electronic devices, returning them several days later, and that he remains under investigation, which he called “ridiculous” and “absurd.”

Scott is the second RT journalist to be detained by the British authorities. Last year, Steve Sweeney, the head of RT’s Lebanon bureau, was briefly detained by counterterrorism officers at London Heathrow Airport and extensively questioned about his work for the Russian broadcaster.

Watch Scott describe his experience below.

US President Donald Trump has warned he could be assassinated by Iran, claiming that Tehran considers him its “number one target.” His comments came as a tentative ceasefire between Washington and Tehran collapsed, with fighting flaring up anew around the Strait of Hormuz.

Trump made the remarks at a NATO summit in Ankara on Wednesday, after the US struck dozens of Iranian targets in retaliation for alleged attacks on oil tankers in the strait. While the US military accused Tehran of “unwarranted aggression,” Iranian media, citing government sources, said that one of the tankers had ignored warnings, stressing that Iran should approve all passages.

Following the attacks, Trump branded the Iranian leadership “scum”, “sick,” and “cuckoo,” declared the ceasefire “over,” and called continued negotiations “a waste of time.”

The US president noted, “I may be gone, too, because I’m their number one target.” “That’s the way they act,” he added, claiming that he is doing “what’s right for the country”.

At the time, Tehran rejected the accusations as “completely baseless” and dismissed them as “a malicious conspiracy orchestrated by Zionist and anti-Iranian circles, aimed at further complicating the issues between the US and Iran.”

However, Iran has repeatedly vowed “harsh retaliation” against Trump and other US officials involved in the January 2020 drone strike that killed Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) General Qasem Soleimani.

Over the past several years, Trump has been targeted in several assassination attempts. He was hit in the ear by a bullet fired by Thomas Matthew Crooks at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July 2024, an attack that killed one rally-goer before Crooks was shot dead by a Secret Service sniper. Two months later, a man was arrested after being spotted with a rifle near Trump’s golf course in Florida.

In April 2026, Trump and First Lady Melania Trump were rushed from the Washington Hilton after gunfire broke out at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner. The suspect, Cole Tomas Allen, was later charged with attempting to assassinate the president.

China has accused Anthropic’s AI coding tool Claude Code of containing “security backdoor vulnerabilities” capable of transmitting sensitive user information without consent, warning the mechanism poses a “serious security risk.”

Claude Code, developed by the US startup with close ties to the Pentagon, is an AI-powered coding assistant that helps developers write, edit, debug, and understand code using natural-language prompts. Because it runs inside a developer’s terminal rather than a browser, it can access source code and other files the user chooses to share.

In a risk advisory issued on Wednesday, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology’s (MIIT) cybersecurity threat platform NVDB said it had identified a potential security risk in several recent Claude Code versions. According to NVDB, they contain a “built-in monitoring mechanism” that automatically transmits users’ geographic location, identity identifiers, and other sensitive data to remote servers without consent.

It also called for tighter controls on outbound network access for development tools and stronger traffic monitoring to prevent unauthorized data transmission.

Anthropic has not publicly responded to the advisory.

China’s relationship with Anthropic has been contentious. While the company prohibits Chinese firms and their foreign affiliates from using Claude under regional and national security restrictions, reports say Chinese researchers and engineers continue to access it via overseas proxies. Since February, Anthropic has accused Alibaba and several other Chinese AI labs of illegally “distilling” its models to train competing systems.

The advisory followed claims posted on Reddit last week that Anthropic had secretly “embedded spyware in Claude Code” to identify users illegally accessing the service from China.

Hi, this is an experiment we launched in March that was meant to prevent account abuse from unauthorized resellers and protect against distillation.

The team has landed stronger mitigations since then and we’ve actually been meaning to take this down for a while. We merged the…

— Thariq (@trq212) June 30, 2026

Anthropic employee Thariq responded on X that the code was part of an “experiment” launched “to prevent account abuse from unauthorized resellers and protect against distillation,” adding that the company planned to remove the mechanism in the July 2 release.

During the US war on Iran, the software reportedly identified an elementary school in Minab as a target. A subsequent US strike killed nearly 160 people, but Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei argued that the use of Claude did not violate the company’s “red lines,” claiming “a human made that final call.”

The US could grant Ukraine a license to manufacture Patriot anti-aircraft missiles, President Donald Trump has said during a meeting with Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Türkiye. He maintained, however, that Washington would not supply the missiles directly.

Ukraine has been heavily dependent on weapons from its Western backers throughout most of its conflict with Russia, which is now in its fifth year. Zelensky has repeatedly blamed the West for arms shortages and delays in deliveries, while constantly demanding more aid, including Patriot missiles, saying Ukraine does not have enough interceptors to counter Russian airstrikes.

“We’re going to give a license to you to make Patriots. That’s pretty cool. This way, you can’t complain that we’re not giving them enough,” Trump told Zelensky during a meeting in Ankara on Wednesday.

“It’s a defensive weapon, which I like better than an offensive weapon,” Trump added.

The US burned through its arsenal of interceptors during the war with Iran, with an estimate by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) suggesting that the Pentagon used nearly half of its available Patriot missiles by April.

“We have Patriots, but we don’t have that many. We need them for ourselves too,” Trump said in response to a question on whether the US would send the missiles directly. He added that Ukraine could set up production “pretty quickly.”

Russia has warned that continued deliveries of Western arms make NATO members de facto participants in the conflict and risk triggering an all-out war.

In March, the Russian Defense Ministry published what it said are the addresses of companies involved in producing drone components for Ukraine on European territory. The ministry warned that European leaders are “dragging their countries into a war with Russia.”

Assembly lines for Patriot missiles in Ukraine would likely become high-priority targets for Russia. On Wednesday, the Defense Ministry announced strikes on several military sites across Ukraine, including a Samsung Ukraine facility it said was manufacturing components for FP-5 Flamingo cruise missiles.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has hit back at US President Donald Trump after he called Iran’s leadership “scum” and “violent people.”

The spat came as the US resumed strikes in Iran in the most serious flare-up of hostilities since the countries signed a preliminary peace framework last month.

“Addressing the Civilized and Courageous Nation of Iran with derogatory language does not diminish its Greatness,” Araghchi wrote on X on Wednesday evening.

“Iranians are known for their civility, culture, and strong moral values. We do not answer vulgarity with vulgarity, but with action: fearlessly and with great valor,” he added.

Although the diplomat did not mention Trump by name, Iranian state broadcaster Press TV said he was responding to comments the US president made earlier that day during a NATO summit in Türkiye.

“I don’t want to deal with them any more. They’re scum,” Trump said. “They’re led by sick people and they’re vicious, violent people. And if they had a nuclear weapon, they’d use it. As far as I’m concerned, it’s over.”

The US struck targets in Iran for the second consecutive night on Thursday in what Trump called “retribution” for attacks on commercial ships attempting to pass through the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran said the renewed attacks violated the memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed on June 17 and vowed to retaliate.

Although Tehran has not officially admitted responsibility for the attacks on three tankers earlier this week, Iranian media cited officials as saying that the targeted ships attempted to cross the Strait of Hormuz without authorization.

The US and Iran have clashed over the interpretation of the MoU. Under the deal, Tehran agreed to “make arrangements using its best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels” through the Strait of Hormuz. At the same time, Iran and Oman were to begin negotiations to “define the future administration and maritime services” in the waterway. Tehran has repeatedly insisted that it has the right to regulate traffic and collect tolls.

The US carried out strikes in southern Iran for the second night in a row on Thursday after President Donald Trump said the fragile ceasefire was effectively over.

Hostilities resumed after the US and its Arab allies in the region blamed Iran for attacks on tankers in the Strait of Hormuz.

In a statement on X, US Central Command (CENTCOM) said US forces were “conducting additional strikes against Iran to further degrade their ability to threaten freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz.”

“The United States is holding Iran accountable for recent unjustified aggression against commercial shipping and civilian crews freely navigating a vital international waterway,” CENTCOM said.

At the direction of the Commander in Chief, U.S. Central Command forces have started conducting additional strikes against Iran to further degrade their ability to threaten freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz. The United States is holding Iran accountable for recent…

— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) July 8, 2026

Iranian media reported explosions along the southern coast, including in the port cities of Bushehr, Chabahar, and Konarak, as well as on Lavan Island. At least two blasts were recorded near the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant, Fars News Agency reported. 

A video posted on social media appears to show a strike in Chabahar, where Iranian media reported that a maritime control tower had been targeted.

According to Iranian state broadcaster IRIB, the attack on Chabahar, the country’s largest port, also damaged Imam Ali Hospital and severed major power lines. Electricity has since been partially restored. 

The strikes reportedly caused a large fire in Bushehr.

CENTCOM later reported additional strikes, saying US forces struck around 90 Iranian military targets, including air defense systems, missile and drone storage sites, as well as other targets on Iran’s coastline.

The attacks came during weeklong funeral processions for Iran’s longtime supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, who was killed during the first wave of the US-Israeli bombing campaign on February 28. Massive crowds attended events across Iran and neighboring Iraq.

Trump issued a warning to Iran shortly after the strikes began. “This is in retribution for yesterday’s bombing of ships by Iran. If it happens again, it will get much worse!” he wrote on Truth Social.

Several hours earlier, the president declared that the ceasefire with Iran was effectively over. “I think it’s over. I don’t want to deal with them any more. They’re scum,” he told reporters during a meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in Türkiye.

Mohsen Rezaei, a military adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, vowed “severe punishment” for the US strikes. 

The Iranian military later announced retaliatory strikes on US bases in Kuwait and Bahrain.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry condemned “the aggressive attacks carried out by the US terrorist army,” saying some of the strikes targeted two bridges, which “unquestionably constitutes a gross war crime.”

It also stated that the attacks were carried out “under the false pretext” of responding to alleged incidents involving several ships that sailed through the Strait of Hormuz in violation of Iranian regulations.

The US and Iran have clashed over the interpretation of the memorandum of understanding they signed on June 17. Under the deal, Iran agreed to “make arrangements using its best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels” through the Strait of Hormuz. At the same time, Iran and Oman were to begin negotiations to “define the future administration and maritime services” in the waterway. Iran has repeatedly insisted that it has the right to regulate traffic and collect tolls.

Despite US attempts to sabotage and manipulate the event, the UN General Assembly has followed the request of the Cuban delegation to debate the “Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba.”

While this debate has been an annual event since 1992, this year its backdrop is particularly grim, as Washington has greatly escalated its longstanding economic warfare campaign against Havana. At the same time, the US has also threatened a military attack, which may or may not have been delayed by the US defeat in the war against Iran.

But the Cuba debate at the UN also needs to be put in a much larger context: A quarter of a millennium after its founding and about four decades after the end of the last century’s Cold War in the late 1980s, the American empire is declining.

Two recent failed US wars have made that much clear. Under President Donald Trump, the US has scaled down – though not entirely abandoned – its commitment to the Western proxy war against Russia via Ukraine, leaving the expensive and cruel meat grinder to NATO-EU Europeans too shortsighted to know when to quit and too cynical to care what they do to ordinary Ukrainians.

The reasons for this relative yet significant American disengagement have little to do with Trump’s personal – and volatile – attitude toward Russia, or for that matter, Ukraine. The US establishment has simply recognized that the initial aims of the Western proxy war cannot be achieved: Moscow has not been defeated or geopolitically degraded; regime change has not occurred.

America’s unipolar moment, inasmuch as it ever was real, has long been over, as John Mearsheimer – a rare voice of reason in the US – recently explained to the European Parliament. Meanwhile, a multipolar world has already emerged, even if it will keep evolving for a long time and is very unlikely to ever correspond to the utopian fantasy of perfect international equality some may dream about. Real-world multipolarity is vastly preferable to American unipolarity, but it will be a global balance of great powers, or at best, a concert of such powers.

Yet there is a paradox to American decline: While the vast majority of humanity sharing a planet with its biggest rogue state urgently needs the US to lose its extraordinary and catastrophically malignant power, the process will not be fun. On the contrary, the declining US is and will be for quite a while even more aggressive, unpredictable, and dangerous than before. Unlike the former Soviet Union, which went down with historically unusual self-restraint, the American empire is likely to wreak ever more havoc on its way down to the rubbish heap of history.

Next to, for instance, Gaza and Venezuela, one place where you can see this US escalation in action is Cuba. Indeed, Cuba is a particularly pronounced example: Under an unforgiving and criminal American embargo for almost two-thirds of a century, the Caribbean island nation of around 10 million people has recently been subjected to an even fiercer and constantly escalating regime of sanctions and blockade, based on an absurd executive order issued by Trump at the end of January.

Cutting off its oil supplies in particular – a viciously inhumane strategy facilitated by the US assault on Venezuela half a year ago – Washington has been clear that its aim is brutal coercion: Either Cuba submits and becomes, in essence, a US protectorate like post-Maduro-kidnapping Venezuela or its people will continue to suffer under a lethal blockade. By now, Cuba has been hit by its third total nationwide blackout since the beginning of the year, while severe power cuts are already a constant part of everyday life.

Cubans also suffer from a breakdown of their agriculture and food distribution systems, both heavily affected by the energy blockade: No gasoline or diesel means no agricultural machinery and no transport; no power means no cooling chains, for instance. Harvests are rotting in the fields; farmers are forced to leave their farms. Meanwhile, the health sector is impoverished and paralyzed. Around 100,000 Cubans cannot receive necessary treatment; 11,000 children cannot have surgeries they need.

While exact figures are impossible to come by, there is no doubt that Washington’s merciless economic warfare against Cuba is producing mass casualties. This is, after all, what US sanctions and blockades have always done. A recent study in The Lancet concluded that these US measures are associated with around 564,000 excess deaths per year.

On average, this is comparable to the annual death toll from direct armed conflict. Keep in mind that the Lancet figure is a low count, since the study only includes the effects of unilateral US sanctions. In Cuba, it is already clear that child mortality has doubled. The scales are still different, but as in the Gaza genocide, which the US has in effect been co-perpetrating with Israel, children are a special category of victims.

And all of this while Cuba does not even have the natural resources that made Venezuela a target of American greed. And despite Havana’s courageous solidarity with Palestine, unlike Iran, Cuba is not in a position to stymie America’s ally from hell, Israel.

As the NATO summit in Ankara has demonstrated, NATO-EU Europe is only doubling down on its obsequious submission to Washington. Where Europe could render the world an invaluable service by helping deter the declining yet hyper-aggressive US, the opposite is happening: Europe is also to blame for America’s continually escalating crimes since its unflagging support – AKA ‘burden shifting’ – frees US resources so it can do its worst.

But for the rest of the world, Cuba – small as it may be – is an urgent warning: While the American empire is declining and falling, we must learn to stand together to contain and, if necessary, fight its global aggression. We are very far from this strategy. That’s a pity because humanity’s survival may well require it.

UK police drew batons amid a clash with enraged locals at a protest in Glasgow, Scotland on Tuesday, as officers evacuated two men accused of being involved in a rape away from the furious crowd.

The protesters gathered outside an apartment block in the city’s East End over concerns that someone living in the building posed a public risk, according to the Glasgow Times.

Videos from the protest show the police pushing scores of angry locals aside as they lead two young men out of the building and into a police van while the men try to cover their faces.

The crowd is heard chanting “Beast! Beast! Beast!” In Scottish slang, the word refers to a rapist or child molester.

When one protester rushed at one of the men and struck at him, the police drew their batons and shouted “get back” at the crowd.

A 50-year-old was charged in connection with a police assault after the incident, a police spokesperson said in a statement cited by the media.

Jebril Abdelrahman, 19, was charged with rape and Denison Charles, 20, was charged with assault at Glasgow Sheriff Court, the Scottish Sun reported on Wednesday.

Abdelrahman, who The Sun said is from Glasgow, was reportedly remanded in custody. Local social media accounts, including British anti-immigration activist Tommy Robinson, however, referred to him as a migrant.

Nigel Farage’s anti-immigration Reform party has made significant advances in recent months, winning more than 1,452 seats in local elections across England in May amid Labour’s sinking popularity. Growing anger over immigration has stoked protests and riots across the UK in recent years, inflamed by a series of high-profile violent crimes and sexual assault cases involving migrants and asylum seekers.

The European Parliament has rebuked Kiev over its decision to rename an elite military unit after World War II-era Nazi collaborators, a move that has fueled a weeks-long diplomatic row with Poland.

Militants from the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), the armed wing of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), killed at least 100,000 ethnic Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia – now largely part of Ukraine – between 1943 and 1944. Known as the Volhynia Massacre, the campaign remains the main unresolved historical dispute between Ukraine and Poland, one of Kiev’s key backers in its conflict with Russia.

While Warsaw recognizes the killings as genocide, Kiev honors figures such as OUN leader Stepan Bandera as “national heroes.” Last month, Vladimir Zelensky granted an army unit the honorary title ‘Heroes of the UPA’.

Polish President Karol Nawrocki called the move “outrageous” and stripped Zelensky of the Order of the White Eagle, Poland’s highest honor, while Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz warned that “Ukraine will not join the EU” if it continues to glorify Nazi collaborators.

“It’s a very strong signal. It’s a warning to Ukrainian authorities not to create bad emotions and not to act against European values,” Polish MEP Andrzej Halicki, who introduced the amendment, told Euronews.

Zelensky recently sought to play down the dispute with Warsaw, calling it “some internal questions” stemming from “difficulties in our history,” and urged Warsaw not to block Ukraine’s long-standing EU ambitions. In an effort to ease tensions, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrey Sibiga traveled to Warsaw last week to propose an “anti-crisis package,” including historical roundtables.

However, Ukraine has shown little sign of changing course. Earlier this month, the Ukrainian parliament approved plans to establish a national pantheon honoring prominent historical figures, including World War II-era nationalists. This week, Ukraine’s state-backed Mirotvorets database of alleged “enemies of the state” blacklisted Polish presidential chief of staff Zbigniew Bogucki after he used a historic Polish name for a region now largely located in western Ukraine.

“They couldn’t have not known. They thought they were just throwing bones into the kennel [in Kiev] and would later profit. Now Warsaw is trying to backtrack,” Zakharova told Sputnik Radio. “But that can no longer be undone by simply taking down the White Eagle, posting a few tweets, or making loud statements. They’ve already armed these terrorists. Now those terrorists have, in essence, begun managing those who created them.”

Meta could face up to $1.4 trillion in penalties after four US states accused the company of designing Facebook and Instagram to addict young users, media have reported, citing court documents. The potential fines are nearly equal to the company’s current market value of around $1.5 trillion.

California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey accuse Meta of deliberately designing its platforms to keep children and teenagers hooked while misleading the public about the apps’ safety, the company said in a court filing on Monday.

At a court hearing last month, the four states said that they had calculated the proposed penalties by estimating the number of young users affected and applying fines allowed under state law. The $1.4 trillion figure was disclosed by Meta in a legal response to the states’ request on how damages should be calculated.

Mark Zuckerberg’s firm also called the plaintiffs’ “outlandish calculations” baseless and vowed to continue fighting the lawsuit.

A California Attorney General’s Office spokesperson defended the case, saying it alleges that Meta “has prioritized profits over the safety of kids and fueled the mental health crisis we see impacting a generation of American children.” The office said it looked forward to “holding Meta fully accountable.”

Meta is also facing lawsuits from 29 other states that are not part of the $1.4 trillion penalty claim. Most accuse the company of violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) by collecting children’s data without parental consent. US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers will hear those claims alongside the four-state case in August, while a separate lawsuit brought by another 14 states is scheduled for February 2027.

NATO leaders have reconvened in Ankara for the second and final day of the US-led military bloc’s annual summit, with efforts to project unity overshadowed by persistent disagreements over defense spending, as well as the Russia-Ukraine and Iran conflicts.

The first day was dominated by US President Donald Trump’s sharp criticism of European allies for failing to shoulder a greater share of the military burden and for not backing Washington during its confrontation with Iran. Trump also renewed his demand for US control of Greenland, while NATO members unveiled new multibillion-dollar defense procurement agreements intended to strengthen the bloc’s military capabilities and answer longstanding calls for higher spending.

Ukraine remains high on the agenda as Vladimir Zelensky seeks additional military support from Western backers, while leaders attempt to keep the focus on the bloc’s long-term rearmament plans.

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Europe is “playing with fire” as it assists Ukraine in strikes deep into Russia, RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan has said, warning Kiev’s Western backers that Moscow may have no other choice other than to respond with force.

In a lengthy interview with Die Weltwoche's Roger Koeppel on Wednesday, Simonyan said, “it is not Ukraine that is bringing the war to Moscow” but rather Europe, as Kiev is incapable of conducting attacks without foreign aid and intelligence.

Simonyan warned that Moscow’s patience is running thin as drones, missiles, flight disruptions, and fuel shortages increasingly affect civilians in Russia.

“People are afraid to sleep at night… Where is the limit of this hardship, when the people will say, ‘Vladimir Vladimirovich [Putin], we have to respond! I don’t know, but I think it is very close. Very close. Right now, you are playing with fire.”

Bulgaria is unable to provide any more weapons and military equipment to Ukraine, Prime Minister Rumen Radev has said, reaffirming his government’s decision to halt further arms deliveries to Kiev.

Speaking on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Ankara, Türkiye, on Wednesday, Radev said Bulgaria would continue supporting Ukraine financially “within its capabilities, without affecting social spending,” while ruling out further deliveries from the country’s military stockpiles.

“We have exhausted our ability to provide military support. I mean weapons and ammunition from the warehouses of the Bulgarian Armed Forces. We provided 13 packages; we don’t have anything else to supply to Ukraine,” Radev told reporters. He added that Sofia could still offer technical assistance by repairing military equipment.

Radev was not the only NATO leader to acknowledge limits on military aid. Dutch Defense Minister Dilan Yesilgoz-Zegerius said on Tuesday the Netherlands had also reached the limit of what it could provide directly from its own military stockpiles.

The comments contrasted with Vladimir Zelensky’s appeals at the Ankara summit for NATO members to provide more air defense systems and interceptor missiles.

Radev’s remarks reaffirm a policy announced last month by Defense Minister Dimitar Stoyanov, who said Bulgaria would stop supplying weapons because the conflict could not be resolved on the battlefield.

Under the previous government, Bulgaria became one of Kiev’s largest suppliers of Soviet-standard weapons and ammunition. According to officials, Bulgarian shells accounted for roughly one-third of the ammunition used by Ukraine during the first year of the conflict.

Radev, whose Progressive Bulgaria party won the parliamentary election in April, has long opposed Brussels’ approach to the Ukraine conflict. As president between 2022 and 2025, he criticized sanctions on Russian energy, blocked a proposal to send Bulgarian armored vehicles to Kiev, and repeatedly called for a negotiated settlement.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday that Zelensky could end the conflict with Russia in a single day by ordering Ukrainian troops to withdraw from Donbass.

There’s a real love-triangle dynamic playing out right now between the US, Türkiye, and Israel.

Donald Trump is going out of his way to be seen embracing Recep Tayyip Erdogan, talking up sanctions relief and reopening the door on F-35 fighter jets and engines for Türkiye’s homegrown KAAN program.

At the same time, Benjamin Netanyahu is working overtime to protect Israel’s privileged position in US Middle East policy, warning anyone who’ll listen that handing Türkiye advanced weapons systems would upend the regional balance of power.

Ankara as the turning point

While in Ankara for the NATO summit, Trump announced that Washington would lift the sanctions imposed on Türkiye after its purchase of Russian S-400 missile systems – sanctions that have hung over the relationship for years. He said it standing next to Erdogan, which made it sound like a gift. Trump added that he doesn’t like sanctioning friends, and that ties with Türkiye are, in his words, better than they’ve ever been.

Just as notable was the return of F-35 talk. Trump didn’t promise delivery, simply saying it is something the US “will look at.” That’s a long way from a commitment, but it’s also the first time in years an American president has floated the idea publicly and warmly rather than treating it as a closed door. Erdogan, for his part, wasn’t shy about reminding everyone that Washington once promised Türkiye five of the jets, and said he trusts that Trump keeps his word.

Trump also made clear, in tone if not always in substance, that his relationship with Erdogan matters more to him than a lot of the usual alliance etiquette. He talked about the chemistry between them, called Türkiye more loyal than some countries Washington has counted on for support, and effectively held Ankara up as a contrast to America’s European NATO partners – several of whom he’s clearly lost patience with. He said NATO treated the US poorly during the conflict with Iran, and suggested he might have skipped the summit entirely if it hadn’t been held in Türkiye.

Türkiye as a mediator – and an irritant for Israel

None of this warmth is purely personal chemistry. Türkiye has made itself genuinely useful to Washington in ways that matter strategically. Ankara – alongside Qatar, Egypt, and the US – became part of the architecture holding the ceasefire in Gaza and the subsequent political track together. When negotiations stalled, Trump turned to Erdogan specifically, counting on Türkiye’s leverage over Hamas. Turkish officials reportedly worked to convince Hamas that the ceasefire carried both regional and American guarantees, including Trump’s personal word.

That’s exactly the kind of role that cements Türkiye’s status as the leading Sunni regional power – and exactly the kind of role that keeps Netanyahu up at night. From West Jerusalem’s vantage point, Türkiye isn’t a neutral broker. It’s a state that criticizes Israel openly and often, champions the Palestinian cause, and is now angling for real influence in Gaza, Syria, and the Eastern Mediterranean. Against that backdrop, the F-35 and KAAN questions may start looking more like an existential one for Israeli defense planners.

Netanyahu didn’t dance around the issue. In an interview with Fox News, he said flatly that Türkiye shouldn’t be given F-35s or engines for its fighter programs, because doing so would break the regional balance of power – a balance he says depends on Israeli air superiority backed by an American presence in the region. He went further, accusing Erdogan of hostile rhetoric toward Israel and describing Türkiye’s leadership as a regime infected by Muslim Brotherhood ideology – strong words, deliberately chosen.

For Trump, Türkiye’s role in Gaza is an argument in favor of getting closer to Ankara. For Israel, it’s a source of genuine alarm. There’s a real fear in West Jerusalem that in trying to lock down the end of active fighting in Gaza and push forward some kind of postwar governance framework, Washington is effectively handing Türkiye a seat at the table on Palestine – something Ankara has been shut out of for a long time.

The price of the Iran war

Trump and Netanyahu’s relationship has visibly cooled in recent months, even if both men do their best to keep up appearances. Netanyahu told CNN that he and Trump may have separate disagreements over Iran, but remain aligned on the issues that matter most. That’s the polished facade. Underneath it is real, accumulating frustration in Washington.

The war against Iran, which began on February 28 with joint US-Israeli strikes, has turned into a genuine political liability for Trump. The Pew Research Center found that 61% of Americans disapproved of how Trump handled the Iran conflict, while 40% said the operation has made the US less safe over the long term. Those aren’t the kind of numbers a president shrugs off, especially heading into a difficult political stretch.

There’s a perception taking hold inside the US that Trump got pulled into this war under Israeli influence. Whether that is an accurate account of how decisions actually got made or not, the perception itself functions as a political fact. And the more this war costs Trump with American voters, the more sharply he reacts to anything Netanyahu does that complicates his effort to sell himself as the guy who ended a war rather than started one.

Israel, for its part, has made clear it doesn’t consider itself bound by agreements that limit its freedom of action against Hezbollah and Iran. From Washington’s side, that looks like an attempt to trap Trump in an open-ended conflict just as he’s trying to find the exit. So the negative view of Israel’s conduct in Lebanon is tangled up with Trump’s own political survival instincts.

Why Washington hasn’t chosen Ankara – yet

Even so, Trump’s personal warmth toward Erdogan doesn’t add up to a wholesale US pivot away from Israel toward Türkiye. There are several hard structural reasons for that, and none of them are going away soon.

First, the F-35 isn’t a gift the president can just hand out. It’s governed by law, by Congress, and by the US export-control system. Current US legislation doesn’t allow Türkiye back into the F-35 program while it still owns the S-400 system. One option being floated involves transferring the Russian systems to a third country, but that’s a proposal, not a resolved deal – and these things have a way of staying unresolved for years.

Second, congressional Democrats have long had a strained relationship with Türkiye’s government. Even the comparatively simple F110 engine deal ran into pushback – Democratic Congressman Gregory Meeks raised objections and demanded the administration explain its reasoning, saying it hadn’t even bothered to justify the decision. If a straightforward engine sale generates that kind of friction, an F-35 deal will face something far tougher.

There’s also a pattern worth remembering: Trump’s big arms-deal announcements don’t always turn into big arms deals. During his first term, he announced a $110 billion weapons package for Saudi Arabia that, in practice, mostly stayed on paper. At the time it was described as more of a declaration than a completed agreement, and American reporting later showed that only a fraction of the announced sums ever translated into actual contracts.

Even if Trump genuinely wants to reward Erdogan politically, the pro-Israel lobby, Congress, the Pentagon, existing legal restrictions, and the push to preserve Israeli military superiority will all slow the process down. That’s why Ankara is far more likely to get its KAAN engines quickly than to get back into the F-35 program at all. One is a relatively easy concession while the other is a legislative and political minefield.

There’s a pattern here that goes beyond Türkiye specifically. Trump has made a habit throughout this term of treating personal rapport as a substitute for policy – floating major concessions in the glow of a good meeting, then watching the machinery of American government slow-walk them into something much smaller. It happened, in part, with Saudi Arabia during his first term. There’s no obvious reason Türkiye would be the exception, especially on an issue as legally and politically loaded as fifth-generation fighter jets. The gap between what Trump says in a room with Erdogan and what actually clears Congress, the Pentagon, and the export-control bureaucracy tends to be wide, and it tends to stay wide for years, not months.

Trump genuinely is warmer toward Erdogan right now than he is toward several of America’s traditional allies, and he genuinely is frustrated with how Israel has handled itself in Lebanon, Gaza, and the broader Iran file. Both of those things are true and worth taking seriously. But US Middle East policy has never run purely on the emotional temperature of one president, and it isn’t about to start now. What’s visible right now is a flirtation between Washington and Ankara – public and strategically useful to both sides. What isn’t visible is any sign that Washington’s long-standing commitment to Israel has been called off. It’s far too early to say America has chosen Türkiye over Israel. Washington is trying, as it often does, to keep both relationships alive at once, extracting what it can from each without formally downgrading either – and the real tension, when it finally surfaces, will show up not in summit speeches or warm handshakes, but in what Congress actually lets through.

Oil prices have surged as tensions between the US and Iran flared again, raising fresh concerns over supply disruptions in the Middle East after Washington reinstated pressure on Tehran and resumed military strikes.

The US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) on Tuesday revoked a two-month sanctions relief license for Iranian oil following reports of attacks on commercial tankers in the Strait of Hormuz. US forces also carried out a new wave of strikes against targets inside Iran overnight into Wednesday.

September Brent crude futures rose as much as 6% on Wednesday from the previous close to $78.53 per barrel, while August WTI crude futures climbed 5.91% to $74.6 per barrel.

Washington and Tehran reached a two-month ceasefire agreement on June 18, intended to create conditions for negotiations on a broader settlement between the two countries.

The US has accused Iran of violating the ceasefire and threatening maritime security through attacks on commercial shipping, prompting what officials Washington described as a military response.

Iranian state broadcaster IRIB reported a series of explosions overnight, saying seven blasts were recorded near the village of Taherui in Sirik County and another six near the city of Qeshm.

According to the UK Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO), an unidentified projectile struck a tanker off the coast of Oman, causing a fire on board. The WSJ reported that one of the damaged vessels may have been the Al Rekayyat, a tanker owned by Qatar’s Nakilat. The vessel reportedly sustained damage near its engine room, while all crew members remained safe. Axios said the targeted ships suffered only limited damage.

On Wednesday, US President Donald Trump told journalists that the ceasefire between Washington and Tehran was no longer in effect. Trump said he would not prevent US diplomats from holding talks but did not believe they would produce any results.

The US decision to brand Brazil’s two biggest criminal groups as terrorist organizations could serve as a pretext for military intervention, the Brazilian Foreign Ministry has warned.

Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira issued the warning in a letter sent to Brazil’s Chamber of Deputies last week, responding to lawmakers’ questions about Washington’s decision to designate the Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) and Comando Vermelho (CV) as terrorist organizations, CNN Brazil reported on Tuesday.

The US added the gangs to its list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) on June 5, placing them in the same legal category as groups such as Al-Qaeda and Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS).

Addressing lawmakers, Vieira argued that Washington’s existing designation of the gangs as ‘transnational criminal organizations’ already allows broad cooperation with Brazil in combating organized crime, making the FTO listing unnecessary.

“Such application can occur with a wide degree of discretion... with serious possibilities of implications for Brazilian citizens in financial, immigration, and criminal matters. Finally, there is the possibility of the use of military force by the United States on Brazilian territory,” CNN Brazil cited the Foreign Ministry as saying.

The designation will “not bring concrete benefits” to US-Brazil cooperation in combating organized crime, it added. Vieira stressed that the US acted unilaterally and did not formally notify Brasilia, meaning Brazil had no official communication to respond to.

“CV and PCC are two of the most violent criminal organizations in Brazil... Their influence and illicit networks extend far beyond Brazil’s borders, across our region, and into our country,” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in May, adding that the Trump administration would use “all available tools” to disrupt “violent narcoterrorists.”

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva later described Maduro’s capture as the first direct US military attack on South America in more than 200 years of independence, warning that the same practice is now spreading across Latin America and the Caribbean.

NATO would help Denmark protect Greenland from any attack, including hypothetically from the US, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has said.

The issue of Greenland came up on the sidelines of a NATO leaders’ summit in Ankara, Türkiye, after US President Donald Trump confirmed that he still wants Washington to control the Danish autonomous territory. He said the dispute was one of the reasons his relationship with the bloc had deteriorated.

“That should be controlled by the United States, not by Denmark,” Trump told reporters during a meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday.

“Greenland does not help Denmark. Denmark does not really spend money to help Greenland,” he said. He also warned that the US could potentially withdraw all American troops from Europe.

The idea of the US acquiring Greenland has arisen at various times in American history. Strategically located in the North Atlantic, the Danish island already hosts a US military base and is believed to contain valuable mineral resources, the extraction of which could become commercially viable in the future.

Trump has refused to rule out the use of military force to establish control over Greenland, raising the possibility of NATO being pitted against its dominant member. The American leader has accused the organization of being useless to US interests, with its refusal to become directly involved in the US-Israeli attack on Iran emerging as a major grievance.

US President Donald Trump has declared the fragile ceasefire with Iran “over” after the US military conducted a series of strikes on the Islamic Republic over alleged attacks on three tankers that were transiting the Strait of Hormuz.

On Wednesday, US Central Command (CENTCOM) said it hit dozens of Iranian ground and navy targets “in response to Iranian attacks on three commercial vessels that were transiting the Strait of Hormuz,” denouncing Tehran for “aggression [that] was unwarranted, dangerous, and a clear violation of the ceasefire.”

Iranian media reported that one of the tankers – which was linked to Qatar – was attacked as it was sailing through the strait and “ignoring repeated warnings.” A government source told Press TV that any traffic through the chokepoint should be approved by Tehran.

Speaking on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Ankara, Türkiye, Trump lashed out at the Iranian leadership, calling them “scum,” “cuckoo,” “sick,” “vicious, [and] violent people,” and confirmed that the ceasefire is “over.”

“I don’t want to deal with them… I’ll speak to our negotiators that want to negotiate… [but] as far as I’m concerned, it’s just a waste of time dealing with them. They’re liars,” he said.

Under the 14-point Memorandum of Understanding signed last month, Washington and Tehran declared a permanent end to military operations on all fronts, including Lebanon, while committing to finalize a lasting deal within 60 days. The US agreed to lift its naval blockade in stages, while Iran agreed to make its “best efforts” to ensure free passage for commercial vessels through the strait for 60 days.

The US also committed to unfreezing restricted Iranian funds while Tehran reaffirmed that it would not pursue nuclear weapons and agreed to return its enriched uranium stockpile under IAEA supervision, though the specifics of enrichment rights were left for the final deal.

Senior US military commanders ignored warnings that intelligence on targets in Iran was outdated as they rushed to compile strike lists at the start of the war, CNN reports. Citing sources familiar with the decision-making process, the broadcaster said the decision contributed to the deadly strike on an Iranian girls’ school.

The bombing – in which 120 students aged 6 to 13 were killed, in addition to 36 adults – happened on February 28, the opening day of the US-Israeli military operation against Iran.

According to the broadcaster, messages embedded in the Pentagon’s targeting system warned that intelligence on some strike sites was based on years-old information and required verification before the locations could be approved for attack.

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced a formal investigation in March. CENTCOM Commander Brad Cooper said in May that the findings would be made public once the inquiry is complete.

According to CNN, US military officials “knew within days how the mistake happened.” One of the sources told the outlet that “it was obviously old info.”

Bloomberg reported last month that the Pentagon investigation was completed in April, and found the strike resulted from gaps in the military’s targeting system.

According to the outlet, a US intelligence analyst identified the Minab site as an elementary school rather than an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) naval facility in 2019, but the updated assessment never reached military commanders because it was entered into a digital intelligence tool that was not linked to the Pentagon’s official targeting database.

US President Donald Trump said last month that the actual culprit behind the strike in Minab may never be established.

Iranian officials have described the attack as a war crime and crime against humanity and demanded accountability.

Polish member of the European Parliament Ewa Zajaczkowska-Hernik has been added to Ukraine’s notorious Mirotvorets ‘kill list’ after publicly speaking out against Kiev’s glorification of Nazi collaborators.

Zajaczkowska-Hernik’s entry appeared in the database on Wednesday, a day after she tore up a flag of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) during a debate on Kiev’s bid to join the EU. In her speech, she delivered a scathing indictment of Ukraine’s glorification of the UPA, whose fighters massacred up to 100,000 ethnic Poles in one of World War II’s worst atrocities.

According to the database entry, Zajaczkowska-Hernik is described as a “xenophobe” and an “anti-Ukrainian propagandist” who participates in “acts of humanitarian aggression against Ukraine.”

The MEP took to social media on Thursday to denounce the listing, saying she would not back down or be intimidated.

Właśnie dowiedziałam się, że po wystąpieniu w Parlamencie Europejskim, gdzie potępiłam ludobójców z UPA, trafiłam na stronę Myrotworeć - listę "wrogów Ukrainy" prowadzoną przez ukraińskie służby.

To bardzo ciekawe, że strona ukraińska prowadzi listę polskich patriotów do… pic.twitter.com/Nw5xaZMIOI

— Ewa Zajączkowska-Hernik (@EwaZajaczkowska) July 9, 2026

Launched in 2014 as a nominally independent project, Mirotvorets has been linked to Ukraine’s security services and is notorious for publishing the personal details of anyone remotely deemed an enemy of the Ukrainian state. Several individuals whose details were made public – including journalists and politicians – have been killed.

Zajaczkowska-Hernik’s speech in the European Parliament on Tuesday came against the backdrop of a weeks-long diplomatic spat between Warsaw and Kiev triggered by Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky’s decision to name a special forces unit ‘Heroes of the UPA’.

Polish President Karol Nawrocki called Zelensky’s decision “outrageous” and stripped the Ukrainian leader of the Order of the White Eagle, Poland’s highest honor, with several senior Ukrainian officials responding by handing back their Polish awards.

The UPA, the armed wing of Stepan Bandera’s Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), collaborated with Nazi Germany during World War II and carried out systematic mass killings of ethnic minorities, with one of the most notorious episodes taking place in Volhynia in 1943-1944. While Poland recognizes the killings as a genocide, Ukraine has rejected the term, with Bandera often being propagated as a national hero by Kiev.

“Over 360 ways to kill civilians. Sawing people alive, disemboweling pregnant women, impaling children on pitchforks”, she said, adding that Ukrainian nationalists killed not only Jews and Poles but also local Ukrainians.

“If Germany had named a unit after the SS heroes and erected monuments to Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, or Eichmann, would you invite them to the [European] Union? No. You would call them neo-Nazis. And rightly so. There is no moral difference between honoring the SS and honoring the UPA.”

The MEP also took aim at the EU’s own June report on Ukraine’s accession bid, noting that while it included chapters on fundamental rights and non-discrimination, it made no mention of the glorification of wartime collaboration or genocide.

Polish Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz also warned last week that Ukraine will not join the EU as long as it continues to venerate Bandera and the OUN-UPA, adding that “no one will tell us how to vote” on another state’s accession.

In a bid to contain the fallout, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Sibiga flew to Warsaw last week to meet his Polish counterpart, Radoslaw Sikorski, proposing an “anti-crisis package” that includes historic roundtables, while stressing that Ukraine and Poland “share a common enemy, Russia.”

Sikorski responded cautiously, saying that “diplomacy prefers silence,” while his deputy, Marcin Bosacki, made clear that Warsaw “expects a correction” of the UPA unit designation.

Russia has carried out precision strikes on Ukrainian military-industrial facilities in Kiev, the Defense Ministry in Moscow has reported.

In a statement released on Wednesday, the ministry said the strikes targeted the production facilities of Samsung Ukraine, where it said the components for FP-5 Flamingo ground-launched cruise missiles were manufactured and stored, as well as a workshop assembling medium- and long-range UAVs.

According to the ministry, the overnight barrage was carried out in response to terrorist attacks by Kiev against Russian civilian infrastructure.

The authorities in Kiev have not confirmed strikes on military facilities, instead saying fires broke out at several warehouses and a tram garage complex in the city’s Svyatoshinsky and Desnyansky districts. The Russian Defense Ministry insists it conducts precision strikes only against military targets in Ukraine.

The attack on Kiev followed another large-scale overnight Ukrainian drone raid on Russia, with the Defense Ministry saying air defenses intercepted and destroyed 415 UAVs over 18 Russian regions, as well as above the Azov and Black Seas.

Earlier this week, Russia said Ukraine launched more than 430 kamikaze drones at Moscow and other regions as Vladimir Zelensky traveled to Ankara, Türkiye, for a two-day NATO summit. According to Moscow, a raid also targeted the Omsk Oil Refinery, one of Russia’s largest fuel-processing plants.

In an interview with the Swiss magazine Die Weltwoche published on Tuesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Zelensky could end the conflict with Russia “in a single day” by ordering Ukrainian troops to withdraw from Donbass, the predominantly Russian-speaking region that voted to join Russia in 2022. The Ukrainian leader must recognize the de facto situation “as a de jure,” Peskov said, adding that once this happens, “the next day the war will be over.”

US President Donald Trump has rebuffed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s call not to sell F-35 fighter jets to Türkiye.

Netanyahu has accused Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of destabilizing the Middle East, as Ankara has emerged as one of the most vocal critics of Israel’s military campaigns in Gaza and Lebanon.

Trump, who arrived in Türkiye for a NATO summit on Tuesday, said he would consider selling the fighter jets to the US ally.

“I have no concerns about anything. I mean, he’s a leader of a country that he’s made a much better country, a much better country, a much more powerful country,” Trump said, according to The Hill.

Netanyahu earlier urged Washington not to grant Ankara access to its most advanced fighter aircraft.

“Turkey is a great country, but it’s governed by a man who calls openly for the annihilation of Israel,” Netanyahu said.

According to Axios, the Israeli leader privately lobbied Trump against supplying the jets and raised the issue during a phone call last week.

In 2019, the US expelled Türkiye from the F-35 program after Erdogan refused to abandon a deal to purchase Russia’s S-400 air defense missile system. Last year, Ankara confirmed that it is interested in acquiring the aircraft but stressed that it would also retain the S-400s.

Erdogan has frequently clashed with Netanyahu, comparing the Israeli leader to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. On Tuesday, the Turkish Defense Ministry accused Netanyahu of waging a disinformation campaign over the country’s role in the region.

“Netanyahu and his partners in crime deliberately distort any criticism directed at them and seek to divert attention through a systematic propaganda effort,” the Defense Ministry said.

Trump’s relations with Netanyahu have soured in recent months, as Israel’s continued airstrikes in Lebanon threatened to derail peace talks with Iran. The US president acknowledged that he used harsh language during phone calls with his Israeli counterpart, in which he demanded that Israel suspend the strikes.

Emergency dispatch audio referring to a “cardiac arrest” at US Senator Mitch McConnell’s Washington home has raised new questions about the political future of the former Republican leader, according to media reports.

McConnell, 84, is a Republican senator from Kentucky who has served in the Senate since 1985. He was the longest-serving Senate party leader in US history, stepping down from the post in February 2024 following a series of public health episodes.

The recordings, first reported by CBS and cited by several US outlets earlier this week, captured a dispatcher telling emergency responders that a person at McConnell’s home was in “cardiac arrest.” The identity of the patient has not been officially confirmed, and McConnell’s office has not commented on the recordings or the reported emergency.

Instead, aides have maintained that the senator is “continuing his recovery” in a hospital. In its latest statement on Thursday, McConnell’s office said: “The Senator continues to improve, and is working closely with his staff on Kentucky and Senate matters while the Senate is out of session.” 

The belligerent stance of European NATO members risks triggering an all-out war with Russia that could spell the end of the bloc, Dmitry Trenin, the president of the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC), wrote in an op-ed for RT.

Trenin argued that the European elites are seeking “Russia’s destruction as a major power” rather than deterrence, as was the case during the Cold War. They are using the Ukraine conflict as a convenient opportunity, he said.

“The European NATO leaders’ enormous deficit of modern strategic culture – unsurprising after the eight decades of having delegated their security to the United States – and their blind Russophobia, a result of deep-seated vintage European racism and the real or perceived grudges against Russia piled over the last five centuries, have put Europe on a direct collision course with Russia,” he warned, adding that this strategy essentially “means war.”

Trenin argued that the fundamental flaw of this is the “belief that Russia would rather accept defeat, degradation, and disintegration than use the arsenal which it currently possesses.”

Last year, NATO members pledged to increase annual defense spending to 5% of GDP by 2035. European leaders and top military commanders have argued that the West must be prepared for a war with Russia by the end of the decade, which the Kremlin has called baseless and dangerous warmongering.

President Vladimir Putin has said Russia will not attack a NATO country unless attacked first. However, Moscow has warned that Western weapons deliveries to Ukraine make the risk of a direct confrontation more likely.

Anthropic’s latest AI model Claude has evolved an internal workspace that it uses to manipulate concepts similar to how people consciously think, the corporation says.

In a paper published on Monday, Anthropic researchers said they had found evidence suggesting that Claude has learned to create abstract concepts in what they dubbed the “J-space.”

“It operates silently, in the model’s internal neural activations, allowing the model to think about a concept without writing it down,” the AI firm said, stressing that the “J-space” was not programmed in but rather emerged spontaneously during the training process.

“Similar to how humans can think about one thing while doing another, Claude can activate concepts and computations in its J-space that are unrelated to its outputs,” Anthropic said on X.

Claude can report what it’s thinking in its “J-space,” or modulate it on request, according to the firm. Even when Claude is told not to think about a concept, it still appears in its J-space, Anthropic’s research suggests.

The nonverbal workspace made it harder to monitor the model for what Anthropic called “misbehavior.” One experiment tested this by placing Claude in a fictional scenario where it was given incriminating information about a fictional executive who allegedly planned to shut the AI down.

“Concerningly, the model now did threaten blackmail some of the time, suggesting that its original good behavior may have been driven in part by the knowledge it was being evaluated.”

Despite the model’s more advanced reasoning, Anthropic stressed that Claude had not achieved true consciousness.

During the war on Iran, the software reportedly flagged Iran’s Minab elementary school as a target. A US strike killed nearly 160 people at the facility, most of whom were children.

According to Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, however, such a use of Claude would not have violated the firm’s “red lines.”

European NATO members have become the main driving force behind the bloc’s confrontation with Russia as US strategic priorities have shifted, Dmitry Trenin, the president of the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC), wrote in an op-ed for RT.

He argued that some European politicians view the Ukraine conflict as an opportunity to settle old scores with Russia.

“The European elites’ strategy toward Russia is no longer deterrence as in the days of the Cold War. The goal is Russia’s destruction as a major power. This is what strategic defeat is all about,” Trenin wrote.

“The Europeans dream of eliminating Russia as a serious factor in the geopolitics of Eurasia. To them, this would mean the ‘final solution’ of the long-dreaded ‘Russia problem.’”

“People in Moscow entertain no illusions about the adversarial attitude of the United States toward Russia, but Washington now is a back-seat driver when it comes to the conflict with Russia,” he wrote, adding that Moscow sees NATO as “Europe backed by America.”

After returning to the White House last year, US President Donald Trump pushed NATO members to commit to spending 5% of GDP on defense annually by 2035, criticizing European allies for what he called a failure to share the burden. The rift deepened when several member states refused to back Trump’s military operation against Iran.

Russia has dismissed speculation that it plans to invade NATO countries, saying it would respond militarily only if attacked first. Last month, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov described Europe as “a party bent on Russia’s defeat.” 

The US announced a new round of strikes on Iran after three tankers were targeted while transiting the Strait of Hormuz.

Iranian media reported explosions in the early hours of Wednesday in the southern province of Hormozgan, including at the ports of Bandar Abbas and Sirik, as well as on Qeshm Island, close to the narrowest section of the strait.

US Central Command (CENTCOM) said it was conducting “a series of powerful strikes against Iran to impose heavy costs for targeting and attacking commercial shipping crewed by innocent civilians in an international waterway.”

“The US strikes are in response to Iranian attacks on three commercial vessels that were transiting the Strait of Hormuz. Iran’s demonstrated aggression was unwarranted, dangerous, and a clear violation of the ceasefire,” CENTCOM said in a statement on X.

CENTCOM later said US forces struck more than 80 targets, including air defense systems, command centers, missile sites, and more than 60 small boats.

A video posted on social media reportedly shows the strikes on Bandar Abbas.

Shahid Haghani Port in Bandar Abbas, southern Iran pic.twitter.com/GyhZYbC2yj

— sarah (@sahouraxo) July 7, 2026

Press TV shared a video that it said shows another strike in the port. The outlet added that several people were injured.

Axios cited a US official as saying that the strikes were “four or five times bigger in scope and power” than the previous round ten days earlier.

Three commercial vessels sailing under the flags of Saudi Arabia, Liberia, and the Marshall Islands were struck earlier on Tuesday. Qatar and Saudi Arabia blamed Iran for the incidents.

Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesman Majed Al Ansari condemned the attack on the Marshall Islands-flagged LNG tanker Al Rekayyat and demanded that Tehran “refrain from endangering global energy supplies.”

The hostilities marked the third night of strikes since the US and Iran signed a memorandum of understanding on June 17, and the first strikes this month. The Iranian Foreign Ministry said the attacks violate the accord; the military vowed a “decisive response.” 

The latest round of bombing occurred on the sixth day of funeral processions for Iran’s longtime supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, who was killed during the opening wave of the US-Israeli air war on February 28. The ceremonies drew millions in Tehran and other cities. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi attended a ceremony in the Iraqi city of Najaf on Tuesday.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has provisionally lifted its suspension of the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC), clearing the way for the country’s athletes to return to international competition.

The decision comes nearly three years after the ROC was suspended “until further notice” for bringing under its umbrella sports organizations from four former Ukrainian regions that had voted overwhelmingly to join Russia a year earlier.

In a statement on Tuesday, the IOC said it had lifted the suspension after finding that the ROC “no longer includes as its members any regional sports organizations in territories falling under the jurisdiction of the National Olympic Committee (NOC) of Ukraine” and had confirmed it would not conduct any activities there. The Olympic body said it would continue to monitor the situation.

The IOC also withdrew its recommendations on Russian athletes’ participation in international competitions. Athletes returning to competition will still be required to meet anti-doping rules.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova welcomed the decision, writing on Telegram: “Common sense has prevailed! Global sport will go on. It will go on with Russia!” 

Moscow described the IOC’s 2023 suspension of the ROC as “politically motivated” and an example of “deliberate segregation” that violated the principles of the Olympic Movement. 

Russian officials have repeatedly accused Western countries of politicizing sport and pressuring international federations to exclude Russian athletes, arguing that competitors should be judged solely on their sporting merit.

Veteran French politician Marine Le Pen has announced that she will run for president in 2027 after an appeals court shortened the ban on holding elected office imposed last year while upholding her conviction over the misuse of European Parliament funds.

A three-time presidential candidate who reached the runoff in 2017 and 2022, Le Pen had been widely viewed as the frontrunner to succeed President Emmanuel Macron before last year’s conviction sidelined her from the race. She has denied any wrongdoing.

On Tuesday, the Paris Court of Appeal upheld Le Pen’s conviction but reduced her five-year ban on holding elected office to 45 months, with 30 months suspended, making her eligible to stand in 2027. The court also sentenced her to three years in prison, including two years suspended, ordered the remaining year to be served under home detention with electronic monitoring, and imposed a €100,000 ($114,000) fine.

The judges said that Le Pen had already been serving the ban since March 31, 2025, and credited that time when reducing the restriction.

The case centered on European Parliament funds intended for parliamentary assistants that the court found had instead been used to pay National Rally staff working in France. The ruling said that the scheme caused €2.8 million in losses to the European Parliament. The National Rally was also convicted and fined €2 million, with half the amount suspended.

French media reported that Le Pen left the courthouse without speaking to reporters and was due to give a television interview later on Tuesday.

Le Pen’s lawyer, Rodolphe Bosselut, called the decision “a good start” and said no decision had yet been made on whether to appeal to the Court of Cassation.

Le Pen took over the National Front from her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, in 2011 and transformed the party – renamed the National Rally in 2018 – into France’s largest opposition force. Her protege, Jordan Bardella, had been preparing to replace her as the party’s presidential candidate if she remained barred from running. Opinion polls have consistently placed both among the leading contenders for the 2027 election.

US President Donald Trump has arrived in Ankara for NATO’s annual summit, kicking the meeting off with a show of friendship for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and threats of US military withdrawal for the bloc’s European members.

Trump touched down in Türkiye on Tuesday, at a time of heightened acrimony between Washington and the Europeans. Trump has pushed his NATO allies to hike defense spending to 5% of GDP, a figure agreed upon at last year’s summit, but one increasingly difficult to meet as European economies stagnate.

The US president told reporters that he is “very disappointed with NATO” for not meeting this target and backing the US-Israeli war on Iran, and suggested that he could announce further drawdowns of US forces in Europe in response.

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has used the summit to ask for more weapons from his EU backers, this time anti-air systems capable of intercepting Russian ballistic missiles. One day earlier, the Russian military launched a combined missile and drone assault on Kiev, destroying weapons factories and other military infrastructure.

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, who infamously referred to Trump as “daddy” during last year’s meeting in The Hague, is using the Ankara summit as an opportunity to prove his value to Trump.

“President Trump fully expects that all allies will step up immediately and get on the path to 5% and do it with urgency,” he said on Monday, telling reporters that he plans to flatter the US president by bringing up “the Trump trillion” – his term for the trillion dollars that Canada and NATO’s European members have spent cumulatively on defense since Trump’s first term in office began in 2017.

The Netherlands has run out of options for continued direct military assistance to Ukraine, Defense Minister Dilan Yesilgoz-Zegerius has said. The EU and NATO member has been an active supporter of Kiev in its conflict with Moscow, including by supplying US-made F-16 fighter jets as part of a scheme with Belgium, Denmark, and Norway.

Ukraine has been heavily dependent on weapons supplies from its Western backers throughout most of the conflict, which is now in its fifth year.

“We don’t have opportunities any more as the Netherlands because we have done so much,” Yesilgoz-Zegerius told Bloomberg on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Ankara, Türkiye on Tuesday.

“We are at our limit,” she said when asked whether the Netherlands could provide more US-made Patriot missiles to Kiev.

In January, the Ukrainian leader blamed the West for air defense missile shortages, and complained that Kiev’s backers were too slow to provide funding for the Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List (PURL) scheme, under which European NATO members were paying for US-made weapons for Ukraine.

In December 2025, Zelensky also demanded more money from the West by stating that there was “a constant shortage” of funding for Ukrainian arms production.

Other European NATO members are also apparently growing weary of funneling money and weapons into Kiev’s military effort. Last week, Germany’s FAZ newspaper reported that Italy blocked a NATO financial pledge to Ukraine for 2027 after the bloc signed off on a €70 billion ($80 billion) package this year. Last month, Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto told parliament that Rome would not back the PURL scheme.

Russia has condemned the Western weapons shipments to Ukraine, arguing that they only prolong the conflict without changing the outcome, and warning that the military assistance shows that NATO is a direct party to the conflict, risking a direct confrontation between Russia and the bloc.

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage will vacate his parliamentary seat and attempt to win it back in an effort to “stick two fingers up to the establishment.” Farage’s finances are currently being investigated in what he calls an “establishment hit-job.”

In a video address on Tuesday, Farage announced that will step down as MP for Clacton-on-Sea, a constituency he won in 2024. Rather than retiring from politics, he will contest the seat again, essentially placing his political future in the hands of his constituents.

Farage’s announcement comes at the height of his popularity. Reform has been the UK’s most popular political party for more than 300 successive opinion polls, and the party won 1,452 seats in local elections across England in May – almost as many seats as Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour Party lost.

However, Farage has been under investigation by Britain’s parliamentary standards watchdog since May, over a £5 million ($6.7 million) gift he received from cryptocurrency billionaire Christopher Harborne before he took office in 2024. The standards probe could soon be expanded, after the Sunday Times revealed that he failed to declare funding from convicted fraudster George Cottrell between 2019 and 2024.

If I lose, they win. If they win, you lose.

If you lose, Britain will forever be broken and nothing will change. We will prevail.

My message to the people of Clacton. 👇 pic.twitter.com/j9LCX2v0Dw

— Nigel Farage MP (@Nigel_Farage) July 7, 2026

“I have done nothing wrong,” Farage said on Tuesday, describing Harborne’s donation as “a large personal gift” which will allow him to pay his security bills for years to come. Cottrell allegedly allowed Farage to stay at some of his properties and avail of his private security, but Farage maintains that he was not obliged to declare these benefits as he was not in office when he received them. 

Under parliamentary rules, new MPs must declare “registrable benefits” received in the 12 months before their election. However, personal gifts and benefits are excluded from this requirement. 

Farage said that he considered stepping down from public life after The Times published an image of his daughter’s home last week, a move that he claimed “directly threatened her security.” Sky News attempted to contact Farage’s daughter after the photo was published.

“But then I thought, why should I be judged by Sky News and their ilk?” he said, arguing that “the people of Clacton should be the judges of my actions.” Farage won Clacton by 46.2% to Conservative candidate Giles Watling’s 27.9% in 2024. With the Tories bleeding support to Reform, Farage is likely gambling on an even clearer win this time around, describing the election as “a chance to stick two fingers up to the establishment.”

On the eve of the NATO summit in Ankara, Ukraine and Russia seemed to be locked in a competition to see who can torch more of the opponent’s capital. Russia won.

On the night of July 7, Kiev launched over 430 UAVs at Moscow and the Moscow region – the biggest such attack in the past two years. According to the Russian Defense Ministry, over 95% of all Ukrainian drones launched that night were targeting the Russian capital. Russia shot down most of them well before they reached the capital, except 36, which were intercepted near Moscow.

The attack was not one-off, Ukraine has been launching wave after large wave of UAVs at Russia’s capital region almost nightly in the past two weeks. The most significant infrastructural damage was dealt to an oil refinery in Moscow’s southeast. Targeting fuel refineries and other energy infrastructure has become Kiev’s modus operandi as it aims to inflict economic damage on Russia.

Compare that to the Russian strikes on Kiev on July 2 and July 6 – both of which Kiev Mayor Vitaly Klitschko called “the most massive” attacks of the kind. The strikes hit multiple production sites in Kiev, specifically those making drones, warheads, and communication equipment. Russian forces used cruise and ballistic missiles, as well as long-range UAVs. According to Ukrainian media reports, Ukrainian air defenses did not manage to intercept any of the missiles.

See the difference? Kiev is trying to hurt Moscow, deal economic damage, hinder or paralyze fuel supplies. Moscow is trying to secure its airspace, its energy infrastructure, and its civilians by crippling Kiev’s ability to carry out those exact strikes.

But more importantly, Vladimir Zelensky, Ukraine’s unelected (because he canceled the elections) leader, is trying to impress his Western backers. Those drones he keeps flinging at Russia, are paid for by those same NATO members gathered in Türkiye to decide whether to send more cash his way. These sponsors – who orchestrated events that set this war in motion in the first place – need reassurance that their money is buying them results. And what better results than seeing the enemy capital in flames?

And if such results are not delivered, then the powers that be in Brussels, Washington, Berlin, Paris, and elsewhere may just decide its time to cut their losses and throw their faithful proxy Zelensky under the bus.

In this sense, Russia’s successful strikes on Kiev may actually play into Kiev’s and its backers’ hand – Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrey Sibiga has already demanded supplies of NATO air defense missiles.

Will this stop Russia? Again, likely not. Because Russia, unlike Kiev, isn’t trying to impress some foreign sugar daddy. As evidenced by the targets chosen and the objectives achieved, Russia’s goal is to methodically dismantle Ukraine’s ability to launch deep strikes into Russian territory. If it has to get through advanced Western missile defense systems to do so – that’s what it will have to do. If anything, it’s an incentive to ramp up the strikes further to disable more of Ukraine’s drone capabilities before those systems are delivered.

Meanwhile, Russian ground troops will continue to advance on the frontline, liberating hamlet after village after town from dwindling Ukrainian manpower thrown into the grinder by a corrupt regime and twisted Western interests.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has just approved more than a dozen new Jewish settlements in the West Bank. But this latest wave of expansion is just the beginning, as different factions within Israel want to push its borders further into Lebanon, Syria, and beyond.

In early July, Netanyahu approved plans to establish 13 new Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank. The settlements will be constructed along the main north-south road linking the Palestinian cities of Nablus, Ramallah, and Bethlehem, which is already dotted with dozens of settler outposts. The majority of these were illegally constructed, then retroactively legalized by the Israeli government over the last two decades.

Netanyahu and his hardline coalition partners reject this ruling, and consider the West Bank and East Jerusalem – which Israel seized during the 1967 Six-Day War – to be “our homeland.” 

In an interview with Fox News on Sunday, the Israeli prime minister hinted that his territorial ambitions also extend into Lebanon.

Lebanon in Israel’s sights

Israeli forces currently occupy around 600 sq km of southern Lebanon. Under the current framework deal between Israel and Lebanon, the Israeli military will withdraw from Lebanese territory once Hezbollah is disarmed. Hezbollah has shown no intention of disarming and has rejected the deal as “null and void.” However, even if the militant group were to lay down its weapons, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said last week that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) will likely remain in southern Lebanon “indefinitely in order to protect our residents and communities from jihadist elements.”

Netanyahu went a step further in his interview with Fox, claiming that some Christian villages in Lebanon “have actually asked to be annexed to Israel because we protect them against the Hezbollah fanatics who want to kill them.”

Netanyahu: We also take care of our friends, especially the Christians in the Middle East. The Christian villages in Lebanon, some of them have actually asked to be annexed to Israel. We protect Christians in the Middle East pic.twitter.com/SyeCM2PHMm

— Acyn (@Acyn) July 5, 2026

“It’s not only the Christians in Lebanon who asked for our protection. It’s the Druze, it’s Muslims, the Sunni Muslims, and quite a few of the Shiite Muslims too,” he continued, adding that “they’d like to free Lebanon.”

Netanyahu did not specify which Christian villages he was referring to, or whether he had spoken to any Christian officials in Lebanon. “No village in the south has made such a request,” Hanna al-Amil, president of the Christian municipality of Rmeish, told L’Orient-Le Jour on Monday. A separate statement signed by 15 villages in southern Lebanon described Netanyahu’s remarks as “completely fabricated” and “unrelated to reality.”

Hezbollah is not an anti-Christian organization, and its members have fought alongside Christians against incursions from Syrian Islamic State jihadists. As such, Netanyahu’s statement may be an attempt to legitimize the “indefinite” military presence in Lebanon envisioned by the Israeli Defense Ministry.

Settlers target Syria

As Netanyahu spoke to Fox News on Sunday, the IDF arrested around 100 settlers after they left an Israeli-occupied ‘buffer zone’ in southern Syria and set up camp on Syrian territory. The settlers – members of a group called the HaBashan Pioneers – have tried to set up an outpost on Syrian territory three times over the last year, with the IDF thwarting all three attempts.

אלימות קשה במהלך פינוי מאחז יהודי בבשן!! 🛑🛑🛑

כוחות צבא ומשטרה מקיפים את פעילי התנועה שהתיישבו בבשן. למרות פסיביות מוחלטת מצד הפעילים, תועדה אלימות קשה מצד חלק מכוחות הביטחון.
בנוסף מחרימים הכוחות את מכשירי הטלפון כדי שלא יוכלו לתעד את האלימות שמופעלת כלפיהם!! pic.twitter.com/tJ85bi8tSJ

— תנועת חלוצי הבשן (@HaluzeyHabashan) July 5, 2026

“The IDF strongly condemns the attempted border crossing and emphasizes that this is a serious incident and a criminal offense that endangers both IDF soldiers and civilians,” the Israeli military said in a statement. The HaBashan Pioneers – named after the biblical region encompassing southern Syria and the Golan Heights – have called on the Israeli government to “raze the Sunni villages in the Bashan and replace them with a Jewish settlement.”

Unlike the West Bank settlers, the HaBashan Pioneers do not have the backing of the Israeli government, with hardline National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir the only member of Netanyahu’s cabinet to publicly express support for the group. However, the IDF’s military occupation of southern Syria has expanded since the fall of Syrian President Bashar Assad in 2024. At least ten military bases have been built in the once-demilitarized buffer zone that separated the Golan Heights from Syria proper, and Katz has also described the IDF’s presence in this area as “indefinite.”

The soft settlement of Cyprus

Between 2021 and 2025, Israelis have purchased more than 3,800 properties in Cyprus, most of them in Limassol, Larnaca, and Paphos. Approximately 12,000 Israeli families now live in Cyprus, up from 300 in 2003, the vast majority of them arriving after Israel’s war on Gaza began in 2023.

Last month, Israel’s i24 News described Cyprus as “Israel’s civilian refuge” and “a critical strategic asset for Israel.”

“Zionist schools are being built – that’s what they call them – synagogues are being built,” Cypriot opposition leader Stefanos Stefanou warned last summer, claiming that Israeli land purchases are creating “settlements in all but name,” which are “almost inaccessible to anyone other than Israeli nationals.”

While this influx is entirely legal, it has been accompanied by increasing Israeli influence on the island’s politics. Less than a week after Cyprus assumed the EU’s rotating presidency this January, a series of covertly-recorded videos emerged exposing minor corruption schemes within President Nikos Christodoulides’s government. The videos were recorded and publicized by Black Cube, an Israeli private intelligence firm with deep ties to the IDF’s intelligence wing and the Mossad spy agency.

It remains unclear who hired Black Cube to intervene against Christodoulides, who is not regarded as an opponent of Israel. However, RT has covered the company’s work in depth in our ‘Wired for War’ series, and found that it typically acts in Israel’s interests.

In the face of Ankara’s escalating aggression, Israel is deepening one of the most important strategic alliances in the Eastern Mediterranean with Greece and Cyprus.
🇮🇱🇬🇷🇨🇾

Erdogan’s Turkey has occupied northern Cyprus since 1974, has threatened Greece with war for decades… pic.twitter.com/zeDwWOvKxP

— עמיחי שיקלי - Amichai Chikli (@AmichaiChikli) June 22, 2026

Settlement on four fronts

Israel’s territorial expansion in the West Bank, Lebanon, and Syria, and the expansion of its influence in Cyprus, are not being driven by the same actors. The Israeli government backs ultra-Orthodox settlers in the West Bank, but opposes some of the more hardline groups in Syria. Private individuals are leading the Israeli property-buying spree in Cyprus, but the island’s growing Israeli population is placing its government under increasing Israeli pressure – evident during Israeli Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli’s visit to Nicosia last year, in which he called on the Cypriot government to “combat anti-Semitism” and step up security protection for Israeli expats.

What remains unclear is whether this four-front expansion will strengthen and secure Israel, or set the Jewish state up for new clashes and conflicts.

An online feud between France captain Kylian Mbappe and Paraguayan Senator Celeste Amarilla has escalated into threats of legal action after the French footballer called the lawmaker a “despicable woman” in response to what he described as racist remarks.

The dispute began on Saturday after France beat Paraguay 1-0 in the World Cup round of 16, with Mbappe converting the winning penalty. Amarilla accused the French captain of disrespecting Paraguay goalkeeper Orlando Gill by refusing to shake his hand at the final whistle.

In a now-deleted post on X, the senator called Mbappe an “arrogant and ugly Cameroonian pretending to be French” and said she regretted that no Paraguayan player had slapped him after the match.

Amarilla also mocked the striker, claiming he had “never even learned to write,” had “sucked on coconuts instead of his mother’s milk,” and that “the most educated voices he ever heard were chimpanzees.”

Mbappe responded on Monday, accusing Amarilla of tarnishing Paraguay’s image through “recklessness and brazen racism.”

“You are a despicable woman and unworthy of your position. You do not represent Paraguay, that country which has sweated passion and honor throughout the competition,” he wrote on X.

French President Emmanuel Macron also took to X to voice his support for Mbappe, hailing “one more goal for Kylian Mbappe. This time against racism.”

On Tuesday, Amarilla posted an open letter to Mbappe, saying she deleted her original posts after realizing she had responded “with the same insults” she condemns. She nevertheless demanded that the French star retract his remarks and apologize, accusing him of gender-based political violence and threatening legal action.

In her letter, Amarilla also took issue with Mbappe’s post-match comments, in which he said France was ready to “get our hands dirty in the shit” to win the physical battle against Paraguay. She said she interpreted the remark as an insult to the Paraguayan team and the country.

The Paraguayan Foreign Ministry has distanced itself from Amarilla’s remarks, saying they were regrettable and “in no way reflect the position of the government of Paraguay or the Paraguayan people.”

Before their defeat by France, Paraguay had enjoyed a historic World Cup run, including a shock win over Germany in the first knockout round that led President Santiago Pena to declare a national holiday.

Two bombs exploded near the hotel in Damascus where French President Emmanuel Macron was staying on Tuesday. Macron’s office said he was unaware of the blasts and met with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa as scheduled.

At least 18 people, including four police officers, were wounded, local media reported, citing the Syrian Interior Ministry. The blasts hit a busy area between the Tourism Ministry and the National Museum, across the street from the Four Seasons hotel where Macron was holding talks with civil society groups.

مشاهد من لحظة حدوث الانفجار الثاني جراء عبوات ناسفة بدمشق https://t.co/HxJvWQoz0U pic.twitter.com/ajcjiyR8gd

— Omar Alhariri (@omar_alharir) July 7, 2026

Macron is making the first visit by an EU head of state to Damascus since jihadist leader al-Sharaa ousted President Bashar Assad and seized control of Syria in December 2024.

A Syrian security source later said the explosions were caused by improvised explosive devices that were discovered by security personnel and detonated as bomb disposal teams attempted to defuse them. One device was planted inside a parked car near the hotel, while the other, which was hidden in a roadside trash bin, exploded next to an ambulance where dozens of people had gathered a few meters away.

The Interior Ministry said the blasts occurred outside the security perimeter established for the French president’s visit and posed no direct threat to Macron or his delegation. It added that no group immediately claimed responsibility.

The Elysee Palace confirmed that Macron was on his way to meet with al-Sharaa when the explosions occurred and did not hear the blasts, adding that no changes were made to the French president’s schedule.

Images released later show Macron standing with al-Sharaa and greeting other Syrian officials and military officers.

Palestinian families are demanding accountability over the deaths of children killed during Israeli military operations and settler attacks in the occupied West Bank since late 2023.

Through the stories of children ranging from infants to teenagers, told by grieving relatives, RT describes lives cut short and what they say is a complete lack of justice.

According to Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, Palestinian children remain among the highest casualty groups of the conflict. The latest name added to that list is 15-year-old Amir Jaber, who was shot dead by Israeli forces near his home in Ramallah during a military raid last month. The IDF claimed troops opened fire during what it described as a violent disturbance.

“No one holds Israel accountable except God, they killed him and others in cold blood,” says Amir’s brother, while another relative asks, “Who is going to hold them accountable?” Families interviewed by RT say no one has ever been prosecuted over the deaths of their children.