Half-truths and hypocrisy: GPS-jammed Ursula von der Leyen speaks again
From “Europe must fight” to drones sold as peace and a tale of stolen children debunked, the EU president’s state of the union was heavy on rhetoric and light on reality.....

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen delivered her annual state of the union speech in Brussels on Wednesday. It was a performance full of urgency and sweeping rhetoric – Europe’s “fight,”an “independence moment,” and even plans to turn frozen Russian assets into weapons for Ukraine.

But behind the soundbites, her vision is riddled with contradictions.

Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s de facto foreign minister (and former prime minister of Estonia), is unusually, grotesquely incompetent, even for an unelected EU apparatchik.

Like former German Foreign Minister Annalena “360 Degrees” Baerbock – now instagraming like an excited upper-class teenager from her ill-begotten UN sinecure in New York – Kallas also displays an enormous capacity for being pleased with herself. She appears never happier than when holding a mic to her own platitudes, presented in a mortifyingly basic form of very labored English, while being obsequiously soft-balled by a fawning interviewer.

Abstract- If the Soviet Union was the “Evil Empire” of the 1980s, it seems in the modern era the roles have switched and now the US/West is the Evil Empire, seeking to impose itself and stamp out foreign cultures and subjugate entire countries.

This week, Israel killed my cousin Mohammed, a young and cheerful lawyer, along with his wife Myriam and their only seven-day-old baby, Jaber.

Words fail me as I try to pick up the phone to mourn my caring and patient auntie, who is now displaced, starved, and left alone, having to find medical care for two of her grandchildren who have sustained burns due to Israeli missiles. How do we mourn unceasing wounds and waves of loss, even when mourning has become a privilege?

Ayman Qwaider

The Russian military has suggested consultations with its Polish counterparts, after being accused by Warsaw of violating the country’s airspace with drones. The Defense Ministry in Moscow neither confirmed nor denied such violations, but implied that whatever aircraft crossed the border were not launched from Russia.

Multiple Western officials have already accused Moscow of staging a reckless provocation and hailed NATO’s joint response.

Russia and Ukraine have been conducting long-range drone and missile strikes against each other’s territory.

1) What the Russian MOD says

  The Russian ministry’s statement stressed that during its overnight operations, “no targets were planned for strikes in the Polish territory,” according to a statement.

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul tore into Vice President JD Vance's defense of the U.S. military's strike on an alleged drug vessel leaving Venezuela.

And he cited a long-loved literary classic to prove his point.

France faces a day of disruption Wednesday as the "Block Everything" protests, called by a loose left-wing coalition, threaten to obstruct transport and other services. The protests come as Sébastien Lecornu is set to take the reins as France’s new prime minister amid a gridlocked National Assembly. Follow our live coverage of the day's events as they unfold.

SNCF railway operator expects disruptions
France’s state-owned SNCF railway operator expects disruptions particularly on the TER regional and Intercités services, but not on the high-speed TGV network.

This morning SNCF said “two malicious acts” overnight were disrupting some services in southern France.

Israel has conducted a “precise strike”against the “senior leadership of Hamas,” the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced on Tuesday, shortly after multiple blasts rocked the headquarters of the Palestinian militant group in Doha, Qatar.

The Israeli military said it carried out the operation in coordination with the Shin Bet security agency (ISA). The IDF did not name the exact location targeted in the strike.

“The IDF and ISA conducted a precise strike targeting the senior leadership of the Hamas terrorist organization,” the IDF said in a statement. “Prior to the strike, measures were taken in order to mitigate harm to civilians, including the use of precise munitions and additional intelligence.”

For the past decade, the _most geostrategic_ country in Southeast Asia and the world’s third-largest democracy has been wooed by Washington and Beijing.

Now China has won an engagement. No pre-nup because treaties are banned under the Indonesian Constitution, through everything bar a US divorce decree.

Duncan Graham

Japan’s Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba on Sunday announced that he will resign after less than a year in office. Ishiba’s tenure, which began last October, has been marked by significant electoral setbacks for his governing coalition.

Ishiba’s Liberal Democratic Party lost its coalition majority in the upper house of Japan’s legislature in a July election. That electoral defeat followed the coalition losing its majority in the lower house last October, one month after a leadership election that Ishiba narrowly won.

The US market has been under heavy pressure since early 2023, when a severe outbreak of avian influenza struck major poultry regions, forcing mass culling and reducing domestic production. The result was a sharp decline in output and soaring retail prices, making eggs one of the most inflation-sensitive products in the American diet.

Despite some price stabilization later in the year, eggs in July still cost 16.4 percent more than a year earlier, signaling an incomplete recovery and ongoing shortages.

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and senior Pentagon officials made an unannounced visit to Puerto Rico on Monday. The Department of War has deployed a significant military force to the Caribbean as it prepares for more strikes against alleged Venezuelan cartels. 

Governor of Puerto Rico Jennifer Gonzalez praised Hegseth for recognizing the American colony’s military value. “Honored to welcome Secretary of War Pete Hegseth along with General Dan Caine, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to Puerto Rico,” she wrote on X. 

The post continued, “We thank [President Donald] Trump and his Administration for recognizing the strategic value Puerto Rico has to the national security of the United States and the fight against drug cartels in our hemisphere, perpetuated by narco-dictator Nicolas Maduro.”

The Russian Armed Forces outmatch Kiev’s army in both manpower and equipment, Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Aleksandr Syrsky has said.

His remarks come after months of Ukrainian setbacks on the front lines and mounting struggles to replenish the ranks, with the country’s leader, Vladimir Zelensky, accused of dragging out peace efforts by insisting on Western-backed security guarantees.

In a Telegram post on Monday outlining the situation on the front line, Syrsky said August was a difficult month for Ukraine, acknowledging that Russian troops prevailed in all key areas.

“August 2025 was a month of great trials for our troops,” Syrsky wrote. “ The enemy has a three-fold advantage in troops and means, and in the main areas of concentration of their forces outnumber us four to six times.”

In the midst of France's political crisis, low trust in politics and politicians is creating fertile ground for fake news stories to spread. An anti-government campaign calling for a nationwide shutdown on September 10 is being pushed and manipulated by bots, likely controlled by a foreign entity. We take a closer look in this edition of Truth or Fake.

https://www.france24.com/en/tv-shows/truth-or-fake/20250908-how-flames-of-french-political-crisis-are-being-fanned-by-foreign-bot-networks

================

A Holocaust Museum in Los Angeles has deleted a social media post featuring a slogan long associated with the Holocaust after some people claimed it alluded to the war in Gaza.

The message, shared with the Holocaust Museum Los Angeles’ 24,000 Instagram followers over the weekend, showed a graphic of hands and forearms of different skin tones – including one with a Holocaust tattoo – linked in a circle. Its caption read “‘Never Again’ can’t only mean never again for Jews.” 

While some initially praised the post as an acknowledgment of Palestinian suffering, it quickly drew backlash from Jewish groups, prompting its removal.

The museum later said the post was part of a pre-planned campaign “intended to promote inclusivity and community,” not “a political statement reflecting the ongoing situation in the Middle East.”