Mary Kostakidis stood with Julian Assange when others stayed silent. After two years of legal action over her own speech, thousands of Australians returned that solidarity when she needed it.

Gabriel Shipton

I have known Mary Kostakidis for years. We met through the campaign to free my brother Julian Assange.

Mary supported Julian when much of the media had turned against him. During the years when he was isolated and smeared, many journalists who had built stories and careers on his work kept their distance. Mary stood beside him.

The latest SCO and BRICS summits offer a glimpse of a world no longer organized around a single center of gravity. As governments from Asia, Africa, Latin America, and elsewhere seek greater room to maneuver, the old architecture of global governance is under pressure – not necessarily because it has become irrelevant, but because the distribution of power around it has changed.

That is the backdrop against which China’s Global Governance Initiative, or GGI, enters its second year.

When President Xi Jinping unveiled the initiative at the SCO Plus meeting in Tianjin on September 1, 2025, it could easily have been dismissed as another diplomatic cliché. A year on, and China has begun translating the GGI into institutions dealing with mediation, data, and artificial intelligence, while embedding its principles in its longer-term economic and diplomatic planning.

An empire is perhaps the most expensive indulgence that even the most powerful nations can afford only for a limited time. Arguments that empires are profitable are largely unconvincing and while they may enrich a narrow section of the elite, and perhaps do so spectacularly, it’s rarely for very long, and for everyone else, empire eventually means costs.

Why the world’s great powers are thinking about empire again

From Britain and the USSR to Trump’s America, the cost of imperial expansion raises a lasting question: Can great nations be secure without it?

By Timofey Bordachev

Berlin has officially blamed a murky drone incident at the Leipzig-Halle airport on Moscow. However, as unbiased observers agree, the German authorities have not published any actual evidence to back up this accusation. Instead, they have relied on unsubstantiated claims and what seems to be the systematic management of the public mood via leaks and speculation. 

The Fiedler Dare: Germany’s politicians never lie, they say

Berlin’s Moscow accusation rests on credibility Germany’s leaders don’t have

BY Tarik Cyril Amar

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has called for more EU power over security, social control, and militarization, while announcing tighter restrictions on Russia, avoiding Israel, and unilaterally making Canada special, during her sixth state of the union set-piece.

Key calls include:

The United States has weapons deployed in spatial orbit, the US Space Force announced, confirming the existence of such capabilities for the first time.

"The US has on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the Joint Force against hostile adversary action," a US Space Force spokesperson said in a press release. The statement did not provide specifics on the weapons in question.

"Space control encapsulates the mission areas required to contest and control the space domain — employing kinetic and non-kinetic means to affect adversary capabilities," it said, adding that "these capabilities can be employed for offensive and defensive purposes."

A senior Spanish naval officer stationed with NATO in the UK became the subject of a counterintelligence investigation over his relationship with a British woman who was born in Soviet Russia, The Telegraph has reported.

The unnamed officer eventually had his security clearance revoked and was ostracized by fellow military personnel. The couple, who have since separated, both believe they were betrayed by their respective countries over what the woman described as a “rumor” started by partners of other officers at the British base.

Janina White, 49, was born in Soviet Russia, moved to Poland as a child and emigrated to the UK as a teenager, the British newspaper reported on Monday. She holds dual British-Polish citizenship and works as a solicitor in London. According to her public professional profile, she speaks nine languages, including Russian.

Despite its policy confusion, Pauline Hanson’s One Nation is leading the polls. But is the idea of monoculture what their supporters want, asks ethicist Max Jeganathan?

One Nation is now the most popular political party in the country. Its Secret Harbour state by-election victory in WA and another round of national opinion polls confirm that it can turn disaffection into votes. But – like all good cons – there’s plenty they’re not telling you. As an Australian Tamil with an Anglo-Australian wife and mixed-race kids, I see more red flags than I’ve had cold beers or hot curries.

Russia launched two drone strikes on western Ukraine, close to its border with NATO member Poland, Ukrainian and Polish authorities said on Sunday.

One of the drones hit a locomotive of a passenger train at the Yahodyn railway station in the Volyn region, some 2 kilometers (1.24 miles) from the border crossing.

"The monitoring team gave the train crew advanced warning, and thanks to that, no one was injured," Ukrainian railway operator Ukrzaliznytsia said in online post.

The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) provides a highly convenient platform for voicing facts that Western elites hide from the public, Russia's Permanent Representative to the organization, Dmitry Polyansky, told Sputnik.

Russia "will use concrete examples to demonstrate the harmful consequences of the course Western countries continue to pursue toward Russia, including on the Ukraine issue," the envoy pledged.

Ukraine commits war crimes daily — Russian diplomat

Relying on arms supplies from Europe, Zelensky has escalated strikes on Russia’s civilian populated areas, Russian Ambassador-at-Large Rodion Miroshnik says

"Terrorist warfare is the strategy chosen by Zelensky… The targets… pic.twitter.com/rOdhivjJhW

The Republic of Ireland and the UK’s Northern Ireland will eventually be reunified, US President Donald Trump has predicted.

The Republic of Ireland gained independence from Britain in 1922, while six northeastern counties remained part of the UK as Northern Ireland.

Speaking to reporters after a meeting with Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin in Dublin on Saturday, Trump said that he would “love to see [Ireland] unified.”

“I think it would be a great feather… in everybody’s cap if that happened. It’s going to happen eventually. Might as well happen now,” the US president added, suggesting that Martin is the “right man… to get it moving.”

Donald Trump’s promise of a $5,000 “Trump dividend” for every US citizen if Republicans retain control of the US Congress in November’s midterm elections has sparked incredulity and accusations of bribery.

“If the Republicans win, you win with us and you get $5,000,” Trump said during the unprecedented Republican midterm convention in Dallas. “It will be called the Trump dividend.”

Trump promise of $5,000 for US citizens after midterms decried as ‘bribery’

Critics react to bid for Republican votes with incredulity and point to potential $1.2tn cost atop existing national debt

When some of the nation’s best informed business and financial players start describing the current economic outlook as “GFC-like”, it’s time to worry.

For weeks, the concern about the confluence of higher interest rates on government debt, the AI building boom, inflation and the Trump administration’s loose grip on economic reality has been building.

Alarms flashing red as Trump takes US debt to level almost beyond comprehension

BY Shane Wright (SMH)

As one analyst I spoke to recently put it, that concern is now flashing red.

The ghost of Berlin 1939 is haunting Europe.

The present and the past cannot simply be the same, yet the politics and the psychology bear remarkable similarities.

We are entering a new and dangerous era: military logic is increasingly dominant; freedom of thought and media are restricted; public discourse about an inevitability of conflict intensifies, and diplomacy is pushed to the background.

Berlin 1939/Berlin 2026

How can we simultaneously protect the sovereignty of smaller states, such as Ukraine, and the security interests of great powers, such as Russia? asks Uros Lipuscek.

This is the atmosphere today not only in Berlin, but in several European capitals.