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

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

The EU can’t fix Europe – but it can fund Kiev forever

While railways stall, hospitals fail and scandals spread, Brussels still finds endless billions for its pet proxy war

The Federal Court has found pro-Israel activist Ofir Birenbaum breached his Cairo Takeaway settlement deed. Stephanie Tranand Wendy Bacon report. 

The Federal Court has found pro-Israel activist Ofir Birenbaum breached the confidential settlement that resolved his high-profile defamation dispute with Sydney restaurant Cairo Takeaway after he and his solicitor made public statements portraying the outcome as a victory.

In a judgment delivered on Tuesday, Justice Bromwich declared that Birenbaum breached the settlement deed by publishing statements on social media and by statements made on his behalf by his solicitor, Rebekah Giles. 

The provisional surrender document signed by Donald Trump appeared to represent a triumph for Iran and indeed for the world; but neither the U.S.A. nor Israel has the slightest sense of honour and they cannot be trusted to negotiate in good faith.

Iran knows this – after all, the U.S.A. twice attacked Iran actually during peace negotiations, on each occasion killing key Iranian negotiators.

To understand the American position, it is important to realise two key points:

The machine saw what five millennia of human eyes had missed.

In February 2026, a joint team from the University of Birmingham and the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich deployed a new synthetic-aperture radar array beneath the Stonehenge monument, feeding raw geophysical data into a neural network trained on archaeological pattern recognition.

Stonehenge AI Scan: Has Artificial Intelligence Finally Solved the 5,000-Year Mystery?

BY DANIEL MERCER

Electric vehicles will not save the planet on their own but anti-EV rhetoric conveniently ignores the problems caused by petrol and diesel vehicles.

A recent article in The Australian warns that electric vehicles may ‘feel right for the wealthy’ but will ‘destroy our planet’. The script is familiar: EVs require minerals; their interiors contain plastic; some manufacturing uses coal-fired electricity; China makes many of them; Pauline Hanson mentioned it. Case closed. It manages to sound environmentally concerned, while showing little interest in environmental comparison.

Fred Zhang

One hundred four degrees Fahrenheit in Paris, a new record? That is what I read Thursday. Paris, as I figured out while studying there decades ago and freezing through the dark winters, is latitudinally further north (roughly 48.8°N) than Nova Scotia (43.5°N – 47°N).

The heat wave of all heat waves has Europeans in a state of shock and panic. There are “red alerts” across the Continent. In the foothills of the Alps temperatures are running into the mid–90s. The Swiss… how to put it?… do not know quite what to do when it is in the mid–90s.

PATRICK LAWRENCE: Heat Waves, Brain Waves

With people jumping into the Canal Saint–Martin in 100°–plus temperatures in Paris, it’s a good time to recall Paul Valéry and his regrets at the mental and spiritual consequences of Europe’s Great War on itself.

The Sanders, Corbyn, Ardern and Shorten moments were missed chances to renew social democracy through structural reform, leaving genuine economic grievances to be harvested by the populist right.

Every generation offers political moments that, in retrospect, appear as forks in the road. In the past decade, four such moments emerged across the English-speaking democracies: the rise of Bernie Sanders in the United States, Jeremy Corbyn in Britain, Jacinda Ardern in New Zealand and Bill Shorten in Australia. Each was different in ideology, personality and political circumstance. Yet together they represented something larger: opportunities to reverse the long retreat of social democracy from its founding purpose.

Former SBS journalist Mary Kostakidis was back in court on Monday, defending herself against racial discrimination claims by the Zionist Federation of Australia. Stephanie Tran with the update.

As the Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion began its third hearing block, two of Australia’s highest-profile legal disputes arising from criticism of Israel returned to the Federal Court on Monday.

WhatsApp battle. Zionist action v Mary Kostakidis drags through discovery

by Stephanie Tran

In separate hearings, the court dealt with interlocutory disputes in proceedings brought by Zionist complainants against veteran journalist and former SBS news presenter Mary Kostakidis and University of Sydney academics Nick Riemer and John Keane.

A monument will be erected in Kiev honoring Ivan Mazepa, a 17th-century Cossack military commander who was infamous for switching sides between major powers seeking regional dominance in Eastern Europe, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has said.

Zelensky announced the project on Sunday at a ceremony to unveil a bust of Mazepa at the Kiev-Pechersk Monastery. He claimed that Russia has “smeared” Mazepa as a traitor and insisted that he was an outstanding statesman.

Mazepa led the Cossack Hetmanate, an autonomous entity that split from the Catholic Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth amid economic exploitation and religious persecution of its Orthodox Christian population.

A leak has revealed new details about Dialog, a secret society started by billionaire Palantir cofounder Peter Thiel — and man, does it sound weird.

With the details of the signed Memorandum of Understanding still unclear, it does appear, for all intents and purposes, that the United States has lost the war with Iran. That means Pete Hegseth, the first Secretary of War, has lost a war.

As if the US couldn’t look more foolish, the MoU gives the US nothing it wanted when it comes to the military objectives it was pursuing in Iran.

The First Secretary of War Loses A War

MAC SLAVOSH 

President Donald Trump’s Energy Secretary has downplayed the threat of rising temperatures at a fossil fuel industry-funded event in London, even as millions in the UK, France, Spain, and Italy endure a deadly record-breaking heatwave.

Trump’s Energy Secretary Says ‘Cold Is Larger Killer’ During Record European Heatwave

Chris Wright, a former oil and gas executive, urged the UK to embrace fossil fuels at right-wing Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference in London.

By Adam Barnett

The United States expanded its Entity List to slow China's technological rise, expecting restrictions to weaken Chinese semiconductor ambitions. But what if those sanctions ended up accelerating something else entirely?

This [AI] video explores how export controls, blacklists, and chip restrictions may have unintentionally created demand for hundreds of Chinese suppliers that previously struggled to compete against established foreign companies.

From SMIC and YMTC to semiconductor chemicals, specialty materials, industrial equipment, and localization efforts backed by China's Big Fund, we examine whether Washington's strategy is preserving America's technological lead or encouraging China to build a more resilient industrial ecosystem.

Did America successfully slow China's progress?

Or did it simply show Beijing exactly which industries needed to be developed first?

As the EU flushes its first $3.7 billion tranche from a roughly $105 billion set to be funneled over the next two years to Ukraine, Russian Special Envoy Kirill Dmitriev offers up the hard math.

This EU “generosity” announced by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen - along with the over $234 billion already EU-provided to Ukraine - has European pensioners tightening their belts, workers struggling with energy bills, and industries bleeding out, the CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund points out on X.

As Dmitriev neatly pointed out: add the ~$3.5 trillion EU self-inflicted wound from rejecting Russian gas, and suddenly every EU household is down minus roughly $19,300.

But war hawk Ursula gets her to do her victory lap.