German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is seeking to claw back decision-making power from European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday, citing diplomats familiar with the matter.

Merz, increasingly critical of Brussels, wants Berlin to have greater influence over issues directly affecting EU members, according to one of the sources.

He has already opposed von der Leyen’s proposals for new EU taxes and her plan to send peacekeepers to Ukraine, while also clashing with her over a tariff agreement with the US and climate regulations.

“We must now put a stick in the wheels of this machine in Brussels,” Merz told business leaders on Friday, Bloomberg noted.

US President Donald Trump has suggested that denying him the Nobel Peace Prize would amount to an insult to the United States.

Speaking to top military brass in Quantico, Virginia, on Tuesday, Trump said he has repeatedly been overlooked for the award, even though he believes his record qualifies him.

The president pointed to his latest Middle East peace plan, claiming it was the eighth conflict he has helped resolve in as many months.

“We’ll have eight, eight in eight months… Will you get the Nobel Prize? Absolutely not,” he said, before adding, “They’ll give it to some guy that didn’t do a damn thing.”

Israel has been paying influencers for social media posts to improve its image in the US, according to online magazine Responsible Statecraft. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has recently stressed the role of content creators in maintaining support for the Jewish state. 

Responsible Statecraft reported on Tuesday that documents filed under the US Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) revealed details of an “Influencer Campaign” run by Bridge Partners, a Washington-based consulting firm working for Israel’s Foreign Ministry.

The EU is considering whether to end the diplomatic isolation of Belarus in an effort to drive a wedge between it and its close ally, Russia, The Guardian reported on Tuesday, citing European diplomatic sources.

According to the newspaper, there are “tentative discussions in Brussels”about offering Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko “a way out of Moscow’s shadow.” The Guardian also cited a source who said US presidential envoy Keith Kellogg views Lukashenko as a potential intermediary in talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The EU first imposed sanctions on Belarus in 2000, citing alleged election fraud and human rights violations, and significantly increased the pressure after the 2020 protests in Minsk sparked by claims of vote-rigging.

New Eastern Outlook met with Inga Koryagina, Director of International Development at the Directorate of the World Public Summit, PhD in History, Associate Professor of the Department of Marketing at the Plekhanov University of Economics, International Development expert at the UNDP, and Director of International Development at the Russian-African Club of Moscow State University.

Read more in our exclusive interview.

– Inga Anatolyevna, the First World Public Summit recently concluded, having gathered over 4000 participants across its various sessions. What was the geographical spread of our guests? How did the idea for an event of this caliber come about?

The US must prepare for war, Secretary of Defense [OF WAR] Pete Hegseth has told a gathering of senior military commanders. He called it a matter of utmost urgency but did not name any specific adversaries America could face in the near future.

The Pentagon has recently completed two major policy reviews, one of which was a new National Defense Strategy that shifts priorities from China to homeland security and the Western Hemisphere.

“To ensure peace, we must prepare for war,” Hegseth told hundreds of US generals and admirals at a Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia, on Tuesday. He also claimed that “pacifism is … naïve and dangerous.”

One critic noted Trump’s plan for Gaza “contains numerous opportunities for Netanyahu to renege on his commitments, as he has repeatedly done in the past".

US President  Donald Trump announced on Monday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had agreed to a peace plan to end the war in Gaza – but many critics were sceptical that anything good would come from it.

Brad Reed

Department of Energy adds three new words to its 'banned' list
Staffers at the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy received an email last week announcing that several words have now been banned from their official terminology

Members of the Energy Department have added the words "Climate Change," "green," and "decarbonization" to its ever-growing “list of words to avoid,” according to an internal memo sent to staffers at the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy last week.

Western Europe must keep sending billions in aid to Ukraine even if it comes at the expense of health services and education provision to citizens, former NATO Secretary General and current Norwegian Finance Minister Jens Stoltenberg, has said.

Stoltenberg, who led the military bloc from 2014 to 2024 and oversaw the deterioration of the Ukraine crisis into a full-scale conflict in 2022, addressed the Warsaw Security Forum on Tuesday. His remarks echoed previous calls by his successor, Mark Rutte, to cut social spending in order to further aid Kiev.

”I know that one additional billion to Ukraine or one billion extra to national defense is one billion less to other good purposes like health, education and infrastructure. But we must remember that the highest cost is to let Putin win,” he said.

Can governments keep their sovereignty without becoming innovation-stifling totalitarians? And on the other hand, are the tech feudalists willing to provide innovative digital infrastructure without eating into state sovereignty and freedoms?

Non-State Actors, Techno-feudalism, and Governments’ Dependency Syndrome

BY Tamer Mansour

Dante Alighieri, in his book Inferno, places those who betray benefactors in the deepest circle of hell. If that is true, the place is likely overpopulated with the managers and executives of nonprofit organizations. 

In recent years, such organizations have been implicated in egregious schemes to launder money and influence for every sundry and malevolent cause and hundreds of billions in taxpayer money. But even those not on the take from taxpayers have vast problems, so much so it is a wonder why anyone donates to them at all.

In October 2024, Vladimir Zelensky told Donald Trump that Ukraine faced a stark choice: either ironclad security guarantees or a return to nuclear weapons. Nearly a year later, that statement still reverberates through international debates. Moscow has warned that any Ukrainian move toward nuclear arms would cross a “red line,” while in the West it’s seen as a deeply unsettling signal.

Fallout without the bomb: Ukraine’s nuclear rhetoric is the real radioactive waste
Three decades after giving up the world’s third-largest arsenal, Kiev is once again dangling the nuclear option – a move Russia vows it will never allow

By Petr Lavrenin

The US is working to ramp up missile production in preparation for a potential conflict with China, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday, citing officials familiar with the matter. The Pentagon is reportedly pressing defense contractors to double or quadruple output amid mounting concerns over insufficient weapons stockpiles.

The US Department of Defense launched the drive in June, when it invited top missile makers to a Pentagon roundtable, sources told the paper.

Led by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine, the meeting drew major arms contractors, startups like Anduril Industries and crucial component suppliers.

Scott Morrison, former PM and architect of Robodebt, got a large ‘secret handshake’ payout when sacked by Tourism Australia. After a 4-year battle the FOIs finally surface for Jommy Tee.

The political career of Scott Morrison was built on punching down at welfare recipients. Yet, in a bitter twist of irony, the architect of the pernicious Robodebt scheme was himself the beneficiary of a massive, secret overpayment when sacked as managing director of Tourism Australia in 2006.

Revealed: brawl over Scott Morrison’s big secret payment on sacking by Tourism Australia

by Jommy Tee

This is the humblest day of my life,  declared Rupert Murdoch to a parliamentary committee on 19 July 2011.

This was at the height of what the newspaper historian Roy Greenslade called “the most astonishing 14 days in British press history, with daily shock heaped upon daily shock”.

Rodney Tiffen