USA - President Trump has condemned European leaders as “weak” in a wide-ranging attack that criticised the “decaying” group of nations for being too politically correct and failing to control immigration. “Europe doesn’t know what to do,” Trump said. “They want to be politically correct, and it makes them weak. That’s what makes them weak.” The president also criticised European leaders for failing to end the war between Russia and Ukraine, saying: “They talk but they don’t produce. And the war just keeps going on and on. I mean, four years now it’s been going on, long before I got here.” Trump’s comments echoed the new US security strategy published last week, which warned that immigration risked “civilisational erasure” in Europe. “Within a few decades at the latest, certain Nato members will become majority non-European,” the document said.

USA - In February, JD Vance used his Munich Security Conference speech to launch an ideological assault on Europe. This month Elon Musk said the EU should be “abolished” after its executive branch issued a $140 million fine against Musk’s social media platform, X. Last week the White House published its National Security Strategy, a 33-page document that has delighted the Maga base and horrified many western politicians in equal measure. Published on Friday, the paper sets out “a roadmap to ensure that America remains the greatest and most successful nation in human history” through “a coherent, focused strategy for how we interact with the world”.

GERMANY - Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, has criticised elements of the US’s national security strategy as “unacceptable”, amid mounting concern in European capitals about the doctrine. It also calls for the inclusion of Russia in a system of “strategic stability across the Eurasian landmass” and says the US must rebalance its global military presence towards the western hemisphere and away from parts of the world that are becoming less important to America. The document castigates Europe at length for purportedly abandoning its core civilisational values and it prioritises “cultivating resistance to [its] current trajectory within European nations”. A number of European governments are particularly alarmed by the implication that Washington may now systematically redouble its efforts to promote hard-right or national conservative parties and undermine liberal democratic governments on the other side of the Atlantic.

NIGERIA - Whatever the US President and Christian evangelicals may have you believe, religion is not the primary driver of conflict. Having served as head of security for the European Union’s election observation mission in Nigeria, I have no illusions about the scale and complexity of challenges facing Africa’s largest country. But portraying a nation of more than 200 million – roughly split between Christians and Muslims – as consumed by religious conflict is not only a gross misrepresentation; it risks driving polarisation in a country where the two faiths live side by side in every state.

VATICAN - Pope Leo XIV has insisted that Europe must play a central role in any Ukraine peace agreement, whilst launching a sharp rebuke at the Trump administration for what he described as attempts to "break apart" the historic transatlantic alliance. Speaking to journalists following talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who is currently touring European capitals to secure backing for Kyiv, the American pontiff addressed the pressing need for a ceasefire and outlined the Vatican's ongoing work to help repatriate Ukrainian children removed by Russian forces. "Seeking a peace agreement without including Europe in the talks is unrealistic, given the war is in Europe," he stated. "Guarantees are also being sought for security today and in the future. Europe must be part of this, and unfortunately - not everyone understands this. But I think there is a great opportunity for European leaders to unite and seek a solution together."

VATICAN - The pope's comments echo Zelensky's frequent demands for a "just" peace as the Ukrainian leader tries to ensure that any agreement to end Russia's war in Ukraine is balanced. Pope Leo called for continued dialogue to seek a "just and lasting peace" in Ukraine during a meeting on Tuesday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the Vatican said. Zelensky, who arrived in Italy after talks in London on Monday, thanked the pontiff "for his constant prayers for Ukraine and the Ukrainian people, as well as for his calls for a just peace," and invited him to visit Ukraine. Leo, who was elected in May, has followed in the footsteps of his late predecessor, Francis, in repeatedly calling for an end to the war in Ukraine and at one point suggested he could host peace talks. The offer was never taken up.

UK - Large numbers of men continue to be admitted by the state despite a clear risk to public safety. The Telegraph’s latest investigation into people-smuggling networks suggests they are now using Channel migrants as drug mules as well as cash cows. Our dysfunctional, widely-abused asylum system is becoming inseparable from criminality. How could we expect anything less, given it is already rooted in brazen lawlessness? Yes, it’s correct to assert that many asylum seekers are legitimate refugees fleeing war or intolerable persecution and will work, live, assimilate and contribute to Britain when they get here. But it’s also true that we are granting sanctuary to some individuals whose presence poses a genuine threat to our safety and security.

EUROPE - Europe's woke policies, mass migration and liberal leaders, sparking fury in Brussels - and fears it could be the END of the European Union. A new US National Security Strategy (NSS) has accused Europe of economic, political and cultural deterioration, sending shockwaves through Brussels but delighting the continent's populist parties. The controversial strategy, signed by US President Donald Trump, warns that Europe is on the brink of 'civilisational erasure' due to decades of decline, and condemns its practice of 'censorship' and 'mass migration' that will render the continent 'unrecognisable in 20 years or less'. The report crystallises in stark terms the growing fracture between the EU and its most important ally, the United States, threatening to torpedo a relationship that has defined global politics since the Second World War.

USA - Donald Trump’s peace plan is on the brink of collapsing after Volodymyr Zelensky insisted Ukraine had no obligation to cede territory to Russia. Kyiv is set to send the US president a Europe-backed counter proposal on Tuesday following an emergency Downing Street summit. The revised plan was intended to balance out a previous draft, presented by the US, seen as widely favourable to Russia. But the Ukrainian leader’s rejection of Russia’s demand to give up the entire eastern Donbas region of Donetsk and Luhansk, which Kyiv still controls parts of, is unlikely to appease Moscow. Mr Trump will remain unsuccessful in his efforts if he cannot get both sides to agree to terms, plunging his latest plan into uncertainty. Ceding land is a huge sticking point.

EUROPE - The president of the European Council has warned Donald Trump not to meddle in Europe’s politics after the White House threatened to use populist parties to cultivate “resistance” to Brussels. António Costa said the EU needed to remain “sovereign” despite US pressure to go softer on what he called American “techno oligarchs”. Washington had criticised the EU over its immigration policies and regulation of US tech companies, including Elon Musk’s X, which was fined £105 million by the European Commission (EC) on Friday for breaking transparency rules. Mr Costa criticised the White House’s national security strategy, which was published on Friday and claimed Europe was facing “civilisational erasure” from uncontrolled migration. The report said the Trump administration would be “cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations” by working with “patriotic European parties”.

EUROPE - The world has changed more in five years than in the previous thirty. How should Europe work with Trump? European leaders have slipped into a dangerous playbook on how to “manage” the volatile and unpredictable President. Stroke the ego, flatter the man, praise his leadership – and hopefully avoid vilification and an avalanche of tariffs. Reality check: it’s not working. The more we bow to Trump, the more we are taken for granted and the more he wields American power to divide us. Yet so normalised has our behaviour become, state visits to the Oval Office now resemble scenes from The Godfather. Leaders shuffling in, offering praise, taking a knee, desperately hoping any live press questions don’t send the President off-script. By indulging one man’s impulses, we’ve allowed our collective voice to shrink, our strategic clarity to fade, and Western resolve to erode.

CHINA - I don’t want China to be the world’s most dominant economic superpower. I am an American, and so I want the United States to be the world’s most dominant economic superpower. We consume far more than we produce, and we go into colossal amounts of debt in order to make that possible. Somehow we have convinced ourselves that this makes us an economic superpower. Meanwhile, the Chinese produce far more than they consume, and as a result they have far more money coming in than they do going out. This allows them to loan vast amounts of money to nations all over the planet, and that gives them tremendous economic leverage.

SCOTLAND - Students at the University of Glasgow are also being warned about Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll and The Treasure Seekers by Edith Nesbit. A host of classic books for children and young people, including the first in the Harry Potter series, have been marked with trigger warnings at one of the country’s leading universities. Students at the University of Glasgow have been cautioned that Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone contains “outdated attitudes, abuse and language”. Dame Margaret Drabble, the novelist, said: “Poor, poor students! Exposing themselves at their age to Lewis Carroll and Edith Nesbit and all those ghastly outdated stories glorifying public school. How they must suffer. They will need counselling from all the children who have survived these terrible tales and enjoyed them so much.”

CHINA - The primary reason why China sells so much stuff to the rest of the world is because they are able to make things very inexpensively… For a long time, cheap human labor was China’s main competitive edge. But now Chinese factories are replacing human workers with ultra-efficient robots. In fact, today there are more robots working in China than the rest of the world combined. If you can believe it, Chinese factories added almost 10 times as many robots last year as US factories did… According to the International Federation of Robotics, China, which is home to nearly a third of all global manufacturing capacity, installed 295,000 industrial robots, the highest annual total on record. Of course the Chinese are not just using more robots than anyone else. They are also producing more robots than the rest of the planet combined…

USA - Immigration has a way of importing more than just people. It brings new ways of life – and in the United States today, that includes some of the kleptocratic ways of life characteristic of nations like Somalia. Minnesota is a pleasant if rather cold midwestern US state that bills itself as the land of 10,000 lakes. It’s also now a land of more than 80,000 Somalis, the largest concentration anywhere in America.