GERMANY - Member of the European Parliament from Alternative for Germany (AfD), Thomas Froelich, is one of the party’s most dynamic young figures and a rising star of Europe’s anti-globalist right. Froelich has earned a reputation as a sharp critic of Brussels’ overreaching power and Berlin’s increasingly authoritarian course. In the European Parliament, he operates within the Europe of Sovereign Nations (ESN) group, focusing on defending national sovereignty, fighting censorship, and exposing what he calls the “globalist cartel” steering EU policy against the will of ordinary citizens. Froelich warns that the German government’s move to classify AfD as an “extremist organization” marks a dangerous escalation — an attempt to criminalize the country’s largest opposition party, which, according to the latest polls, is also its most popular. He describes this as a denial of voting rights for as many as 15 million citizens.

JAPAN - Donald Trump and Japan’s prime minister Sanae Takaichi signed a framework agreement for “securing” supplies of critical minerals and rare earths on Tuesday. The agreement was signed during the US president’s visit to Tokyo, part of his wider Asia trip, as both countries look to strengthen their rare earth supply chains and to wean reliance off China’s chokehold on the materials. Japan’s new prime minister is also expected to offer a package of US investments under a $550-billion deal agreed this year, including shipbuilding and increased purchases of US soybeans, natural gas and pickup trucks, sources familiar with the talk said. Mr Trump will then meet business leaders in Tokyo, before travelling on Wednesday to South Korea. In talks there with Chinese President Xi Jinping, the US president said he hopes to seal a trade war truce between the world’s two biggest economies.

USA - The government shutdown has awakened the public about how many people are on food stamps. The longer the shutdown goes on, the more reports there are about this and it’s stunning to taxpayers who did not realize until now how incredibly huge this is. "There are 42 million people in this country that need food stamps on a weekly basis. And we’re saying ‘people’ deliberately instead of Americans because most of the people that are on food stamps aren’t even from this country. 45% of Afghanistan immigrants are on food stamps. 42% of Somali immigrants, 34% of every immigrant from Iraq, 23% of Haitians. 59% of ALL illegal aliens are collecting food stamps, meaning that most of the people getting food stamps from the US Government and the US Taxpayer are not even Americans. Think about that. And we didn’t know about any of this before the government shutdown started.” [Cost of food stamp program? $100 billion per year!]

JAMAICA - Hurricane Melissa, the strongest storm of 2025, is a large and slow-moving hurricane fuelled by unusually hot ocean temperatures in the Caribbean. The hurricane is crawling west towards Jamaica at speeds of around 3mph. Its slow pace means it will subject places in its path to longer stretches of torrential rain, destructive winds and heightened storm surge. “It’s this repetitive or continuous threat and existence in a dangerous situation,” Jill Trepanier, a hurricane climatology expert at Louisiana State University, said. Its slow path also allowed it to strengthen substantially over the warm Caribbean waters through the weekend.

TURKEY - Panic took hold in western Turkey as yet another strong earthquake hit the country loved by British tourists. A strong earthquake shook western Turkey on Monday, causing at least three buildings to collapse, officials said. It was felt in Istanbul, and the nearby provinces of Bursa, Manisa and Izmir, Haberturk news channel reported. Turkey sits on top of major fault lines, and earthquakes are frequent. In 2023, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake killed more than 53,000 people in Turkey and destroyed or damaged hundreds of thousands of buildings in 11 southern and southeastern provinces.

UK - From toothpaste to coffee, medicine to chocolate, “shrinkflation” is still rife on Britain’s high streets, according to Which?, the consumer group. Which? invited shoppers to share recent examples of products getting smaller without a corresponding reduction in price, then verified the findings. Among the most striking examples, Aquafresh Complete Care Original toothpaste was found to have shrunk from 100ml to 75ml while the price rose from £1.30 to £2 at Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Ocado. In the same aisle, Gaviscon Liquid Heartburn & Indigestion bottles were reduced from 600ml to 500ml, although the price at Sainsbury’s remained £14. Even budget staples have not escaped the trend. Sainsbury’s Scottish Oats, previously sold in 1kg bags, are now offered in 500g packs at £2.10 — up from £1.25 for the larger size, representing a 236 per cent increase per 100g.

UK - Telling the truth is now seen as a weapon of the right. Once upon a time, telling the truth wasn’t a political statement – it was just called honesty. But in 2025, the simple act of stating a fact can get you branded “right-wing”, “problematic”, or worse. We’ve reached a point where acknowledging biological reality or defending women’s spaces is treated like a radical act. Take the magnificent seven nurses from Darlington. They spoke up for something millions of people quietly believe – that female-only hospital wards should remain just that: female-only. No hostility. No hate. Just a statement of common sense and patient dignity. For that, they were bullied, investigated, and smeared. In a sane world, they’d be applauded for protecting women’s privacy. Instead, they were treated like they’d burned a rainbow flag on live television.

USA - When Amazon Web Services (AWS) went down last Monday, we got a nasty reminder of how interconnected our world has become. Pets were left unfed, while people roasted in their beds after the glitch caused Wi-Fi “smart” mattresses to overheat. As widely reported, Snapchat, Lloyds Bank and parts of the British state were affected by the AWS outage, which is bad enough and something we now expect to happen regularly. But it is the hungry cats and the sleepless yuppies that should give us a clue that something even more profound has gone very wrong. The beds that got stuck in an inclined position, and with the heating set to maximum, are no ordinary beds.

USA - The world is clearly splitting into two blocs — one anchored to the USD, the other gravitating toward gold-backed currency. The trend goes even deeper. As Japan and China reduce their US Treasury exposure, their reserves are quietly re-anchoring elsewhere. The correlation between Treasuries and global reserves has broken, flows are now moving through Chinese bonds and ultimately into Gold, the final settlement asset beyond debt and politics.

JAPAN - Japan’s new prime minister, Takaichi Sanae, said in her first major policy speech on Friday that she plans to increase defense spending and accelerate Japan’s military buildup to meet rising threats from China, North Korea, and Russia. “In the region around Japan, military activities and other actions from our neighbors China, North Korea and Russia are causing grave concerns. Japan needs to proactively push for its fundamental buildup of its defense power,” she elaborated. According to sources, the Trump administration is pushing a plan for Japan to increase defense spending to 3.5 percent of GDP – considerably higher than the 2% planned by March 2026, but lower than Trump’s earlier request of 5 percent.

SOUTHEAST ASIA - In Kuala Lumpur, Thailand and Cambodia etched their names into the ledger of history — not with the clash of arms, but with the quiet resolve of reconciliation. President Donald J Trump, standing as both witness and architect, presided over the signing of an expanded peace agreement that builds on the ceasefire he brokered just months earlier. Leaders from the two nations, long entangled in a bitter frontier feud, clasped hands under the watchful eye of an American president who refuses to let tyrants or bureaucrats dictate the terms of peace. The conflict, simmering for years along the rugged 800-kilometer border that snakes through ancient temples and dense jungles, had erupted into open violence over the summer. As artillery echoed across the frontier, he issued a stark ultimatum: higher tariffs on goods from both nations unless the guns fell silent. It was a move straight from the America First playbook — using the might of our markets not as a bludgeon, but as a bridge to de-escalation. No endless UN resolutions, no photo-ops with empty promises. Just the hard-nosed reality that peace pays dividends, while war devours them.

USA - US President Donald Trump said Sunday he will solve the Afghanistan-Pakistan crisis “very quickly,” as peace talks between the warring neighbors entered a second day. The two countries are embroiled in a bitter security row, with each side saying they were responding to aggression from the other during clashes earlier this month. “I heard that Pakistan and Afghanistan have started up,” said Trump on the sidelines of the ASEAN Summit in Malaysia. ”But I’ll get that solved very quickly.” He made the comments while attending the signing of the Thailand–Cambodia peace agreement.

SOUTHEAST ASIA - President Donald Trump is currently in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, for a trade summit with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. The United States has reached trade deals with four Southeast Asian countries addressing critical rare earth minerals and broader trade imbalances. The global market for rare earths — which are critical components in modern computer technology and in other sectors — is cornered by China, which dominates the refining of these materials and has among the largest deposits of them in the world. The US adversary has increasingly sought to crack down on exports of these critical materials, sending global manufacturers scrambling to find alternative sources.

USA - In Britain and the United States, there are signs that creeping Islamisation has now accelerated to a gallop. Until recently, America viewed the erosion of Western norms by Islam as a British and European problem from which America was largely immune. That is now far from the case. Last week, the 34-year-old Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani, the New York state assemblyman who is the runaway favourite to become mayor of New York City in next month’s election, posted pictures of himself at Masjid At Taqwa mosque in Brooklyn, New York with its imam, Siraj Wahhaj, who he described as one of the nation’s foremost Muslim leaders.

UK - Britain must look at sharing nuclear weapons with Germany to counter the “critical” threat posed by Russia, defence chiefs have said. Senior leaders, including a former chief of defence staff and Nato secretary general, have urged the UK to open up talks with Berlin over a fresh defence pact. Germany is already in “strategic discussions” with Paris over how the French could provide potential protection in the form of its own nuclear deterrent. However, Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, has hinted he would be keen to discuss a similar arrangement with Sir Keir Starmer. Senior defence officials have voiced their support for such a pact, with Lord Robertson, a former Nato secretary general, saying: “I welcome it. It’s right and proper and should have happened a long time ago.”