USA - “We believe that in order to survive and indeed thrive, NATO must change," US Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby told ambassadors representing NATO countries. The Pentagon’s policy chief told NATO members on Thursday that the alliance must adapt and that he wants to hear from allies as part of a review of US forces in Europe he said was meant to enable a more European-led defense of the continent. Colby also praised progress within the alliance and said that Europe remains a critical area for the US. “Consultations and engagement are a vital part of this review,” he said. “We want to hear from you”. Diplomats described the discussion with the Pentagon policy chief as positive but preliminary. The meeting “went pretty well and showed allied efforts and contributions to the burden shifting are on the way,” said a NATO diplomat. A European diplomat described the discussion as “mainly sounding out” and said “the overall message from Allies was quite clear: Europe is stepping up and unity is key."

UK - There is a free speech crisis in Britain, and, at long last, people on both the Right and Left can see it. A poll this week found that the majority of the British public during Sir Keir Starmer’s premiership lost confidence in the government to defend their right to express themselves freely. It is an astounding measure of just how tangible censorship has become to the general public. These days, you’re far more likely to hear someone say “you can’t say that!” than “it’s a free country”. Police now arrest around 22 people a day for speech offences – but only an estimated 16 people for fraud.

USA - A whopping $18 billion (£13.2 billion) settlement, reams of damning witness statements and a string of forced changes that could reshape the way that teenagers use not just Facebook and Instagram but social media more broadly. As part of Meta’s settlement over claims the tech giant sought to keep children addicted to its apps, children will be prevented from using them at night, notifications will be muted during school hours, screen time limited to two hours a day and stricter age controls introduced in a bid to prevent under-13s from using them.

GERMANY - T-shirts bearing the logo of the AfD party have been banned from schools in eastern Germany, after officials ruled they were a symbol of Right-wing extremism. Several schools in the state of Brandenburg issued a ban on T-shirts, pens and badges with the logo of Alternative for Germany (AfD), the country’s second-largest political party. German intelligence officials in the state of Brandenburg classified the local AfD branch as a Right-wing extremist group in April 2025, because of its links to neo-Nazis and its hostility towards immigrants. That “extremist” classification has required schools in the state to consider all AfD merchandise to be extremist propaganda tools, rather than only campaign material for a political party. The hard-Right party is surging in the polls because of deep disaffection with Friedrich Merz’s centrist government, which has failed to curb the AfD’s rise in its eastern strongholds.

UK - Birmingham city council wants to remove British flags from the streets of the city “to protect public safety”. On Wednesday, the council – run by a coalition of the Liberal Democrats, the Greens and independents – launched legal action to ban raising Union Flags or St George’s Crosses. If Birmingham council is granted an injunction, anyone who put up flags near roads without its permission would face as long as two years in prison or an unlimited fine. Birmingham city council first ordered the removal of Union flags from lamp posts in August last year, claiming they put the lives of pedestrians and motorists “at risk” despite being as much as 25ft off the ground. At the time, the council’s political opponents pointed out that Palestinian flags had flown elsewhere in the city, where almost one third of residents are Muslim, since the war in Gaza began in 2023.

USA - The world can see America is overstretched and lacks sufficient military power to enforce its will. The Trump administration is hallucinating again. The US’s “economic D-Day” against Iran will exhaust political consent in Washington for this ill-conceived war long before it forces Iran’s Revolutionary Guards to capitulate.

GERMANY - A German public broadcaster went dark on Monday in protest against the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party’s plans to close it down. Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk (MDR), a BBC-style broadcaster in eastern Germany, interrupted its usual programming on Monday evening with a broadcast of a black screen. It was accompanied by a voice-over which said: “As you can see, you can see nothing. No more MDR in Sachsen-Anhalt? This could happen.” The message was alluding to elections in the eastern state of Sachsen-Anhalt this September, which the AfD is predicted to win by a landslide. The Right-wing party has pledged to effectively close down MDR in Sachsen-Anhalt by terminating a regional broadcasting treaty, claiming the network is politically biased.

UKRAINE - They trundled over the cobblestones of the historic centre, skimmed the surface of the River Dnipro and soared over Kyiv’s tallest monument. Ukraine has historically marked its Independence Day with tanks, missile systems, flypasts and marching troops. But on Monday, it broke with tradition to host what has been described as the first-ever robot-only military parade. In festivities marking 35 years of Ukrainian independence from the Soviet Union, Kyiv mobilised teams of unmanned ground vehicles, heavy bomber drones, interceptor drones and Magura and Sea Baby uncrewed surface vessels in a display of its military prowess. Thirty of the ground robots traversed the historic Khreshchatyk avenue in formation, while a fleet of nine naval drones navigated the waters of the Dnipro and at least a dozen unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) took to the skies over the Soviet-era Motherland Monument, which towers over Kyiv. Reconnaissance drones and deep-strike drones also made up part of the parade, Ukraine’s presidential office said in a statement.

USA - The absolutely devastating floods and mudslides that we just witnessed along the border between Nepal and Tibet look like something out of a science fiction movie. It is a tragedy of epic proportions, and it has made us forget all of the other catastrophic disasters that have been hitting our planet recently. In the end, the final death toll will probably be in the thousands. Unfortunately, the victims in Nepal and Tibet will also soon be forgotten because more catastrophic disasters are on the way. We live at a time when global weather patterns have gone absolutely nuts, giant earthquakes are occurring with alarming regularity, the northern hemisphere is experiencing the worst wildfire season in history, and our overheating oceans threaten to kill billions of fish.

INDONESIA - The Center for Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation (PVMBG) recorded 13 eruptions from Mount Anak Krakatau in South Lampung Regency, Lampung Province. The height of the eruptions varied from 50 to 300 meters from the summit of Mount Anak Krakatau, from 12:00 pm to 6:00 pm Jakarta time. Suwarno, Head of the Mount Anak Krakatau Monitoring Post in Hargopancuran, Rajabasa District, stated on Wednesday that the volcano remains volatile, so further eruptions are still possible.