GERMANY - Germany has unveiled a €98 billion debt package as it prepares an overhaul of its underfunded armed forces. Berlin’s budget committee signed off on revised 2026 spending plans that will push the country deeper into debt, politicians said on Friday, clearing the way for a rapid increase in investment. The rise in planned borrowing comes after repeated warnings from Friedrich Merz, the chancellor, that Germany must respond more forcefully to the deteriorating security landscape. “In view of the threats to our freedom and peace on our continent, ‘whatever it takes’ must now also apply to our defence,” Mr Merz said in March, before he officially entered office. “The political developments in Europe and the world are evolving faster than we anticipated just a week ago,” Mr Merz added. “Germany and Europe must now undertake extraordinary efforts to ensure our defence capabilities.”

UK - Warning that boys and young men lack role models with pop culture portraying males as 'frightening' or 'pathetic'. Britons fear teenage boys lack positive role models in popular culture with men too often portrayed as either wimpy or “excessively masculine”. Young men face a “crisis of identity”, according to a major report from the Centre for Social Justice which calls for a “masculinity reset”. It warns that men are too often portrayed as either “frightening” or “pathetic”. The think tank’s recent Lost Boys inquiry concluded that “boys and young men are in crisis” with British males under-performing on a host of measures. It argues Britain’s cultural institutions are not ready to acknowledge the country has a “men problem”.

UK - Sara Sharif endured years of torture and mutilation before being murdered by her father and stepmother at the age of 10. But an independent review into her death shows that chances to save her were missed due to concerns about racial sensitivities. To hide the abuse she received at home, Sharif’s family covered her scars and bruises with a hijab, which is uncommon in Islamic societies before puberty begins. An occupational therapist who visited the family told the review that she “may have been reticent to talk about it for fear of causing offence”. Neighbours on Sharif’s road, who regularly heard the father subject Sharif to torrents of verbal abuse, said that they “feared being branded as being racist” on social media if they reported their concerns. The report states it is “concerning that race was a bar to reporting possible child abuse” and that this “needs to be overcome”.

UK - In his new book, The Big Payback, the British comedian Sir Lenny Henry has called on the UK Government to pay £18 trillion in reparations for slavery to black British people. Having spent the past five years researching a history of slavery and the slave trade in the Islamic world, what struck me especially about Sir Lenny’s intervention (apart from the figure of £18 trillion, which is equivalent to between six and seven times the size of the UK’s economy), was the continued dominance of the transatlantic trade in public discourse about slavery. While the West has engaged in critical discussions over this egregious phenomenon for many years, the same cannot be said for swathes of the Middle East: a region in which slavery and the accompanying trade endured without pause from the seventh to the 20th centuries. Any talk of reparations that doesn’t include the Arab countries and Turkey is dishonest...

GERMANY - It was the moment that marked an extraordinary new partnership between the descendants of a genocidal regime and its victims. At the G7 summit in June, Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, was challenged by a reporter about Israel’s ferocious bombardment of Tehran in the Israel-Iran war, as it raged on 6,000 miles away. “Das ist die Drecksarbeit, die Israel macht, für uns alle,” Mr Merz replied, with a stony glare at his interviewer: “Israel is doing the dirty work for all of us.” To German ears, it was an unusually blunt and bellicose remark for a post-war chancellor. But it revealed something quite profound about Mr Merz’s world view: that Germany’s security now depends on Jews, the very people it once sought to annihilate. The most striking thing about Germany’s rearmament strategy is the extent to which it will rely on missiles, drones and air defence systems provided by Israel.

CHINA - Bot Army Invasion: Chilling moment humanoid Chinese robot army marches for ‘first mass delivery’ of futuristic machines coming for our jobs. These robots could spell the end of factory jobs, designed to work non-stop and uninterrupted. A Chinese firm has claimed to have rolled out an army of humanoid robots in what has been described as the “first mass delivery” of machines. Nightmarish footage released by the company appears to show hundreds of the industrial robots eerily standing in line before marching uniformly into shipping containers. It comes as secretive robotics firms spar for supremacy – often with stunts and slick PR videos showing off their latest designs.

USA - Wall Street had a rough Thursday. By midday, all three major indexes — the Dow, Nasdaq, and S&P 500 — closed deep in the red, down between 1.3 and 2.2 percent. Only one big mover ended in the green: the Volatility Index, or VIX — better known as Wall Street's fear gauge. Around 2pm ET, it was up nearly 20 percent before closing with a 15 percent gain. The VIX tracks how volatile investors expect the stock market to be over the next 30 days, based on options prices for the S&P 500. When it spikes, it's a sign investors are nervous; when it cools off, the market's feeling pretty chill. Today's surge shows Wall Street is still on edge, as doubts about AI-fueled stock gains creep in.

UK - It’s wrong to tell younger people they shouldn’t have children for environmental reasons. Cop30, the UN climate conference, is taking place in Brazil this week, but one subject is unlikely to be up for discussion. Environmentalists’ misleading views of climate change are discouraging people from having children, exacerbating the global demographic crisis. The fertility rate across developed nations has fallen sharply, from an average of 3.3 births per woman in 1950 to just 1.5, well below the replacement level required to sustain population levels, according to the OECD’s latest Employment Outlook. This demographic shift is placing mounting pressure on pension systems and healthcare services, and threatens to constrain long-term economic growth unless offset by gains in productivity and workforce participation. The choice to have children remains deeply personal, shaped by individual circumstances and preferences. But it shouldn’t rest on mistaken premises about environmental collapse.

IRAN - Months after surviving a punishing war, the nation is now facing a drought which could be more devastating than any Israeli or American bomb. “May God protect this country from the enemy, from drought, from lies.” Thus prayed Darius the Great, the ancient Persian emperor, in an appeal to the heavens inscribed on the tomb in Persepolis where he was laid to rest more than 2,500 years ago. The Islamic theocrats who run Iran today may not think much of Darius’s Zoroastrian god, but they have every reason to hope his prayer was heard. For, just months after surviving a punishing war with their own enemies, they are now facing a drought – made worse by their own lies – which could be more devastating than any Israeli or American bomb. It is not clear that their own empire will survive. At the time of writing, Tehran’s reservoirs are estimated to hold just nine more days of drinking water. If it does not rain soon, president Masoud Pezeshkian has warned, the capital city – home to 10 million people – may have to be evacuated.

EUROPE - Under the EU's Solidarity Pool, member states are obliged to share the burden of accommodating refugees. European countries are rushing to pull out of the EU's refugee relocation programme. The continent has seen an upsurge in migrants heading to its borders in recent years, as wars and economic crises ravage many parts of the world. Countries must accept a quota of asylum seekers, pay for each person they decline to take in, or offer another form of assistance. However, Brussels tweaked the rules on Tuesday to allow countries facing intense migration pressures to opt out of the scheme.