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The UK government today branded a far-right Israeli minister a 'disgrace' as it added its voice to international condemnation of a video he shared showing him taunting Gaza flotilla activists. Hamish Falconer criticised Tel Aviv's national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir over an 'inflammatory' post on social media last week. The video showed masked officers aggressively subduing activists by pushing them down, forcing them onto all fours, and dragging them across the floor. The video posted to Ben-Gvir's X account on Wednesday also showed him goading them, waving an Israeli flag and saying 'That's how we welcome the terror supporters. Welcome...

President Trump on Thursday said the U.S. will send an additional 5,000 troops to Poland, stirring confusion following weeks of changing statements from Trump and his administration about reducing the American military footprint in Europe.

VIENNA—On May 9, the day before the Eurovision Song Contest held its opening ceremony, protesters were already in the streets. Israel’s participation, a fact of Eurovision since the country joined in 1973, had become a flash point after the war in Gaza began in 2023. Ahead of this year’s contest, the 70th edition of Eurovision, the controversy reached a fever pitch. What began as calls from artists and activists for Israel’s exclusion transformed in the months leading up to the contest into an open revolt. Five countries—Iceland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Slovenia, and Spain—announced they would not attend. Numerous former contestants...

Two senior Polish defense ministry officials are on their way to Washington to get more information on why the U.S. suddenly canceled the deployment of 4,000 soldiers on a planned rotation to the country. Paweł Zalewski and Cezary Tomczyk — both deputy defense ministers — will try to get details on what Zalewski called "the incident." "No one in Poland knew that the rotation of the American brigade would be suspended," Zalewski told TOK FM radio on Monday morning. Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth blindsided Warsaw by halting the long-planned deployment of soldiers with the 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st...

The European Commission found the treatment of the Gaza flotilla activists shown in a video released by Israel's National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir is "completely unacceptable", a spokesperson said on Wednesday. "Every detained person must be treated with safety, dignity and according to international law," spokesperson Anouar El Anouni said in a post on X. "We call on the Israeli government to ensure the protection and dignified treatment of these activists, including several EU citizens," he added. Israeli police forced activists who were aboard a Gaza-bound aid flotilla to kneel on the ground in rows with their hands tied behind...

The Trump administration is planning to tell NATO allies this week that it will shrink the pool of military capabilities that the US would have available to assist the alliance’s European nations in a major crisis, three sources familiar with the matter said. Under a framework known as the NATO Force Model, the alliance’s member countries identify a pool of available forces that could be activated during a conflict or any other major crisis, such as a military attack on a NATO member. While the precise composition of those wartime forces is a closely guarded secret, the Pentagon has decided...

French officials have openly admitted they have “no solution” to stop the flow of small boats crossing the Channel, dealing a fresh political blow to Keir Starmer after Britain agreed a new £662 million border enforcement package with Paris. The comments came despite Downing Street unveiling plans for expanded joint patrols, increased surveillance and the deployment of at least 50 riot-trained French officers to beaches used by migrant gangs operating along the northern French coastline. Local politicians in the Pas-de-Calais region dismissed the measures as cosmetic and warned the crossings would continue regardless of British funding. Alain Boonefaes, a deputy...

In a disturbing snapshot of today’s Britain, the Henry Jackson Society published figures after this month’s local elections suggesting that more than 570 of new councillors were what it classed as “sectarian-style” candidates. The criteria used to define this were the emphases those candidates had, in their campaigns, put on issues of “Muslim communal grievance” and “transnational Muslim causes”. The Green Party, illustrating how it has stopped focusing on the environment or ecology, accounted for 350 of those councillors. What this has to do with local government is unclear; what it has to do with a complete failure of certain...

Replacing globalism with national self-sufficiency is a life-or-death decision. The United Kingdom’s recent elections were a bloodbath for the Establishment political parties and a resounding success for Nigel Farage’s Reform UK. Voters are furious with their “ruling elites.” Because these were local elections, though, Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour Party remains in control of the national government. Therefore, the election results will likely prove symbolically seismic yet practically anemic. Starmer insists on rejecting the democratic will of Brexit voters and reintegrating the U.K. with the European Union. The “ruling elite’s” hostility toward British citizens’ desire for national sovereignty will produce...

-The UK government will introduce legislation banning new North Sea oil and gas exploration licences as part of its Energy Independence Bill. -Critics argue the policy will increase Britain’s reliance on imported fossil fuels while damaging Scotland’s oil and gas industry. -Rising oil prices and disruptions tied to the Iran conflict have intensified political pressure on Labour to reconsider the ban. The government will make it illegal to grant new oil and gas licences in the North Sea, the King said at the state opening of Parliament, in a sign ministers are refusing to buckle in the face of a...

WTF. Can't make it up.

The United Kingdom has fallen. It’s a country where people are jailed for flipping off traffic cameras, where social media posts can also land you in prison, and where smoking is now banned for anyone born after January 1, 2009. That’s just the tip of the iceberg, and it makes one proud to be American that they are not part of this chaos. And HBO’s Bill Maher was not shy about discussing it either.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared himself "a strong supporter of NATO" after talks with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni on Friday, as political friction between the two allies brews. The atmosphere during the visit was notably warmer than in recent weeks. Rubio spoke partly in Spanish during the meetings, joking that the language was "very similar" to Italian. He also said he had been trying to learn Italian himself, but that his subscription to language app Babbel had expired.

FIFA president Gianni Infantino has again defended high ticket prices for this summer's World Cup and brushed off seats for the final being resold at a cost of more than $2 million. During an appearance at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills on Tuesday, Infantino addressed the criticism directed at world soccer's governing body over the prices set for the tournament and the adoption of dynamic pricing. FIFA has been accused by fans of a "monumental betrayal" on ticket costs, but Infantino has previously stressed that the revenue from the flagship tournament supports the development of soccer globally....

In case of any doubt about Norway’s commitment to maintain – and expand – its production of gas and oil offshore, the energy minister, Terje Aasland, has a pithy response: “We will develop, not dismantle, activity on our continental shelf.” This week, to the alarm of environmental campaigners, he announced that three gasfields off the country’s southern coast would reopen by the end of 2028 – nearly three decades after they closed – to meet a shortfall caused by the impact of the war in Ukraine and disruption to supplies from the Middle East. The decision will help keep gas...

Zero. There are currently no European-headquartered public companies with a market capitalization of $1 trillion or more. As of May 2026, the largest European companies by market cap are all well below this threshold (figures are approximate and fluctuate daily): ASML (Netherlands): ~$580–590 billion (the current leader). Roche (Switzerland): ~$320–330 billion. LVMH (France): ~$260–275 billion. Others like SAP (Germany), Novo Nordisk (Denmark), AstraZeneca (UK), etc., are generally in the $200–250 billion range or lower. For context, the global trillion-dollar club is dominated by U.S. tech giants (e.g., Nvidia, Apple, Alphabet/Microsoft in the multi-trillion range), with a few others like Saudi...

President Donald Trump has said he will give the European Union until July 4 to ratify its trade agreement with the U.S., threatening to raise tariffs to “much higher” levels if the 27-nation bloc fails to do so. In a post on Truth Social late Thursday, Trump issued a new trade deadline during a “great call” with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, one in which he said both leaders agreed Iran can never possess a nuclear weapon. The conversation took place shortly after the U.S. president pledged to raise tariffs on cars and trucks imported from the EU...

The scale of the electoral challenge facing Labour has been laid bare as the party haemorrhages councillors at the local elections and Reform makes significant gains. Keir Starmer’s party went into Thursday’s local elections expected to lose up to 1,850 councillors, with senior figures describing the contest as “tough”. Initial results overnight painted a bleak picture for the prime minister, with Labour losing councillors in its traditional northern heartlands. Reform took control of its first council at around 6am, gaining overall control of Newcastle-under-Lyme from Labour. The party’s leader, Nigel Farage, described the early results as a “historic change in...

Finnish parliamentarian Päivi Räsänen announced Thursday that she is appealing to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) after the Supreme Court of Finland found her guilty of hate speech in March for a 22-year-old pamphlet condemning homosexuality."The failure of the Finnish Supreme Court to uphold freedom of speech has set a dangerous precedent in my country and across Europe. I feel it is my duty to appeal this decision, to reinstate respect for the basic human right that all are free to peacefully express their views in the public square," Räsänen said, according to a press release from the...

…Most other nations dutifully adopted SI, changing road signs and packaging and teaching the metric system in schools. Even the United Kingdom, which had lagged for years, mostly embraced the system in an effort to keep pace with other European Union nations. (Since the U.K. left the EU, metric opponents there have argued the nation should stop using metric units, a controversial proposition that has yet to be adopted.) Despite international adoption and increasing federal policy encouraging the use of metric units, the U.S. continued to drag its feet. Resistance was fueled in part by industrialists who argued the system...