GERMANY - Germany has announced it will turn asylum seekers away from its borders as part of a raft of new measures to curb illegal migration agreed by the nation's incoming coalition government. The new rules will see asylum seekers refused entry at Germany's land borders. It comes as Germany’s incoming chancellor, Friedrich Merz, promised a “repatriation offensive” against illegal immigrants. The coalition deal, finalised this week, includes a raft of pledges aimed at restoring economic confidence, boosting defence spending and tightening immigration controls. Mr Merz said: “Germany will suspend family reunifications for many migrants, designate more ‘safe countries of origin’, and launch a return offensive for rejected asylum seekers."

RUSSIA - Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Tuesday that the EU’s attempts to pressure candidate states not to attend the 80th anniversary of victory in World War II in Moscow are tantamount to a revival of Nazism. On Monday, the bloc’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, warned the leaders of EU members and candidate states against taking part in the event in the Russian capital on May 9. British daily The Telegraph later wrote that candidate states such as Serbia could be barred from joining the bloc if their leaders attend the Victory Day celebrations. “If this is true, then Euro-Nazism is being reborn before our eyes,” Zakharova wrote on Telegram, citing the article. “This is how the fascists 80 years ago forced those they considered ‘second-class people’ to renounce their homeland, ethnicity, and faith,” the spokeswoman added. Victory Day honors the 1945 triumph of the USSR over Nazi Germany, as well as the estimated 26.6 million Soviet lives lost in the conflict.

UK - It’s pretty straightforward to decide who comes out best from the Supreme Court’s unanimous verdict on, believe it or not, “what is a woman?” Obviously, and certainly in my opinion, the vast majority of women everywhere will reckon they do and, of course, so will the four women who took their fight all the way to the UK’s highest court and won. But right at the top of the list of victors should go good old-fashioned common sense. That’s what Wednesday’s learned judgement delivered. It is a ridiculous situation that should never have reached the highest court in the land: it shouldn’t have been judges deciding what is or isn’t a woman. Biology and nature, combined with common sense, should have made that abundantly clear to everyone.

UK - Public bodies are under pressure to tear up pro-trans guidance after a ruling that only biological women are women. The decision by the Supreme Court that laws against sex-based discrimination should only apply to biological women will lead to a raft of changes. They are expected to include who can access single-sex NHS wards, which police officers can carry out strip searches, and who can join female teams in elite sport.

UK - The Supreme Court has dealt a killer blow to woke activists. Handily for Mr Starmer - who seemed perennially puzzled - the Supreme Court ruling also answers that tricky question “can a woman have a penis?” No. No she can’t. Like the Cass report before it, which savaged years of the NHS’s “gender affirming” practices of ramming puberty blockers down the necks of young teens at the merest suggestion they might be sexually confused the most mind-blowing revelation of today’s Court ruling is just how we, the tolerant, silent, kind majority, put up with the madness for so long. There was always an annoying logical inconsistency built into the phrase “transwomen are women”. Nope. Women are women. And trans-women are trans-women. Saying “trans-women are women” was always linguistically wrong – as from today it’s legally wrong too.

USA - Not since Britain voted to leave the sinking European project have we been offered such an opportunity. Yesterday, US Vice-President JD Vance was unequivocal. ‘The President really loves the United Kingdom,’ he said in an interview. ‘He loved the Queen. He admires and loves the King. And he’s a businessman and has a number of important business relationships in Britain. But I think it’s much deeper than that. There’s a real cultural affinity... I think there’s a good chance that, yes, we’ll come to a great agreement that’s in the best interest of both countries.’

USA - America has misjudged China horribly before. Hyperpower hubris turned the Korean War into a direct conflict between US and Chinese troops. President Harry Truman thought he had free licence to hurl parts of the US Eighth Army across the 38th parallel in October 1950 and roll back the whole of communist North Korea. Advisers assured him that the infant regime of Mao Tse-tung was too weak to intervene, and too ill-equipped to make much difference if it dared. It was the worst failure of US strategic analysis in modern times. US-led forces faced rout, encirclement and total humiliation as 200,000 Chinese troops poured across the Yalu River.

UK - Nationalisation will force the Government to finally face up to the real costs of green utopianism. The British Government has made a historic intervention to save the final remnant of the nation’s steel industry. Under the circumstances, it is the right thing to do. Aside from the livelihoods of the employees concerned, the overwhelming justification for doing so is the strategic imperative not to rely entirely on imports for this critical basic commodity. But it might also be that nationalisation is the only way to force the British state to wake up to the crisis in manufacturing which its own policies have created.

EUROPE - Last Thursday, the European Union announced they would suspend retaliatory tariffs on America for 90 days. This comes a day after President Trump elected to suspend tariffs on more than 75 countries for the identical number of days. “We want to give negotiations a chance… if negotiations are not satisfactory, our countermeasures will kick in,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in a statement. Von der Leyen also reiterated that she wants America to accept a zero-for-zero trade offer on industrial goods. As TGP reported, the bloc believes this will help address some of Trump’s concerns. But it’s not likely to satisfy Trump. Moreover, von der Leyen did not mention accepting American agricultural products, which the snobby EU views as poisonous and inferior to theirs. On Monday, EU Trade Chief Maros Sefcovic announced he is seeking a fair deal on tariffs with the United States.

USA - In his first major interview with European media, Vice President JD Vance asserted that Europe must not remain a “permanent security vassal” of the United States, arguing that the enduring post-World War II security framework no longer serves the interests of either Americans or Europeans. Vance’s remarks — delivered during an interview with the UK outlet UnHerd on Monday — come at a time of mounting political friction between the United States and Europe, driven largely by sharp divisions over the Russo-Ukrainian war and disputes surrounding member states’ NATO funding. The Vice President voiced frustration with Europe’s longstanding approach to security, describing it as a persistently neglected priority. “The reality is — it’s blunt to say it, but it’s also true — that Europe’s entire security infrastructure, for my entire life, has been subsidized by the United States of America.”