GERMANY - US Vice President J D Vance delivered a fiery speech at the Munich Security Conference on Friday, taking direct aim at European elites for their war on free speech and authoritarian censorship tactics. In a no-holds-barred address, Vance exposed the hypocrisy of European leaders, who claim to champion democracy while silencing dissent and weaponizing so-called ‘misinformation’ laws to crush political opposition. Vice President Vance warned Europe that the greatest danger the continent faces today is from within through censorship of free speech and silencing of their political opponents. Vance accused European leaders of fear of their own people and warned them that the real threat against their democracy was their assault on individual rights. The EU elites did not take the news well. They were hoping for another empty, vapid speech filled with exaggerated praise from the Trump regime.

USA - US President Donald Trump has declared the BRICS trade and development group “dead” and threatened to impose massive tariffs on all imports from its member nations if they proceed with plans to establish a common currency. Trump made the comment on Thursday, while addressing perceived challenges to the US dollar’s dominance in global trade. “BRICS was put there for a bad purpose,” Trump stated. “I told them if they want to play games with the dollar, then they are going to be hit by a 100% tariff." Trump dismissed concerns about BRICS nations’ potential economic leverage over the US, asserting, “They don’t have us over a barrel. We have them over a barrel. If BRICS wants to play games, those countries won’t trade with us. We won’t trade with them.”

USA - The US vice-president, JD Vance, has launched a brutal ideological assault on Europe, accusing its leaders of suppressing free speech, failing to halt illegal migration and running in fear from voters’ true beliefs. In a chastising speech on Friday that openly questioned whether current European values warranted defence by the US, he painted a picture of European politics infected by media censorship, cancelled elections and political correctness. Arguing that the true threat to Europe stemmed not from external actors such as Russia or China, but Europe’s own internal retreat from some of its “most fundamental values”, he repeatedly questioned whether the US and Europe any longer had a shared agenda. “What I worry about is the threat from within,” Vance said.

USA - Europe is obsessed with external threats but is so morally lost it isn’t even clear what it’s defending itself for any more, JD Vance warned in an excoriating speech to the continent’s security elite on Friday. Traditionally, applause is a well-worn gauge of how well a message is going down in a conference-hall. In most cases an audience can bring itself to at least raise half-hearted, polite applause but in Munich on Friday Vance couldn’t even get that. The response was particularly frosty mid-speech as Vance listed some particularly egregious recent cases in European states where the government has cracked down on liberties, from arresting Christians for silent prayer to cancelling elections, and when he outright accused the leaders of the continent of Soviet, anti-democratic attitudes. Worst of all, he said, they held these feelings towards their own people.

USA - US Vice-President JD Vance Friday urged Germany's mainstream political parties to drop resistance to cooperating with the far right, hours after Berlin rejected American "meddling" ahead of its election. "Democracy rests on the sacred principle that the voice of the people matters," said Vance in a speech to the Munich Security Conference. "There's no room for firewalls," he added, referring to the long-standing position of Germany's established parties not to work with the far right. Friedrich Merz, leader of the opposition Christian Democrats and tipped as Germany's next chancellor, was last month accused of breaching this taboo when the far-right Alternative for Germany backed a proposal he put forward to toughen up immigration law. The comments come amidst a German election campaign that has been dominated by immigration and security.

GERMANY - Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany on Saturday accused Vice President JD Vance of unacceptably interfering in his country’s imminent elections on behalf of a party that has played down the atrocities committed by the Nazis 80 years ago. A day after Mr Vance stunned the Munich Security Conference by telling German leaders to drop their so-called firewall and allow the hard-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, to enter their federal government, Mr Scholz accused Mr Vance of effectively violating a commitment to never again allow Germany to be led by fascists who could repeat the horrors of the Holocaust. “A commitment to ‘never again’ is not reconcilable with support for the AfD,” Mr Scholz said at the conference on Saturday morning, in an address opening the gathering’s second day.

EUROPE - Afroditi Latinopoulou, a Greek member of the EU parliament representing the “Voice of Reason” party, delivered an epic and fiery indictment of Europe’s socialist policies. Latinopoulou argued that 50 years of socialist rule and the modern pervasiveness of woke ideology have decimated economies and destroyed Europe, not the “far right.” Latinopoulou began, “Seriously, ladies and gentlemen? Did the right destroy industry? Did the right idolize Greta Thunberg? Did the right impose green energy at the expense of industry, destroying the EU’s competitiveness? Or was it the socialist governments that have been ruling the European Union for 50 years? France, Italy, Germany, Spain, and my homeland Greece have been devastated by groundless socialist policies. And today you, the destroyers of Europe, have the audacity to point fingers at us, saying that we conservatives are a threat to Europe? Lower taxes, increase competitiveness, bring back plastic straws, leave lignite alone, invest in the industry and, above all, face reality: YOU HAVE FAILED.”

USA - The Department of Government Efficiency has managed in just a few weeks to inspire dread among various contributors to and beneficiaries of government waste. After making its penetrating gaze felt at over a dozen federal agencies, including the US Agency for International Development, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the DOGE set its sights on the Internal Revenue Service. Sure enough, bureaucrats at the organization that the Obama administration weaponized against conservatives have begun to panic. Two unnamed sources said to be familiar with the matter told Reuters that one of Elon Musk's top DOGE staffers, Gavin Kliger, arrived at the IRS Thursday to scrutinize the agency's operations. Kliger reportedly met with top executives at the agency who were separately instructed in an email to identify all "non-essential" contracts for termination.

GERMANY - Yet another asylum seeker has just launched a deranged attack out of nowhere on innocent members of the public. This time, the horror is unfolding in Munich, where 28 people have been injured, some critically, by a car crashing into a modest trade union demonstration near the main station. ‘You see – it has happened again,’ says Florian Wiese, pointing to the breaking news on the television in his insurance office on the main road running through Furstenwalde. It only reinforces his view that the hard-Right Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) party will sweep the board in this part of Germany come polling day.

UKRAINE - Zelenskyy's Europe armed forces call is harsh truth that London, Paris and Berlin needed to hear. It is time for an armed forces of Europe. This was the key message from Ukraine's president at a major security conference in Munich that has brutally exposed European irrelevance when the US is not onside. Volodymyr Zelenskyy said such a force would not replace the transatlantic NATO alliance, but it would instead ensure that Europe is as strong as Washington - and taken seriously by friends and foes once again. "We must build the armed forces of Europe so that Europe's future depends only on Europeans and decisions about Europe are made in Europe," he said, speaking on the main stage at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday. He then asked the audience of European politicians, diplomats and military chiefs in Munich: "If Russia came for you, could your army fight the same way?" An uncomfortable question for deeply uncomfortable times.

GERMANY - Mainstream politicians have failed to grasp the scale of the country’s immigration issue. More tragedy is inevitable. An empty pram lies forlorn, on a street covered in debris and police tape. In Munich, a failed Afghan asylum seeker has driven his car into a crowd. Among the injured are a mother and her small child, who are still struggling for their lives. Like many German mothers, I find myself wondering how safe it is to push my 14 month old daughter through the town where we live.

GERMANY - As Germany’s economic miracle unravels, its dark past is coming back to haunt it. Next Sunday, Germany goes to the polls. The federal republic’s most important election since reunification in 1990 coincides with its longest peacetime recession. As shadows lengthen across Ukraine, Germany has once again had to confront its demons, recalling the darkest moments of the past. Old slogans of the Nazi era, such as Alles für Deutschland (“Everything for Germany”), have resurfaced as dog whistles.

UK - Gen Z is the gift that keeps giving, though this generosity is not a welcome one. Just when you think there couldn’t be a more barmy, navel-gazing, trouble-making, nihilistic bunch of young people, you get served up another mind-bending insight into their worlds: this or that cult figure, whether Greta Thunberg or Luigi Mangione, the celebrated young killer of the insurance executive Brian Thompson; this or that reason for opting out of work or family, for being mortally offended and ethically outraged; this or that protest for Palestine and human rights and so on.

USA - Council meetings are often drab affairs in which officials in suits debate bin collections and the minutia fire safety regulations. But a meeting in Massachusetts this week bucked the trend as drag queens, pastors and a seven-year-old boy pleaded to councillors, one by one, to designate their city a safe haven for transgender people. Around 200 residents packed into the wood panelled committee meeting in Worcester City on Tuesday, where members of the gallery held up signs saying “silence = death” and heckled their opponents.

UK - Children need the best start in life - and the authors of a new report warn too many young people face a mental health crisis. Britain is a “global leader in family breakdown” with devastating consequences for mental health, a leading think tank has warned. Young people whose families break-up before they reach the age of 18 are nearly twice as likely to suffer from mental ill-health, according to the Centre for Social Justice. It argues that securing “stronger families” is key to improving mental health across the nation. Researchers are alarmed that “a fifth of children aged eight to 16 have a probable mental health disorder, up from 12.5% in 2017”.