A fleet of retired tanks the Albanese government pledged to Ukraine last year remains stuck in Australia, with defence figures in part blaming resistance from the United States for their delayed transfer.

More than six months after the donation of the M1A1 Abrams was first announced as part of a $245 million Australian military aid package, the ABC can reveal the aging army vehicles are still awaiting final clearance to be shipped overseas.

Chancellor-in-waiting Friedrich Merz and his CDU won Germany's election, yet his personal popularity is low — and getting lower. Most Germans don't trust him, not least because of his approach to the far-right AfD.

As the Kremlin massed troops on Ukraine’s border in early 2022, and the threat of sanctions grew, wealthy Russians began flying crates of cash home — with help from Raiffeisen Bank International, Brink’s and Bank of America.

Trade data reviewed by OCCRP and Paper Trail Media shows that the three global institutions moved more than $12 billion worth of foreign currency to Russia just before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Most of the cash was in U.S. dollars, euros, and Swiss francs.

Austria’s Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI) was by far the biggest money mover, sending 189 shipments worth a combined $10 billion.  

Boris Johnson rages at Donald Trump's 'capitulation' to Russia - 'Putin will attack again'

Boris Johnson says it is time to take the boot off the neck of the Ukrainians and put the squeeze on Vladimir Putin.

In 2016, US Vice-President J.D. Vance published a best-selling memoir titled Hillbilly Elegy. Curiously, he explained on the Fox News network recently that China’s pivotal influence on American consumption was due to the US borrowing “money from Chinese peasants to buy the things those Chinese peasants manufacture” (YouTube link here). Let’s consider the sort of individuals in question.

Richard Cullen

European understanding

We still cannot feel confident in predicting the outcome of this 2025 election. But what we can confidently say is that it has been a quite remarkable campaign, shaped by external events in unpredictable ways.

This has been quite a remarkable election campaign whatever the outcome. That stands out. I can trace its unpredictability by looking at my speaking notes since last December on the local Canberra community speaking circuit.

John Warhurst

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWddiYK8_uc

"I can't stop cracking up my eyes are watering this is so funny. Zelensky's face went from joy and confidence to pure anxiety once the French dude was told to scram...." — comment

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

         Gus Leonisky

As the world watches tariff brinkmanship unfold between the US and China, analysts have cast doubt on the truth of US President Donald Trump's claim in a magazine interview that China's President Xi Jinping called him.

Mr Trump told Time magazine that tariff talks were taking place between the US and China, an assertion he repeated to reporters as he was leaving the White House to attend the funeral of Pope Francis in Rome.

Beijing denied any talks were taking place.

Leaked documents reviewed by The Grayzone reveal that a blueprint for Ukraine’s failed effort to capture the village of Krynky was assembled by Project Alchemy, a secret military-intelligence cell created by the British Ministry of Defence which sought “at all costs” to “keep Ukraine fighting.” The Krynky plot led to a bloodbath that remains one of the war’s biggest disasters.

UK intel behind Ukraine’s disastrous Krynky invasion, leaked documents reveal

BY KIT KLARENBERG

IA's catalogue of major reasons Peter Dutton should never be prime minister – begun a few months ago and updated here by Michelle Pini – is now at 95 big fat whopping reasons.

If Dutton’s Coalition fails the May 3 contest, members of the media circus will still be able to hold their heads high, since the loss won’t be due to lack of effort on their part.

A whopping 95 reasons why Dutton is unfit to be PM — and still counting
By Michelle Pini

Russian President Vladimir Putin is reportedly prepared to hold peace talks with Ukraine, the Kremlin said on Saturday, as the Russian military claimed to have recaptured the border region of Kursk.

According to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, Putin stated his readiness to negotiate during a meeting with US President Donald Trump's special envoy Steve Witkoff in Moscow on Friday.

In 1948, as the foundations of the Israeli state were being laid upon the ruins of hundreds of Palestinian villages, Albert Einstein wrote a letter to the American Friends of the Fighters for the Freedom of Israel, condemning the growing Zionist militancy within the settler Jewish community.

Aisya A. Zaharin

What would it mean for Ukraine to temporarily give up land?
The mayor of Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko, has told the BBC that Ukraine may have to give up land as part of a peace deal with Russia.
It follows growing pressure from US President Donald Trump to accept territorial concessions.
The political opponent to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, called it a "temporary" solution. But what might that actually mean?
BBC Verify's Merlyn Thomas explains.
https://www.bbc.com/news/videos/c9dj44v4eqwo

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The Road to War in Ukraine — The History of NATO and US Military Exercises With Ukraine — Part 1
    by Larry C. Johnson

Palestinians do not have the luxury to allow Western moral panic to have its say or impact. Not caving in to this panic is one small, but important, step in building a global Palestine network that is urgently needed.

Responses in the Western world to the situation in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank raise a troubling question: why is the official West, and official Western Europe in particular, so indifferent to Palestinian suffering?

Ilan Papp

Peter Dutton’s long-awaited military spending plan was supposed to be the Coalition’s chance to shift the election debate onto the former defence minister’s favoured terrain.

Instead, Dutton ran into yet more questions about his preparation for the election contest as he revealed the plan in a hot defence manufacturing factory in Perth on Wednesday, raising further questions over what his own MPs privately describe as a thin and rushed policy agenda.

“Leaving policies so late is a tactic that belongs in the Howard era, and we haven’t learnt our lesson from last time when Morrison’s super-for-housing policy should have come earlier,” one opposition minister, who asked to remain anonymous to discuss internal party matters, said. “We needed to offer more than just saying we’re not Labor, and we’ve so far failed.”