Trade tensions are once again front and center for investors as President Trump’s tariff deadline looms.

On Sunday night, the president announced that the U.S. will begin sending tariff letters to major trading partners, warning of levies on countries that have yet to strike a deal. The president expects letters to be sent to 12 countries. 

Trump wrote on Truth Social:

I am pleased to announce that the UNITED STATES TARIFF Letters, and/or Deals, with various Countries from around the World, will be delivered starting 12:00 P.M. (Eastern), Monday, July 7. Thank you for your attention to this matter! DONALD J. TRUMP, President of The United States of America.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said President Trump will begin sending letters to U.S. trading partners, warning that if no agreement is reached, tariff rates will revert to April 2nd levels—set to take effect on August 1.

Bessent noted that several major deals are nearing completion and that “big announcements” could be made this week. He added that around 100 smaller countries will be assigned a default tariff rate, many of which never engaged in negotiations with the Trump administration. 

Adding to the uncertainty, Trump said an additional 10% tariff will be imposed on any nation aligning with BRICS, the bloc of emerging market economies (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) seen as increasingly hostile to U.S. interests. 

Trump wrote on Truth Social:

Any Country aligning themselves with the Anti-American policies of BRICS, will be charged an ADDITIONAL 10% Tariff. There will be no exceptions to this policy. Thank you for your attention to this matter!

The 10-member bloc of emerging-market nations has increasingly positioned itself as a geopolitical and economic contender to the US-led global economic order, which is seen as fracturing as the world stumbles into a dangerous bipolar state. 

BRICS seeks to reduce the dominance of Western institutions like the IMF, World Bank, and the U.S. dollar system

Trump has previously threatened countries that back a new reserve currency…

“The idea that the BRICS Countries are trying to move away from the Dollar, while we stand by and watch, is OVER,” Trump wrote on X in late 2024. 

The idea that the BRICS Countries are trying to move away from the Dollar while we stand by and watch is OVER. We require a commitment from these Countries that they will neither create a new BRICS Currency, nor back any other Currency to replace the mighty U.S. Dollar or, they…

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 30, 2024

Goldman analyst Nelson Armbrust commented on Trump’s tariff posts:

Trade tensions are back in view as the tariff deadline approaches, with Trump pledging to start issuing unilateral rates to dozens of countries in the coming days. Stocks retreated at the start of a potentially volatile week as U.S. trading partners rushed to finalize trade deals with the Trump administration ahead of a July 9 tariff deadline.

U.S. officials earlier signaled August 1 as the date for higher levies to kick in. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent indicated some countries may be offered a three-week extension to negotiate.

On a side note, over the weekend BRICS leaders, including China and India, condemned U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran and called for a “just and lasting” resolution to conflicts across the Middle East. President Donald Trump threatened to impose an additional 10% tariff on any country aligning with “the Anti-American policies of BRICS”. Metals fell, the yuan weakened and the dollar rose 0.4%

The inflection point appears to be the 2030s… 

The broader message is clear: the Trump administration is drawing a very hard line—it will not allow BRICS to dismantle the dollar-based global order. This is shaping up to be a fight for economic and geopolitical survival, as the White House moves to ensure the American experiment endures the challenges of a bipolar world in the 2030s. 

Authored by Lance Roberts via RealInvestm,entAdvice.com,

Retail investor greed again dominates market activity, echoing some of the same speculative behaviors seen during previous risk-on phases. Retail investors show heightened risk appetite across multiple metrics, from options trading to leveraged ETF flows, with little regard for valuation or macroeconomic headwinds.

Put/call ratios are flashing strong bullish sentiment, with the SPY ratio hovering around 0.79, reflecting an imbalance toward calls over puts.

Investor greed primarily drives this skew, particularly in names and sectors associated with high momentum or popular narratives.

“Despite the looming July 9th trade negotiation deadline, not much is priced into the SPX vol surface for the event, suggesting investors either expect a positive resolution or for the deadline to be extended. Interestingly, the flattening in skew was mostly concentrated in the front-month, suggesting this was mostly positioning-driven FOMO-type call buying. Longer-dated skew remains steep in comparison.” – CBOE

The surge in call option volumes has occurred across semiconductor plays, especially in leveraged vehicles like SOXL, the 3x bullish semiconductor ETF, where open interest in call options far exceeds puts. Similar patterns are emerging in thematic ETFs like RETL (3x retail) and DRN (3x real estate), which are seeing elevated daily volume despite mixed performance. This appetite for leverage is being pushed further with the proliferation of single-stock leveraged ETFs, such as HIMZ, a leveraged play on HIMS, which saw a dramatic 70% collapse after a corporate announcement, highlighting how retail speculation often ignores risk asymmetry.

Investor greed is also evident in flows to speculative and penny stocks. Retail inflows into U.S. equities have topped $70 billion year-to-date, with much of that concentrated in highly volatile names like Palantir, MicroStrategy, and other crypto-adjacent or AI-linked plays. Penny stocks and small caps, traditionally the domain of risk-seeking traders, have also seen outsized gains in short bursts, primarily driven by social media chatter and retail momentum chasing. At the same time, investors are doubling down on speculative trades even after short-term losses, reflecting a “buy-the-dip” mindset that prioritizes quick returns over fundamental analysis.

Supporting this activity are broader ETF flow dynamics. Retail-focused providers like Vanguard have seen their share of total U.S. ETF inflows jump to 37%, up from 27% a year earlier. Leveraged equity ETF flows reached a five-year high this past spring and have remained elevated through Q2. Meanwhile, tighter bid-ask spreads and more retail-accessible platforms are enabling higher trade volume with lower friction, further fueling this behavior.

However, it isn’t just retail investor greed driving the market. While a bit late to the party, professional investor sentiment and positioning have surged higher, helping the recent push of the markets to all-time highs.

While retail and professional exuberance fueled the market’s rise, it also introduces fragility. Leveraged ETFs suffer from compounding decay in volatile markets, and speculative trades can unwind violently, as HIMZ demonstrated. While momentum can extend rallies, the resulting reversals are often sharp when sentiment turns.

Optimism is working in the Bulls’ favor, but the warning signs of overreach are mounting. It won’t take much for a decent price correction, which could begin as soon as next week.

Trade accordingly.

📈 Nasdaq 2025 Tracking 2020

I have noted many times previously that I hate market analogs. The reason is that they require “cherry-picking” starting and ending points to make the correlation. However, there are times when analogs can help display similarities between market performance periods and investor greed or fear. The following chart of the Nasdaq in 2020 and 2025 is a good example of the latter. As shown, the onset of the pandemic led to a 35% decline in March of that year. The market then bottomed and began a sharp rally into the end of 2020, and further in 2021. As shown, in 2025, the Nasdaq is tracing out a similar pattern with the decline in March and early April, and the subsequent rebound through the end of June.

This is undoubtedly an encouraging analogy for the bulls, suggesting that the market has plenty of runway left for the rest of 2025. However, this is why I personally dislike analogs like this because it assumes that just because something occurred in the past, it will repeat identically in the future. The problem is that the analysis lacks the data that supported the previous rally.

The table below details some of the differences between 2020 and today. It is also critical to remember that during 2020, sporting events from football to horse racing were shuttered, leaving only the stock market as a viable outlet for gamblers to place bets. Armed with a Robinhood account, a $1500 stimulus check, and a “bad attitude”, investors flocked into the financial markets chasing some of the speculative corners of the market. Of course, with the Federal Reserve cutting rates to ZERO, injecting a $120 billion a month into the financial system, and ensuring the junk bond market functioned, it is unsurprising that markets quickly recovered from their lows.

The fascinating thing about 2025 is that the market “feels” much like it did in 2020, but the backdrop is entirely opposite. The Fed is maintaining elevated interest rates, reducing its balance sheet, and fiscal support for the country continues to reverse. Yet, even with monetary and fiscal policy absent, the market is rallying with seemingly the same reckless abandon.

Will the 2025 analog continue to mirror 2020? Maybe. But with valuations elevated and the economy slowing, I would bet that the analog breaks sooner than later.

Be careful taking analogs at face value.

The flash flood that sent a 30-foot wall of water surging down the Guadalupe River in Central Texas has claimed at least 81 lives as of early Monday morning. Law enforcement officials in Kerr County confirmed that at least ten girls from Camp Mystic remain missing. Amid speculation that the so-called “1-in-1,000-year storm” may have been triggered by cloud seeding, one of the weather modification operators in the region has denied any flight operations during the relevant timeframe. 

On Sunday, Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R) warned that another round of storms could bring additional danger to the region over the next one to two days. The flooding across Central Texas is shaping up to be one of the deadliest freshwater flood events in the U.S. over the past half-century, with the death toll likely to surpass the 84 lives lost in the 1977 Johnstown, Pennsylvania flood.

“There’s the potential for flash flooding, but there’s no expectation of a water wall of almost 30 feet high,” Gov. Abbott told reporters.

Local, state, and federal officials have outlined plans to expand search and rescue operations throughout Kerr County. Meanwhile, National Weather Service officials pushed back against claims by corporate media about staffing shortages. The White House’s response to those claims was described as “disgusting.”

Intense scrutiny has fallen on Rainmaker Technology, a California–based weather modification startup, amid speculation that cloud seeding may have contributed to the historic flooding.

CEO Augustus Doricko responded to baseless claims on X by saying, “Rainmaker did not operate in the affected area on the 3rd or 4th or contribute to the floods that occurred over the region.” 

The natural disaster in the Texan Hill Country is a tragedy. My prayers are with Texas.

Rainmaker did not operate in the affected area on the 3rd or 4th or contribute to the floods that occurred over the region.

Rainmaker will always be fully transparent. https://t.co/J5QlUbruCd

— Augustus Doricko (@ADoricko) July 5, 2025

Doricko continued:

Overnight from July 3rd – 4th, moisture surged into the Hill Country from the Pacific as remnants of Tropical Storm Barry moved across the region. At 1:00 a.m. on July 4th, the National Weather Service (NWS), which we work closely with to maintain awareness of severe weather systems, issued a flash flood warning for San Angelo, Texas. Note, summer convective cloud seeding operations in Texas do not occur during overnight hours. At 4:00 a.m. on July 4th, the NWS issued a life-threatening emergency warning, and flooding ensued.

Did Rainmaker conduct any operations that could have impacted the floods? No. The last seeding mission prior to the July 4th event was during the early afternoon of July 2nd, when a brief cloud seeding mission was flown over the eastern portions of south-central Texas, and two clouds were seeded. These clouds persisted for about two hours after seeding before dissipating between 3:00 p.m. and 4:00 p.m. CDT. Natural clouds typically have lifespans of 30 minutes to a few hours at most, with even the most persistent storm systems rarely maintaining the same cloud structure for more than 12-18 hours. The clouds that were seeded on July 2nd dissipated over 24 hours prior to the developing storm complex that would produce the flooding rainfall.

A senior meteorologist observed an unusually high moisture content prior to the event’s arrival, using NWS sounding data. It was at this point that our meteorologists determined that we would suspend future operations indefinitely. As you can see, we suspended operations on July 2nd, a day before the NWS issued any flood warning.

Here are the flight logs for July from our South Texas Program

And more:

I encourage the meteorology community to ask questions and scrutinize our claims, and we will continue to be fully transparent in answering.

Attached is a meteorological report on the events. pic.twitter.com/zyuamIygg8

— Augustus Doricko (@ADoricko) July 5, 2025

Related:

• Texas Floods Kill 50; Search Ongoing For Dozens Of Missing Campers

Other weather news:

• Tropical Storm Chantal Makes Landfall – All Eyes On Possible NYC Path

. . . 

Authored by Felicity Bradstock via OilPrice.com,

• Google signed the first direct corporate power purchase agreement for nuclear fusion energy with Commonwealth Fusion Systems.

• The global race to achieve commercial nuclear fusion is intensifying, with significant investments from the U.S., China, and the European Union.

• Nuclear fusion promises to deliver abundant, clean energy, potentially revolutionizing the global energy landscape and reducing reliance on fossil fuels.

For decades, researchers have been assessing the potential to develop nuclear fusion reactors, capable of producing abundant clean energy. However, despite several breakthroughs in recent years, most scientists agree that we are far from achieving the commercial rollout of this technology. Nevertheless, the barrier has not stopped widespread investment in the technology, the most recent of which came from U.S. tech giant Google.

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA) definition, Nuclear fusion is the process by which two light atomic nuclei combine to form a single heavier one while releasing massive amounts of energy. Fusion reactions take place in a state of matter called plasma – a hot, charged gas made of positive ions and free-moving electrons with unique properties distinct from solids, liquids, or gases…nuclei need to collide with each other at extremely high temperatures – around ten million degrees Celsius. When the nuclei come within a very close range of each other, the attractive nuclear force between them will outweigh the electrical repulsion and allow them to fuse. For this to happen, the nuclei must be confined within a small space to increase the chances of collision.

Nuclear fusion differs from nuclear fission, the current nuclear power production process used worldwide, which occurs when a neutron slams into a larger atom, forcing it to excite and split into two smaller atoms, also known as fission products. Additional neutrons are also released that can initiate a chain reaction. When each atom splits, a massive amount of energy is released. Uranium and plutonium are the most commonly used fuels for fission reactions. 

After decades of investment and research into nuclear fusion around the globe, several breakthroughs have put us one step closer to achieving a nuclear fusion reaction that could lead to the commercial rollout of fusion reactors. As of 2025, commercial fusion companies have raised over $9 billion in investment, and many governments now view fusion as the modern-day ‘space race’. Currently, there are around 50 private companies worldwide pursuing commercial fusion, and many are hopeful that the previous timeline of around 30 years for a commercial rollout may have been overexaggerated. 

In May, a long-delayed nuclear fusion project, supported by over 30 countries, finally announced it was prepared to assemble the world’s most powerful magnet. The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project, based in southern France and supported by the United States, China, Japan, Russia, and the European Union, aims to create an “invisible cage” to contain super-hot plasma particles that combine and fuse to release energy. Following years of delays, the start-up phase of the project is now scheduled to begin in 2033, when it is expected to start generating plasma.

In addition to the joint project, some countries are battling to be the first to achieve commercial nuclear fusion. In February, satellite images emerged revealing a giant facility in China. The images showed a massive nuclear fusion research facility, which many have taken to mean that China is racing ahead in nuclear fusion development. 

The Chinese government is spending between an estimated $1 billion to $1.5 billion annually in fusion research and development, according to the lead of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Fusion Energy Sciences, Jean Paul Allain. Meanwhile, former President Biden was spending around $800 million a year, although the U.S. is also making significant progress in nuclear fusion. 

In the U.S., Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) engineers are developing a fusion project consisting of a doughnut-shaped machine known as a tokamak and called SPARC, which they hope will achieve a nuclear fusion reaction. CFS is a company that spun off from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2018. The firm has raised over $2 billion in funding to develop the machine, although it is not certain how long it will take and whether it will be able to achieve a net surplus of energy once it is up and running. However, the company’s target is to construct the world’s first fusion-fuelled power plant in Virginia by the early 2030s. 

This week, Alphabet, the parent company of Google, came to an agreement with CFS to purchase power from its nuclear fusion project. Google signed the technology’s first direct corporate power purchase agreement, according to the tech company. CFS CEO and co-founder Bob Mumgaard stated, “Without partnership and without being bold and setting a goal and going for it, you won’t ever reach over those challenges.” The financing forms part of a new funding round for CFS, after Google invested $1.8 billion into the firm during its previous 2021 round. 

Several countries around the world are racing to develop nuclear fusion technology that can be rolled out at the commercial level to support clean energy development and a shift away from fossil fuels. Achieving this level of fusion reaction would allow governments to provide far more abundant clean power than they are currently able to supply through fission and renewable energy projects. 

An ammonia leak during loading operations on the LPG tanker “Eco Wizard” reportedly triggered an explosion, resulting in the tanker sinking at one of Russia’s most strategically important ports, located in the Leningrad Region of northwest Russia on the Gulf of Finland. 

German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle reported that Eco Wizard experienced an explosion during onboard loading operations at Ust-Luga seaport. All crew members were safely evacuated…

On a tanker in the Leningrad Region of Russia, an ammonia leak occurred. This is already the sixth tanker this year that has been affected in some way by an explosion after entering Russian ports. The incident took place at the Russian port of Ust-Luga on the Baltic Sea during the loading of the tanker Eco Wizard, according to the Russian Ministry of Transport.

Telegram channel “MNS | Moscow • News • Events,” citing its sources, reports that an explosion occurred on board the tanker during ammonia pumping operations at the terminal of JSC “MHK Eurochem.” As a result, holes appeared in the hull of the ammonia carrier, through which water began to flood. Eco Wizard sails under the flag of the Marshall Islands and arrived in Ust-Luga from Belgium.

Current location of Eco Wizard. 

The owner of the vessel is StealthGas Inc. Additional details about the owner:

Ust-Luga is one of the most strategically important ports in Russia—economically, logistically, and geopolitically, mainly because it handles over 100 million tons of cargo annually, including coal, oil products, fertilizers, and LNG. 

The incident marks the sixth tanker explosion at a Russian port this year, raising suspicions of possible sabotage by Ukrainian special forces or Western intelligence operations—mysterious explosions for sure.

Submitted by Thomas Kolbe

If you’ve ever wanted to witness the slow-motion collapse of a Ponzi scheme, you might want to keep an eye on Germany’s public pension system.

Rhetorically and politically sugar-coated as a “pay-as-you-go” system — where today’s workers finance the retirement of yesterday’s — this bureaucratic redistribution leviathan is utterly dependent on an ever-growing pool of contributors. Problem is: Germany is aging, shrinking, and losing its industrial base.

Just in time for this demographic crunch — declining birth rates, increasing life expectancy, and longer pension payout durations — policymakers have decided to torch what’s left of the country’s industrial foundation in a green frenzy. Year after year, around €70 billion in value creation is being sent up the chimney, while more than half a million jobs have disappeared in recent years. That’s half a million fewer contributors to the pension Ponzi.

Tax Payer´s Money To Maintain The Illusion

To keep the locomotive rolling — even as it barrels in the wrong direction — the federal government now plugs the pension system’s gaping cash hole with roughly €123 billion annually from the general budget. In other words: workers pay a second time, in the form of taxes, to support the same unsustainable system they already fund through record-high payroll deductions.

With a government spending ratio now exceeding 50% of GDP, Germany has erected a full-scale hyperstate. Attached to its bloated bureaucracy are ever-growing administrative tentacles: layers of social insurance agencies and subsidized institutions now serving as the domestic enforcement arm of Brussels’ self-destructive Green Deal.

The coming deep economic depression, which has been foreshadowed by three years of quasi-permanent recession, will test just how resilient — and solvent — the savings and wealth accumulation of past generations truly are. It may be their prudence that softens the blow of the present generation’s green delirium.

Trapped in the Logic of a Ponzi Scheme and Keynesian Voodoo Economics

Entirely captive to the logic of Ponzi finance and Keynesian voodoo economics, Germany’s new federal government now plans its grand escape from all woes. With a debt hammer of one trillion euros over the coming years, it aims to wipe away every problem while putting the economy back on track.

Broadly speaking, the money is supposed to raise the defense budget to 5% of GDP, as demanded by the latest NATO summit, pour into the country’s crumbling infrastructure, and plug countless holes in the overstrained welfare apparatus.

We don’t need to go into detail here to recall that such stimulus-fueled bonfires leave behind nothing but more debt and inflation, misallocating printed capital into sectors with little or no real demand. It would suffice if politicians had even a passing familiarity with recent economic history — they’d realize they are once again slamming their heads against the very same wall as in decades past.

Socialists Debate Higher Contribution

Meanwhile, the SPD — junior coalition partner to Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s CDU-led government — is currently debating raising the pension contribution ceiling by €500 to €8,050 monthly salary. This increase would translate to an additional yearly burden of over €1,116 for anyone earning that amount. In other words, those who already carry the lion’s share of the country’s fiscal load as the last remaining productive pillars of society would be hit with yet another surcharge. The welfare state and social peace, they argue, are worth this sacrifice.

The coalition partner CDU’s reaction was not long in coming. There was unanimous rejection of the SPD proposal to once again burden the country’s top earners. Wolfgang Steiger, Secretary General of the CDU’s Economic Council, stated:

“We strictly oppose the move to raise the contribution ceiling in statutory health insurance. It would further increase the cost of labor.”

That sounds good at first and has its merits. After all, it’s about time fiscal policy wielded the Milei chainsaw instead of continuing with the socialist cornucopia. Yet recent history has shown us that the CDU flips positions faster than expected.

It is, not least, Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s fault that trust in his party has hit rock bottom. After multiple broken campaign promises — like cutting the electricity tax or securing the country’s external borders once and for all — no one believes his party anymore.

After all, the community, acting as a global social welfare office, also needs to provide compensatory payments across other social insurance branches — which, thanks to successful recruitment efforts related to illegal migration, are facing significant special financing needs.

Germany is the Victim of Its Own Success

Two successful postwar generations built the capital and economic foundation on which the neo-socialist aberration could flourish — manifesting itself in an overgrown welfare system.

At the root of the problem lies not only the crushing tax and contribution burden in Germany but also its stagnating productivity, which together make rapid private capital formation nearly impossible for large parts of the population.

Even though politicians occasionally flirt with the idea of introducing elements of a capital-funded pension system, such proposals are a suicide mission in light of the sheer weight of the public pay-as-you-go system. Germans hold almost exclusively cash-based savings, which makes them highly vulnerable whenever the state — in concert with the ECB — fires up the inflation engine. On top of that, they remain deeply risk-averse investors, culturally and historically allergic to equity markets or private pension schemes.

Powerful Voting Block

The pension insurance provides the perfect case study. With over 21 million pension recipients, every reform attempt at the expense of this group faces a homogeneous voting block. Germany could raise the retirement age, which it is attempting to do to 67 years. It could reduce benefits, which it does not. Pensions are tied to inflation and productivity growth in the economy.

Politicians could reject the green-socialist agenda and return to the economic rationality of the free market to expand the contributor base and attract investment. They do not. The bureaucracy — the political front organization — is simply too powerful. Regulation is its product, and additional welfare recipients are its customers.

The path of least resistance will be taken: further increasing contribution rates for the productive pillars. Federal subsidies from the tax pool will supplement this to ease the pressure. But due to demographic development and the destructive economic policies in the EU, especially in Germany, the Ponzi scheme is steering toward an abyss.

* * * 

About the author: for over 25 years, Thomas Kolbe has worked as a journalist and media producer for clients from various industries and business associations. As a publicist, he focuses on economic processes and observes geopolitical events from the perspective of the capital markets. His publications follow a philosophy that focuses on the individual and their right to self-determination.

Authored by Andrew Korybko via Substack,

The possible deployment of nuclear-capable F-35As there, which could be equipped with US air-to-ground nukes since the UK no longer has its own, would give London a leading role in managing the joint Arctic-Baltic front against Russia that’s expected to remain even after the Ukrainian Conflict ends…

Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur told the Postimees newspaper after last month’s NATO Summit that his country is interested in hosting nuclear-capable F-35As from its allies, with the outlet suggesting that the UK could deploy some of the 12 that it plans to purchase after they’re transferred. The UK’s other announcement that it’ll join NATO’s dual-capable nuclear aircraft mission raises the chance that these jets could be equipped with US nukes since the UK no longer has its own air-to-ground ones.

The Wall Street Journal explained how “U.K. Shifts Nuclear Doctrine With Purchase of U.S. Jets”, which could lead to it obtaining the aforesaid nukes from the US, while Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declared that Estonia’s readiness to host nuclear-capable jets from any NATO country poses an “immediate danger” to Russia. All this follows Russia’s Foreign Spy Service warning in mid-June that the Brits and Ukrainians are cooking up two false flag provocations in the Baltic to rope Trump into the war.

Seeing as how it was assessed in late April that “Estonia Might Become Europe’s Next Trouble Spot”, it’s therefore likely that they’ll let the UK deploy nuclear-capable F-35As at Tapa Army Base, where it already has some troops as part of its largest overseas deployment. Putting everything together, it can therefore be concluded that the UK is actively expanding its sphere of influence in the Baltic on anti-Russian pretexts and via associated means, with Estonia playing a leading role by hosting its regional forces.

The Baltic front of the New Cold War is connected to the Arctic one due to Finland joining the alliance in 2023 and Russia responding by building up its forces along their border to deter NATO-emanating threats from there. This joint front, which is expected to remain tense even after the Ukrainian Conflict ends, will also see the construction of the “EU Defense Line” that’ll stretch along Finland’s, the Baltic States’, and Poland’s eastern borders with Russia and Belarus as a 21st-century Iron Curtain.

It’s within this context that Trump reportedly plans to pull some US troops out of Central & Eastern Europe (CEE), perhaps in exchange for Russia reducing its own presence in Belarus (possibly including its tactical nukes), as part of their plans to build a new European security architecture. Be that as it may, the “EU Defense Line” – which includes new border fortifications and the deployment of extra-regional countries’ forces like the UK’s and Germany’s – ensures that the EU-Russian security dilemma will persist.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov recently said that the EU is becoming an extension of NATO, which is confirmed by these countries’ role in the “EU Defense Line”, their reaffirmed commitment to Ukraine during the latest NATO Summit, and the EU’s €800 billion “ReArm Europe Plan”. Therefore, the abovementioned security dilemma is also a NATO-Russian one, which might dramatically worsen even if there’s a mutual Russia-US pullback of forces in CEE should Trump give air-to-ground nukes to the UK.

The risk of World War III breaking out by miscalculation would remain sky-high in that event due to the ambiguity about whether every British-piloted F-35A that takes off from Estonia (even just for training) is equipped with American nukes as part of a first strike sneak attack. This dark scenario can only be averted by Trump refusing to give the UK air-to-ground nukes, but even if he declines, NATO-Russian tensions will still remain even after peace in Ukraine due to the increasingly British-led Arctic-Baltic front.

Russia’s military announced on Sunday that its forces had taken control of two additional settlements in eastern Ukraine, specifically one in the Donetsk region and the other in Kharkiv.

The statements indicated the villages of Piddubne in Donetsk and Sobolivka in Kharkiv are now under Russian control, though the Ukrainian side has not yet acknowledged this.

Piddubne had an estimated pre-war population of about 500 and is located merely 4 miles from the Dnipropetrovsk oblast border.

As for, Sobolivka, it lies about two miles west of Kupiansk and is outside of areas previously claimed by Russia, according to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW).

Russia’s Defense Ministry said in a couple of social media posts that its troops had “liberated” the settlements, and made reference to “Poddubnoye” and “Sobolevka” – according to the Russian spellings.

According to analysis presented in AFP, this marks the third straight month of Russian forces’ advance in Ukraine’s east, after stagnant front lined during the winter.

“Russia’s military advance in June accelerated for a third consecutive month and made its largest advance since November, according to AFP’s analysis of data from US-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW),” AFP writes.

“The Russian army took 588 square kilometers (227 square miles) of Ukrainian territory in June, compared with 507 square kilometers in May, 379 square kilometers in April, and 240 square kilometers in March, according to ISW data,” the publication adds.

Drone assaults from both sides continues to be a feature of the war, with Russia just days ago having unleashed an unprecedented 500 drones on Ukraine.

Kiev was targeted again overnight Friday, and the next day the city’s mayor Vitali Klitschko said the number of people killed had increased to two, with an additional 31 people wounded.

NEW: Russian forces recently advanced northeast of Pokrovsk and may attempt to advance further toward Dobropillya as part of a mutually reinforcing effort to envelop Pokrovsk and bypass Ukraine’s fortress belt in Donetsk Oblast from the west in the coming months.

Russian… pic.twitter.com/kAzQ7jt9Xb

— Institute for the Study of War (@TheStudyofWar) July 5, 2025

But Ukraine has been touting some successes, with the country’s General Staff on Saturday stating that it struck the Borisoglebsk air base in Russia’s Voronezh region. The statement characterized it as a strike on the home base of Russia’s Su-34, Su-35S and Su-30SM fighter jets.

Authored by eugyppius,

Migrants will not stop molesting and assaulting children at swimming pools in the best and most democratic Germany of all time…

In the last 10 years, we’ve welcomed a lot of ill-behaved and criminal young men into our country for no discernible reason, and along the way we’ve had the dubious privilege of discovering whole new categories of crime. There is the hostile-immigrant-drives-his-car-into-a-crowd-of-unsuspecting-innocents crime, there is the hostile-immigrant-stabs-a-bunch-of-random-people crime, there is the immigrant-gang-collectively-rape-underage-girl-in-park crime, and there is the immigrants-at-swimming-pool-molest-or-assault-various-children crime.

The latter has been stealing the headlines since the latest (allegedly carbon dioxide-induced) ‘heatwave’ in Germany. Recent stories include this one about a 25 year-old man of undisclosed background (who is almost certainly a migrant, otherwise authorities would not be so secretive about his origins) exposing himself to a bunch of underage teenagers at a pool in Asperg (Baden-Württemberg). Or this one, about a 21 year-old Syrian at a pool in Schweinfurt (Bavaria) caught exposing himself to four boys. Or this one, about men of “dark complexion” who severely beat an 18 year-old and threw him down some stairs. Or this disturbing one, about two Syrians who groped and assaulted a 12 year-old girl at a pool in Hof (Bavaria), forcing her beneath the water repeatedly and leaving her with a bloody nose.

Stories like this often come in groups, and what set off the present cascade was a particularly grim incident from June 22nd in Gelnhausen (Hessen), in which a group of Syrian migrants aged 18 to 28 molested eight or nine underage girls at the local pool. When the girls first complained about what was happening, pool personnel sent them back into the water. After this incident became a nationwide story, the Mayor of Gelnhausen, Christian Litzinger (CDU) gave an interview in which he appeared to ascribe the crime to “high temperatures”, which can cause “tempers to flare up”.

Naturally, this is but a partial list comprising only those news reports that I found, that anybody bothered to report to the police and that have made it into the press. The problem is vastly more pervasive than my brief summary might suggest. Personally, I haven’t been to a public pool in Germany in 10 years. I would never go again, and I would certainly never send my kids there. What used to be occasionally amusing places to get a bit of exercise have become crowded loci of urban chaos invariably full of drunken 20 year-old men from the global south. Everybody knows this is happening but it’s very politically incorrect to acknowledge that it’s happening, and so it’s become the occasion for a great deal of bizarre messaging from our progressive establishment.

A small group of peculiar lunatics have decided that what we really need to do is remind everybody that groping and assaulting and molesting is not okay. Thus we’ve been treated to an array of bizarre anti-swimming-pool-molestation messaging campaigns that just love to reverse the typical ethnicities of perpetrator and victim.

Consider the Cologne “Ich sag’s” (“I say it”) poster series. “Shoving is not funny!” screams this placard, with an awkward cartoon of a blonde German boy joining in harassing a brown girl:

Another poster from the same series informs viewers that “groping” is “forbidden” and likewise features a blonde German offender, because obviously that’s the problem demographic here.

All of that is irritating enough, but it’s nothing compared to the posters devised by a literal blue-haired city bureaucrat in Büren (near Paderborn), which take the woke programme so far around the bend that I had trouble believing they weren’t intended as subversive parodies. In the anti-groping category, Büren provides this insane PSA of a fat red-haired woman molesting a diminutive black man with a prosthetic leg, while a bizarre sea turtle named Tiki lurks beneath them and deplores unwanted touching.

Tiki the retard turtle, who apparently cannot even swim because he requires goggles and flotation devices, recurs in this anti-peeping placard, which – you guessed it – features a German man intruding upon a black woman.

Aside from other obvious objections, what strikes me about these posters is how infantilising and trivialising they all are – waving away an entire category of crime that is overwhelmingly, disproportionately committed by adult male migrants as some kind of cartoonish childhood problem that just requires a bit of schoolmarmish clarification to iron out.

Authored by Andrew Korybko via Substack,

Chinese President Xi Jinping declined to travel to Rio for the latest BRICS Summit on the reported pretext of scheduling conflicts and having already met with his Brazilian counterpart Luiz Ignacia Lula da Silva twice this year.

The South China Morning Post speculated that the real reason was that Xi didn’t want to be “perceived as a supporting actor” there given the state dinner that Lula will hold for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, however, who’ll be the first Indian premier to visit Brazil in nearly six decades.

Despite the border de-escalation deal that Xi and Modi agreed to during the last BRICS Summit, China and India still remain rivals, which recently manifested itself through reported Chinese support to Pakistan during the latest Indo-Pak Conflict and India’s perception that China is using the SCO against it. Accordingly, with Modi indisputably being the top VIP at the group’s latest annual gathering, it might therefore indeed be the case that Xi felt uncomfortable and thus declined to travel there to attend.

This hypothesis directly leads to the question of why Lula agreed to make Modi’s visit an official state one with an associated dinner despite him traveling there to attend a multilateral event. While it could just be for reasons of protocol considering the historical significance of his visit, Lula might have also calculated that it could expand Brazil’s balancing act from its hitherto mostly binary Sino-US nature into a more complex one through the inclusion of India. That could in turn alleviate some pressure from Trump.

Lula, whose evolution into a liberal-globalist during his third term (as documented in the several dozen analyses enumerated at the end of this one here) led to him closely aligning with Biden, endorsed Kamala right before the last US presidential election and recently told Trump to stop tweeting so much. All of that naturally put him in Trump’s crosshairs precisely at the moment when Brazil and the US are engaged in trade and energy talks whose successful outcome is more important to Brazil than to the US.

As luck would have it, Modi’s decision to attend the latest BRICS Summit in person and thus become the first Indian Prime Minister to visit Brazil in nearly six decades provided Lula with an opportunity to give him a state visit, which might have been responsible for Xi’s absence from the event as was reported. From the US’ perspective, there might indeed be a connection between these two developments, which could ingratiate Lula with Trump if he comes to share that perception at his advisors’ suggestion.

After all, this is the first time that Xi won’t attend a BRICS Summit in any capacity, not even remotely. The resultant optics fuel Western media speculation about China’s commitment to the group, which can manipulate some of the global public’s views regardless of its veracity. This sequence of events – China’s Indian rival (which is still friendly with the US in spite of the US’ latest efforts to subordinate it) visiting Brazil, Xi declining to attend the BRICS Summit, and Western media’s spin – aligns with US interests.

Accordingly, Xi’s absence from the latest BRICS Summit (regardless of the real reason[s] behind it) might stimulate US-Brazilian ties and comparatively reduce China’s role in Brazil’s balancing act if India’s role therein soon becomes more significant, which can altogether be considered a setback for China. To be sure, it’s not a major one and it could potentially be reversed through skillful Chinese diplomacy, but it’s still difficult for any honest observer to describe this outcome as meaningless, let alone a success.