Authored by Haley Zaremba via OilPrice.com,

• Meta signed a deal with startup Overview Energy to develop up to 1 gigawatt of space-based solar power, though a pilot satellite won’t launch until 2028 at the earliest — and commercial viability remains years away.

• Despite clean energy ambitions, Big Tech is still heavily dependent on natural gas: Meta is funding 10 new gas plants for its Louisiana data center campus, and Google is building a major gas facility in North Texas.

• Google admitted its carbon emissions rose 48% in five years and has conceded its 2030 net-zero target may be out of reach as AI energy demand continues to accelerate.

The AI boom has unleashed an energy monster unlike anything the world has ever seen before. No one is exactly sure how much energy the AI sector will require in the coming years as large language models continue to advance and expand. In fact, we don’t even really know how much energy it’s consuming now. But most experts agree that we can expect a sharp and continuing rise in demand from the data centers that power the tech sector in the coming years as the global economy increasingly integrates AI into virtually every market sector on Earth.

“AI’s integration into almost everything from customer service calls to algorithmic ‘bosses’ to warfare is fueling enormous demand,” the Washington Post reported last year. “Despite dramatic efficiency improvements, pouring those gains back into bigger, hungrier models powered by fossil fuels will create the energy monster we imagine.”

And, so far, it’s consumers who are bearing the burden of this ‘energy monster.’ As data centers place unprecedented strain on local power grids, consumers are paying the price for the extra competition at the meter. But this system is unsustainable, and in flux. In May, as a result of voter outcry ahead of the midterm elections, Big Tech firms signed a pledge to either purchase or provide their own energy supplies to power their energy-hungry data centers in order to buffer consumers from rising energy prices.

As a result, major tech firms are starting to invest more heavily in next-gen and clean energy alternatives in a bid to find ways to power their enormous future needs without throwing their climate pledges out the window. Just this week, Meta announced a deal with Overview Energy to start developing a solar power system in space, which would be able to beam energy down to Earth even in darkness.

Overview Energy is a startup seeking to put solar satellites into Earth’s orbit, where they can harvest power from the sun at all times of day and night. Meta, the company behind Facebook, has signed a deal with the energy startup to develop up to 1 gigawatt of space solar power, or the equivalent of the energy output of a nuclear reactor.

However, the deal is all theoretical at this point, as the technology of space solar has not yet caught up to the vision set out by the two companies. Overview Energy aims to launch a pilot satellite into orbit by 2028 – meaning that a gigawatt of power is still quite a few years away from becoming a reality, if it comes to fruition at all. But proponents of the technology feel that it’s just a matter of time before space-based solar becomes commercially viable, and some contend that it could even be cost-competitive with other energy sources as soon as 2040.

Silicon Valley is also investing more and more into a high-stakes bet on nuclear fusion as a silver bullet solution to slay the AI energy monster. “There’s no way to get there without a breakthrough,” Sam Altman, co-founder and CEO of ChatGPT firm OpenAI, said at the 2024 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “It motivates us to go invest more in fusion,” he went on to specify.

Tech giants, including Meta and Google are also increasingly investing in next-gen geothermal energy research, which uses enhanced drilling methods borrowed from the oil and gas sector and even, in some projects, from nuclear fusion to drill down to tap into the Earth’s heat from nearly anywhere on the surface.

In the meantime, however, Meta and other Big Tech firms are heavily relying on natural gas to power its massive AI ambitions. Meta alone is funding the development of 10 new gas-fired plants for its biggest-ever AI data center campus in rural Louisiana. Meanwhile, Google is developing a massive natural gas facility attached to a data center campus in North Texas.

So while Big Tech has major clean energy ambitions, these technologies are still years away, and real-time emissions are continuing to balloon. In 2024, Google admitted that the firm’s carbon emissions had risen 48 percent in five years thanks to the AI boom. Google had previously pledged to reach net zero by 2030, but the officials have conceded that “as we further integrate AI into our products, reducing emissions may be challenging.”

Iran is telling Washington that the ball is in its court as President Trump has affirmed over the weekend that he is reviewing the latest peace deal submitted via Pakistani mediators. Tehran is further saying the US is going from worse to worse as it must now choose between an “impossible” military operation or a “bad” deal.

The intelligence unit of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has newly stated that “Trump must choose between an impossible military operation or a bad deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran,” according to Al Jazeera referencing the official statement. The provocative words framing the dilemma came soon on the heels of the following Saturday Truth Social post from Trump:

As for the IRGC statement about an “impossible” miliary operation, it further indicated that Tehran sent the US military a deadline to end its blockade of Iranian ports. It highlighted that Europe, China and Russia are are increasingly taking a more critical toward Washington’s war.

“The room for US decision-making has narrowed,” the IRGC intelligence unit sad additionally, emphasizing “there is only one way to read this.”

At the moment, the two-week ceasefire which was announced on April 8 through Pakistani mediation has been unilaterally extended by Trump, to now be indefinite. On Friday as the conflict reached 60-days, President Trump submitted a formal letter to Congress stressing Operation Epic Fury had already been ‘terminated’ due to the ceasefire. 

The White House is arguing that this loophole – or the fact that there’s currently no exchanges of fire between the US and Iranian sides – means that required Congressional review and authorization of use of American troops is essentially voided. In the meantime gas prices at the pump for Americans are steadily rising. The below is the full IRGC statement to the US side:

IRGC Intelligence Organization:

🔺 Iran sets Pentagon a blockade deadline

🔺 China, Russia, Europe shift tone against Washington Trump’s passive letter to Congress

🔺 Acceptance of Iran’s negotiating terms pic.twitter.com/e5wIH4ZbHv

— Press TV 🔻 (@PressTV) May 3, 2026

The current Iran-submitted plan now being reviewed at the White House reportedly contains 14 points. A Russian correspondent has said that “Iran is seeking a decisive and permanent end to the conflict with the US, rather than a previously proposed two-month ceasefire” and that it seems a one-month window to end all hostilities.

“The plan includes a demand to resolve all issues and end the war within 30 days,” said RT correspondent Saman Kojouri, adding that “”he space for compromise between Tehran and Washington is narrowing.” Just by the close of last week Trump said he was ‘not satisfied’ with what he had seen so far.

Summary:

• Airlines For America CEO Chris Sununu Blasts Democrats For Spirit’s Death Spiral

• Duffy Pledges Relief For Customers, Workers

• Spirit Airlines Is Dead, Flights Canceled

Head Of Airlines Lobbying Group Blasts Democrats For Spirit’s Death Spiral

Chris Sununu, president and CEO of Airlines for America, the lobbying group representing major U.S. passenger and cargo airlines, blasted Democrats under the Biden-Harris regime era for accelerating bankrupt Spirit Airlines’ demise after the blocked Spirit-JetBlue merger. 

This aged well!

I’ve warned for months that a @JetBlue–@SpiritAirlines merger would have led to fewer flights and higher fares.@JusticeATR and @USDOT were right to stand up for consumers and fight against runaway airline consolidation.

This is a Biden win for flyers! https://t.co/lJFGS3ucv3

— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) March 6, 2024

“In their own BIG GOVERNMENT way, they said, no, we won’t allow [the merger] to happen! And THIS is the result! What folks warned was going to happen ultimately came to fruition, unfortunately,” Sununu told Fox News.

He continued, “The opportunity that an airline like Spirit creates for those kinds of working-class customers, if you will, they have a lot of low fares, a lot of that point-to-point stuff that those consumers really relied on, they threw it away!”

“They absolutely threw it away! They had the opportunity to make sure they could survive. They didn’t want to look at the math,” he emphasized, adding, “They didn’t want to understand the business models.”

Sununu commended President Trump for putting together a rescue deal to save the bankrupt airline. But as of Saturday morning, the liquidation process had begun, with all flights canceled.

🚨 NOW: Airlines for America President Chris Sununu EXPOSES Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg for DESTROYING lower air fares and thousands of jobs by crushing Spirit Airlines

They just harmed the working class — which socialists CLAIM to fight for!

“In their own BIG… pic.twitter.com/nssxHEXCPm

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) May 3, 2026

RIP Spirit 

Rest in peace Spirit Airlines pic.twitter.com/7MVmW899pI

— Not Jerome Powell (@alifarhat79) May 3, 2026

The collapse of bankrupt Spirit Airlines Now Official

After several failed attempts by the Trump administration to engineer a rescue package, including a proposed $500 million financing deal that could have left the U.S. government with control of up to 90% of the budget carrier, negotiations broke down late this week.

By Saturday morning, Spirit had begun winding down operations, with all flights canceled and the carrier entering liquidation mode.

The outcome marks the final flight for the budget airline, crushed by years of operational stress, failed merger attempts, mounting debt, and a brutal jet-fuel price shock that derailed its efforts to emerge from bankruptcy this summer.

Well… oops https://t.co/Ahv3e2M8vU

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) May 1, 2026

The Trump administration was willing to explore an extraordinary state-backed rescue to save nearly 7,500 jobs.

Now, however, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has announced “ACTION to bring relief to Spirit customers and its workforce.” This will include other airlines (United, Delta, JetBlue & Southwest) agreeing to cap ticket prices for Spirit customers who have been left in the lurch, reduced fares on ‘high-volume Spirit routes”, while American Airlines and United “are creating microsites for Spirit employees looking to continue a career in aviation.”

In coordination with our airline partners, we’re taking ACTION to bring relief to Spirit customers and its workforce.

From capped ticket prices for flyers who need to rebook to employees looking for job opportunities, there’s a lot of information you should be aware of.…

— Secretary Sean Duffy (@SecDuffy) May 2, 2026

Spirit’s statement about winding down operations:

It is with great disappointment that Spirit Airlines has started winding down its global operations, effective immediately. All flights have been cancelled, and customer service is no longer available. While we are not able to help rebook your flight on another airline, we will automatically process refunds for any flights purchased through Spirit with a credit or debit card to the original form of payment. We are proud of the impact of our ultra-low-cost model on the industry for the last 33 years and had hoped to serve our Guests for many years to come.

pic.twitter.com/Wz3ilRHD2z

— Spirit Airlines (@SpiritAirlines) May 2, 2026

Polymarket odds:

US takes a stake in Spirit Airlines by May 31?

Spirit Airlines shutdown/liquidation by May 31?

Very easy money

SPIRIT AIRLINES STARTS ORDERLY WIND-DOWN OF OPERATIONS https://t.co/PAtaxmG5gv

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) May 2, 2026

Even as Spirit begins winding down operations, President Trump said Friday that he will “have something on Spirit today or tomorrow.”

What that means at this stage is anyone’s guess, especially with rescue talks reportedly dead and the airline already moving into full shutdown mode.

Authored by Paul Birch via DailySceptic.org,

These people have never been in a life-or-death situation like the arresting officers

One would think that even when the police successfully detain a suspect who was alleged to have been conducting a marauding knife attack, the professional activists would have a day off.

But you would be wrong. Amid all the ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’ cliché bingo, voices of criticism were heard. Among them, the blue-tick career race-baiter Shola Mos-Shogbamimu. She was quick to take to X following yesterday’s attack on the Jewish community in Golders Green, north London. The 45 year-old suspect, a British national of Somali origin, had reportedly stabbed two Jewish men at random. The suspect – depressingly, inevitably – had previously been referred to the Government’s counter radicalisation programme, Prevent.

Shola Mos-Shogbamimu criticised police officers who are shown kicking the suspect in the head while he is on the ground. She opined:

Contemptible abuse of police power. Why kick him in the head several times when he’s already Tasered and in your control? Should he not be alive to be brought to justice in a court of law for stabbing two Jews??!! Disgusting.

Also, Green Party leader Zack Polanski, still playing at politics, was quick to condemn the actions of the arresting officers, using a retweet to maintain that:

Essentially his (Commissioner Mark Rowley’s) officers were reportedly and violently kicking a mentally ill man in the head when he was already incapacitated by taser.

What Shola, Zack and other commentators do not understand – because they have never been in a life-or-death situation – is that force is not judged by how it looks in a six-second clip. It is judged by necessity in the moment. These keyboard warriors have no idea what it’s like to face immediate and possibly lethal violence armed with often nothing more than some irritant spray and a stick. Your priority is to keep members of the public safe, followed by yourselves as much as possible.

These officers would have had no idea in such a fast moving situation whether the suspect was acting alone or as part of a cell. He needed to be neutralised as soon as possible in order to keep people safe. He wasn’t showing his hands; he was still holding a bloodied weapon that he had just used to attack Jewish members of the public; he had been moving rapidly towards them, and they would have had no idea if he was wearing an explosive vest (wearing a coat on a warm day is never a good sign).

Policing is not theatre. It is not performed for social media approval. It is messy, fast and often brutal. Because the people officers deal with are messy, fast and often brutal. A man armed with a knife who has already stabbed two people, who refuses repeated commands to disarm and who continues to pose a threat even after being tasered, is not “under control”. He is an active danger until the weapon is removed. That is the reality, no matter how uncomfortable it makes Left-leaning commentators feel.

The idea that officers should politely wait or somehow apply ‘gentler’ tactics while a suspect still has the capacity to kill is not just naïve in the extreme, it is dangerous. It puts officers’ lives at risk. It puts the public at risk. And it reveals a complete detachment from reality (I am reminded of the occasion when then Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, declared that Islamic State murderer Mohammed ‘Jihadi John’ Emwazi should have been arrested in war-torn Syria rather than killed.)

This is the gap at the heart of modern public debate on policing. One side deals in real-world consequences. The other deals in optics. The officers in Golders Green had seconds to act. Not minutes. Not the luxury of hindsight, slow-motion replays or viral commentary. Seconds. In those seconds they made unquestionably the right decision: remove the threat as quickly as possible, by whatever means necessary short of lethal force. And that point matters. Because the same voices now condemning ‘excessive force’ would be the first to demand answers if those officers had hesitated and others had been stabbed.

There is also an uncomfortable truth that many would rather avoid: this attack was not just violent, it was targeted. Two visibly Jewish men were attacked in broad daylight in a part of London with a large Jewish community. That context matters. It should matter. It’s part of an ever growing pattern of antisemitic attacks carried out by people holding extreme Islamist ideologies.

Yet instead of sustained outrage about antisemitic violence, the conversation was almost immediately derailed, redirected toward the conduct of the officers who stopped it. That inversion of priorities is telling.

It reflects a culture where the instinct is no longer to back those who confront violence but to scrutinise them first, and often most harshly. Where the benefit of the doubt is extended to offenders, those enforcing the law are expected to meet an impossible standard of perfection under extreme pressure – often from their own senior management.

And it is precisely this culture that erodes effective policing. If every split-second decision is second guessed by people with no operational understanding, officers will become more hesitant. More risk-averse. Less pro-active. That is not compassion. It is a recipe for more victims.

None of this means police should be beyond scrutiny. Of course they shouldn’t be. But scrutiny requires context. It requires full evidence. It requires intellectual honesty. A selectively edited clip on social media is not scrutiny. It is propaganda. That is the real issue here.

Not just one commentator getting it wrong, but an entire ecosystem that rewards outrage over accuracy, speed over truth and narrative over fact. The Metropolitan Police, to their credit, did something increasingly necessary: they put out the full body-worn footage. They showed the public what actually happened. And when people saw the complete picture, the narrative collapsed. Because reality is stubborn like that.

In the end, strip away the noise and the incentives of social media and the situation becomes very simple. A violent attacker stabbed two innocent men. Two unarmed officers confronted him. They stopped him. They went home alive, and so did everyone else.

That is not a scandal. That is policing working exactly as it should.

Europe’s population is no longer replacing itself.

Across the continent, fertility rates have fallen below the 2.1 births per woman needed to maintain stable population levels, with no country meeting that threshold as of 2024.

The map below, via Visual Capitalist’s Gabriel Cohen, shows the number of live births per woman across Europe using the most recent data from Eurostat, FRED, and the UK’s Office for National Statistics.

From Ukraine (0.99) to Spain (1.1), some of Europe’s largest countries now rank among those with the lowest birth rates, highlighting how widespread the decline has become.

Fertility Crisis in South and Eastern Europe

Europe’s lowest birth rates are concentrated in the east and south, where economic strain and geopolitical instability have accelerated long-term declines.

Ukraine has seen the sharpest drop. Its fertility rate, which last exceeded the replacement level in 1986, fell to 0.9 in 2022 before recovering slightly to 0.99 in 2024.

Among countries at peace, Malta has one of the lowest fertility rates at 1.01, followed by Spain (1.1) and Poland (1.14).

This data table lists European countries alongside their fertility rates as of 2024.

Lower fertility in countries like Spain and Poland reflects a mix of economic pressures, including lower wages and the rising cost of raising children, alongside broader trends seen across developed economies.

Aging populations are already reshaping national priorities. As Poland seeks to build a larger military, its shrinking population presents a strategic vulnerability.

Europe’s Fertility Woes

This trend extends across the continent. Europe’s largest economies, including Germany (1.36), the UK (1.41), France (1.61), and Italy (1.18), all remain well below replacement levels.

Even countries with relatively higher fertility rates, such as Bulgaria (1.72) and Montenegro (1.75), are not producing enough births to stabilize their populations.

One response has been increased immigration. In Germany, migration policy in the mid-2010s was shaped partly by the need to support the country’s labor system. However, this approach has also fueled political backlash and the rise of anti-immigration parties.

Family Incentives As A Solution?

Some countries are attempting to boost birth rates through financial incentives. France, Hungary, and Poland have introduced tax credits, subsidies, and other programs aimed at encouraging larger families.

Hungary, for example, has spent over a decade expanding benefits for young couples, with the goal of reaching the 2.1 replacement rate by 2030.

So far, the results have been limited. Hungary’s fertility rate of 1.41 is similar to countries like the UK and Portugal, suggesting that financial incentives alone may not reverse the broader trend.

To learn more about this topic, check out the Which European Nations Have the Best Fertility Treatment Policies? on Voronoi.

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

British kids as young as five are now being read picture books that paint small boat crossings in glowing terms and urge them to open the door to unlimited migration.

While record numbers of illegal arrivals strain housing, schools and public services, left-wing charities are using taxpayer-backed programmes to turn classrooms into recruitment centres for open borders ideology.

More than 1,100 schools and nurseries across the UK have signed up to the Schools of Sanctuary programme, run by the City of Sanctuary network. The scheme requires schools to complete a “rigorous” award process to prove they are “working collaboratively to strengthen community approaches to welcoming refugee children and families.” Once awarded, they pay a minimum donation of £75 to £300.

Children’s books with pro-migrant messaging that teach pupils ‘everybody’s welcome’ are being shared in scheme promoted at more than 1,000 schools https://t.co/0Yc556WpXS

— Daily Mail (@DailyMail) April 30, 2026

As part of the programme, schools are given a suggested reading list packed with pro-migrant messaging. One book, Kind by Alison Green, illustrated by renowned children’s illustrators such as Quentin Blake and Axel Scheffler, tells children: “Sometimes people have lived through very hard times. They’ve had to leave their homes and their countries because of danger. They are brave and amazing and have extraordinary stories to tell.”

It continues: “Sometimes people say there’s no room for anyone more. But maybe you can say ‘There’s plenty of room! Come on in!’ After all, if you don’t let people in, you’ll never know what you’re missing.”

Yeah, come on in! In fact, come on in and live in a hotel in a nice green village, all at taxpayer expense!

The book features a cartoon lion in a crowded boat with other animals and encourages pupils to share toys, draw pictures together and even learn words from a foreign child’s language.

Children told to welcome ‘brave and amazing’ illegal migrants – and even share their toys with themhttps://t.co/4Uz4uofgJF

— GB News (@GBNEWS) April 29, 2026

Another title, Everybody’s Welcome by Patricia Hegarty, states plainly: “Everybody’s welcome, no matter who they are, wherever they may come from, whether near or far.”

No matter who they are. Never a truer word spoken.

The classic Elmer and the Hippos is also recommended. In it, elephants initially resent hippos arriving at their river because “there isn’t enough room for them and us.” By the end, the two groups work together and become friends after clearing a blockage.

Except of course, in this story none of the hippos go on a stabbing or raping spree. Something the UK is experiencing every single day now.

Schools are also encouraged to hold an annual “Day of Welcome” in June, complete with non-uniform days to raise funds for the scheme or local migrant-support groups. Secondary pupils can even meet real-life refugees promoted by the charity.

What could possibly go wrong?

Shadow Education Secretary Laura Trott has demanded the books be withdrawn “immediately.” She told the Daily Mail: “Classrooms should be places of learning not promoting political ideology, schools have a very clear duty to stay out of politics.”

Trott added: “Portraying the arrival of small boats as a positive thing in books for children as young as five is indoctrination, this is an illegal practice. This organisation has already made clear its aim is to turn pupils into ‘ethically informed change makers’ and that crosses a very clear line.”

She concluded: “We must get a grip on these third party resources infiltrating our schools and peddling political agendas to young children.”

The City of Sanctuary UK defended the materials, saying it “works with schools to support a culture of welcome, inclusion and understanding for all members of the community.” It added: “Our suggested educational resources, including book recommendations, are designed to help children develop empathy, critical thinking, and awareness of the experiences of others.”

A Pattern of School Indoctrination

This is not an isolated incident. It fits a clear pattern of using British schools to enforce mass-migration acceptance while cracking down on any pushback.

As we previously highlighted, the far left UK Green Party, which is about to become much more influential in Parliament with upcoming local elections, wants to teach children they have a “moral obligation” to accept unlimited immigration:

The current government has also urged schools to snitch on “anti-Muslim hostility” in an Orwellian crackdown:

Meanwhile, counter-terror police are running ads warning teenagers that sharing “funny content” online could amount to terrorism:

And a government-funded video game explicitly warned kids they could be flagged as terrorists for questioning mass migration:

Even primary school children are not exempt from the rampant indoctrination:

The message is relentless: British children must be conditioned to accept endless migration, share what little they have, and never question whether “there’s plenty of room.”

After all, we’re reliably told to expect the arrival of another 7 MILLION migrants in the coming years:

Seven million migrants will come to the UK in the next decade, pushing the nation’s population to a record high, according to official data.

🔗: https://t.co/MMfQoPCSMN pic.twitter.com/c4Sakfay43

— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) April 28, 2026

Parents and politicians are right to push back. Schools exist to educate, not to manufacture “ethically informed change makers” for the open-borders lobby. Until third-party political materials are banned from the curriculum and real scrutiny is applied to groups like City of Sanctuary, Britain’s classrooms will continue serving as recruitment tools for the very policies destroying community cohesion and national identity.

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

Ukraine has been demonstrating deeper targeting reach inside Russia, as several key oil sites have come under direct drone attack this week, resulting in significant destruction.

This as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday announced “a new stage in the use of Ukrainian weapons to limit the potential of Russia’s war.“

The massive Tuapse complex on Russia’s Black Sea coast has been hit no less than three times in under a month, sparking a series of massive fires that in some cases took days for emergency crews to extinguish.

In some cases, targets in the Urals – nearly 1,000 miles away from the Ukraine border – have been hit.

Transneft’s oil pumping and distribution facility in the city of Perm was struck this week, which lies very far into Russian territory.

The Ukraine Security Service (SBU) owned up to it, boasting that the targeted facility is “a strategically important hub of the main oil transportation system.” It further declared that “almost all oil storage tanks are on fire.“

Amid the fresh Perm attack, Russia had said it downed nearly 100 Ukrainian drones across various regions, while Russia’s presidential envoy to the region, Artem Zhoga, conceded that “The Urals are now within reach, be vigilant.”

Putin’s office has also denounced these fresh assaults on oil facilities as “terrorist attacks”. As for the prior Black Sea export and refining hub attacks of the last month, CNN reviews:

For the third time in 12 days, the Russian Black Sea town of Tuapse woke up Tuesday to apocalyptic scenes.

Thick toxic fumes, and flames rising up from the latest Ukrainian drone attack on the Rosneft-owned Tuapse oil refinery, almost reached the heights of the surrounding Caucasus mountains.

By Thursday morning, authorities said the fire had been extinguished. Fires from the two previous attacks, on April 16 and 20, also took days to put out, with toxic substances pouring down in black rain and blanketing cars and streets in oily grime, leading to what experts are dubbing the worst environmental disaster in the region in years.

Huge fireball at Perm oil site…

Ukrainian drone attacks have struck Perm (about 1,500 km from Ukraine), targeting oil infrastructure. pic.twitter.com/lCXo8Pb1tb

— Clash Report (@clashreport) April 30, 2026

Currently, the globe’s attention is largely focused on the Iran war and the Hormuz Strait blockade, and with that efforts to reach a political and peace settlement in Ukraine have faded as well. Earlier in the Ukraine war, these major refinery attacks would dominate world headlines, but at the moment they have remained in the background given the constant Iran-related news flow. President Putin has lately communicated to Trump that he’s open to a ‘Victory Day’ ceasefire, a proposal the Kremlin said Washington has backed.

Via Remix News,

A new poll from the presitigous ifop polling firm shows that a large majority of French citizens believe in a core tenent of the Great Replacement.

Specifically, 60 percent of French people told ifop they believe we are witnessing “a replacement of the French population by non-European populations, mainly from the African continent.”

The poll also found that 66 percent see it as a bad development, compared to 9 percent who see it as a good thing.

Two weeks ago, Marion Maréchal, leader of Identité Libertés, posted to X: “60% of French people think that we are witnessing ‘a replacement of the French population by non-European populations mainly from Africa’ according to @IfopOpinion. To our greatest misfortune, our rulers are among the 40%.”

Analyst Paul Cébille, from the Hexagone Observatory, posted the same line.

💥📊 Chiffre choc passé inaperçu⤵️

🔸60% des Français pensent que l’on assiste à “un remplacement de la population française par des populations non-européennes principalement issues du continent africain.”

🔸Et 66% y voient une mauvaise chose, contre 9% une bonne.

IFOP, 2026 pic.twitter.com/61AZT0XfUS

— Paul Cébille (@Ellibec) April 16, 2026

According to the data from IFOP, 7 percent are undecided.

According to the French Directorate General for Foreigners (DGEF), valid French residence permits in 2025 hit an unprecedented level of 4.5 million, an increase of approximately 3 percent, driven primarily by multi-year permits and long-term resident cards, writes Le Journal du Dimanche.

For 2025, one in three permits was issued for family reasons (1.5 million), while one in five was an automatic renewal. New permits also increased to 384,000, a jump of 11 percent, which was partly driven by a 65 percent increase in admissions for humanitarian reasons.

Foreigners with legal status now represent 8.1 percent of France’s adult population, with a high concentration of nationalities from the Maghreb. At the same time, regularizations have declined (-10%, to 28,610), while deportations have increased sharply (+15.7%, to 24,985), reaching their highest level in a decade, notes JDD.

Maréchal more recently posted a telling video of the number of illegals coming to the EU, blasting French leaders for their continuous stance of “above all, let’s do nothing!”

L’immigration illégale dans l’UE de 2008 à 2024. Chaque point représente 100 clandestins.
Réaction des gouvernements français successifs en voyant cela : « surtout ne faisons rien ! ». pic.twitter.com/0G78rKLeIy

— Marion Maréchal (@MarionMarechal) April 23, 2026

Maréchal has also been a vocal critic of Spain’s Socialist PM Pedro Sánchez for his “irresponsible regularization of 500,000 undocumented immigrants,” a figure that some say is likely to skyrocket to over 1.5 million.

“Closing Schengen at the Spanish border is a vital act to deter and protect the French and Europeans,” she wrote. The National Rally’s Jordan Bardella has also sounded the alarm over what many consider an immediate threat to France. Bardella has made it clear that he feels the EU must alter current rules to disallow free movement within Schengen for those holding a resident permit.

Read more here…

Authored by Gregory Copley via The Epoch Times,

Western focus was, in 2026, on whether U.S. President Donald Trump would fulfill his threat to withdraw the United States from NATO. Eastern and Southern focus was on whether the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the BRICS alliance were even functioning.

In the U.S.–NATO standoff, it may take more complex political maneuvering for Trump to achieve a breakup of the alliance. Certainly, he could withdraw the U.S. military from European basing, but Congress in 2023 approved legislation that would prevent any president from withdrawing the United States from NATO without approval from the Senate or an act of Congress. The measure, spearheaded by Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and, ironically, Marco Rubio (R-Fla.)—now Trump’s secretary of state—was included in the annual National Defense Authorization Act signed by President Joe Biden.

It may be more feasible for Trump to have the United States leave aspects of the military component of the North Atlantic Alliance, as French President Charles de Gaulle did in withdrawing from the NATO integrated military command structure—but not the North Atlantic Alliance—in 1967. Other members of NATO may themselves go beyond that to abandon NATO in order to form a new alliance, but that is a separate issue.

Of real, but as yet unexplored, interest is that other alliances have been forced to the sidelines because Trump initiatives, and time, have rendered them ineffective.

Among the most important of these are the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and BRICS. Secondarily, the informal Quad alliance against China—of India, the United States, Japan, and Australia—is quietly becoming less tight.

The SCO, which emerged in 2001 from the 1996 Shanghai Five security arrangement, now has 10 member states, most of which harbor suspicions about other members of the SCO. It was meant to contain a mutual security clause to require members to support other members under attack from outside. SCO membership includes Iran, and that clause has proven to be unenforceable as the wars against Iran continue. So the SCO is now effectively inoperable, except as a showcase with an expensive bureaucracy.

Similarly, BRICS—which began as a working group of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—was designed to circumvent U.S. domination of global trade systems by finding alternatives to trading using the U.S. dollar. The BRICS membership had expanded by 2026 to 10 states, adding Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. But it failed to shake the United States’ ability to control and sustain a global sanctions regime against political leaders who used the U.S. dollar in ways deemed inimical to U.S. interests.

BRICS achieved some new trading modalities that avoided the use of the U.S. dollar, but this did little to weaken the U.S. currency, or strengthen the currencies of BRICS members. But that was to be expected. This journal, as early as 2008, was discussing the end of the globalist, multinational framework of financing the international logistics chain based on the U.S. dollar. It discussed a return to bilateralism of trading methodologies, including barter and countertrade, which had, even in the 1970s, been a normal practice.

The past year-plus has seen the promoters of BRICS—as a defensive mechanism against the United States—becoming incapable of creating a new trade finance system. A proposed BRICS currency has come to naught; the currency of China has weakened to the point that it is hardly tradeable. And so on.

At what point is the Trump administration prepared to push for the complete breakdown of “opposing currencies,” not just of the BRICS states’ proposed new currency, but even of the euro and sterling?

Has all of this saved and bolstered the U.S. dollar? By default, yes; there is still no viable alternative to the use of the U.S. currency for major world trade.

But is Trump yet through with his plans to diminish, and perhaps totally dispense with, the United Nations? He has certainly hit key aspects of the U.N. that were heavily dependent on U.S. taxpayer contributions. The U.N. itself has been making itself less relevant and less forceful; it has taken an extremely polarizing, leftist position on many international issues and, at the same time, has been disregarded by the United States and other powers.

This, in turn, has made it less useful to Beijing, which entered the U.N. on Oct. 25, 1971, displacing the original founding member, the Republic of China, also known as Taiwan. China then began a sustained campaign to use U.N. agencies for political influence. So some of Trump’s anti-U.N. activities were clearly designed as moves against China.

What is the impact of the diminishing role of the U.N.? It has become less trusted as an instrument to impartially mediate interstate conflicts, and this makes its International Criminal Court (ICC)—to which the United States is not a signatory—also less trusted. The attempt to use the ICC as a key body to create “international law” out of thin air has now become discredited, or less of an influence. The World Trade Organization is also increasingly disregarded, as are regional bodies, such as ECOWAS in West Africa, and the Organization of American States.

So to what extent was the “rules-based world order” a creature of this utopianist U.N. thinking, or was it merely a reflection of a pax Americana?

If Trump wished to move heavily against the U.N., his best timing might be before the U.S. midterm congressional elections in November. But could he make it stick?

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

Authored by Savannah Halsey Pointer via The Epoch Times,

The Department of Justice (DOJ) on April 30 released a 500-page report detailing alleged anti-Christian bias on the part of the Biden administration.

According to the report by the DOJ’s Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias, the former administration’s prosecutions, policies, and practices constituted bias throughout multiple agencies, in accordance with the administration’s priorities.

The task force is chaired by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.

“No American should live in fear that the federal government will punish them for their faith,” Blanche said. “As our report lays out, the Biden Administration’s actions devastated the lives of many Christian Americans.”

Around 200 pages of the report are dedicated to the actions of more than 17 federal agencies that uncovered alleged religious discrimination. The investigation included a review of internal discussions and case files, as well as prosecutorial decisions.

There were details of a since-retracted 2023 FBI memo on “radical traditionalist” Catholics, which cited the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The review also listed Biden-era regulations on abortion, contraception, gender, and human sexuality, among other issues that pitted the government against religious groups.

The report also makes note of the Biden administration’s reading of the 2019 Supreme Court ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County, which led to decisions that were based on what the Trump administration report called “sex-based discrimination in federally funded schools and sports.”

According to the DOJ report, the previous administration used the FBI, IRS, Department of Education, Department of Health and Human Services, and other agencies to monitor, investigate, and apply pressure to various Christian groups at a federal level.

The current DOJ’s task force was formed in accordance with President Donald Trump’s Feb. 6, 2025, executive order titled Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias.

The president ordered multiple agencies to investigate what he called an “egregious pattern of targeting peaceful Christians, while ignoring violent, anti-Christian offenses.”

Conflicting Response

This is a “very different Department of Justice … than the previous administration,” said Neama Rahmani, a former federal prosecutor and president of West Coast Trial Lawyers.

“The conclusion in the report, at least from an enforcement perspective, was that … federal law was disproportionately used to prosecute pro-life and other Christians under the Biden administration,” he told The Epoch Times.

However, Rahmani, who worked at the DOJ from 2009 to 2012, said that while policies change, he has not seen a “systematic bias for or against” any one religious group.

“I don’t necessarily see … [that] Christian activists in this country are receiving more prison time for violent acts, as opposed to, you know, Muslim or other religious groups.”

According to Andrea Picciotti-Bayer, director of the Conscience Project, the report “calls out the brazen assault against religious freedom by the former administration for what it was: a failure of constitutional and statutory duty.”

Picciotti-Bayer said in an emailed statement that the Biden administration disregarded “fundamental guarantees” in the First Amendment and federal civil rights law, and treated “sincere religious objections as obstacles to overcome, prosecuting peaceful prayer, trampling on parental rights and steamrolling conscience rights.”

The Interfaith Alliance, however, which states its mission is to “challenge Christian nationalism and religious extremism,” responded to the DOJ report, saying their group has “consistently opposed the work of this ‘task force.’” It accused the DOJ of trying to “undermine Americans’ religious freedom and First Amendment rights.”

The alliance called the task force’s report a “political stunt designed to promote the lie that American Christians are a persecuted group, while providing justification to target anyone deemed out of step with their Christian nationalist agenda.”

Previous Report

This report comes just weeks after an 800-page report from the department, detailing the “weaponization” of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, which called out alleged prosecutorial problems, surveillance activities undertaken by pro-abortion groups, and failures to comply with federal law.

Biden’s DOJ did not enforce the law evenly, according to the April 14 report.

The task force under the Biden administration treated pro-life groups differently from pro-abortion groups, outlining disproportionate coordination with pro-abortion groups that, according to the report, indicated bias and prosecutorial overreach.

In her statement, Picciotti-Bayer said, “Religious freedom isn’t a courtesy the government extends—it’s a legal check on what government can do. It’s refreshing to see that recognized today.”