Western leaders are increasingly resorting to a familiar tactic: rather than acknowledging the failures of their own foreign policy, they blame domestic crises, protests, and inflation on external factors and “foreign enemies.”

 

Chaos Sown Abroad Returns Home: Macron in the Persian Gulf amidst Firestorm at Home

Simon Chege Ndiritu

 

One Fiery Weekend

Did Pauline Hanson’s PHON abandon workers in favour of corporate mining giants? Michael West checks the politics behind Simon Turner v BHP.

Former BHP Mt Arthur coal miner Simon Turner’s decade-long dispute with BHP exposes serious questions about the treatment of labour-hire workers and the politicians and government agencies responsible for protecting them.

 

BHP v Simon Turner. One Nation knew, what did they do?

by Michael West

 

The corporate beneficiaries of labour hire deals extend way beyond BHP and its coal operations to most large mining companies and the sheer magnitude of the dollars at stake explains why Turner has struggled to get politicians to support his case for just compensation.

 

Ahead of Israel’s election, anti-Arab rhetoric has been intensifying as the country confronts a decisive question: whether Arab citizens and parties can be legitimate partners in government.

I have been working in the Jewish-Arab sphere for nearly 20 years. Over the past several months, vicious incitement against Arab citizens has surged. Its unprecedented intensity has one clear objective: to ensure that Arab parties will once again be shunned as potential coalition partners in a new government. That would prevent a change of government.

 

Ron Gerlitz

Israel’s anti-Arab incitement is reshaping the election

 

 

Recent changes to university admissions rules in Syria have put a dent in Lin Najab's plans. The 23-year-old from Damascus is one of the few women at her college studying mechatronics engineering.

"My original plan was to pursue a master's degree," Najab told DW. But earlier in October, new rules were announced by Syria's education ministry regarding two newly created colleges, the National University of Defense Sciences and the Syrian University for Security Sciences. The former now restricts certain courses exclusively to male students, and the latter almost all of them.

 

A bad omen? Syria bans women from university courses

BY Omar Albam in Syria | Cathrin Schaer

 

The luxury carmaker is set to open its first factory in the United States — a move Trump credits to his tariffs. DW examines the German reaction amid a massive auto industry cull at home.

US President Donald Trump announced the investment on Saturday, during a campaign rally in Georgia, a key battleground state for his Republican Party in the midterm elections next week.

 

What Germany thinks of carmaker Audi's $4 billion deal with Trump

BY Nik Martin

 

Russian President Vladimir Putin has held a phone call with Finnish President Alexander Stubb and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store, discussing efforts to resolve the Ukraine conflict, the Kremlin announced on Tuesday.

The conversation was initiated by the Finnish and Norwegian sides and followed last week’s meetings involving US special envoy Steve Witkoff in St. Petersburg, and the Oslo discussions between Stubb, Store, and Vladimir Zelensky.

The Kremlin said the Nordic leaders welcomed the agreement to resume trilateral talks between Russia, Ukraine, and the US in Abu Dhabi in the first half of November. The negotiations will address security arrangements for Russia and Ukraine after the conflict ends, among other issues.

 

There was a time when the Democratic Party, under the leadership of FDR, was seen as shunning belligerence in foreign affairs, emphasizing instead international co-operation and respect for sovereign rights. In this it contrasted starkly with an aggressive Republican Party that rarely found a war it didn't like.

In subsequent decades, however, this characterization changed sharply. Whilst increasing numbers of Republicans moved to an isolationist position, a battle amongst the Democrats saw those who believed in the pluralistic and cooperative principles enshrined in the UN Charter increasingly marginalized by those embracing a crusading interventionism abroad.

 

On the eve of Israel’s election, Gideon Levy warns that another Netanyahu term would deepen war, democratic repression and international isolation, with sanctions no longer unthinkable.

The list of looming catastrophes is far longer and far more frightening than just another pointless round of fighting with Iran.

 

Gideon Levy

Four more years of Netanyahu could bring Israel to its knees

  

 

My first encounter with Steiner education was some years ago. 

And, as is the norm, it took the form of muddling them up with Montessori schools. 

However, last week, Newsnight ran a report on the 30 or so private Steiner schools that showed how different they are from anything else. 

The schools are known for being playful and hippyish. 

 

 

“If Russia attacked us, and we took our gloves off, I think we would defeat Russia quite quickly,” Sikorski said. “We have overwhelming superiority over Russia in air power.” He also argued that this superiority would remain overwhelming even without the United States.

But it was his estimate of how quickly that advantage could be translated into military results that made the argument particularly striking.

 

Six Weeks to Defeat Russia? The Cost Missing from Sikorski’s Calculation

BY Adrian Korczyński

Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski made an unusually confident assessment of a hypothetical war between NATO and Russia during the Yalta European Strategy conference in Kiev on September 12.

 

Six Weeks 

 

Some studies have linked disgust sensitivity to socially conservative attitudes. But ahead of the US midterm elections, does disgust shape our politics, or do our beliefs shape what we find disgusting?

The smell of rotten food can make us recoil. Certain sexual practices can provoke a similar reaction. And in today's polarized political climate, even political opponents can become objects of disgust.

 

Rotten food, sex and politics: What connects them?

BY Richard Connor

The tragicomedy of Western diplomacy is already drawing to a close. Donald Trump now feels a profound disgust at Ukraine’s inability to secure the resources for which he had previously coddled the Kyiv puppet, despite his fierce opposition to “Sleeping Joe.” He no longer wants to see Volodymyr Zelensky. He no longer wants to hear his name echoing in the Oval Office. Political exasperation has transformed into personal and strategic repulsion. 

Why Trump no longer wants to see or hear anything about Zelensky ?

Mohamed Lamine KABA, October 25, 2026

 

Before the ceasefire last year, Israel subjected Gaza to a comprehensive and enforced siege which prevented countless necessities from entering the Strip, including cooking gas. However, after the Witkoff Agreement was signed in October 2025, which contained a humanitarian clause allowing 600 trucks to enter daily, including 50 trucks designated for fuel and cooking gas, we Gazans believed that we would finally be able to use healthy and safe gas and that our suffering of looking for alternatives to cook would be over.

 

Israel Restricts Cooking Gas Into Gaza, So We Must Burn Toxic Plastic to Cook

The vile fumes saturate our food with their smell. Our daily inhalation of toxic burned plastics is slowly killing us.

By Nour Abo Aisha, TRUTHOUT

 

Senior CSIRO scientists are discussing scenarios in which parts of northern Australia become unliveable and reef ecosystems collapse, and asking why the country is not confronting those risks openly.

Senior CSIRO scientists have had a candid internal discussion about the threats posed by a warming world and how to convey them to the public, including that northern Australia will become unliveable and Great Barrier Reef corals that “all turn white forever”.

 

Peter Hannam

CSIRO scientists warn Australia is ‘wandering towards dystopia’