Will it one day be possible for climate-neutral planes to fly without leaving contrails*? What does the rover that will be used to drill a two-meter-deep hole in Phobos, one of moons that orbits planet Mars, look like? These are just two of the questions being explored at the ILA in the German capital, one of the biggest air shows in Europe.

Gold rush atmosphere at Berlin's military air trade show

Nina Werkhäuser | Sabine Kinkartz

This year's ILA Berlin Air Show is breaking records, primarily because of the booming defense sector, which is reaping billions in contracts as a result of wars and crises.

New York: Elon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire after shares of his rocket company, SpaceX, soared in Wall Street’s biggest initial public offering of stock.

Shares in SpaceX closed more than 19 per cent higher after opening for trading at noon on Friday (Saturday morning AEST), a sign that investors are looking past the billions the company is losing and instead betting that its massive investments in satellites, orbital data centres and artificial intelligence will pay off in the future.

You can’t argue with a man observing the obvious: We are living in unusually perilous times. In the Middle East, for instance, the Israeli-American infernal duo have been on a rampage of war, state terror, all-purpose devastation, and genocide that, as a bonus, has also brought the world economy to the verge of cardiac arrest by clogging one of its vital fossil fuel arteries. Indeed, that particular risk is so obvious that even Germany’s less than brilliant Friedrich Merz has long spotted it.

Puffy Putin peril: The West’s latest attempt to scare itself

Headlines about the Russian president’s looks and ‘erratic’ behavior are a symptom of terminal Russophrenia

BY Tarik Cyril Amar

Many ABC journalists are close to journalists of the left wing The Guardian Australia and activists at the avowedly leftist Australia Institute. Amy Remeikis is the author of the error-ridden book Where It All Went Wrong: The Case Against John Howard. (Simon & Schuster, 2026 – this is reviewed by Gerard Henderson in the current issue of The Sydney Institute Review Online.).

Can You Bear It?

The Australia Institute’s Amy Remeikis makes a false claim about Tony Abbott

Washington – Since US President Donald Trump threatened to launch extensive strikes against Iranian infrastructure, from bridges to power plants, for the sixth time after similar threats were repeatedly withdrawn, the scene appeared to be an expression of anger at the stalled negotiation process due to Iran’s refusal to meet demands that Trump believes he cannot concede on, without having a clear plan to employ the threat in the context of a military resolution to the war or in the context of improving the negotiating position with Iran.

DOTS ON THE LETTERS: TRUMP BUYS STRATEGIC FAILURE

BY Nehme Hamie

For many years, I [Johnny Vedmore] have been unwittingly preparing to write this piece and a bulk of my previous investigations will intersect with this article. For those who aren’t aware, I have written extensively about Jeffrey Epstein’s influence on leading politicians and scientists;

Nearly 60 percent of retired senior British military officers now working in the defence industry have appeared as expert commentators in UK media without any disclosure of their commercial ties, a conflict research charity has found.

The London-based group Action on Armed Violence (AOAV) examined a decade of UK media appearances by former British senior military figures. 

They promised to “Drain the Swamp” and end the “Forever Wars,” but from cabinet picks to new military interventions, the MAGA movement has been successfully co-opted by the neoconservative uniparty, with the help of a spineless influencer class that convinced the base to love the boot simply because it was painted red.

The Great “Red Hat” Psyop: How the Establishment Co-Opted MAGA

BY MATT AGORIST

A bitter row has erupted between Kiev and Warsaw, after Volodymyr Zelensky renamed a Ukrainian military unit the “Heroes of the UPA”. The UPA – Ukrainian Insurgent Army – was an ultranationalist faction heavily implicated in the Holocaust, which slaughtered up to 100,000 Polish civilians during World War II. In addition to commemorating the mass-murdering militant group, the corpse of Andriy Melnyk, leader of UPA parent the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B), was reburied in Kiev.

One Nation can win the next federal election. Whether that comes to pass depends on a galaxy of factors whose orbits we can only guess. But now, for the first time, it’s possible to see how those orbits could deliver Pauline Hanson to the Lodge, even if it’s not the likeliest outcome.

Why One Nation can win the next federal election

BY Waleed Aly

Yes, this is about polling. But it’s about more than that. It’s about the forces beneath the numbers which are all heading in one direction. The only question is if and when those forces halt, and how far One Nation has gotten in the meantime.

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced on Wednesday that the US is going to be launching major strikes in Iran, while President Trump says he’ll “bomb the shit out of” the Iranians if they don’t agree to a deal of his liking. 

A new Explosive Weapons Monitor report finds civilians are continuing to bear the brunt of explosive weapons in populated areas, with Israel’s armed forces responsible for the majority of recorded civilian fatalities in 2025.

While the overall number of civilians killed by explosive weapons decreased by 21 per cent last year, largely due to Israel scaling back attacks on the Gaza Strip and Lebanon in response to ceasefire deals, “the majority – 56 per cent – of all global civilian fatalities in 2025 could be attributed to Israeli armed forces, most of which occurred in Palestine,” according to an annual report released Wednesday.

The European Commission should have revealed the details of its Covid-19 vaccine contracts with drugmakers to the public, an adviser to the EU’s highest court has declared. Among the contracts was a deal with Pfizer that commission President Ursula von der Leyen negotiated via text message.

In an opinion published on Thursday, Advocate General Athanasios Rantos argued that the commission’s insistence on secrecy made it impossible to know whether its vaccine negotiators had any conflicts of interest with the pharmaceutical companies that they procured the shots from.

The commission signed six advance purchase agreements with pharmaceutical companies – including Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and Moderna – between 2020 and 2021. The contracts were worth a combined €71 billion ($82 billion).

One Nation’s surge is easiest to read as anger. It is better read through a different lens – gathering the Australians who formed their sense of who they are in an offline world, where belonging was anchored where they grew up.

Kos Samaras