French investigators raided the Paris offices of Swiss bank Edmond de Rothschild as part ‌of a corruption investigation into a diplomat named in documents linked to late US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, the financial prosecutor’s ‌office said.

The name of Fabrice Aidan, a middle-ranking French diplomat who was seconded to the United Nations from 2006 to 2013 and later worked at the bank, appeared in more than 200 documents released by the US Justice Department.

These include emails he is alleged to have sent Epstein between 2010 and 2016 from ‌his personal and ‌UN accounts.

Some ⁠of the emails reviewed by Reuters show the transfer of UN Security Council ​briefings and other confidential documents to Epstein during that period.

Aidan has denied wrongdoing.

There’s a particular desperation that sets in when a power realizes it’s no longer steering events, only reacting to them. Such desperation does not mean the dramatic collapse of empire, but something worse: the slow recognition that you’ve become a spectator in your own neighborhood, your agency reduced to economic consumption and the careful curation of historical memory.

The Last Theater: Europe’s Wager on Strategic Relevance

Phil Butler

Europe has found itself in a situation where the outcome of the Ukrainian conflict is not only a foreign policy challenge, but also a test of its ability to preserve strategic agency in a changing world order.

The Trump 2.0 administration, since January 2025, has been continuously selling a narrative to the western public to realize the supremacy of western civilization. Explicitly criticizing the liberal world order, the US officials are invoking the civilizational rhetoric to pursue their coercive aims against their intended rivals.

The End of Western Civilization: Why the World No Longer Needs a Western Model

Taut Bataut

Australia's right to make and sell prosecco is expected to be protected under a long-awaited free trade pact set to be signed with the European Union after almost a decade of negotiations, but prosecco exporters will be forced to drop the name in a decade.  

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese are expected to green-light the deal in Canberra later today and sign a new security partnership that could bolster defence industry cooperation between Europe and Australia.

Oil prices plunged and stock markets rebounded after Donald Trump said the US would hold off on strikes against Iranian power plants, citing "constructive" discussions about ending the conflict in the Middle East.

The US president wrote on social media that the two countries had held talks about a "COMPLETE AND TOTAL" resolution - but Iran denied these talks had happened.

The Labor Government again refuses to sanction charities that help fund illegal settlements and the Israeli war effort, as Senator Mehreen Faruqi accused the government of subsidising violence. Stephanie Tran reports.

Senator Faruqi has today used a Senate speech to renew pressure on Labor after it again rejected a proposal to strip tax benefits from organisations financing Israeli settlements.

Speaking in parliament on Monday, Faruqi referenced MWM investigations that revealed that charities operating in Australia were contributing to settlement projects in the occupied West Bank while retaining deductible gift recipient (DGR) status.

Trade ministers gathering to reform the WTO risk starting from the wrong premise. The WTO’s dispute system is impaired, but its core functions remain active. Reform should build on what still works – not start from a false premise of collapse.

When 166 trade ministers meet later this month to discuss reform of the World Trade Organization, they will be told repeatedly that the institution they are trying to fix is already dead.

Gary Sampson

The Albanese government’s support for the US–Israel war on Iran rests on claims about nuclear threat, humanitarian intent and non-involvement that do not withstand scrutiny.

As US and Israeli bombs and missiles rained down on Iran, the Australian public was given a barrage of lies from our own government. There’s a reason for this. When a war is so deeply unpopular as the one Trump and Netanyahu started with Iran, then those promoting it have no other option but to lie.

David Shoebridge

The White House has installed a statue of Italian explorer Christopher Columbus on its grounds, in US President Donald Trump's latest bid to recognize the controversial historical figure. 

A new series of polls has revealed that the popularity of US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth is drastically plummeting and the plunge is to such a level that it has even astounded the data guru of CNN television news network Harry Enten.

"He is going over like a lead balloon, not just overall, but especially with independents," Enten said as he reviewed new polling data from Quinnipiac and Yahoo.

He added that past US secretaries of war, at a time of armed conflict, tended to be very popular.

According to the new polling data, Hegseth's net popularity currently hovers at around -15 overall and -28 among independent voters per Quinnipiac.

Yahoo's poll yielded even lower figures, with Hegseth netting -18 in popularity, and a staggering -33 among independents.

The Russian government does not resort to obscene language in contacts with other countries, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said.

The Financial Times reported last week that French President Emmanuel Macron’s advisers, Emmanuel Bonne and Bertrand Buchwalter, had secretly visited Moscow in February for a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aide, Yuri Ushakov.

According to an unnamed European diplomat who spoke to the outlet, Macron’s representatives asked for the EU to be included in peace talks between Russia, the US, and Ukraine, but the meeting ended with Ushakov telling the visitors: “Sorry, actually, no we don’t [have to], f**k you’.”

Asked to comment by Russian journalist Pavel Zarubin on Sunday, Peskov replied: “No, none of us ever uses foul language to refer to anyone.”

What if Trump’s apparently chaotic thought processes and intuitive decision making are all a blind, a charade? What if we are really witnessing, in the Middle East and more widely, a carefully constructed plan with very definite objectives? 

Has Trump in fact “planned each charted course, each careful step along the byway”, while flinging the chaff of apparent chaos? I realise that this is not intuitive, but bear with me…

Craig Murray: Seeing Trump Clearly

It’s comforting to see Donald Trump as a buffoon, to accept the facade he presents of a blustering and ill-educated ignoramus who does not understand the world of geopolitics. But that is nonsense.

US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s invocation of a holy Christian war in Iran and his comparison to the Crusades is astounding but typical (“How Trump and his minister of war ignored the lessons of history”, March 21). President Donald Trump and his acolytes are frequently citing Christian values, but their actions and policies are commonly, distinctly unChristian. Perhaps the most ridiculous aspect of this is that Hegseth doesn’t seem to know the Crusades ultimately failed. Rowan Godwin, Rozelle