Europe's War Mongers, A Wake-Up Slap For Growth, and an Anti-Corruption Bot for Albania

Good morning! It's Friday, September 19, 2025—and this week, we're calling out the unexpected global leaders stoking the flames of war with Russia, all while preaching peace from their podiums.

We're diving into the alarming milestone where childhood obesity has outpaced hunger worldwide for the first time ever.

Plus, we're unpacking Europe's sizzling new romance with India. And that's just the start...

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What began as a land grab in Ukraine three years ago has metastasized into a full-spectrum showdown: Russian drones slicing through NATO skies, Belarusian missiles thundering in mock invasions, and a parade of world leaders—from Putin's stone-faced oligarchs to von der Leyen's Brussels mandarins—fanning the flames not for glory or survival, but for the cold calculus of profit.

Arms barons like Lockheed and Rheinmetall tally billions in blood money, while the rest of us—farmers in the Baltics, factory workers in Dusseldorf, dreamers in Stockholm—watch our fragile peace auctioned off to the highest bidder in self-serving summits and saber-rattling spectacles.

The Ukraine war is a heist, orchestrated by the very guardians sworn to protect us. Read the full story.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is commanding a €2.9 billion NATO war chest, pledged by cash-strapped European allies, to arm Kyiv with American firepower like Patriot missiles and HIMARS rockets. In the wake of wounded children and flickering power grids plunging cities into darkness—Zelenskyy’s billion-dollar lifeline ignites debates across Europe, ablaze with fears of endless escalation, and calls for smarter alliances than those woven by current leadership.

Denmark's leading a massive NATO drill with 550 troops from across Europe, turning Greenland into a stage for a united Europe countering Russian threats. This exercise is a costly saber-rattling, ignoring Europe's defense gaps, and edging The Continent closer to another cold war vibe.

Poland's refusal to reopen its border with Belarus is severing a €25 billion annual trade lifeline from China, spelling surging prices for Western European shoppers hooked on cheap online goods from Temu, Shein, and similar platforms.

With roughly 90% of China-EU rail freight grinding to a halt through Poland amid the Zapad-2025 military drills and a recent Russian drone incursion, Beijing pleaded with Warsaw to restore the vital route—but after three hours of talks, Foreign Minister Sikorski flatly said no.

As sea shipping drags on longer and air freight jacks up costs by up to 30%, expect disruptions to Europe's e-commerce supply chains, hitting bargain hunters hard with surging prices on everything from fast fashion to gadgets.

Rheinmetall, Europe's biggest ammunition maker, has agreed to acquire Luerssen Group's warship division, NVL, as part of its expansion strategy in Europe. Rheinmetall's move into the naval sector is driven by heightened defense spending following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, with Germany alone projected to spend around 31 billion euros on naval vessels by 2035. Read the full story.

For two decades, Europe has staggered through an economic hangover, limping along at a measly 1% growth rate while shedding $3 trillion in output since 2005—meanwhile, the rest of the world races ahead in full throttle.

Bloated taxes, sky-high energy bills, and rigid labor rules act like leeches on innovation, bleeding the continent's global GDP share from a robust 25% down to a pitiful 7%. Yet glimmers of life flicker from the edges: Poland, the Baltics, Spain, and even Greece are racking up gains.

The escape plan is a hard lean into fossil fuels, unshackling workers from red-tape fetters, slashing wasteful public spending, and ignite incentives for bold innovators. Burn down the regulatory thicket, and hammer out trade pacts that actually lift all boats. Read the full story.

Protests are exploding across France as Macron's budget slash-fest hits public services hard, with strikers blocking roads and cops firing tear gas in Paris—it's chaos that's got the French raging about the squeeze on everyday life. This ain't just about lost jobs; it's a wake-up call on how Europe's economic tightrope is pushing people to the edge, mixing fury with calls for real change, fueling debates on whether leaders are ignoring the real cost of "fiscal responsibility." Read the full story.

Donald Trump rattled across Windsor's cobblestones in a grand horse-drawn carriage, right alongside King Charles III and Queen Camilla, en route to a lavish feast—while heated protests erupt across London's skyline. Read the full story.

In Russia, dissent is a death sentence, yet Yulia Navalnaya stands unbowed. Tests have confirmed what the world suspected: her late husband, Alexei Navalny—Russia's most audacious thorn in Vladimir Putin's side—was poisoned, a strike that echoes Putin’s ruthless playbook and reignites the call for justice. Read the full story.

The European Union is leaning in hard for a bromance with India, the rising superpower that's become Vladimir Putin's favorite dance partner. It's a tango of trade pacts, defense whispers, and free-trade dreams, but with a EU caveat: Cut the Kremlin flirtation, or this party's over. Read full story.

The latest Unicef report drops a brutal truth: for the first time ever, obese kids and teens aged 5 to 19 outnumber the underweight. Famine was once the foe, now it's the flip—a toxic feast swelling bellies and risks, from type-2 diabetes to heart attacks before graduation. Read the full story.

In Europe the median age hovers at 43 and the over-85 crowd is set to explode by 2050, straining long-term care systems to the breaking point. It’s a ticking demographic bomb that's about how societies choose to honor, or abandon, their elders. Read the full story.

Bjorn Borg, the stoic Swede they've dubbed the Ice Man, in his raw new memoir Heartbeats, peels back the varnish on a life that spiraled from global icon to ghost in his own skin: a cocaine-fueled haze, financial freefall, fractured families, and now, at 69, a cancer scare. Borg's unflinching confessions rewrite his legend. Red the full story.

Under the floodlights of La Liga's Bernabéu, Kylian Mbappé—Real Madrid's lightning rod of talent—danced past defenders with that signature swagger, only to be met by a chorus of monkey howls from the stands. European Football is poisoned by the rising tide of far-right fervor, where every racist chant is a crack in the facade of unity. Read the full story.

While the Eurozone shuffles along like a hungover tourist on a cobblestone street, Spain's S&P Global Ratings has bumped the country's credit score to A+ from a solid A, slapping on a "stable" outlook.

The upgrade is the result of a cocktail of exports and a wave of immigrants injecting fresh energy into the workforce. Toss in reforms from years past and a surge in investments and Tourism, and you've got demand firing.

S&P's crystal ball sees 2.6% growth next year—triple the Eurozone's limp along—thanks to an economy that's about services, not only stuff, keeping it blissfully buffered from Uncle Sam's latest tariff tantrums.

Extreme weather events, including heat, drought, and flooding, across Europe during the summer caused short-term economic losses of at least €43bn, with projections estimating costs could rise to €126bn by 2029, representing 0.26% of the EU’s 2024 economic output. Read the full story.

US pharmaceutical giant Merck has canceled its planned £1bn expansion of operations in the UK, choosing instead to relocate life sciences research to the US and resulting in the loss of 125 jobs. The decision stems from insufficient government investment in the sector and the undervaluation of innovative medicines by UK governments, reflecting broader challenges in maintaining competitiveness amid global economic pressures and trade policies. Read the full story.

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Nature's Miracle Holding Inc. is set to snap up a $20 million carbon credit portfolio from Taiwan's Carbon Credit Corporation, tokenizing it on the XRP Ledger. Turning ethereal emissions reductions into tradable digital assets promises transparency, liquidity, and a shot at dodging the carbon market's notorious pitfalls like double-counting and fraud. Read the full story.

Crypto firms aren’t just sponsoring jerseys anymore. Blockchain tech is turbocharging football transfers, from Bitcoin-fueled deals in Turkey to stablecoin swaps in Argentina, slashing settlement times from weeks to minutes. Read the full story.

The London Stock Exchange Group is teaming up with Microsoft, tokenizing private funds from issuance to settlement. LSEG is the first major exchange to dive headfirst into this digital revolution, redefining liquidity and access to a market hungry for change. Read the full story.

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See the winning images in the world's biggest space photography competition

Space Out: There’s a live feed of Planet Earth from the ISS, 24/7

Watch: Drone show over Vatican recreates Michelangelo’s artworks

Nanoplastics—ghostly specks smaller than dust—are infiltrating rivers, lungs, even the womb, breaking down from the billions of bags, bottles, and wrappers we've flushed into the world.

Now a team of researchers unveils an optical sieve that snags these elusive invaders with precision, on polluted beaches but also in our bloodstream. Read the full story.

In Albania, corruption has long danced with drug lords and EU dreams. Prime Minister Edi Rama just introduced a futuristic fix: Diella, an AI bot tasked with purging graft from public tenders—immune to bribes, threats, or backroom deals—the digital Diva promises to drag the Balkan nation into an era of transparency. Read the full story.

Swapping out that spoonful of sugar for a guilt-free zero-calorie bliss, and you will quietly erode the very organ that craves the rush—the brain. A new study out of Brazil has pulled back the curtain on artificial sweeteners, revealing a trade-off: the more you sip, the faster your mind ages. Read the full story.

Europe has entered the exascale computing era with the inauguration of JUPITER, the continent's first supercomputer capable of performing more than one quintillion operations per second. Hosted at the Jülich Supercomputing Centre in Germany, JUPITER is set to advance research in areas such as climate modeling, neuroscience, and quantum simulation, fostering innovation across science and industry. Read the full story.

On September 19, 1944, the Moscow Armistice was signed between Finland and the Soviet Union, formally ending the Continuation War.

On September 20, 1944, Allied forces liberated the Dutch city of Nijmegen from Nazi occupation during Operation Market Garden, a critical advance that boosted morale in the push to free Western Europe from German control.

On September 21, 1980, the Solidarity trade union was founded in Gdańsk, Poland, by Lech Wałęsa and shipyard workers, igniting a non-violent revolution against communist rule that inspired anti-Soviet movements across Eastern Europe.

On September 22, 1985, French Prime Minister Laurent Fabius publicly confessed on television that French intelligence agents had bombed the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior in Auckland Harbor.

On September 23, 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain flew to Munich for secret talks with Adolf Hitler, initiating negotiations that would lead to the Munich Agreement allowing Nazi annexation of Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland.

On September 24, 1990, East Germany formally withdrew from the Warsaw Pact, a pivotal step in dismantling the Soviet-led military alliance amid the collapse of communism, accelerating German reunification and symbolizing the end of the Cold War division of Europe.

On September 25, 1972, Norway held a referendum approving membership in the European Economic Community (precursor to the EU), though later rejecting full EU accession in 1994, reflecting ongoing debates over economic integration and sovereignty in Scandinavian Europe.

Ever had one of those days where a sideways glance from your boss or a skipped text from a friend unravels you like a cheap sweater—suddenly you're replaying every failure, ghosting your own life, and wondering if you'll ever measure up?

In the mind, these aren't random meltdowns; they're spirals, born from ancient questions we all carry like hidden scars: Do I belong? Am I enough?

What starts as a whisper of doubt calcifies into a roar of self-sabotage, twisting our perceptions and pulling us under. But there’s a lifeline: tiny, wise interventions—a reframed thought, a timely postcard—can snap the loop, turning freefall into flight, reshaping not just the moment, but the years ahead. Read the full story.

In the quiet hours of twilight, when the mind wanders unbidden through the labyrinth of old regrets and what-ifs, a simple loop of negative thoughts can feel like a gentle thief—stealing not just sleep, but the sharp edges of memory and reason itself.

Now, a new study shines a light on this insidious spiral: for older adults, repetitive negative thinking isn't just emotional baggage; it's a measurable drag on cognitive function, accelerating the fade of mental acuity in ways that demand we rethink how we guard the golden years. Read the full story.

Evolutionary biologist Daniel Lieberman reveals the truth about that nagging voice whispering "just one more Netflix episode" over a pair of running shoes. It's not sloth, he insists—not some moral failing etched into our souls—but a brilliant, ancient adaptation, hardwired by millennia of survival on the savanna, where every unnecessary step was a calorie squandered. Watch the video.

In an era where cryptocurrencies make headlines, remote work has shattered traditional borders, and AI is reshaping economies, few books feel as eerily prophetic as The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age by James Dale Davidson and William Rees-Mogg.

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🇬🇧 English Copy | 🇩🇪 German Copy