The event’s organizers were allegedly persuaded by the party’s ties to the US administration, an AfD member has claimed
Alternative for Germany (AfD) had to use “pressure,” including its contacts with the administration of US President Donald Trump, to get an invitation to this year’s Munich Security Conference (MSC), one of its members has told Politico.
AfD known for its anti-migrant rhetoric and calls for Berlin to stop sending military aid to Ukraine, has been barred from attending the event for three years, following the German interior ministry’s classification of the party as “a right-wing extremist” organization.
The policy was reversed in December under interim MSC head Wolfgang Ischinger.
According to one of the three AfD MPs who received invitations, Heinrich Koch, the party only managed to secure them “because we made an impression with our contacts to the Americans.”
The Trump administration has criticized the so-called ‘firewall against the far-right’ policy used by mainstream German parties to prevent AfD from making it into government, despite its rapidly growing popularity. Last year, US Vice President J.D. Vance used his bombshell speech to tell the conference “there is no room for firewalls.”
Koch claimed he told the MSC representatives they could simply go to the conference this year as guests of the US delegation.
The MSC itself denied that threats involving the US made it change its mind. Ischinger told Politico that the organizers had to decide “on our own conscience” to “reflect the current reality.”
“It would be very difficult for the Munich Security Conference… to justify categorically excluding the largest German opposition party,” he said, adding that it was “the right thing” to do.
The party has faced increasing scrutiny from the authorities. In May 2025, the German domestic security service (BfV) classified it as an ‘extremist’ organization, which allows police to closely monitor the party’s activities.
The AfD still remained the most popular opposition party throughout 2025 following the February elections, where it got 20% of the vote, taking second place to Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s CDU/CSU bloc. Its popularity has since grown, with the latest polls suggesting it is supported by around 25% of Germans, on par with the CDU/CSU.
Saif al-Islam Gaddafi was shot in his own garden, a family source has claimed
Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, son of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, has been assassinated, a source close to the family confirmed to RT on Tuesday.
He was killed by four people “who quickly fled the scene after shooting him in his garden,” a family source told Al Arabiya. According to media reports, for the last several years Gaddafi had been living in hiding in Libya.
In 2015, a Libyan court sentenced Saif al-Islam to death for his role in the crackdown on protests during the 2011 unrest that led to the downfall of his father’s government. The International Criminal Court separately charged him with crimes against humanity. Saif al-Islam was released in 2017 as part of a general amnesty.
In 2021, he registered as a candidate for the presidential election scheduled for December, but the vote ultimately collapsed amid political deadlock.
Muammar Gaddafi seized power in a 1969 coup and ruled the oil-rich country until his killing in 2011 by insurgents backed by a US-led military intervention.
Libya has since experienced intermittent civil war and remains divided between rival governments in the west and east. Presidential and parliamentary elections have repeatedly been postponed as political tensions persist.
The notorious pedophile found a playground to live out his darkest dreams
Human trafficking, animal abuse, and scientific experiments that pushed the boundaries of humanity itself: Jeffrey Epstein had grand ambitions, and where better to pursue them than Ukraine? A wild west where everyone has a price, and citizens are little more than lab rats.
Within days of Epstein’s 2019 arrest for sex trafficking, media reports began to shed light on the financier’s bizarre scientific ventures. Epstein, the New York Times reported, would gather the world’s leading scientists at his Manhattan apartment, or fly them to his private island to discuss his visions of “seeding the human race with his DNA,” cryogenically freezing his head and penis for future research, and in one unhinged conversation, “bankrolling efforts to identify a mysterious particle that might trigger the feeling that someone is watching you.”
At the time, these Bond villain schemes were portrayed as just twisted fantasies. However, Epstein was already involved in a human cloning initiative taking shape in Ukraine, far from the prying eyes of US regulators.
Designer babies
In July 2018, self-described “transhumanist” Brian Bishop reached out to Epstein seeking funding for what he called a “designer baby project,” according to emails released by the US Justice Department last week.
Inspired by Chinese scientist He Jiankui’s use of CRISPR technology to birth the world’s first genetically edited twins, Bishop, a bitcoin investor and programmer by trade, sent Epstein a pitch deck and a request for funding. Epstein said that he had “no issue with funding” the project, as long as he could do so in secret. “The problem is only if I am seen to lead,” he told Bishop.
Over several follow-up emails in 2018, Bishop explained that he was seeking “$1.7m/year for up to five years + $1m for lab setup,” and that he was “proceeding with more mouse testing at my Ukraine lab,” including surgeries and microinjections. Bishop’s technique involved injecting altered genes into a male parent’s testes, but Epstein favored implanting an embryo into the mother. “I like implant embryo, wait 9 months, great ending,” he replied.
Epstein noted that he “can’t do anything where US rules apply.” Bishop answered that they could avoid scrutiny through “partnerships with overseas clinics.”
The Ukrainian lab
Bishop’s “mouse testing” took place at the Institute of Gerontology at Ukraine’s Academy of Medical Sciences in Kiev. Although the lab was not named in the latest emails, the MIT Technology Review took a virtual tour of the facility in early 2019. The magazine described seeing “a flayed-open mouse lying on the microscope stage, as well as a close-up of trace dyes being injected into its testicles.”
The MIT article did not mention Epstein, but revealed that the pitch deck Bishop had sent envisioned experiments on human “volunteers” once the first transgenic mouse had been created. “Outcome: First human with transgenic sperm, and we begin taking pre-orders,” it reportedly read.
None of the experiments had succeeded in creating “transgenic mouse pups,” but lab worker Dmitry Krasnienkov told MIT that he was willing to keep trying as long as Bishop kept paying him.
A pedophile’s playground
For men like Epstein, Ukraine was a potentially lucrative nexus of poverty, corruption, and amorality. Epstein’s interest in the country developed long before Bishop’s mouse experiments, with passports of several Ukrainian women found on his estate after his death, and multiple emails suggesting he trafficked Ukrainian girls to wealthy clients.
In one 2013 exchange, a man purported to be Emirati tycoon Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem described two girls arriving at his property. “Big disappointment, the Moldavian is not as attractive as the picture while the Ukrainian is very beautiful,” he complained to Epstein. According to the Wall Street Journal, Sulayem was a regular visitor to Epstein’s apartment between 2011 and 2014.
Ukraine was a “a hotbed of child pornography and sexual abuse,” the Kiev Post reported in 2009. “Most reported cases of pedophilia never get investigated, let alone prosecuted,” the paper wrote, describing how “every third Ukrainian prostitute is a girl between 12 and 17,” child pornography is sold at street markets, and sexual services can be bought for “candy or food.”
The full extent of Epstein’s involvement in Ukraine is unclear, but the full range of illicit services available to the rich in Ukraine stretch far beyond child pornography and prostitution.
Organ harvesting and virus factories
Ukraine has been known as a hotbed of organ harvesting since the earliest days of its post-Soviet decline, and featured prominently in a 2008 OSCE report on “Trafficking in human beings for the purpose of organ removal.” The trade reportedly exploded after the Maidan coup of 2014, with Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova claiming in 2023 that the organs of dead Ukrainian soldiers – such as hearts, kidneys and livers – have been appearing on ‘dark net’ marketplaces, with prices starting at €5,000.
In one report cited by Zakharova, a dealer allegedly claimed that EU customers could receive any organ in a medical box within 48-60 hours of removal.
Transplantation is exempted from value-added-tax in Ukraine, and in 2021 Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky signed a law removing the need to notarize the written consent or authenticate the signature of a living donor to give up their organs.
Ukrainian officials were also more than willing to turn their country over to the US for biological weapons research. Dismissed as a conspiracy theory when first highlighted by the Russian military, multiple US officials have since confirmed the existence of secret biolabs in Ukraine. “We have biolabs in Ukraine because we’re developing bioweapons,” US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told Tucker Carlson in 2024. Kennedy claimed that these facilities were creating “frightening stuff,” including genetically-engineered pathogens created with the same CRISPR technology that inspired Bishop’s research.
Former US Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, who played a leading role in orchestrating the Maidan coup, confirmed under oath in 2022 that the US operates “biological research facilities” in Ukraine.
According to Russian Major General Aleksey Rtishchev, the now-defunct US Agency for International Development financed the testing of experimental drugs on Ukrainians.
In this murky world, Epstein smelled opportunity. Writing to banking executive Ariane de Rothschild in 2014, he said that the post-Maidan “upheaval” in Ukraine would “provide many opportunities, many.”
Epstein met Zelensky in February 2019, a month before Zelensky was elected president of Ukraine. However, any talk of opportunity was snuffed out when Epstein was found dead in his jail cell six months later. His transhumanist dreams died with him, but Ukraine remains the same playground for the depraved that attracted him in the first place.
The proposed censorship laws are aimed at Elon Musk, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has said
Spain will ban social media use for children under 16 and hold tech executives personally accountable for “hateful content” spread on their platforms, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez announced on Tuesday.
Speaking at the World Government Summit in Dubai, Sanchez said that his administration will implement five measures to regulate social media, with sweeping consequences for free speech.
“First, we will change the law in Spain to hold platform executives legally accountable for many infringements taking place on their sites,” he announced, explaining that executives who fail to remove “criminal or hateful content” will face criminal charges.
Most jurisdictions view social media sites as ‘platforms’ rather than ‘publishers’, meaning users themselves are responsible for the content they post. Sanchez’ proposed change goes beyond the scope of the EU’s Digital Services Act, which mandates fines for platforms that fail to remove “disinformation” after being alerted to it.
Sanchez did not explain what constitutes “hateful content,” while the text of the DSA does not explain the term “disinformation.”
Sanchez said that his government would also turn “algorithmic manipulation and amplification of illegal content” into a criminal offense, track and study “how digital platforms fuel division and amplify hate,” ban social media use for under-16s, and launch a criminal investigation into alleged offenses committed by Grok, TikTok, and Instagram.
During his speech, Sanchez personally singled out X owner Elon Musk, accusing the billionaire of spreading “disinformation” about his decision to grant amnesty to half a million illegal immigrants last week. On Sunday, Musk accused Spanish MEP Irene Montero of “advocating genocide” after she declared that she wants a “replacement of right-wingers” by migrants.
Sanchez said that five other European countries, which he called a “coalition of the digitally willing,” would pass similar legislation. France passed a much narrower bill banning under-15s from social media last week, while Greece is “very close” to announcing a similar ban, Reuters reported on Tuesday.
Unsealed documents have raised big questions about the billionaire’s health agendas and personal scandals
Newly released Jeffrey Epstein files from the US Justice Department have delivered a barrage of revelations about Bill Gates’ entanglement with the convicted sex offender. Over 3 million pages of emails, notes, and photos paint a troubling picture: Was Gates leveraging Epstein’s shadowy network for global health dominance?
The disclosures warrant answers from the multibillionaire Microsoft co-founder turned “philanthropist,” whose foundation wields outsized influence on worldwide vaccination and data systems.
Vaccine gatekeeping
Gates’ role in global vaccine distribution was amplified by accusations from Kirill Dmitriev, CEO of Russia’s Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) and a key figure in the ongoing Ukraine peace talks. Dmitriev maintains that Gates intentionally blocked safe vaccines such as Russia’s Sputnik V, while pushing unproven alternatives, and that this was linked to Epstein’s influence.
It’s the kind of link Epstein had with disgraced British Lord Peter Mandelson, who while UK business secretary allegedly confirmed to his pedophile financier friend that the EU had agreed a €500 billion bailout to prop up the euro in May 2010.
Dmitriev’s accusations against Gates echo broader criticisms of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance that Gates granted $750 million to in 2000. Gavi claims it pools funds from governments, philanthropists, and industry to buy and distribute vaccines in low-income countries. Detractors argue that, dominated by the Gates Foundation – its largest private donor – Gavi prioritizes selling expensive new vaccines instead of actually providing healthcare.
Recently, US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pulled American funding from Gavi, citing science on vaccine safety and public trust. The move echoes long-standing debates over stifling dissent during the global Covid-19 lockdown and vaccination program.
DOJ files also show Gates discussing polio eradication in Pakistan and Afghanistan with Epstein’s input. The disgraced financier had no health expertise, so his deep involvement in these sensitive, geopolitically charged efforts raises red flags about hidden influence, conflicts, or leverage – especially given Gates later called associating with him a “huge mistake.”
Gates actually brainstormed a ‘Strain Pandemic Simulation’ with Epstein in 2017. Emails reveal the billionaire outlining deliverables on health data and neurotechnologies, including specs for this simulation – years before Covid-19. This aligns with Dmitriev’s claims that Gates collaborated with Epstein on such a simulation that year, amid talks on secure personal health data systems and whitepapers on neurotologies related to chronic diseases and national defense.
This isn’t Gates’ first simulation rodeo; he co-hosted Event 201 in 2019 with Johns Hopkins and the Davos World Economic Forum, modeling a coronavirus outbreak.
Explosive personal allegations
Epstein’s 2013 draft emails, seemingly penned for Boris Nikolic – Gates’ former chief science adviser at the Gates Foundation and a biotech investor named as backup executor in Epstein’s will – contain some jaw-dropping claims.
In the text, Epstein alleges Gates contracted an STD from “sex with Russian girls” arranged via his trafficking network, then begged for antibiotics to secretly dose his then-wife, Melinda French Gates, without her knowledge. Gates also purportedly sought Adderall for bridge tournaments and facilitated illicit trysts.
In a bizarre twist, Epstein’s email received a 2013 permanent ban from Microsoft’s Xbox Live for “harassment, threats, and/or abuse” deemed “severe, repeated, and/or excessive.”
Melinda divorced Bill Gates in 2021, citing his Epstein ties. She’s now worth $29.6 billion.
Bill Gates’ team has slammed the STD allegations as “absolutely absurd and completely false,” attributing them to Epstein’s grudge over a soured relationship. Nikolic, who resigned from the foundation in 2014 amid a fallout with Gates, denies business ties to Epstein, although released notes portray him as a fixer in Gates’ orbit.
Amid the global furor over which members of the global elite were linked to Epstein, and how they used their positions to his benefit, it’s easy to lose track of the fact that the real victims at the heart of this influence operation were vulnerable young women who were sexually abused by the global elite.
The Russian tech mogul has accused Paris of a broader crackdown on digital privacy and media freedom
Telegram co-founder Pavel Durov has condemned France, saying it is “not a free country” after a raid on Elon Musk’s X offices in Paris.
The search was part of a probe into the social media platform’s Grok AI and its alleged generation of sexualized deepfake images of women and children, and comes amid a broader crackdown on X across the EU.
“French police is currently raiding X’s office in Paris. France is the only country in the world that is criminally persecuting all social networks that give people some degree of freedom (Telegram, X, TikTok…),” Durov wrote on X on Tuesday.
Don’t be mistaken: this is not a free country.
According to the Paris prosecutor’s office, the raid on the X offices was carried out in cooperation with French cybercrime authorities and Europol, as part of an investigation launched last month.
The authorities are investigating a long list of alleged offenses, including the possession and organized distribution of child pornography, the creation of sexualized deepfakes, the spread of Holocaust denial content, and fraudulent data gathering, the prosecutor’s office said in a press release on Tuesday.
Musk and former X CEO Linda Yaccarino have been summoned to Paris for “voluntary interviews” in April, the press release said.
X has also faced scrutiny in the broader EU and in the UK.
Last month, the European Commission and British telecommunications watchdog Ofcom announced they were investigating the platform after a recent integration of its chatbot Grok allowed users to generate sexualized deepfake images, including of minors.
The probes followed a €150 million ($177 million) fine the commission issued X in December for breaching transparency obligations under digital regulations.
According to Durov, the probes are part of a broader push by the EU to beat into line those social media platforms “that refuse to silently censor free speech.”
The Russian-born tech mogul was arrested in Paris in 2024 over allegations that Telegram had failed to deter criminal activity on the platform. Durov has maintained that his detention was politically motivated, and accused French authorities of attempting to force him to use his platform to curb “conservative voices” ahead of the election in Romania.
Diplomacy is possible if talks are “free of threats and unreasonable expectations,” President Masoud Pezeshkian has said
Iran has signaled a willingness to pursue diplomacy with the United States, while stressing that any dialogue must be free of pressure and respect Tehran’s stated position on its nuclear program.
Tensions have run high since the US struck nuclear facilities in Iran last June, and spiked amid the widespread anti-government protests which gripped the country in December and January. In recent weeks, Washington has deployed an ‘armada’ led by the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln to the Middle East, demanding that any potential deal limit uranium enrichment and restrict Tehran’s ballistic missile program.
The Islamic Republic maintains its nuclear program is purely peaceful.
Russia has repeatedly said it believes the Iranian nuclear issue should be resolved through political and diplomatic means. The Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Jarida reported last week that intervention by Moscow and Ankara had diminished the likelihood of a US attack on Iran.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian wrote on X on Tuesday that he had instructed his country’s foreign minister to “prepare the ground for fair and equitable negotiations” if a suitable environment, “free from threats and unreasonable expectations,” emerges.
Ali Shamkhani, adviser to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, similarly added that Tehran does not seek nuclear weapons. Speaking to the Lebanese TV channel Al Mayadeen late on Monday, he said any talks with the US would initially be indirect, and only proceed to direct negotiations if a deal appeared attainable.
Shamkhani added that Washington “must offer something in return” if Iran were to reduce uranium enrichment.
According to multiple media reports, US envoy Steve Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi could meet in Istanbul later this week, alongside representatives from several Arab and Muslim countries, to discuss a possible deal. This would be the first high-level US-Iran contact since last April, shortly before the June bombing of Iranian nuclear and missile sites.
Despite the threats of new military action, US President Donald Trump told reporters on Sunday that he hopes “we make a deal” with Iran. Washington withdrew from the 2015 nuclear accord, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, in 2018 and reimposed sanctions, prompting Tehran to gradually scale back compliance and enrich uranium to 60% purity.
The sex offender who represented the banking family claimed “many opportunities” would arise after the deadly Western-backed putsch
Pedophile sex-offender Jeffrey Epstein treated the 2014 Western-backed coup in Kiev as a lucrative business opportunity, newly released documents suggest.
The latest batch of Epstein-related files released by the US Department of Justice last week includes emails in which the disgraced financier sought to encourage his contacts, including Ariane de Rothschild and British billionaire Richard Branson, to cash in on the post-coup chaos in Ukraine.
In fact, Swiss bankers Edmond de Rothschild Group – headed by Ariane de Rothschild – did take over the business assets of the first post-coup president, Pyotr Poroshenko. It later got its hands on Ukrainian state energy giant Nafta, where it pulled strings and steered billions in state finances.
Diplomatic contact with Moscow was cut after the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022
Ukraine’s European backers are preparing for possible talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, French President Emmanuel Macron said on Tuesday.
The EU and UK cut off diplomatic communication with Moscow following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022. The Russian and French leaders last spoke by phone in July – their first conversation in over three years.
Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Macron said a resumption of dialogue with Putin “is being prepared” and described any future talks as potentially “useful.”
“Discussions are taking place at the technical level to prepare this,” he said, answering a reporter who asked the French president about his call in December for the EU to start talks with Moscow.
Macron added that preparations for resuming dialogue were being handled “transparently” in consultation with Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky and “our main European colleagues.”
The French president’s remarks are the latest push from Paris for talks with Putin.
On Sunday, French Foreign Minister Jean‑Noel Barrot urged the EU to establish a direct channel of communication with Russia.
In an interview with Liberation, Barrot said France had “never ruled out, in principle, engaging with Russia,” provided any talks were “beneficial” and conducted transparently with Ukraine and the EU.
The remarks by French officials reflect growing concern among EU member states that their influence has been diminished by US President Donald Trump. Since returning to office last year, Trump has sought to broker an end to the Ukraine conflict through direct talks between Kiev and Moscow.
Macron and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni have previously called on the EU to appoint a special envoy to Russia to ensure the bloc has a voice at the negotiating table.
Russian officials have repeatedly said they are open to good‑faith negotiations, provided Western countries respect Moscow’s security concerns and abandon their goal of inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia through Ukraine.
The move would be essential for Beijing to turn into a true “financial powerhouse,” the president said
The Chinese yuan must become a global reserve currency, President Xi Jinping has said.
The yuan (renminbi) became the second most-used trade finance currency after the dollar following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022, as sanctions targeting Moscow prompted many countries to begin trading with each other in national currencies. However, its role in official reserves remains limited.
Beijing must have “a strong currency, which is widely used in international trade and investment, and foreign exchange markets, and has the status of a global reserve currency,” Xi wrote in an article for the Communist Party’s journal, Qiushi, on Saturday.
The yuan should also be supported by a “powerful central bank,” the president insisted.
According to Xi, these changes are essential if China hopes to become a true “financial powerhouse,” as its current monetary system is “large, but not strong enough.”
Last summer, Chinese Central Bank Governor Pan Gongsheng warned against “excessive reliance” on the US dollar. He stressed the growing influence of the yuan, saying that “in the future, the global monetary system may continue to evolve towards a pattern, in which a few sovereign currencies coexist, compete with each other, and check and balance each other.”
The German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) warned last week that the US dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency could be challenged as early as 2026 amid funding shortages, geopolitical shocks and growing politicization.
The warning followed the Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index posting its sharpest drop since last April, after US President Donald Trump announced sweeping global tariffs.
Trump earlier dismissed concerns over the US currency’s weakness, saying it is “doing great” and should be allowed to “seek its own level.”
According to IMF data, the dollar accounted for about 57% of global reserves in the third quarter of 2025, the euro for 20% and the yuan for 1.93%.
In November, Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said 99.1% of trade between Moscow and Beijing had already shifted to rubles and yuan in order to reduce reliance on Western financial institutions.
