'Hopefully' Russia and Ukraine 'will make a deal this week,' says US President Trump

US President Donald Trump said on Sunday that "hopefully" a deal can be struck "this week" without specifying what that arrangement would entail.

Anthony Albanese has claimed victory in Australia’s “Vegemite-gate” trade stoush with Canada, which has relented and allowed a Toronto-based cafe owner to sell the spread after initially ruling it did not comply with local food laws.

Speaking at a press conference in Sydney on Saturday morning, holding up a jar of Vegemite, the prime minister declared he had achieved a “win for Australian industry” after his government’s discussions with the Canadian government.

On Friday the Canadian Food Inspection Agency said in a statement that it had ordered a health risk assessment from Health Canada on Vegemite, which was being sold in jars and on toast at Found Coffee – a chain of Australian-inspired cafes in Canada.

The values and mechanism underlying the evolution of contemporary European civilisation are on the verge of self-exhaustion. Consumerism and the ceaseless accumulation of capital contradict basic human interests and threaten equilibrium between humanity and the rest of nature. Humankind is unable to halt growing drug addiction, terrorism, and crime. Recent occurrences show us unexpectedly caught up in a new outburst of ethnic wars.

Overcoming the rift between politics and morality

Postscript of the book: “Moral lessons of the twentieth century”

by Mikhail Gorbachev

If you think the Russian army's numerous battlefield victories are a clear sign that the war is nearing its end, you are sorely mistaken. As I said earlier, the closer Russia gets to victory in this conflict, the more dangerous Ukraine and its Western backers become.

Russia deploys world's most powerful and fastest 'annihilation system'

by Borzzikman

More journalists have been killed in Israel’s genocide in Gaza than in the past seven major U.S.-involved wars combined, marking the “worst ever conflict” for reporters in history, a new report says.

As of late March, at least 232 journalists have been killed in the Gaza genocide, with the vast majority being Palestinians, according to a new paper by the Costs of War project in Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. Nearly 380 journalists have been wounded in the violence as of January, per the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate.

The unplumbed depths of Peter Dutton cynical politics should be a matter of deep concern to genuine political conservatives across Australia. Whoever those people are (at present they appear to be in hiding), its time they distanced themselves from what the Liberal Party is becoming under Duttons leadership.

Allan Patience

August 27, 2023

What should a genuinely conservative political party be like in the context of contemporary Australia?

Germany’s chancellor-in-waiting Friedrich Merz doesn’t officially take office until May 6, but that hasn’t stopped him from hitting the press circuit like it’s demolition day. Apparently, he’s got some lost time – and infrastructure – to make up for. 

Germany wants the UK to hold its hand while it starts WWIII
The chancellor-in-waiting says he would commit to giving Kiev long-range missiles if London backs him

Russian President Vladimir Putin has declared an Easter truce in Ukraine, the Kremlin press service said Saturday, over three years after Moscow launched a full-scale offensive of the neighboring country.

The unilateral break in fighting is scheduled to last from Saturday evening until midnight on Sunday local time.

"During a meeting in the Kremlin, the commander-in-chief heard a report by Valery Gerasimov, chief of the general staff of the Russian armed forces, on the situation on the line of contact and said that the Russian side stops all hostilities from 1800 [1500 GMT] on April 19 to 0000 on April 21," the Kremlin's official Telegram channel said.

US President Donald Trump has said that Washington could abandon efforts to find a peaceful resolution to the Ukraine conflict if Moscow and Kiev don’t engage in negotiations. He added, however, the US still hopes to see the fighting come to an end.

Speaking to reporters on Friday, Trump was asked to comment on remarks by the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who had suggested that the White House could walk away from efforts to broker a settlement.

“If for some reason one of the two parties makes it very difficult, we’re just going to say you’re foolish, you’re fools, you’re horrible people,”Trump said, adding “We’re going to just take a pass, but hopefully we won’t have to do that.”

Earlier on Friday, the secretary of state told journalists that the White House is still waiting to see if a peace deal is “doable.” 

The Australia Institute is one of the country’s most influential public policy think tanks. Based in Canberra, we conduct high impact research that combines rigorous fact-driven material with cutting-edge communication strategies.

With your help, we're countering the spin of multinational gas companies. 

We’ve produced a TV ad, based on our research, that takes aim at the gas industry’s exploitation of us and our economy. Now we need to get it on as many screens as possible in the lead up to the election, where gas royalties and taxation will be front and centre. And before the Environment Minister makes a decision to approve or reject the damaging North West Shelf gas project.

The US has presented its allies with details of its peace plan to bring the conflict between Russia and Ukraine to an end, Bloomberg reported on Friday, citing European officials familiar with the matter.

The proposal, outlined during a meeting in Paris on Thursday, reportedly includes easing sanctions on Russia, as well as terminating Ukraine’s aspirations to join NATO. The roadmap would effectively freeze the conflict and leave former Ukrainian territories that are part of Russia under Moscow’s control, the sources suggested.

One of the officials told Bloomberg that the proposal still had to be discussed with Kiev, adding that the plan would not actually amount to a definitive conflict settlement. Kiev’s European backers would not recognize the territories as Russian, the source suggested.

Trump’s actions were neither ‘spur of the moment’, nor whimsical. The ‘tariff solution’ had been pre-prepared by his team over years.

The Trump ‘shock’ – his ‘de-centring’ of America from serving as pivot to the post-war ‘order’ via the dollar – has triggered a deep cleavage between those who gained huge benefit from the status quo, on the one hand; and on the other, the MAGA faction who have come to regard the status quo as inimical – even an existential threat – to U.S. interests. The sides have descended into bitter, accusatory polarisation.

“Chaos.” “A disaster.” “Uncertainty.” “Very negative.”

That’s a sample of the reactions to Trump’s first few months published in the latest Dallas Fed Energy Survey, which gives executives from nearly 200 oil companies headquartered in Texas the chance to speak anonymously about burning issues inside the oil industry.

Bernie Sanders has been repeatedly uttering the phrase “Israel has a right to defend itself” on his “Fighting Oligarchy” tour with Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, which in the year 2025 can only be interpreted as blatant genocide apologia. 

Caitlin Johnstone: ‘Israel Has a Right to Defend Itself’ Is Just a Slogan for Genocide

Tens of thousands of people in Germany are expected to join around 120 peace protests across the country this weekend as Germany's peace movement prepares for its traditional Easter peace marches — even as the presumptive next German government under likely-Chancellor Friedrich Merz is getting ready to spend billions on rearming the country and is seeking to boost the number of Bundeswehr recruits from the current 83,000 to 203,000 by 2031 with a voluntary program.