A German teacher has described a secondary school in the Rhineland where violence, drug dealing, and severe behavioral problems have become part of everyday life, including one case in which a 15-year-old girl allegedly prostituted herself in the school toilets for drugs and money.
Speaking anonymously to Bild, special education teacher "Carola S." said around 75 percent of students at her school have a migrant background, with many having arrived from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan or Ukraine.
"It's all blowing up in our faces," she said.
"Every day is a challenge. Fights, shouting — this happens in the classroom and on the schoolyard," she told the German tabloid.
"We are happy if we can teach for a few minutes at a time. Sometimes the police have to come several times a week."
She said drugs are also dealt on school grounds and recalled an extreme case involving a 15-year-old pupil.
"A particularly egregious case involved a 15-year-old student who prostituted herself in the school toilets for drugs and money. She became pregnant and left the school."
Carola said many newly arrived pupils initially speak little
Building on our investment theme that the US military is racing to harden its bases with counter-drone systems capable of defeating Group 1-3 drones, and potentially Group 4 threats, Bloomberg reported late in Friday's US cash session that the Army plans to purchase at least $400 million of AeroVironment's counter-drone laser systems, citing a person familiar with the deal.
The source told the outlet that the deal would provide the Army with dozens of LOCUST systems, which use artificial intelligence to track and identify small and medium-sized drones before human operators engage them with a high-energy laser.
AeroVironment's LOCUST system was originally developed by BlueHalo, which the defense firm acquired for about $4.1 billion in 2025. The latest LOCUST X3 uses a scalable 20-to-35-plus-kilowatt laser, AI-enabled detection and tracking software, and precision beam control to defeat Group 1-3 drones.
LOCUST can be deployed at fixed installations, including military bases, or mounted on tactical vehicles such as the Infantry Squad Vehicle and Joint Light Tactical Vehicle.
The economics of laser weapons are almost certainly a major focus among military planners. At roughly $5 per shot, compared with
Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity News,
In the heart of the Oxford Union, a supposed bastion of open debate, a single brown paper envelope triggered pure panic.
Commentator Laurence Fox stood to argue that the West is right to be suspicious of Islam. He held up the envelope and indicated it contained a cartoon of the prophet Muhammad. The chamber erupted in frantic attempts to stop him opening it. Rules were suddenly invoked. Relevance was questioned. Respect was demanded.
The Muslim president of the Union interjected that her very presence should have been enough to persuade Fox that Muslims believe in free speech.
Best clip from the Oxford Union in a long time. A speaker suggests that he is about to display a cartoon of Muhammad to prove that Islam has a problem with free speech.
— Champagne Scar (@champagne_scar) August 6, 2026
People scramble frantically to stop him: It is against the rules, unnecessary, irrelevant, disrespectful, and… pic.twitter.com/oRJ6MCXQOz
"My wife asked me not to show this for fear of repercussions for my family," Fox said. "But I told her that if
Update (1100ET): Upon seeing this exclamation from the dismally-polling Green leader. Elon Musk took to X (the platform she demands be shutdown for too much free-speechifying) to make some demands of his own...
I demand that she be shut down for treason against France!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 6, 2026
As Remix News detailed earlier, French Green leader Marine Tondelier has reiterated her calls for social media platform X to be temporarily shut down, claiming its owner Elon Musk is using it to interfere in French politics and promote Marine Le Pen ahead of the 2027 presidential election.
Tondelier, general secretary of the Ecologists and a declared presidential candidate, suggested that suspending X for one month would improve political debate in France.
"If X were to stop for a month, it would do a world of good for the French public debate," she said, as cited by Libération.
She claimed the platform could not be treated merely as a question of freedom of expression or freedom of enterprise because it was controlled from the United States by an owner seeking to influence European
Two Republican governors with a long history of clashing with Donald Trump are working with Democrats on a plan to hand migrant workers state-issued work permits instead of deportation notices, a direct challenge to the president's immigration crackdown that the four laid out on camera. Utah Gov. Spencer Cox and Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt joined Democratic Govs. Wes Moore of Maryland and Matt Meyer of Delaware for a joint interview with Bloomberg, describing a shared position that has far more in common with the Democratic Party and the labor lobby than with the Trump administration's approach to the border.
The vehicle for that position is the National Governors Association's Task Force on Immigration Policy, which Stitt built after noticing a pattern among his colleagues. "The reason I set this task force up is because I realized by talking to my colleagues that they're having the same issues," Stitt told Bloomberg reporter Christina Ruffini. "Let's actually have the governors issue workforce permits."
That last line
Following reports that US forces have "used up virtually all" of their precision, long-range missiles in futile attempts to first trigger an Iranian regime change and then to compel Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz, now comes reporting that an angry President Trump confronted Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in recent days, accusing the Pentagon of misleading him on critical munitions shortages that leave Trump increasingly powerless in the five-month-old fiasco of a war.
According to sources cited by the Washington Post, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to concern about retaliation, Trump's ire erupted alongside a cabinet meeting held Friday at Camp David. Trump expressed consternation that he'd been assured that the weapon shortage "had been fixed" when that is apparently far from true.
According to "multiple officials" who -- reading between the lines -- clearly seem to have had it with Fox News talking-head-suddenly-turned-Defense-secretary, Hegseth defended his own actions and tried
Authored by Rachel Roberts via The Epoch Times,
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved Moderna's flu shot for over-50s, marking the first time the agency has licensed a messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) vaccine for seasonal influenza.
The shot, known as mFlusiva, was given a traditional approval for adults aged 50 to 64, and an accelerated approval for the over-65s, the pharmaceutical giant said on Wednesday.
Moderna has agreed to run an additional study and submit further data on the over-65s in a bid to demonstrate the vaccine's benefit for that age group.
The approval was based on data from a late-stage trial involving more than 40,000 adults aged 50 and older, which found the shot was 26.5 percent more effective than a licensed standard-dose flu vaccine.
Moderna had to submit separate late-stage data showing the shot generated stronger antibody responses than Sanofi's high-dose flu vaccine in the over-65s after problems with the methodology in its phase 3 trial.
The vaccine uses mRNA technology,
The US suspended avocado inspections in Mexico's Michoacán state after the US Embassy cited a "threat against American interests." Because Michoacán is Mexico's largest avocado-producing region and a top supplier to the US market, any prolonged suspension risks disrupting imports and driving supermarket prices sharply higher.
Michoacán Gov. Alfredo Ramírez Bedolla said on social media that the temporary halt to inspections was intended to safeguard workers following recent arrests linked to extortion, according to AP News.
Michoacán supplies about 75% to 80% of Mexico's avocados, while Mexico accounted for more than 80% of US avocado imports in 2025, valued at over $3 billion.
Supplies from Peru, California, and Mexico's Jalisco state could limit shortages and price increases if the suspension is brief, Rabobank analyst David Magana said.
Wholesale prices for first-quality Michoacán Hass avocados sold at Mexico City's Central de Abasto have nearly doubled in recent months, signaling tightening conditions in Mexico's domestic supply chain even before the latest inspection disruption.
"These alternative sources should help mitigate supply shortages and limit upward pressure on prices, particularly if the
By Bas van Geffen, Senior Macro Strategist at Rabobank
Brent prices held steady just below the $80-level, as Iran said it reached an agreement with Oman on a proposed shipping route through the Strait of Hormuz. That's not the Iran-US deal that Trump had been eyeing, but this agreement raises the prospect of more energy flows resuming through the critical waterway.
However, Iran has also said that the deal does not work until the US stops blocking traffic. We are yet to hear when the US lifts its blockade on Iranian ships – if Trump does not revert to threats of air strikes instead. The course of events once again underlines Iran's relatively strong negotiating position.
Days after the Japanese Ministry of Finance –and the US Treasury– intervened in FX markets to prop up the yen, the cabinet approved a plan to cut the sales tax on food for two years. On top of that, the government is planning handouts to lower-income households. High costs of living are weighing on PM Takaichi's popularity. So, she wants to lessen the price pressure on households, but these tax
Authored by Matthew Vadum via The Epoch Times,
New Mexico is suing the Department of Justice (DOJ) over unredacted Epstein files, accusing the federal agency of stonewalling the state's own investigation into alleged crimes at deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein's Zorro Ranch.
The legal action, filed Aug. 5, intensifies a politically charged fight over the DOJ's Epstein files, which have been accumulating since investigations into Epstein began in the mid-2000s.
New Mexico reopened its investigation in February and is seeking access to files relating to who worked at and visited Epstein's Zorro Ranch in Santa Fe County, New Mexico, and may have participated in or witnessed crimes.
The DOJ said it has handed over some of the files but is prevented by law from releasing others due to privacy protections.
"The Epstein Files Transparency Act does not require, and the protective orders in place in the Southern District of New York do not permit, disclosure of victim-identifying information carte blanche, and New Mexico has provided no lawful basis to justify such sweeping disclosures," a DOJ spokesperson told The Epoch Times of its reasons for opposing the lawsuit.
The
US distillate exports surged to a record last week as global supplies tightened. Disruptions across the Gulf area and various surrounding maritime chokepoints, as well as Ukrainian one-way attack drone strikes that have paralyzed portions of Russia's energy infrastructure, have been a major boon for US refiners and export terminals along the Gulf of America.
To begin the week, Samantha Dart, co-head of global commodities research at Goldman Sachs, told Bloomberg TV, "The situation in Russia is really one thing that worries us a lot."
Dart warned, "I'd say on the oil side, as I mentioned before, diesel, I think is the oil product that is most vulnerable right now, not just because you have your seasonal demand strength ahead just in the winter, but on the supply side. And to your point in the beginning, it's not just that you run war, it's what's happening to the Russian refineries as well. And Russia is usually a pretty big exporter of diesel. And now they have restricted it."
Last month, Goldman analyst Daan Struyven warned that "Diesel is at the epicenter of the supply squeeze."
As global supplies dwindle, US energy exporters on the Gulf
Less than a week after Colombian authorities blamed a Marxist-Leninist terrorist group for detonating a truck bomb outside police headquarters in the border city of Cúcuta, injuring 11 officers, security forces intercepted a bus carrying a massive bomb.
The local outlet Blu Radio reported that an intelligence operation by the National Police thwarted a "terrorist attack" when authorities intercepted a bus carrying 1,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate in Santander de Quilichao, about 30 miles from Cali.
President-elect Abelardo de la Espriella, a Trump-backed conservative who has pledged to restore law and order and wage war against far-left terror groups, will be sworn in before foreign leaders and senior U.S. officials on Friday.
The report noted that the bus bomb was orchestrated by the far-left, Marxist-Leninist guerrilla organization Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) to "attack" the military during inauguration celebrations.
The major Colombian news outlet continued:
According to preliminary information, the vehicle had been modified to be used as a bus bomb and, according to the investigation, its objective was to attack military and police installations in Cali during the events related to the inauguration of
