Buckingham Palace brought in experts from the charity Alcohol Change UK to deliver an alcohol-awareness course for royal household staff.
The educational session, organised as part of the Palace’s broader wellbeing programme, aimed to equip staff with the knowledge to manage situations involving colleagues who may be under the influence of alcohol at work.
Richard Piper, chief executive of Alcohol Change UK, confirmed that the royal household had approached the charity to deliver its workplace seminars.
Topics covered during the presentation included mindful drinking and so-called “grey area drinking”, a term describing patterns where individuals consume excessive amounts of alcohol without necessarily being dependent on it. The course also addressed the wider risks associated with alcohol in professional environments.
Buckingham Palace brought in experts from the charity Alcohol Change UK to deliver an alcohol-awareness course for royal household staff.
The educational session, organised as part of the Palace’s broader wellbeing programme, aimed to equip staff with the knowledge to manage situations involving colleagues who may be under the influence of alcohol at work.
Richard Piper, chief executive of Alcohol Change UK, confirmed that the royal household had approached the charity to deliver its workplace seminars.
Topics covered during the presentation included mindful drinking and so-called “grey area drinking”, a term describing patterns where individuals consume excessive amounts of alcohol without necessarily being dependent on it. The course also addressed the wider risks associated with alcohol in professional environments.
“You’ve also got safeguarding issues. So, this isn’t just about the stigma around whether drinking is a good or bad thing. We try and get away from that and focus on health and individuals and making everyone feel included,” he added.
GB News understands the Alcohol Change UK session took place several years ago and formed part of a wider series of wellbeing initiatives coordinated by the royal household’s human resources department.
The course sits within a broader drive to modernise the working culture at the Palace. Over the past year, 17 new mental health first aiders have been trained across the royal household to provide support to colleagues.
In November, the Palace conducted an “employee pulse” survey designed to gauge staff satisfaction in their roles. The findings have not been published, though a report stated that the exercise “provided valuable insight into the lived experience of employees, helping to inform future priorities and targeted actions”.
GB News has contacted Buckingham Palace for comment.
In December 2024, a member of the Palace workforce was arrested following a Christmas gathering at a bar in central London, which had been preceded by an evening reception at Buckingham Palace.
Police were called to All Bar One in Victoria after reports of glasses being smashed and an alleged attempt to assault a staff member. Around 50 household employees had attended the event.
A 24-year-old woman was detained on suspicion of common assault, criminal damage and being drunk and disorderly. She was subsequently released with a penalty order.
A Palace spokesman said at the time: “We are aware of an incident outside the workplace involving a number of household staff who had previously attended an early evening reception at the palace.
“While this was an informal social gathering, not an official palace Christmas party, the facts will be fully investigated, with a robust disciplinary process followed in relation to individual staff and appropriate action taken.”
Călin Georgescu, winner of the first round of Romania’s 2024 presidential election, in handcuffs. Image via X.
Romania’s Bucharest Court of Appeal has ordered Călin Georgescu into preventive detention for 30 days, overturning a lower court ruling that allowed the former presidential frontrunner to remain free under judicial supervision.
Călin Georgescu is the first political prisoner since the 1989 Revolution.
Let this be clear to everyone: today, the system is PSD–PNL–USR. All appointments to leadership positions within the prosecutors’ offices and the police are politically driven.
The decision sends the figure at the center of Romania’s conservative, anti-globalist camp—and the most trusted politician in the country, according to some polls—back behind bars.
The move has further intensified accusations from his conservative Romanians that the country’s post-2024 establishment is using prosecutors and courts to contain a movement it has struggled, and even failed, to contain at the ballot box.
DIICOT prosecutors secured the reversal after challenging the Bucharest Tribunal’s refusal to imprison Georgescu while the €1.1 million fraud investigation proceeds. Businessman Ionel Rusen was also ordered into preventive detention, with the Court of Appeal’s ruling final.
Even the appellate panel was reportedly divided over whether detention was justified. Two judges disagreed, requiring a third to resolve the split in favor of incarceration—a detail Georgescu’s defenders have seized upon as evidence that the prosecution’s demand was hardly self-evident.
Georgescu’s lawyer, Mircea Sinescu, reacted with fury. “It is a hallucinatory solution!” he said, adding that “paper supports anything,” according to the Romanian account of the ruling. Pasted markdown The contrast with last week could scarcely be sharper. Bucharest Tribunal Judge Vlad Andriescu had rejected preventive detention and instead placed Georgescu and Rusen under judicial control for 60 days while prosecutors continued their investigation.
More damaging politically for DIICOT, the lower-court reasoning reportedly questioned whether prosecutors had concretely established the precise role each defendant allegedly played in the supposed fraud. The judge called for investigators to clarify how the alleged deception was actually carried out rather than relying on a broadly asserted criminal association.
That earlier ruling did not amount to exoneration. The judge restricted Georgescu and Rusen from leaving Romania after considering intercepted conversations concerning a possible move to Tuscany, but concluded that imprisonment was not then necessary.
When Georgescu emerged from court after that decision, supporters greeted him with chants of “Freedom!”, “Călin, we love you!” and demands for the cancelled presidential runoff to be restored. Georgescu told the crowd that he was innocent and described the cases against him as “politically motivated.”
He also attacked what he called Romania’s “neo-Marxist and neo-Phanariot system,” casting his confrontation with prosecutors as something larger than one criminal file. That language reflects a conservative, sovereigntist movement that increasingly views Romania’s political, judicial and security establishment as a single entrenched structure defending the country’s existing order, which is said to take its orders from Brussels and Paris.
DIICOT, an institution that has a storied history of deep corruption, rejects that political interpretation and says it is pursuing an ordinary organized-crime and fraud case. Prosecutors allege Georgescu and two other men deceived businessman Răzvan Leu into providing roughly €1.1 million after promising access to a €15 million foreign credit facility that allegedly never materialized.
Those allegations remain unproven, and preventive detention is not a criminal conviction. Georgescu denies wrongdoing, meaning prosecutors will ultimately have to demonstrate both that the alleged scheme existed as described and that he knowingly played the role attributed to him.
The age of the underlying allegations has nevertheless become another rallying point for his supporters. The purported financial activity dates back to 2021, while the complaint moved into the DIICOT investigation in 2024, prompting Georgescu’s camp to ask why an old financial dispute has produced such an aggressive response only after he became Romania’s most prominent anti-establishment figure.
That perception hardened after the September 21 operation at his home. Georgescu was stopped in traffic, taken to his Mogoșoaia residence during searches lasting nearly nine hours, brought to DIICOT headquarters and later led outside in handcuffs before assembled cameras and supporters.
According to the reporting supplied, one of Georgescu’s sons was with him when officers stopped him, while his wife and younger child were at home when masked units arrived.
Five addresses were searched across Bucharest and nearby localities, turning the investigation into the kind of heavily visual police operation that was always likely to acquire political meaning.
For AUR and Georgescu’s supporters, however, the image that endured was simpler: the winner of the first round of Romania’s 2024 presidential election being paraded in handcuffs less than two years after the state cancelled the election he had unexpectedly led. That sequence has become the emotional center of a much broader revolt against what conservatives routinely describe as Romania’s globalist regime.
The Constitutional Court annulled that election after intelligence services alleged, without providing any evidence, Russian-linked online interference, campaign irregularities and manipulation favoring Georgescu. To this day they have failed to provide evidence supporting their extraordinary claim, which effectively ended Romanian democracy. US Vice President JD Vance, Elon Musk, and US State Department have all slammed the decision to annul the presidential election and effectively suspend democracy.
Following Georgescu’s earlier detention, the AUR leader George Simion warned, “Any of us could be next. Stop the abuses! Romania is a dictatorship!” — a political accusation that captures AUR’s interpretation of the crackdown, rather than an independent legal description of the Romanian state.
The scale of AUR’s support gives that rhetoric considerably more weight than it would have carried several years ago. INSCOP’s September survey placed AUR at 39.7% among respondents expressing a party preference and 40.2% among those expressing a preference who also said they were certain to vote.
PSD stood at 18.7%, PNL at 16.3% and USR at 9% among respondents expressing a party choice, leaving AUR with roughly twice the support of its nearest rival in that survey. The poll interviewed 1,100 adults between September 1 and 7 and reported a maximum sampling error of ±3 percentage points.
Those figures do not prove AUR’s allegations about the courts or prosecutors, but they expose the danger for Romania’s establishment of treating the sovereigntist challenge as a marginal phenomenon. When a movement polling around 40% watches one of its defining political figures repeatedly investigated, searched, handcuffed and detained, every prosecutorial decision inevitably becomes part of the country’s larger struggle over state legitimacy.
The Romanian state now faces a credibility test considerably larger than Georgescu’s next 30 days in detention. Prosecutors must show that the fraud case rests on evidence strong enough to withstand scrutiny, while institutions already damaged by the extraordinary 2024 annulment must convince millions of distrustful voters that the state is enforcing law rather than protecting an embattled political order from the sovereigntist movement now dominating the polls.
Centre-right candidate and post Berlusconi Forza Italia (FI) treasurer Fabio Roscioli won a by-election in Calabria Monday. Roscioli, who is close to the Berlusconi family, won with around 60% of the vote. The Reggio Calabria-Locri seat was vacant after the FI’s Francesco Cannizzaro was elected mayor of Reggio.
Attempts by Germany’s increasingly unpopular globalist government to ban Alternative for Germany (AfD), now the country’s most popular party, have reached Washington and drawn a response from Congress.
Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, according to reports from Germany’s mainstream press, has warned lawmakers in Thuringia that she will press the Trump administration to consider U.S. travel restrictions against politicians who support an AfD ban.
Luna’s intervention comes as the Thuringian state parliament prepares for a September 30 public hearing on the far-left, anti-European Die Linke’s motion calling on the state government to push Berlin and other German states toward formal AfD prohibition proceedings.
The hearing is set to unfold in three public sessions and will be streamed by the parliament.
The spectacle, for critics of the proposed ban, raises a basic question that Germany’s political class can no longer avoid: how far should a democratic state go in trying to remove a large opposition party from electoral competition?
Luna’s statements put that question at the center of the dispute rather than treating a ban as an ordinary procedural matter.
“A free state governed by the rule of law may certainly take decisive action against its actual enemies,” Luna wrote. But, she argued, criticism of a government cannot simply be equated with hostility toward the constitution, adding: “The state may punish perpetrators, but not thoughts or opinions.” Pasted markdown
Luna said the material available publicly does not provide “convincing evidence” for banning the AfD as an entire political party. She argued that opponents appear, in her view, to be trying to eliminate an “unwelcome competitor” through institutions rather than defeating it at the ballot box. Pasted markdown
It’s worth noting that the German Constitutional Court says objectionable or even anti-constitutional ideas are not enough by themselves; a party must actively and systematically seek to undermine the free democratic order, and there must be concrete indications that its efforts could have some prospect of success
Only the Bundestag, Bundesrat or federal government may bring a party-ban application, and only the Constitutional Court can order dissolution. Thuringia therefore cannot simply vote the AfD out of existence; the Left Party’s proposal seeks to push the process upward into Germany’s federal institutions.
Luna made clear that she wants German lawmakers to know the controversy could carry consequences in America.. “Should you ban the AfD, I will speak with Minister Rubio” and seek entry restrictions against the lawmakers who initiated or supported the effort, she wrote.
Luna sits firmly inside the MAGA wing of the Republican Party and has cultivated contacts with AfD figures. She has previously met party representatives in Washington and has repeatedly spoken publicly against efforts to isolate the AfD from normal political competition.
The Thuringian AfD welcomed her statements. Deputy parliamentary leader Daniel Haseloff said the central issue remains whether proponents of prohibition can produce hard evidence rather than political labels, asking: “Where is the reliable evidence for a systematic plan by the AfD to abolish the free democratic basic order?”
“Keywords and baseless suspicions do not replace this proof,” Haseloff added. His caucus portrayed Luna’s letter as evidence that Germany’s ban debate is beginning to attract scrutiny well beyond the country’s borders.
Katharina König-Preuß, a lawmaker for the anti-democratic, extremist Die Linke party, condemned Luna’s proposed travel restrictions, claiming them as outside intimidation of elected German legislators. She said parliamentarians must decide according to the constitution, facts and conscience, not according to whether a foreign government might later impose personal consequences.
Her radical left-globalist faction has contacted Germany’s Foreign Office, the president of the Thuringian parliament and the U.S. Consulate General over Luna’s intervention. König-Preuß said the Left would not allow the warning to alter its position on the hearing or the proposed ban initiative.
The hearing itself is set to feature sharply opposed voices, including legal and political specialists, comedian and declared AfD opponent Hape Kerkeling, and former domestic intelligence chief Hans-Georg Maaßen. That unusual mix reflects how far the issue has moved beyond a narrow constitutional-law debate and into Germany’s broader political culture war.
Underlying the entire dispute is the AfD’s rapid growth and its challenge to Germany’s post-Merkel consensus on mass migration, national sovereignty, left-liberal cultural hegemony, and European integration. The party advocates tighter borders, more deportations and a policy it describes as “remigration,” making immigration one of the clearest dividing lines between the AfD and Germany’s globalist establishment political parties.
That electoral growth is precisely why the prohibition debate carries significant political weight. Opponents of a ban argue that removing a party, the most popular party in the country, with a massive base through judicial proceedings risks turning a constitutional safeguard into a substitute for political competition, while supporters counter that popularity does not exempt any organization from Article 21 of the Basic Law.
The Constitutional Court’s own precedent captures that tension. In its 2017 judgment against the National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD) party, it stressed both the exceptional nature of party prohibition and the need for concrete, weighty evidence that a party is actively fighting the democratic order rather than merely expressing objectionable views.
Luna appears to have seized on exactly that distinction. Her argument is that an opposition party’s electoral success and harsh criticism of government policy cannot themselves substitute for evidence satisfying the court’s constitutional test, while the marginal, anti-democratic, far-left extremist Die Linke party maintains that the AfD’s conduct and ideology justify putting that question before Germany’s institutions.
The battle therefore now runs on two tracks: a German constitutional fight over whether an AfD prohibition should even be initiated, and a transatlantic political fight over what such a move would say about Western democratic competition.
Luna’s primary message is that banning a major opposition party should require extraordinary evidence, and the Republican’s MAGA wing intends to make sure the people pursuing that course face international scrutiny as well.
A hunt meet at The Green Man public house, Grade II listed and dating to the 17th century, on Mulberry Green in Old Harlow, Essex, and from Leaves from a Hunting Diary in Essex (1900).Wikimedia Commons, CC-PD-Mark
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Nature Jenny Riddell-Carpenter has some thoughts.
“If we don’t make the case for nature,” the politician told a Labour conference, “there’ll be the far-right deciding and determining what that looks like. It’ll be a vision, a nostalgic vision of Britain, that never really existed. It’ll be that warm ale, a black Labrador by your feet in a pub that doesn’t exist, and with symbolism of fox hunting all around them, it’ll be a very far-right nostalgic vision of Britain that we don’t want to have, [and] never really existed.”
“That we don’t want to have.” Well obviously. After all we know that the original British people were black and built Stonehenge.
Brilliant Black British History, an illustrated book by the Nigerian-born UK author Atinuke, also claimed “every single British person comes from a migrant” but “the very first Britons were black”.
The popular attraction Stonehenge was identified as a landmark built while Britain was a “black country”.
The book states that the first British people were black and “Britain was a black country for more than 7,000 years before white people came”.
Stop Hate UK said the book “is a huge step forward in ensuring racist attitudes do not progress into children of the next generation”.
It also claimed the so-called Cheddar Man, the oldest human remains found in Britain, had skin as “dark as dark can be”.
The book, which comes days after Horrible Histories was also criticised, suggested a black Muslim population brought “new knowledge about textiles, medicine, maths and navigation” to early modern Britain.
There were never any pubs in Britain. Just Muslims importing knowledge about math, medicine and chemical explosives. And black people building Stonehenge.
I wonder if Canadians have become so accustomed to horrifying headlines that we have become desensitized. The National Post’s September 26 headline should be shocking, but we have seen dozens like it over the past decade: “Within 10 days, two pedophile child killers were given temporary passes to leave prison.”
“In just a little more than a week, the Parole Board of Canada granted to two B.C. men jailed for murdering children temporary passes to leave prison,” Tristin Hopper writes. “Both men are pedophiles who committed their crimes in the early 2000s, and whose victims would now be in their 30s. Both men are believed to have been freed into the Victoria area, but their releases were not accompanied by public warnings.”
On September 11, Douglas Lambier was granted 60-day “unescorted absences” from jail by the parole board. I didn’t immediately recognize the name, but I did recognize the face of his victim, which covered the front pages for days: 9-year-old Brandon Burchell, whom Lambier strangled to death in 2005. Prosecutors believed that Lambier, who already had two previous convictions for the sexual assault of children, had attempted to assault the boy and killed him when he resisted.
Lambier was initially charged with first-degree murder of Brandon Burchell (the grandson of the woman he was dating) and pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in 2006, for which he received the mandatory life sentence, with no eligibility for parole for 15 years. Lambier is now on his tenth release from prison, despite Burchell’s family attending the parole hearing to beg that he be kept in jail. “I don’t think this man should be out of prison at all,” said Brandon’s mother Tina Gervais. “It’s not safe for any community.”
I suspect you would be hard pressed to find any Canadian who disagrees with her. Multiple convictions for sexually assaulting children, culminating in an attempted sexual assault and a violent murder? And yet, Lambier is out in public, unsupervised.
The other case cited by Hopper is even worse, if cases like this can be compared. In October 2000, 10-year-old Heather Thomas was playing outdoors near her father’s townhouse in Cloverdale, B.C. Shane Ertmoed, who lived nearby, lured her into his house on the pretense of looking at photos of birds, attempted to sexually assault her, and strangled her to death while suppressing her screams. He then stuffed her body and clothes into a sports bag and dumped it first in the forest, and then into Alouette Lake, where it was found three weeks later.
“Despite receiving a 25-year prison sentence, Ertmoed has been receiving temporary releases since 2021, and his most recent Parole Board decision made reference to his eventual plan to become a plumber,” Hopper reported. “‘At sentencing, the judge described your offence as the most horrific crime known to our law, ‘the killing of a defenceless young girl. The judge noted also that you had no remorse,’ read the decision, which also noted Ertmoed’s history of ‘deviant sexual behaviour’ leading up to Thomas’s murder.” Heather Thomas’s family came to the parole hearing to ask that he not be released.
“They do not believe you should have this opportunity and that you should remain in prison until you die,” the parole board stated in their summary of the family’s request. “They are fearful that you will re-offend and harm another child.” The parole board decided instead that the killer’s “risk to re-offend will not be undue,” and noted that he now takes “arousal reducing medication.” On September 2, he was granted 60-day unescorted absences from prison. Hopper notes that this is standard practice in Canada.
Earlier this year, in fact, Darren Scott Ray was also granted unescorted temporary absences from prison, triggering this public warning from the Durham Regional Police Service on March 2: “Durham Regional Police Service is warning the public about a high-risk offender who has been released into the community. This individual has a history of serious criminal convictions including first degree murder.” Ray is serving time for the 1986 murder of 14-year-old Darren Pepin, whom he sodomized, tortured, and strangled.
In May, Marie Mangoon – one of two people convicted of the first-degree violent murder of 6-year-old Meika Jordan after days of prolonged abuse – was also granted supervised absences from jail in May. Brian Boucher, convicted of sexually abusing two boys, was granted statutory release but had it revoked this month after new alleged incidents and child porn charges. Serial sexual offender Allen Chow, released in March 2025 after serving two-thirds of his sentence, also had his statutory release revoked after new alleged offences.
“Save Portugal”, a Chega Party demonstration against “uncontrolled immigration and insecurity in the streets”, in Lisbon, Portugal. Screengrab .youtube
A bill from the two parties backing Prime Minister Luís Montenegro would oblige illegal migrants and non-residents to pay for treatment, with an exception for emergencies.
The two parties that support Portugal’s minority Government have tabled a bill requiring foreigners in the country illegally, and non-residents, to pay for treatment under the national health service or prove they are covered.
The Social Democratic Party (PSD) and the CDS – People’s Party (CDS-PP) registered the text in the Assembly of the Republic on September 25. It would amend the 2019 health framework law that sets out who qualifies for the Serviço Nacional de Saúde (SNS).
Portuguese citizens and foreigners legally resident or temporarily staying in the country would remain beneficiaries. That covers nationals of European Union member states, third-country nationals, stateless people and applicants for international protection.
Those in an irregular situation or not resident in Portugal would instead pay for the care they received, or produce proof of cover from an insurer, an international agreement or another party legally responsible.
Emergency and life-saving treatment would still be given regardless of status, though patients would afterwards have to supply the necessary documentation. The bill would also require the law to set out how those liable are identified and costs recovered, including guarantees or advance payment.
PSD and CDS-PP base part of their case on a November 27, 2024 report by the health inspectorate IGAS. It concluded that about 330,000 foreigners not resident in Portugal were treated in SNS hospital emergency departments between 2021 and September 2024, more than 140,000 of them without insurance or an international agreement covering that care.
The two parties argue in the bill’s preamble that a growing number of third-country nationals travel to Portugal to obtain free treatment, in some cases through illegal networks. They hold the Socialist Party and the rest of the parliamentary left responsible for the current wording of the law.
The initiative is a revival. A similar text cleared a first vote in the previous parliament with the backing of Chega, the right-wing party now the largest opposition force, but lapsed when early elections were called.
Communist Party leader Paulo Raimundo rejected the plan on September 26, saying the government was diverting attention from the real problems of the SNS, the shortage of health professionals and the lack of investment. He also pointed to the 26 million tourists who visit Portugal each year.
The bill still has to be debated and voted on, so nothing changes yet. It follows a run of migration measures in a country whose foreign population has grown sharply, among them a law enacted in September that speeds up the expulsion of illegal migrants after Chega abstained.
Prime Minister Luís Montenegro has also criticised what he called a lack of rules on migration flows in Europe, saying some governments pursue policies that act as a pull factor.
The FIDESZ MP (C) leaves parliament with his wife (L) and children before handing himself in to prosecutors.Screenshot Facebook
Emotional scenes filmed in parliament last night as former Minister of Culture, Balázs Hankó bid farewell to his wife and children, before voluntarily handing himself in to prosecutors. Out of the three politicians, whose immunity was lifted by a unanimous vote in parliament yesterday by TISZA MP’s, only Péter Magyar, investigated for theft of property, remains at large.
“Neo-communist tactics. The autocrats of the TISZA camp are raising taxes, driving up petrol prices to the skies, and ruining the Hungarian economy.
“Our message to every Hungarian is this: the autocrats of the TISZA camp will not break the community of the national side—we will not let them! They cannot imprison half the country”, posted former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán on his social media platform. The FIDESZ leader has also posted a live video of Mr. Hankó saying goodbye to his visibly shaken children and wife, who have accompanied him to his journey to the headquarters of the National Tax and Customs Administration in Budapest, where prosecutors have detained him.
The detention of the Hungarian MP is interpreted by many as an act of intimidation against conservative Hungarians. As Mr. Hankó’s lawyer explained yesterday, none of the specific grounds for arrest applied to his client. “In the case of Balázs Hankó, the possibility of reoffending is ruled out; he will not go into hiding, nor can he destroy evidence,” stated lawyer Gábor M. Tóth.
Mr. Hankó’s case involves the so called National Cultural Fund (NKA), where prosecutors claim that he, as the institution’s chair, was responsible for misappropriation of NKA funds. Investigators allege that over EUR 50 million was paid out in breach of the law. They also claim that funds were diverted to election campaign events instead of being used for supporting cultural initiatives. The former minister denies these claims and has vowed to refute all the accusations “point by point”.
On social media platforms, messages from thousands of TISZA supporters have flooded the comment sections and hundreds of often offensive memes have celebrated the demise of the FIDESZ politician. However, on the conservative side the move is interpreted as the salvo to a purge against conservative politicians.
András László, MEP for FIDESZ wrote on X saying that “the era of political show trials is back! Today the authoritarian rule in Hungary reached a new low. The judiciary is acting on the PM’s personal instructions. Two months ago, during a heated outburst at the session of the Hungarian Parliament, PM Péter Magyar accused Balázs Hankó, the former Minister for Culture and now opposition MP, and threatened him with imprisonment. When Hankó rose to speak to refute the false allegations, Péter Magyar instructed the Speaker of the House to cut him off and called on the MPs from the TISZA party to publicly humiliate him.”
“Péter Magyar announced the politically motivated proceeding IN ADVANCE on social media. All of this constitutes a serious violation of the independence of the judiciary. And the PM does not even care to pretend that the judiciary is independent”, wrote the Hungarian politician.
The era of political show trials are back!
Today the authoritarian rule in Hungary reached a new low. The judiciary is acting on the PM's personal instructions.
Two months ago, during a heated outburst at the session of the Hungarian Parliament, PM Péter Magyar accused Balázs… https://t.co/epVJdlWGPj
For his part, Magyar went on a conspicuously theatrical rant against the Office of the Prosecutor General, slamming it for “grouping together” the immunity cases concerning the Prime Minister and two former ministers of the Orbán government. The Prime Minister stated that the intention had been to place him in an awkward position and perhaps obscure the “complicity of the Office of the Prosecutor General and the investigative prosecutor’s office in the crimes of the Orbán regime.” Instead, they achieved the exact opposite: they exposed themselves, Magyar claimed.
If polls are to be believed, the TISZA government still enjoys the support of the majority of Hungarian voters, who are now fed a constant stream of propaganda from the now almost exclusively government loyalist press in Hungary, and pro-TISZA public broadcasters. Despite the repression unfolding after the April elections that is unprecedented in post-communist Hungary, such as the removal of the President of the Republic, the dismissal of the Prosecutor General or that of the Head of the Constitutional Court, EU leaders have exclusively been showering praise at the Magyar government, even releasing previously withheld funds, such as Erasmus.
German government politicians are particularly enthusiastic about the latest developments in Hungary, with Defense Minister Boris Pistorius (SPD) saying during his official visit last week that “Hungary inspires courage in many people, because here the people have shown that democracy can flourish even within an authoritarian system”. Marcus Söder, leader of the CSU, has also expressed his “delight at the election victory of Péter Magyar and the TISZA Party”, during a recent visit, reinforcing opinions that the Magyar regime is following a German textbook in its crackdown on the conservative opposition and in initiating lawfare against its political opponents.
German authorities have frozen €5.9 million ($6.5 million) in assets of an operator of a fast-growing intensive-care nursing service. She is now in custody over allegations that the company billed public health insurers for services that were never fully provided or were performed by unqualified staff, causing an estimated €11 million in damage.
Zeynep C., 39, a Turkish national who rose from supermarket work to run White Angels Intensive Care, was arrested Sept. 17 during coordinated raids involving more than 200 officers from police, customs and financial crime units. The case is making major headlines, also in part due to the luxury lifestyle she was living.
Her 44-year-old German husband was also detained. Both remain in pretrial custody.
Thirteen people ages 20 to 54 — of Turkish, Moroccan, Egyptian and German nationality, some with dual citizenship — are also under investigation.
The Wuppertal public prosecutor’s office, which specializes in health-care billing fraud, said investigations began in December 2025 after anonymous tips. Over eight months, detectives examined a network of companies centered in the Düsseldorf and Mettmann area that provided outpatient intensive care, including home ventilation and palliative services, to severely ill patients.
Prosecutors allege the group billed statutory health insurers for intensive-care hours that were not delivered or were incomplete, and that some care was given by staff lacking the required qualifications.
“They must keep qualified personnel available around the clock for seriously ill patients. Those are considerable wage costs that an employer also has to bear,” Chief Prosecutor Wolf-Tilman Baumert told WDR. Using unqualified workers or billing for nonexistent care made “huge profits” possible, he said.
Company records reviewed by investigators showed explosive growth. After roughly eight months of operation under its current name, the service posted about €1 million in profit by the end of 2023. Profit rose to nearly €3 million in 2024, with €11 million in revenue projected for 2025 — a figure that now matches the estimated total loss to insurers. The firm, previously called CAN-Vefa GmbH, marketed itself as offering “culturally sensitive care” with a multilingual team.
During the searches of 31 homes, offices and practices across North Rhine-Westphalia and one site in Hesse, officers found a care-dependent child in a Düsseldorf apartment in “very poor health.” The child was taken by ambulance to a hospital for inpatient treatment; child-protection officials were notified. Authorities said any proven neglect of patients would be an aggravating factor in the case.
Seized items included several luxury vehicles registered as company cars — a Maybach, Mercedes-AMG models and a purple Lamborghini — plus €51,000 in cash, jewelry valued at €265,000, gold worth about €10,000, designer handbags and watches totaling more than €150,000. Mortgages totaling €3.3 million were placed on properties. At the couple’s home in Mettmann, police also recovered a loaded firearm, marijuana and anabolic steroids. A doctor’s stamp, which investigators believe used to forge prescriptions, was among the documents seized.
Zeynep C. had cultivated a public image of success. Photos circulated in German media showed her wearing Chanel-branded clothing and accessories alongside images of the seized Lamborghini being towed. Prosecutors are examining whether the luxury spending was financed by the alleged fraud.
The Düsseldorf-based nursing company itself has not been shut down and continues under a different manager, according to local reports. No charges have been filed yet, and the investigation is still underway.
Billing fraud of this scale, if proven as commercial and organized, can carry prison terms of up to 10 years under German law. If prosecutors discover children and other patients were left untreated or poorly treated due to fictional or inadequate care services, the length of potential prison sentences could expand significantly.
Mohammed Abdalla, 28, ignited the blaze after he was ordered to leave the hotel because of his poor behaviour | WEST YORKSHIRE POLICE
A Sudanese asylum seeker has been jailed after setting fire to a hotel in Bradford with 170 people inside.
Bradford Crown Court was told that Mohammed Abdalla, 28, set off the blaze after he was ordered to leave the Bradford Hotel on Hall Ings because of his poor behaviour on October 31 last year.
At the time of the fire, more than 160 asylum seekers were in the hotel, while there were 10 members of staff on shift.
Recorder Ella Anderson, sentencing, told the Sudanese migrant: “Your actions put all of those people at risk.”
Tayo Dasaolu, prosecuting, told the court that the asylum seeker had been hanging around the lobby with his luggage for hours, repeatedly demanding to be allowed back into his room.
After being allowed to do so, the fire alarm went off, sending staff racing to the second floor of the hotel.
Mr Dasaolu said: “When the security staff saw the defendant he was sitting on a chair on the landing smiling at them.”
The fire erupted by the television and desk area of the room and caused over £4,000 worth of damage.
In mitigation, his lawyer, Imran Khan, told the court that Abdalla had been experiencing mental health issues and had been in hospital 10 days before the blaze.
Mr Khan added that Abdalla had since made a recovery after taking medication while behind bars.
The Sudanese migrant admitted arson being reckless as to whether life is endangered at Bradford Crown Court and was sentenced to two years and seven months in prison.
The judge described the fire as “extremely serious” and praised the response by the members of staff in tackling the blaze.
She told the court: “There were 150 to 160 residents and 10 members of staff.
“There was a significant risk of serious physical harm given the environment and how populated this hotel was.”
Abdalla received the same prison sentence as Lucy Connolly – who merely posted on social media about setting fire to a hotel.
Mrs Connolly, 42, was jailed for stirring up racial hatred against asylum seekers online on the day of the Southport murders.
She was handed a 31-month sentence in October after sharing a post on X stating: “Mass deportation now, set fire to all the f****** hotels full of the b****** for all I care… if that makes me racist so be it.”
Mrs Connolly deleted the posts three and a half hours later, after they were viewed over 310,000 times.
She pleaded guilty to inciting racial hatred by publishing and distributing “threatening or abusive” written material on X and was jailed at Birmingham Crown Court in October 2024.
The former childminder was ordered to serve 40 per cent of her sentence in prison before being released on licence.
