President of the European Investment Bank Nadia Maria Calvino Santamaria..Wikimedia Commons, Aurore Martignoni / European Union, CC-BY-4.0
The European Union and several development finance institutions have signed a new fund designed to channel up to €20 billion in private capital into sustainable infrastructure in low- and middle-income countries.
The announcement that comes as confidence among European households has fallen to its lowest point in more than three years.
The instrument, framed within the Global Green Bond Initiative, was agreed today in Brussels. It will direct financing towards climate and environmental projects in economies that have limited access to international financial markets.
According to the European Commission, the fund will invest exclusively in “green” bonds issued on primary markets, giving priority to “first-time issuers” — governments, local authorities and companies entering this type of financing for the first time.
At least 20 per cent of investments will go to the world’s least developed countries. Operations will be conducted in local currencies and in euros, with the stated aims of “strengthening local capital markets” and “promoting the international use” of the euro single currency.
The fund is targeting up to €2 billion from private European and international investors, underpinned by approximately €1 billion in public capital. Of that, around €800 million is to come from a consortium led by the European Investment Bank along with other European development institutions.
The EC will add guarantees through its European Fund for Sustainable Development Plus, intended to lower risk for private investors. Day-to-day management will be handled by a major European asset manager, not publicly named, which will focus exclusively on acquiring green bonds meeting strict environmental standards.
The initiative also includes technical assistance for issuers seeking to design and launch green bonds for the first time and potential grants aimed at offsetting higher financing costs in a still elevated interest rate environment.
The signing comes as European households grow more anxious about their own finances.
The EC’s own flash estimate for April 2026 shows consumer confidence in the EU at minus 19.4 and in the eurozone at minus 20.6 — the lowest readings since the turn of 2022/2023 and well below their long-term averages.
The EC has attributed the deterioration in part to geopolitical tensions and rising energy prices squeezing household purchasing power.
A Boston Consulting Group survey of 16,000 consumers in nine European countries, published in July 2025, found that 54 per cent were pessimistic about their home country’s economy, a rise of seven percentage points since July 2024.
Oxford Economics has said it expects weak consumer spending in the eurozone to persist, while Ipsos has noted sentiment is “generally down” across Europe, with the sharpest drops recorded in Germany, France, Belgium and Poland.
The new fund forms part of the EU’s Global Gateway strategy, its infrastructure programme that Brussels positions as a counterweight to China’s Belt and Road Initiative. The EC has pledged up to €300 billion in combined public and private investment globally by 2027 under the initiative.
The fund’s emphasis on euro-denominated transactions also reflects a wider EU drive to strengthen the international role of the single currency, a policy priority the EC has pursued more actively in recent years.
The announcement comes ahead of the United Nations’ fourth International Conference on Financing for Development, scheduled for June 30 to July 3 in Seville, Spain.
There, green finance and private capital mobilisation for the developing world are expected to feature prominently.
NCF Senior Fellow Emma Trimble speaks with Danny Kruger, a former Conservative and now Reform MP who is heading Reform UK’s “Department for Preparing for Government,” focusing on civil service overhaul and policy development. He is tasked with drafting legislation, strengthening ministerial control, cutting civil service headcount, and bringing in external expertise to ensure Reform is ready to govern.
Historian and broadcaster Rafe Heydel-Mankoo explains why the only hope of saving Britain is by electing a majority small “c” conservative government with a clear mandate to implement the strong policies required to save the nation. This can only be achieved if the right unite. A fractured right will never form a strong majority.
A trans-identified male serving a 35-year sentence for charges including the brutal 2014 murder of his girlfriend has been relocated to a women’s prison and awarded a payout of $295,000. Zera Lola Zombie, born Daniel Lee Smith, was granted $95,000 with an additional $200,000 for attorney fees as a result of a federal civil rights lawsuit alleging the Oregon Department of Corrections had violated his rights by housing him in a men’s prison.
As previously reported by Reduxx, Zombie was granted the classification of a “vulnerable” inmate in 2023, having lodged a legal complaint two years prior. In their preliminary statement, attorneys for Zombie argued that the state of Oregon was “discriminating against Ms. Zombie on the basis of her gender and gender identity” by housing the killer in a men’s prison, and by failing to designate him as a “Vulnerable Adult-In-Custody” (AIC). Under Oregon law, inmates designated as AICs receive certain privileges, including protections from staff and other inmates, and certain housing benefits.
The suit also claimed that Zombie “is a female person who was previously regarded as being a male person.” Zombie’s attorneys argued that “Ms. Zombie has suffered ongoing harassment and verbal, mental, and psychological abuse by both prisoners and ODOC staff as a result of her sex, gender, and gender identity,” and specifically alleged instances of sexual and physical assault.
A trans-identified male inmate in Oregon is seeking transfer to a women's prison for the second time after being deemed "vulnerable" by a court.
Zera Lola Zombie was convicted of beating his girlfriend to death in 2014.
The complaint reported that Zombie, after being sent to the Oregon State Penitentiary, had been placed in a cell with Mikal Shabazz, an inmate serving a 40-year sentence for multiple violent crimes against women. Zombie alleged he made repeat complaints about Shabazz sexually harassing him, and claimed Shabazz had sexually assaulted him on multiple occasions over the course of a year.
After Shabazz was penalized by the institution as a result of Zombie’s complaints, he says other inmates begun harassing him for “snitching.”
Zombie argued that the Oregon Department of Corrections (ODOC) had violated his rights by housing him in a men’s prison, and by placing him in a cell “with a known sexual predator” serving a sentence for “violence against women.” He also stated he was “deliberately and maliciously” misgendered by correctional officers during his time in a male prison.
Zombie’s lawyers filed a request for a jury trial on the matters outlined in the lawsuit, seeking an undisclosed sum to compensate him for his “pain and suffering … emotional distress … economic losses” and legal fees, as well as an award of “punitive damages.”
In a September 2023 ruling, Judge Ann Aiken found it “more likely than not that plaintiff has been repeatedly subjected to abuse, including sexual assault, by male inmates with whom she [sic] is housed” at both the Oregon State Penitentiary and at Two Rivers Correctional Institution in Umatilla.
The judge determined that Zombie had “repeatedly communicated her [sic] concerns about the likelihood of sexual assault and the actual occurrence of sexual assault to prison officials through appropriate channels.”
NEW: A transgender inmate has been deemed "vulnerable" by an Oregon Court, entitling him to special privileges while he continues to fight for transfer to a women's prison.
Zera Lola Zombie was convicted of beating his girlfriend to death in 2014.https://t.co/72QTzGAdht
In an amended complaint filed in December 2023, Zombie makes bizarre allegations regarding an incident when he refused to be strip searched by male correctional officers. Upon his refusal and repeated requests to have a female officer conduct the strip search, Zombie says he was placed into segregation, where he urinated on himself and told an officer, “I have small breasts, I can’t bear the thought of showing these men my breasts and my booty.”
The complaint describes Zombie being taken to the strip search area “in only her bra and urine-saturated underwear… on full display,” and states that Zombie was “crying and kept repeating, ‘Please don’t judge my body.’”
Bizarrely, the amended complaint also alleges that the strip search was uniquely difficult for Zombie because his genitals had retracted inside of his body – something that is not known to be a side effect of the ingestion of feminine hormones by men.
“Because of the female hormones Plaintiff takes, her genitals are contracted against and into her body, which is difficult to even discuss with others, let alone show them,” reads the statement. “Plaintiff felt acutely aware of her body and humiliated, as if she was on full display to have to show and discuss all her biggest flaws and insecurities all at once.”
Zombie is serving a 35-year-sentence for charges including the brutal 2014 murder of Samantha Brown, who had been his girlfriend at the time. Brown’s corpse was found in the trailer Zombie was living in, the woman having been beaten and bludgeoned to death. While the motive for the crime was never made clear, Brown was survived by four young children.
During the trial, Zombie pleaded guilty to manslaughter and assault to avoid possible murder and attempted murder convictions that could have put him in prison for life without parole. Zombie also pleaded guilty to an additional charge of first-degree assault on a man while in custody. Zombie, along with another inmate, attacked 34-year-old Justin Bedard with a broken broom handle, and was later seen on surveillance video footage “celebrating” the violence.
Zombie began identifying as transgender in 2020 and started a hormone regimen around that time. He has since changed his name and gender marker on legal documents. His attorneys in the lawsuit also insist he has developed “obvious breasts” due to his hormones, and have used the point as though to emphasize he is at heightened risk in a men’s prison.
At the time that the initial lawsuit was filed, September 10 2021, Zombie was already being housed in women’s prison Coffee Creek Correctional Facility (CCCF), having been transferred from Oregon State Penitentiary the week prior. However, ODOC Media Manager Amber Campbell explained to Reduxx that Zombie was returned to a men’s prison, at the end of 2021, just three months after being sent to the women’s facility.
Yet the current ODOC listing for Zombie categorizes him as “female” and states that he is once again being held in the women’s prison, CCCF.
Zombie’s profile on the Oregon Department of Corrections website.
In recent years the ODOC also transferred a double murderer into CCCF on the basis of his self-declared gender identity.
Vietnam war and US Navy veteran Susan Monica, born Steven Buchanan, was found guilty of murdering two men and feeding their corpses to pigs, and was sentenced to a minimum of 50 years in prison.
A trans-identified male who murdered two people and fed their bodies to pigs is demanding a retrial 10 years after being convicted.
Susan Monica is currently serving his sentence at a women's prison in Oregon, where he is listed as a "female" inmate.https://t.co/0jRldbtqtk
While awaiting sentencing, he was held among female inmates at Jackson County jail. A former cellmate of Buchanan’s, Jordan Farris, testified in court that Buchanan had confessed to the grotesque murders.
Farris also described getting “chills” after receiving a birthday card from Buchanan signed, “from the sweetest murderer in Jackson County.”
While it is unclear how many men have been transferred into women’s prison CCCF, there have been at least five lawsuits since 2019 filed by female inmates there alleging “widespread” rape and sexual abuse at the facility.
An investigation by Oregon State Police found that a total of 11 female inmates had reported some form of sexual abuse from the same prison official. However, prosecutors declined to charge him, saying some of the accounts were unreliable and that the women’s claims were “unsupportable” as a whole.
The French public is overwhelmingly in favour of the government cutting fuel taxes amid the growing energy crisis across Europe, a survey has found.
A CSA poll conducted on behalf of broadcasters CNews, Europe 1 and Le Journal du Dimanche found that 82 per cent of French voters support reducing taxes on fuel to lower pump prices for consumers.
Perhaps reflecting the particularities of the French political landscape, voters on the left were more likely to favour a reduction in the fuel tax than those on the right, by a margin of 80 per cent to 66 per cent.
However, supporters of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party, which advocates for strict immigration in conjunction with strong state intervention in the economy, were the most likely to back a fuel tax cut at 93 per cent.
National Rally President Jordan Bardella — who would serve as the party’s presidential candidate next year should the ban on Le Pen be upheld — came out this week in favour of reducing the Value Added Tax (VAT) on energy from 20 per cent to 5.5 per cent.
“We need to lower taxes on fuel. It is false to claim that the main driver of the price increase at the pump is the rise in raw material costs. There is a 55 per cent tax on fuel. And when we look around us today, in Spain, Portugal, Italy, Germany, Poland: all the major economies of the European Union are lowering taxes,” he told the France 2 broadcaster.
Since the start of the conflict in Iran in February, fuel prices have increased significantly in France, with Le Figaro reporting that diesel has surged by 60 per cent and gasoline by 30 per cent.
Rather than cut the hefty taxes on fuel, French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu announced this week targeted relief funds for certain sectors, particularly fishermen, farmers, and truckers, all of whom already receive energy subsidies.
The strategy from Paris appears to be similar to that taken by the liberal government in Dublin, which effectively quelled large-scale anti-fuel tax protests earlier this month by specifically paying off the farmers and truckers, who had an outsized influence given the ability to use their large vehicles to shut down key infrastructure, nearly crippling Ireland’s energy economy in the process. France, which has a robust history of farmer protests, could be primed for similar demonstrations this summer.
However, political tactics aside, Lecornu also claimed that the French government simply does not have the budgetary headroom to provide widespread tax cuts on fuel, with a budget deficit of over 5 per cent of GDP, and public debt hitting 115.6 per cent of GDP last year.
Should France fail to get its financial house in order, it faces the prospect of being slapped with economic sanctions by Brussels for failing to comply with EU budgetary standards.
Germany’s political establishment has pushed through a controversial parliamentary reform in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt in a thinly veiled attempt to curb the rising influence of the right-wing populist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party ahead of September’s state election.
The reform, approved with the required two-thirds majority, was backed by an alliance of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Greens, the liberal FDP, and the far-left Die Linke. The AfD’s 22 MPs were the only ones to vote against it.
Supporters of the changes say they are needed to protect the functioning of democratic institutions, but the real aim is to weaken the AfD, which is currently leading in the polls by a large margin.
Surveys suggest the AfD could win around 40% of the vote in September, well ahead of the CDU on about 25%. Smaller parties like the FDP and Greens may not even enter parliament.
Sonntagsfrage zur Landtagswahl in Sachsen-Anhalt • INSA/NIUS: AfD 38 % | CDU 25 % | DIE LINKE 13 % | SPD 6 % | BSW 5 % | GRÜNE 4 % | FDP 3 % | Sonstige 6 % ➤ Verlauf: https://t.co/lMOn56cNLK 🗓️ Landtagswahl: 6. September 2026 #ltwlsa#ltwstpic.twitter.com/Jtc0xDiNyL
The reform introduces several key changes, all of which are designed to aid establishment parties in case the AfD secures more than a third of all seats in the parliament and is able to block decisions that require a two-thirds majority.
According to the new rules, if the largest party cannot get its candidate elected as president of the state parliament, other parties can now join forces to choose someone else. Rules for appointing judges have also been changed, making it easier to avoid deadlock and reducing the blocking power of large minority groups.
Regional AfD politicians strongly criticised the reform. Co-leader Oliver Kirchner called it a “fraudulent” move driven by fear of the election result. Lead candidate Ulrich Siegmund said other parties are trying to make life harder for the AfD instead of debating policies.
Even some supporters of the reform have been unusually candid. SPD politician Falko Grube previously described it as an “act of political hygiene,” which shows the real intention behind the changes.
Other measures limit how many staff MPs can employ and restrict certain expenses, officially to prevent nepotism. Critics say these rules are also aimed at the AfD.
The reform may, however, prove to be a double-edged sword. Should the AfD exceed expectations and secure an outright majority and form a government on its own, it would inherit the very mechanisms designed to constrain it.
A similar debate is unfolding in the neighbouring state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, which heads to the polls just two weeks after Saxony-Anhalt. There, too, the AfD is expected to emerge as the strongest force, prompting the SPD, Die Linke, and the Greens to explore comparable rule changes.
However, unlike in Saxony-Anhalt, the CDU has so far failed to reach agreement with the other parties, leaving plans for a similar parliamentary reform stalled for now.
The message is clear: as the AfD continues to gain ground on a platform of sovereignty, migration control, and opposition to green and progressive policies, Germany’s mainstream parties appear increasingly willing to rewrite the rules of the game to hold on to power.
No Government’s approval rating has dropped so quickly so soon as the current Labour administration. And the same applies to the personal popularity rating of Keir Starmer as Prime Minister. Has Keir Starmer mortally wounded the Labour party? Is it capable of forming a majority government ever again? Can the Tories ever form a majority government again or are they in terminal
An elderly soup kitchen volunteer, Antonio Turrisi, was viciously beaten to the point that he lost his spleen and has been left unable to walk. Incredibly, the suspect is a homeless Nigerian man who the 85-year-old man fed everyday in the soup kitchen. The injuries, which have proven life destroying, have now left Turrisi calling for remigration.
The attack occurred five months ago on Nov. 14, 2025, in the city of Empoli as Turrisi was headed back home from the Emmaus soup kitchen. However, the victim is far from recovery and can only walk thanks to a walker. Besides having his spleen removed due to the vicious attack, he also has permanent nerve damage to his foot.
Video surveillance shows the man approaching Turrisi and beating him without mercy or warning, with a flurry of punches and kicks. The beating only stopped when a passerby intervened.
The Italian news outlet La Nazione Empoli has since interviewed Turrisi.
“I almost died, they told me that two more kicks would have been enough to send me to the other world,” he told the paper.
When asked if the attacker said anything to him before the beating, Turrisi responded: “Not even a word. He attacked me for no reason. Even now I can’t explain why this could have happened. They told me he was tracked down, arrested and taken to prison.”
While the trauma has blurred his memory of the beating, he says the image of his attacker remains.
“I can’t explain why this could have happened,” said Turrisi.
Despite having maybe fed the homeless migrant every day, now that he has been personally affected by an attack, he seems to have less mercy in mind. However, men and women like him, often acting from a Christian or left-wing ideology, have also brought on great suffering to Europe. Countless Italians have been beaten, raped, and maimed throughout the country due to open borders. In fact, foreigners commit 43 percent of sexual assaults in the country, and over 60 percent of robberies and thefts.
Now, Antonio is calling for remigration from the Italian government.
“These episodes have become very frequent. Violence must be stopped, and institutions must also work in that direction. In the event that illegal foreign persons are the ones attacking, expulsion measures must be implemented. They can’t stay in our country if they don’t behave well,” he said.
More than €100,000 of European Union money has been spent on an electric vehicle charging station that currently sits in the middle of a meadow with no access road, rendering it unreachable by car.
The station forms part of a larger project financed through Romania’s National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR), the EU’s post-pandemic recovery fund aimed at “green” transition measures.
The entire scheme – covering two charging points and a bicycle path – cost 1.352 million lei (approximately €265,000). News channel Antena 3, a partner of CNN, described the controversial unit as an investment of “over €100,000”.
Located in the “Europa” zone of Săcălășeni commune in Maramureș County, northern Romania, the charger stands far from the village centre on what is still communal pasture land.
A second station has been installed opposite the town hall but the remote one can only be reached on foot or by crossing a ditch.
The city claims that the road is planned for construction and that there are discussions with investors for the development of some businesses in that perimeter but it is not known when it will be ready.
Mayor Emilian Pop defended the project, telling local media on April 22: “When you start something, not everything is perfect.”
He explained that the site was chosen because a transformer station already existed there capable of supplying the necessary power, and the surrounding 200 hectares are earmarked for future development.
“We will discuss in time whether the investment had a purpose or not,” he added.
The Mayor noted there are only around 50 electric vehicles in the entire commune, five of them owned by the local authority.
The story, first highlighted by local outlets, has quickly spread on social media in Romania, prompting questions about the effectiveness of EU-funded green infrastructure projects in rural areas.
Peste 100.000 de euro au fost investiți într-o comună din Maramureș pentru construirea unei stații de încărcare electrică la care nu pot ajunge maşinile. Aceasta este amplasată în mijlocul unui imaș, departe de zona centrală a localității și fără drum de acces. #antena3cnnpic.twitter.com/mcuMiBxhzD
Iran sends to the gallows the first woman guilty of having demonstrated against the Islamic regime, Bita Hemmati.
Meanwhile, in the soft underbelly of Berlin, in that Alexanderplatz which was the stage for Hitlerian parades, DDR marches and today tourist selfies, an incredible pantomime has taken place. Anti-Western and anti-Israel hatred becomes a macabre staging.
Four idiots in white tracksuits and Palestinian keffiyehs, tied up like salamis, sacks on their heads, dangle from a makeshift gallows. Arab music at full volume, children in the audience watching open-mouthed, fanatics with green-red-black flags shouting “Solidarity with Palestine” while mimicking the hanging. One holds a woman on a leash like a dog.
And the German police? The police observe, film, take notes and then go home. Official reason: “There was no real violence.” One shouts into the microphone: “There is only one state, Palestine 48.”
This is not a demonstration. It is an imported tribal rite, a butchers’ recital disguised as artistic performance, celebrated in the heart of the nation that, more than any other, should know what a gallows and a sack on the head mean.
In Gaza, the darling of these absurd and violent crowds, executions take place as public and summary trials: the condemned are killed in the middle of the street while people watch and film with their phones. Berlin, the city that gave birth to the 20th century and its monstrosities, today becomes the stage of a theater of horror in which the executioners are transformed into victims and their imitators into street heroes.
Barbarism that does not come from the desert, but from our own comfortable living room. Because these clowns with the noose did not fall from the sky; they were invited, tolerated, coddled by decades of suicidal multiculturalism, by that cultural relativism that has turned Europe into a brothel without rules where anyone can bring their bloodthirsty god and demand that it be respected.
Hamas, which raped, burned people alive, beheaded and filmed everything to enjoy it in streaming, is now mimicked in a European square as if it were the Carnival of Venice. And we, with our snobbish “progressive” superiority, pretend that it is “legitimate protest”.
And the German State – the same State that has spent billions to remember the Holocaust – now allows executions to be mimed in the name of an ideology that denies that very Holocaust. Why? Because it is afraid. Afraid of accusations of Islamophobia, afraid of social media, afraid of losing the votes of the peripheries that are no longer German.
In less than one generation, 20 percent of Germany will be Islamic. Perhaps by that date we will really see hangings in the square?
Europe is not dying of old age, but of cowardice. It has imported millions of people who do not share its values – they not only do not share them, they despise them – and instead of demanding integration it has encouraged them to remain themselves.
Result? Neighborhoods where sharia is more alive than Kant, where veiled women look with disgust at European women who dare to show their ankles, where the boys dream of the caliphate while we pay their benefits. And when these same boys go down to the square to simulate hangings, the cultured left – the one that until yesterday screamed against every cross in the classroom – stays silent or applauds. Because for them the West is always guilty, Israel is always the colonialist and Hamas is only “resistance”.
Remember Orwell? “Whoever controls the past controls the future.” Well, these activists are rewriting the present: they turn the executioners into martyrs and the martyrs into oppressors. And Europe, with its short drunkard’s memory, lets them do it.
The gallows of Alexanderplatz is therefore the terminal symptom. It is the proof that Europe has lost its survival instinct. That it prefers to be “inclusive” to the point of death rather than “intolerant” – yes, intolerant – toward those who hate it. And while our intellectuals sign appeals for a “ceasefire” (always only from one side), the barbarians laugh, film and upload their symbolic victory to TikTok.
The barbarism is in the heart of Europe, it is inside us, in the cowardly refusal to call things by their name, it is in the suicidal multiculturalism that turns hospitality into surrender, tolerance into masochism, respect for differences into an abdication of reason.
But the noose, once lowered, will not distinguish between designated victims and silent accomplices.
