- France's foreign minister, Roland Lescure, says that at least 30% of the Gulf's refining capacity has been taken out of commission by Iranian retaliatory strikes. This means that fuel prices aren't likely to come down any time soon; while this may accelerate electrification of such things as transportation, I fear that given the average person's attention span, many will forget the reason for the high prices and blame their own leaders, voting reflexively for opposition politicians who, in many cases, are hostile to the very measures that could limit the impact.
- On the positive side, there are indications that Donald Trump's excesses may be hurting the electoral chances of the far right, at least in Europe. The recent municipal elections in France were a disappointment for Marine Le Pen's Rassemblement Nationale, and Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni just lost a referendum on stacking the judiciary. Perhaps most encouraging is the fact that Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán may be headed for defeat.
- Polish prime minister Donald Tusk says that Lithuania warned as far back as 2019 that Hungary posed a security risk to the EU and NATO. There are allegations that Hungary's foreign minister, Peter Szijjarto, was briefing his Russian counterpart during breaks at EU meetings; Szijjarto initially denied this, calling it "fake news", but later admitted that he "consulted" with Russian as well as American, Turkish, and Israeli officials before and after these meetings.
- The UK government has vetoed a plan by Scotland to build a wind turbine manufacturing plant in cooperation with a Chinese manufacturer. The central government cited vague concerns about national security, but Scotland's deputy premier says the government has failed to explain their reasoning to her satisfaction.
- Former Liberal MP Dan McTeague, who is often cited by media outlets as an expert on gas prices, has been making strange claims such as saying that building more pipelines would "insulate Canada from price shocks", in spite of the fact that the country is already a net exporter. McTeague is currently the president of a fossil fuel advocacy group whose website has called Chinese EVs, a potential shelter from such price shocks, a "Trojan horse". It's worth noting that while he served as a Liberal during his parliamentary career, he voted against a same-sex marriage bill and opposed the induction of Dr. Henry Morgantaler into the Order of Canada; it looks like McTeague was the real Trojan horse.
