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Feb 5, 2026 - World

An expert Thursday warned that President Donald Trump's health has started to rapidly deteriorate as questions increase over his mental capacity and ability to lead, according to reports. Dr. John Gartner, psychologist, psychiatrist, and a former assistant professor at John Hopkins Medical School, told British publication The i Paper that there have been increased concerns over the president's health and suggested signs of cognitive decline. “The main way to diagnose dementia is that we see a deterioration from someone’s own baseline in these four areas: language, memory, behavior, and psychomotor performance,” Gartner said. “He’s deteriorated since his last administration noticeably but now we’re seeing deterioration almost week over week. The rate of decline is accelerating,” Gartner said.Trump has made several statements, including his mix-up over Iceland and Greenland, among other comments that have led to further unease around his health. “The high-pressure job can also accelerate cognitive dysfunction,” Gartner added. The White House has said that the 79-year-old president has been diagnosed with chronic venous insufficiency — this can cause swollen ankles — and also stated that the president's frequent hand shaking has caused hand bruising.And while medical professionals have cautioned against diagnosing Trump based on his family history or jumping to any conclusions around his health, the increased signs have drawn health experts to consider "the wider state of his health" as Trump pushes to threaten military takeovers and his "military adventurism" with Venezuela. "While this form does not produce the same level of memory decay as Alzheimer’s, it does produce tremendous disinhibition of behavior because it’s the frontal lobes that are the brakes of the brain. So that’s what inhibits us from acting out,'" Gartner told The i Paper.“Part of his brain [appears to be] deteriorating disproportionately so he’s losing the brakes and this is someone who was always impulsive and always acted out aggressively… Whilst he’s becoming confused about what’s happening, he’s also becoming aggressively disinhibited to act in impulsive and erratic ways," Gartner said.

Feb 5, 2026 - World

Vodafone also reviewing its contract with Global Counsel after revelations of former minister’s links to Jeffrey EpsteinBarclays has reportedly cut ties with the lobbying firm co-founded by Peter Mandelson, after intense scrutiny of the founders’ dealings with the late child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.Vodafone has also said it is reviewing its contract for public affairs services with Global Counsel, which Mandelson co-founded in 2010 after Labour lost the general election. Continue reading...

Feb 5, 2026 - World

Anger at former US ambassador Peter Mandelson’s relations with the child sex offender threatens to topple the prime ministerIt was the one scandal that Donald Trump seemed unable to shake. No matter his best efforts to convince his supporter base that there was nothing to see here, the demands for the administration to release every document it had on the child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein only grew.Yet even after the most shocking revelations in the latest drop about Trump’s inner circle – involving everyone from Elon Musk to the Maga honcho Steve Bannon to the commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, not to mention Trump himself – so far, it seems, the administration has escaped largely unscathed. Nobody has resigned, nobody has been fired, and certainly there is no sign that the US president is going anywhere. Continue reading...

Feb 5, 2026 - World

While the US president’s many mentions in the Esptein files seem to have no consequences, in the UK Starmer could be the first world leader to fallAll around Europe, the political and business elite are facing an inquest on what blinded so many to think it was permissible to consort with a known child sex offender. As the 3m emails and 1,800 photos released on Friday by the US Department of Justice start to percolate across the continent and through to national media, questions about the moral fibre of this elite are starting to be asked at markedly different levels of intensity.Squirming businessmen, bankers, politicians, royals, academics, tech bros and partners in law firms have become entangled in Jeffrey Epstein’s interlocking circles of money, power and sex. It seems there was no one in a position of power that Epstein was not in email contact with, and that there was little limit to what this networking elite was prepared to do in return for a gift, a contact or an invite to a sexually charged party. Elon Musk was right when in July 2025 he tweeted – only to quickly delete it – that “so many powerful people want that list suppressed”. Continue reading...

Feb 5, 2026 - World

Although weakened by airstrikes, sanctions and domestic unrest, Tehran is surprisingly bullish before talks with USWhen it comes to Iran and Donald Trump, there is so much bluff, backed by military hardware, that the truth rarely makes an appearance.It appears that a bullish Iran is going into negotiations with the US on Friday adopting maximalist positions that do not seem greatly different to those it adopted in the five rounds of talks before the negotiations were abruptly halted by the surprise Israeli attack on Iran last June. Continue reading...