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Europe’s Solar Surge Exposes Cracks In Aging Power Grid: Analysts

Europe’s solar power boom is putting huge pressure on electricity grids that were never built to handle this much renewable energy, say analysts.

As a record number of new solar panels are being installed every year, the old grid system is struggling to keep up.

Solar generation capacity in the European Union continues to increase and reached an estimated 338 GW by 2024, according to SolarPower Europe.

To curb its dependence on Russian energy and accelerate its green transition, the EU set a goal in 2022 to install at least 700 gigawatts of solar power by 2030, enough to supply electricity to hundreds of millions of homes.

But the rapid expansion has exposed cracks in Europe’s energy system, threatening to slow the transition unless grids catch up.

Europe’s power grids faced a surge in voltage problems last year, with 8,645 over-voltage incidents reported in 2024—nearly 10 times more than in 2023, according to the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity (ENTSO-E).

Aging distribution infrastructure complicates the issue. Industry group Eurelectric estimates that nearly half of Europe’s distribution networks will be more than 40 years old by 2030.

Energy analyst and project lead at the Helmholtz Center Berlin, Susanne Nies, told The Epoch Times that Europe’s power system is under heavy strain because it was designed for a time when electricity made up only a small share of total energy use.

“When you go to the countryside and countries like France or even Germany, those grids have been built in the 50s. They are really nearly 70 years old,” she said.

Europe’s electricity system was initially designed for one-way flows—from large power plants to homes and businesses, Nies explained, adding that now it must handle power flowing in both directions, as millions of solar panels feed energy back into the grid.

She said today’s grid needs to combine large regional “super grids” with smaller, local systems that can operate independently during emergencies.

Harry Wilkinson, head of policy at the Global Warming Policy Foundation, said the challenge is not only that Europe’s grid is aging but that it must be vastly expanded to connect power sources that are far more scattered than in the past.

“Just the physical amount of additional cabling that you have to add to the grid, to connect, that is a big challenge, just in itself,” he said.

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UK DYSTOPIA: Mass Stabbing in Train Sees at Least 10 People Wounded at Huntingdon – Police Now Says It Was NOT a Terrorist Attack – 2 Suspects in Custody

How long must this go on?

The scourges of unchecked mass migration and Islamic invasion keep fraying the social fabric in the United Kingdon.

A Saturday night train commute turned into hell as a couple of men – said at this point to be ‘British citizens’ but who victims heard shout ‘Allahu Akbar’ – went on a stabbing spree that reportedly left ten people wounded, with two fighting for their lives.

Initially, the incident had been investigated as a terrorist attack, but now UK police has reversed course and is saying it was no such thing.

The Mirror reported:

“A statement from Superintendent John Loveless which was delivered at the scene of Huntingdon station this morning:

‘This is a shocking incident and my thoughts are with those who have been injured and their families. At 7.42pm we were called to reports of a multiple stabbing on board the 6.25pm train service from Doncaster to London King’s Cross.

Officers immediately attended Huntingdon station alongside paramedics, where armed police from Cambridgeshire Police boarded the train and arrested two people within 8 minutes of the first 999 call. The two men remain in police custody’.”

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Huge win for Wisconsin mom who was sued for calling a teacher woke

A Wisconsin mom who was sued for defamation after calling an English teacher woke has won her free speech case.

Mother-of-five Scarlett Johnson took to social media in October 2022 to criticize Mary MacCudden for serving as Mequon-Thiensville School District’s social justice coordinator.

‘Why the hell am I paying for a “Social Justice Coordinator” in my school district?’ Johnson tweeted alongside a screenshot of MacCudden’s LinkedIn profile.

‘This is just what @mtschools needs; more woke, White women w/ a god complex. Thank you, White savior.’ 

Johnson, who is affiliated with education lobby group Moms for Liberty, in other social media posts, also referred to DEI specialists as ‘woke lunatics’ who ‘bully’ parents ‘into silence and compliance’.

MacCudden, who had resigned from her position at Homestead High School in January 2022, filed a defamation suit against Johnson in response.

She won her case against Johnson in lower court, but the Moms for Liberty activist’s legal team appealed the ruling.

The Wisconsin appeals court on Tuesday ruled to reverse the circuit courts ruling after determining that her statements ‘do not constitute defamation’.

MacCudden resigned from the school district in January 2022 but did not update her LinkedIn profile, according to a press release from Johnson’s lawyers.

Roughly 10 months later, Johnson discovered the profile, which listed MacCudden as the district’s ‘Social Justice Coordinator’, and started criticizing the district online.

MacCudden responded with a defamation suit, which went to trial.  

An appeals court has now ruled Johnson did not defame the former teacher because her statements ‘cannot be proven true or false.’

‘Free speech belongs to every mom, dad, and citizen who demands answers and accountability from their government,’ Johnson said in a statement by the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL).

‘I am grateful that WILL stood alongside me in this legal battle. Parents across the country are speaking out against radical ideology in our schools, and our fight does not stop today.’

Johnson’s lawyers argued that while Johnson’s social media posts were ‘pervasive’, her words were ‘more restrained than a lot of online speech’.

Her legal counsel added that her posts could not be defamatory because they were ‘statements of opinion that are not provably false’.

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Whitewashing the Gaza Gas Exploration

In 2019, UNCTAD (the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development) reported that the occupied territories lie above sizeable reservoirs of oil and natural gas wealth in Area C of the occupied West Bank and off the Gaza Strip. However, as UNCTAD warned, the Israeli occupation has prevented Palestinians from developing their energy fields.

The missed opportunities added up.

Palestinians’ ransacked energy wealth

Based on the 2010 US Geological survey, the discoveries of oil and natural gas in the Levant Basin amounted to 122 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 1.7 billion barrels of recoverable oil. In 2023 US dollars, the value of these resources translated to $557 billion and $87 billion, respectively. At the eve of October 7, that was about $644 billion in total.

By 2018, 18 years had passed since the drilling of Marine 1 and Marine 2 offshore Gaza. As the Palestinian Authority had not been able to exploit these fields, the accumulated losses were already in billions of dollars. Even in the West, the Israeli stance was seen as needlessly harsh.

In February 2021, amid the covid-19 fog of the pandemic years, talks on a gas pipeline that would deliver reliable energy to the impoverished Gaza seemed to move ahead. The plan would see natural gas from the deepwater Leviathan field operated by Chevron in the eastern Mediterranean flow through an existing pipeline into Israel, and from there into Gaza through a proposed new extension. The Israeli side of the planned pipeline would be funded by Qatar and the section in Gaza paid for by the European Union.

After a painful seven-year pause, the pipeline project was expected to provide “a steady energy source to Gaza, ending rolling blackouts that have helped cripple the economy of the blockaded Palestinian enclave.” Control over these energy resources was a central element in Yasser Arafat’s state-building agenda. As Michael Barron, an energy consultant who has written on Gaza’s energy concurs, “Israeli exploitation of Palestinian resources was and remains a central part of the conflict.”

But the Netanyahu cabinets’ intransigence is working against Israel’s long-term interest in peace and stability. In particular, the recognition of the Palestinian state, especially by countries like the UK and Italy with large energy firms registered in their jurisdiction (BG and ENI, respectively), could clarify the legal ambiguity. It could ensure the Palestinian Authority with a secure source of income that is no longer reliant on Israel.

But that has never been acceptable to the Netanyahu cabinets. 

Illegal offshore tenders amid huge onshore destruction

In December 2022, Israeli Ministry of Energy launched the Fourth Offshore Bid Round offering new exploration licenses. A year later, it awarded licenses to several Israeli and international companies: Eni (Italy), Dana Petroleum (UK, a subsidiary of a South Korean company), and Ratio Petroleum (Israel). The problem is that these tenders violated international law, however.

Nonetheless, just a few months later in June 2023, following years of stalled talks, Israel approved the development of the Gaza Marine field, while Egypt’s state-owned EGAS (Egyptian Natural Gas Holding Company) was to lead extraction efforts in cooperation with the Palestinian Authority. Nonetheless, Israel stipulated that Hamas must not benefit financially.

Ironically, PM Netanyahu had for years ensured, as part of his Gaza strategy, that Hamas can receive multi-million-dollar shipments, via intermediation. The double-faced ploy used Hamas to disrupt the Palestinian Authority (PA), to keep Gaza weak and ultimately to reap the gas benefits to Israel.

As a net effect, active gas exploration or production could not commence due to the ongoing tensions in and around the Strip, which undermined investment and infrastructure development. The resulting stalemate status quo harmed Egypt’s mediation and interest in fostering regional energy stability.

As Israel initiated its ground assault in Gaza a week after October 7, 2023, Energy Minister Israel Katz pledged on X that “all the civilian population in Aza [Gaza’s Hebraized name] is ordered to leave immediately. We will win. They will not receive a drop of water or a single battery until they leave the world.”

But Netanyahu’s veteran Likud ally had another, equally destructive role. It was Katz’s Ministry that awarded the exploration licenses to the companies on October 29, 2023, violating international law – just two days after the lethal fury of the full-scale invasion in Gaza of the Israeli military. If it wasn’t pre-planned, it was certainly most convenient.

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Did 3I/ATLAS Just Show Signs of Technology? Interstellar Object Displays ‘Non-Gravitational Motion’ as it Swings Past the Sun

A new report on the enigmatic interstellar visitor 3I/ATLAS has revealed deeper insights into the object’s behavior, which include signs of non-gravitational motion during its recent closest approach to the Sun.

Presently, most astronomers maintain that the space object, discovered in July 2025, is a natural comet, based on a growing body of data that confirms this interpretation. The object is the third known interstellar visitor that has entered our planetary neighborhood from another star system.

3I/ATLAS is also helping confirm data that suggests such objects probably make appearances far more frequently in our Solar System than previously known. With its glowing gassy envelope—what astronomers call a coma—and other key traits that have manifested as the object has moved closer to the Sun, little doubt has been left about the interstellar visitor’s identity as a natural object.

However, there are still some experts who interpret its recent activity as being noteworthy indicators—if additional related phenomena were to be confirmed in future observations—which some might expect to associate with objects of technological origin. So what does the latest data reveal, and why does it still have some astronomers divided over whether 3I/ATLAS might show signs associated with intelligent life?

What the New Report Reveals

A recent report by researcher Davide Farnoccia with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory offers some of the latest data on the gravitational characteristics displayed by 3I/ATLAS during its journey through our Solar System.

Farnoccia specializes in the study of small objects and their orbits, which includes “nongravitational perturbations” some space objects display, as well as whether some near-Earth objects (NEOs) may pose an impact hazard to Earth.

According to Farnoccia’s report, 3I/ATLAS follows a hyperbolic orbit, displaying an eccentricity of e = 6.1373 (rounded). This figure is important, as it significantly exceeds the accepted value of 1 that astronomers recognize as being required to escape the Sun’s gravity. This means that the object’s trajectory confirms that 3I/ATLAS is not gravitationally bound to our Solar System, confirming astronomers’ suspicions that once it completes its recent planetary drive-by visit, the object will continue back into interstellar space.

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About 1 in 5 Kids Are at Risk of Losing SNAP. Centralized Control Keeps Failing Low-Income Families.

The federal government shutdown is disrupting major federal programs, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Now one in five children nationwide risks losing benefits because Congress has failed to pass a budget. On October 30, a federal judge ordered the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to draw from SNAP’s contingency fund to cover payments, but that fund holds roughly $5–6 billion—barely enough to cover three weeks of payments for a program that spends more than $8 billion each month. 

The ongoing deadlock highlights SNAP’s fragility due to its near-total reliance on federal funding. More importantly, its chronic dependency on Washington’s one-size-fits-all solutions has left it failing the very children it’s supposed to help. The best way to ensure healthy outcomes for kids and protect them from the partisan crossfire of D.C. politicking is to break the federal grip on nutrition programs.

Washington has become a permanent fixture of childhood in low-income America. The N in SNAP stands for “nutrition,” but federal food aid has routinely failed to deliver healthy diets for low-income families despite nearly $2 trillion in spending since 2000. Almost one-quarter of food purchases by SNAP households are for junk food, which undermines the efforts of doctors and other federal agencies to promote healthy diets. SNAP participants also have higher rates of obesity and poorer nutrition than nonparticipants, regularly failing to meet dietary guidelines while performing poorly on key health indicators. All of this has helped drive child obesity to nearly one in five children and adolescents as of 2020.

SNAP may provide assistance to families, but a program that consistently fails to deliver positive outcomes for the children it aims to serve falls far short of its purpose.

We’ve seen this problem before—and its solution. Like SNAP, Congress designed Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) to assist low-income households, but its structure created perverse incentives that encouraged single motherhood, punished work, and trapped families in dependency for years. The 1996 welfare reforms replaced AFDC with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), a fixed block grant program that provided states with much-needed flexibility to innovate and tailor their programs to fit the needs of their residents.

States leveraged TANF’s block grant flexibility by shifting funds from pure cash assistance to targeted supports such as childcare subsidies, job training, and education programs. These reforms helped parents—especially single mothers—overcome employment barriers and increase their income. The results surpassed everyone’s predictions. Within a decade, more than 1.6 million children were lifted out of poverty. Additionally, poverty in single-mother families fell to record lows, and overall poverty and child hunger declined substantially. All of this occurred while welfare caseloads declined by more than half.

By converting SNAP into a block grant and gradually decoupling it from federal dollars, states would be able to take on decision-making and responsibility for their programs, controlling funding and tailoring solutions to the needs of their low-income families. Just as TANF prioritized economic independence and employment, state SNAP reforms could prioritize better health and self-sufficiency.

The current shutdown should serve as a catalyst for Congress to reassess the federal role in welfare. Children shouldn’t go hungry because Congress can’t govern—nor should they be dependent on the D.C. bureaucracy for their food. SNAP’s centralization and reliance on federal dollars have caused it to fail at meeting the nutritional needs of children, and now, millions of families face the prospect of sudden benefit disruptions.

Congress should stop treating Americans as collateral damage in their fight over extending Obamacare subsidies and end the shutdown immediately. While restoring federal funding will avoid immediate disruptions to benefits, Congress should also reform welfare to ensure it helps rather than hinders the families who rely on it. 

SNAP is outdated. Congress should devolve funding and administration to the states, allowing them to pursue more effective nutrition policies for low-income families.

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Mom opens up about taking psychedelics while pregnant, breastfeeding to ‘address’ issues

A microdosing mom who took psychedelic mushrooms while pregnant and breastfeeding says it has given her “more patience” as a parent.

Mikaela de la Myco, 31, began ingesting psylocibin mushrooms – a type of hallucinogenic mushroom – four months into her pregnancy with her son, aged five.

Following battles with alcohol addiction, ingesting mushrooms was a way for Mikaela “to address” her issues before her son was born.

Microdosing is the practice of taking small doses of psychedelic substances with the aim of improving mental well-being and cognitive function.

Mikaela continues to microdose, ingesting mushrooms in a “variety of forms” including capsules, chocolate, whole dried form and in tea.

She believes there is a “stigma” placed on moms who ingest mushrooms but they can be a “catalyst” for changes in behavior.

Mikaela, an educator and folk herbalist, from San Diego, California, said: “Like many mothers I had a relationship with psylocibin mushrooms before I became pregnant and it was tremendously supportive in many areas of my life.

“I sought to consult with others on the topic and was able to receive information from an elder who expressed to me that in her tradition they ingest while pregnant and that the relationship that mothers have with mushrooms doesn’t break just because of pregnancy.

“I had some concerns in pregnancy – specifically my relationship and addiction to alcohol that I wanted to address with microdosing because I didn’t want to carry on my alcoholism experience in my own family to my child.

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European Billionaires Funneled $2 Billion Via Transatlantic NGO Network To Erode U.S. Democracy, Finance Anti-Trump Protest Machine

A new bombshell report by Americans for Public Trust (APT), based on IRS Form 990s and media reports, reveals that five foreign “charities” have funneled nearly $2 billion into American leftist nonprofits, injecting what can only be described as a far-left extremist European policy agenda and toxic social-engineering campaigns into U.S. institutions like cancer. The report alleges that these foreign influence operations, exploiting the dark webs of the NGO world, also bankroll part of the protest industrial complex that has waged an ongoing color-revolution-style operation against President Trump, his supporters, and seeks to dismantle the Make America Great Again movement.

APT’s 31-page analysis (first revealed on Fox News), backed by grant records, shows that while foreign nationals can’t directly donate to U.S. political candidates, there is an alarming interconnected web of transatlantic funding networks into the NGO world where foreign billionaires bankroll American far-left nonprofits to unleash all sorts of activist campaigns. This unchecked foreign philanthropy risks undermining U.S. sovereignty, and according to APT Executive Director Caitlin Sutherland, who told Fox News, “foreign money is coming in, and it’s trying to erode our democracy.”

Here are the five foreign funders outlined in the report:  

  1. Quadrature Climate Foundation (UK) – $530 million
  2. KR Foundation (Denmark) – $36 million
  3. Oak Foundation (Switzerland) – $750 million
  4. Laudes Foundation (Switzerland) – $20 million
  5. Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (UK) – $553 million

The key findings are shocking:

Quadrature Climate Foundation (QCF): Founded in 2019 by hedge-fund billionaires Greg Skinner and Suneil Setiya. Has given roughly $530 million to 41 U.S. groups, including ClimateWorks Foundation ($147 M), Growald Climate Fund ($80 M), Grantham Foundation ($80 M), Windward Fund ($49 M), and Sunrise Project ($36 M). QCF also funds controversial solar-geoengineering research and “climate litigation and regulation advocacy.”

KR Foundation: Danish climate charity tied to the Carlsberg family. Has provided $36 million to 53 U.S. groups backing climate litigation, ESG advocacy, and fossil-fuel divestment. Major recipients include Center for International Environmental Law ($1.4 M), Conservation Law Foundation ($0.4 M), Oil Change International ($2.2 M), and Fossil Free Media ($1 M). It even funded The Associated Press ($300 K) for climate-related programming.

Oak Foundation: Swiss-based trust founded by British billionaire Alan Parker. Gave >$750 million to 152 U.S. groups advancing “climate justice” and lawsuits against fossil-fuel firms.

Key recipients include:

  • Environmental Law Institute ($650 K, creator of the Climate Judiciary Project)
  • Community Change ($1.6 M, linked to Free DC protests)
  • Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors ($108 M)
  • New Venture Fund ($67 M)
  • NRDC ($6.5 M)
  • Tides Center ($8.2 M)

Laudes Foundation: Established in 2020 by the secretive Brenninkmeijer family (C&A clothing empire). Has sent $20 million to 17 U.S. groups promoting ESG disclosure, “climate-friendly diets,” and equity mandates. Largest grants: Pulitzer Center ($3.7 M) for climate-justice reporting, Ceres ($1.7 M), Community Initiatives ($1 M), and World Resources Institute ($2.8 M).

Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF): Run by British hedge-fund billionaire Sir Christopher Hohn. Sent $553 million to 39 U.S. entities before pledging in late 2025 to halt U.S. funding after APT’s exposure.

Key recipients include:

  • Energy Foundation China ($70 M) — under House investigation for links to former CCP officials
  • Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development ($25 M)
  • Environmental Defense Fund ($17 M)
  • Sunrise Project ($36 M)

ATP points out that these funding flows exploit gaps in U.S. oversight laws, which prohibit foreign election donations but allow influence through 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) organizations. Through the nonprofit world, foreign billionaires can conduct foreign influence operations through leftist nonprofits, including funding protest industrial complex against Trump, get-out-the-vote drives, anti-Trump ads, lobbying, and whatever else.

Sutherland said, “There’s not a question about where it’s going and where it is coming from. We know that it’s foreign money coming into our U.S. policy fights, climate litigation, research, protests, lobbying, you name it“. 

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Congress Members Fuming, Left Unsatisfied By Classified Pentagon Briefing On Drug Boat Strikes

US War Department officials don’t know the identities of the 61 people who have been extra-judicially executed in US military strikes on boats in the waters near Venezuela and in the Eastern Pacific Ocean, Politico reported on Thursday, citing House Democrats who attended a classified briefing on the campaign.

“[The department officials] said that they do not need to positively identify individuals on these vessels to do the strikes, they just need to prove a connection to smuggling,” said Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-CA). “When we tried to get more information, we did not get satisfactory answers.”

While the Trump administration has cited overdose deaths in the US related to fentanyl to justify the bombing campaign, lawmakers were told in the briefing that the boats that have been targeted were allegedly smuggling cocaine, though the Pentagon has not provided evidence to back up its claims about what the vessels were carrying.

“They argued that cocaine is a facilitating drug of fentanyl, but that was not a satisfactory answer for most of us,” Jacobs said.

The briefing on Thursday came after the Pentagon shut out Democrats from another briefing it held with Republicans a day earlier, which left Democratic senators fuming. Democrats who attended Thursday’s briefing said Pentagon lawyers were pulled from the meeting at the last minute.

“Am I leaving satisfied? Absolutely not. And the last word that I gave to the admiral was, ‘I hope you recognize the constitutional peril that you are in and the peril you are putting our troops in,’” Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA) told reporters after the briefing, according to CNN.

Jacobs said that, based on what she was told, even if Congress authorized the bombing campaign, it would still be illegal. “[T]here’s nothing that we heard in there that changes my assessment that this is completely illegal, that it is unlawful and even if Congress authorized it, it would still be illegal because there are extrajudicial killings where we have no evidence,” she said.

Criticism of the US bombing campaign has also come from Republicans, most prominently from Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY). “No one said their name, no one said what evidence, no one said whether they’re armed, and we’ve had no evidence presented,” Paul said this week of the people who have been targeted. “They summarily execute people without presenting evidence to the public… so it’s wrong.”

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Are Democrats Trying To Start A Civil War?

Whenever you delve into the modern history of internal national conflict you’re bound to come across post-crisis accounts from people who said “We never saw it coming…” or “The violence hit us from nowhere…” Generally speaking, these were the people who weren’t paying attention and they just happened to survive by sheer luck.

I think of this dynamic a lot these days. I see a large contingent of American society (perhaps 25% of the population) which has been radicalized or brainwashed beyond all reason or repair. These people (leftists) operate deep within a protective bubble of propaganda and zealotry; they function within a hive mind that does not deviate from the demands of their gatekeepers. They cannot be reasoned with, nor can they be satiated. They lust for power and the suffering of anyone who opposes them.

One can see an immediate difference between the sides. Conservatives are so independent we in-fight constantly. We might agree on basic values (even in this we sometimes argue), but in terms of policy and action we rarely shake hands.

For the political left, any disagreement with the majority leads to immediate ostracism. The hive mind does not tolerate individual rebellion. Only the gatekeepers can change the mindset or the mission of the mob.

It is strange then that this dichotomy has resulted in conservatives, with their values of liberty and independence, seeking order. Meanwhile leftists, in their Orwellian uniformity of thought, seek chaos and the deconstruction of civilization. You would think the relationship would be reversed, but this is the way it has always been.

Looking back on the events of the Bolshevik Revolution and the long list of Marxist disruptions in Europe following WWI, it should not have been at all surprising to Europeans that domestic conflict would erupt. It should not have been surprising that people would follow their natural inclination to rally around their founding heritage rather than submit to the cultural and moral relativism of the radical left.

Fascism was popular exactly because it offered shelter from the chaos and degeneracy of communism. The war and brutality that followed was seen as a balancing of the scales. Europeans wanted to ensure that the communists would never get a chance to wreak havoc again.

To be clear, both systems of governance are authoritarian and can lead to monstrous outcomes, but communism’s love for economic sabotage, mob actions and political violence are almost always a precursor to a fascist crackdown. The public does not embrace fascism in a vacuum, they must be compelled by an existential threat.

The question is, can communist subversion be defeated without using “authoritarian” measures? Is a constitutional republic equipped to deal with this kind of threat? When someone wages war on your society internally, is there a way to fight them while remaining civic minded? Probably not.

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