GERMANY - The Eagle’s Nest mountainous retreat built for Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler in the Bavarian Alps has been devastated by a blaze, the German police have said. The former tea house for the leader of the Third Reich, which was constructed on the peak of the Obersalzberg in southern Germany in 1938, sits at an altitude of 1,834 meters (6,000 feet). A fire alarm at the Eagle’s Nest went off on Friday evening, and it was completely engulfed in flames by the time emergency services arrived, the police said. The high elevation complicated the work of some 200 fire fighters, who were only able to extinguish the blaze on Saturday morning, they added. “It is damaged to a large extent. The house is unlikely to be saved,” a police spokesperson told Bild tabloid. The police said that a suspect had been arrested in connection with the fire, but revealed no further details.

GERMANY - The massive data leak comes as Berlin’s political establishment intensifies efforts to legally ban the Alternative for Germany. Germany’s most popular party, Alternative for Germany (AfD), has suffered a massive cyberattack, with unknown hackers reportedly stealing and publishing hundreds of thousands of internal emails, while the country’s political establishment seeks grounds to outlaw the opposition party. The AfD confirmed that a hosting provider working with the party was hacked in September, but disputed suggestions that its current communications systems was compromised. “Only a few email inboxes were unlawfully copied, most of which had not been used for years,” a party spokesman told Bild, adding that current federal party email accounts were unaffected. The AfD condemned the breach as an “attack on the German party system and therefore on democracy” and said it reported the cyberattack to the security authorities.

UK - A decades–old piece of software has sparked one of the biggest cybersecurity alerts in recent memory after a hidden security flaw suddenly came to light. Websites around the world have gone dark as hackers launched millions of attempts to exploit a vulnerability in the PHP programming language. This is a critical open–source system that is built into 70 per cent of all websites on the internet, from Wikipedia to government agencies. While these critical weaknesses have been found and patched, cybersecurity experts now warn that over-reliance on ageing software means future crises are inevitable.

USA - One of Anthropic’s cyber security chiefs has warned that IT crises are likely to “get a lot worse” as AI exposes new vulnerabilities for hackers. Jason Clinton, Anthropic’s deputy chief information security officer, issued the stark warning in response to a cyber incident that shut down websites around the world. Posting on social media in response to the PHP security issue, he said: “As bad as things have gotten in the past four days, they are going to get a lot worse before they get better.”

UK - Pope Leo XIV has accepted an honorary title reflecting a “shared desire for Christian unity” between himself and the King, Buckingham Palace has said. The Dean and Canons of Windsor have announced Pope Leo XIV has become Papal Confrater of the College of St George at St George’s Chapel, Windsor. The King and the Queen met the Pope during a state visit to the Vatican in October last year. On that trip, the King was welcomed as Royal Confrater of the Papal Basilica and Abbey of St Paul’s Outside the Walls. On Friday, Buckingham Palace said: “This act of confraternity represents a visible sign of spiritual fellowship, ecumenical friendship and Christian fraternity. It recognises both the centuries-old relationship between the College and Chapel of St George, Windsor and the Holy See, and the progress in relations between the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of England and the Anglican Communion. It also reflects the deep mutual esteem between the Pope and His Majesty and their shared desire for Christian unity.”

[Confrater: "one... devoted to a religious or charitable cause." In this case - “a shared desire for Christian unity.”]

UK - We are sleepwalking into a society where money exists in our bank accounts, but access to it is based on little more than hope. Governments want us to go cashless, but they do not seem to realise that weakening our access to cash is stripping away our freedom. If we cannot access our money when digital systems fail, how much control do we really have over it? The recent Revolut outage is a timely reminder of why cash still matters. Thousands of customers have reported problems accessing funds and making payments, while Lloyds, Halifax and Bank of Scotland have also experienced disruption. With Revolut serving around 80 million customers, the potential scale of disruption is enormous.

IRAN - In Tehran, discussions about Iran’s potential withdrawal from the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) are growing increasingly urgent. Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Esmail Baghaei has recently acknowledged that the issue is being seriously considered by Iranian officials. His statements lend significant political weight to the discourse around Iran’s potential withdrawal from the NPT: One can no longer downplay it as something proposed by hardliners or fringe groups. While Baghaei also reaffirmed Iran’s commitment to its membership in the NPT and the associated obligations, he made it clear that the possibility of exiting the treaty is being considered.

SAUDI ARABIA - Even an end to the conflict will likely bring little relief, with a fresh demand surge threatening to keep oil markets under strain, Aramco chief Amin Nasser has said. The US-Israeli war on Iran has caused an “unprecedented” shock to global energy markets, removing some 3 billion barrels of oil supply, Saudi Aramco CEO Amin Nasser has warned. The war launched in February effectively shut the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial oil and LNG artery, sending crude prices up roughly 50%. Despite Gulf exports recovering to a reported 80% of pre-war levels, renewed attacks on vessels have kept markets on edge, with Brent hitting a five-month high above $112 this week. Houthi attacks on Saudi energy infrastructure and shipping have compounded the crisis, threatening another vital trade chokepoint, the Red Sea’s Bab el-Mandeb Strait.

USA - The Pentagon and State Department reportedly made similar preparations before launching the war against Iran in February. The moves come as President Donald Trump considers launching a new wave of attacks on Iran, and the withdrawals resemble preparations made by the Pentagon and State Department ahead of the initial US-Israeli strikes in February, NBC reported on Wednesday, citing two US officials and two people familiar with the matter. US troops stationed in Jordan, Qatar, and Kuwait are among those being relocated, according to the report. Washington reportedly intends to maintain a limited presence at its regional bases, including personnel responsible for air defenses and security.

UK - “There are mistakes that don’t matter. There are mistakes that do matter, but they’re not a catastrophe. And then there’s an occasional what I would call monster vulnerability. And this is one of those,” says Ciaran Martin, the former head of the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC). The “monster” Martin fears is a fundamental flaw in the web’s fabric, made public this week, that could let hackers steal everything from credit card information to, potentially, state secrets.