LONDON — The personal mobile phone numbers of three U.K. Cabinet ministers — including Defense Secretary Wes Streeting — have been found published online alongside their names.

The discovery comes after POLITICO reported that Prime Minister Andy Burnham fell victim to a texting scam — engaging with messages from someone impersonating Susie Wiles, Donald Trump’s White House chief of staff, before becoming suspicious the contact was illegitimate and ending the conversation.

After checking through a list of Cabinet members, POLITICO found three published on the web, for Streeting, Justice Secretary Alex Norris and Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Bryant. POLITICO is not pointing to where the numbers can be found to avoid further risking security.

All three ministers declined to comment on the record. The reference to Streeting’s number online has since been deleted, and officials are working to remove the other two.

Ministers are given secure government devices to conduct business for their briefs, in particular for high-risk roles like defense, and are expected to use those for non-personal comms.

A government spokesperson said: “The government has robust procedures in place to ensure the security of sensitive information.”

But Prerana Joshi, research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) think tank, said that having direct numbers for Cabinet ministers in the public domain is a risk, warning that numbers could be spoofed and used to call others at a time when the U.K. is “in a high threat situation” globally.

“In any civil space, if your number is exposed, a whole host of malign, nefarious or even opportunistic cyber criminals or cyber actors could get hold of it, and they have tactics,” Joshi said.

‘No significance’

Downing Street would not comment on the revelation that Burnham exchanged messages with the impersonator, citing “national security.”

One person briefed on the communications said a “few messages” were exchanged after the PM entered No. 10 but insisted they were “of no significance.”

It is unclear how the fraudster obtained Burnham’s number. POLITICO could not find it published online.

British officials initially feared Wiles’ phone had been hacked again. But a White House official said: “This incident had nothing to do with the Chief of Staff’s devices being hacked.”

It is not clear whether Burnham will change his phone number, as Boris Johnson did after the Popbitch newsletter revealed in 2021 that the then-prime minister’s details had been sitting online for years.

‘Full of traps’

The episode has sharpened questions over whether Burnham — who built his political brand on his informal style and being more approachable than other prime ministers — can carry on that way in No. 10.

A former national security adviser, granted anonymity to speak frankly, said the prime minister needs to “get into the habit” of having his security staff verify that messages reaching him are authentic.

National Security Adviser Jonathan Powell “could have phoned the White House in five minutes and checked whether Susie Wiles genuinely was texting the prime minister,” they said.

“Being a domestic politician and going on listening tours around the U.K. is one thing, but when you engage in the international world, it’s full of traps and full of risks,” the former adviser added.

“What starts off as a very informal chat can quickly get into some kind of business, and you could give away key details of an upcoming trip or the movements of Donald Trump,” they said.

Former Defense Secretary Ben Wallace — himself targeted by imposters posing as Ukraine’s prime minister in 2022 — said the incident “demonstrates our adversaries are always looking for weak points in our communications.”

While Downing Street has said nothing significant was discussed in the exchanges between Burnham and the imposter, Wallace said “there is always a risk of kompromat” being obtained by hostile actors.

As technology, such as AI voice cloning, improves, these sort of incidents are going to “happen more and more,” Wallace added.

Others have urged Burnham not to change tack.

Guto Harri, Johnson’s former director of communications, said: “It’s only a threat and it’s only an embarrassment if they give something away — and it doesn’t seem that he’s done anything like that.”

Harri said it was “good to have someone big enough not to have his calls screened from everyone” as prime minister.

“I don’t think it’s healthy that the civil service wants to control all access to the principal. If they had their way, nobody would be able to talk to a prime minister without going through them,” he said.

“We can’t say that politicians are not living in the same world as us … and then moan about them speaking to people like a normal human being.”

Harri conceded a new number might be a “good idea,” giving the prime minister a “clean slate.”

Dan Bloom contributed to this report.

Ukraine called on the European Union to sanction the Russian state nuclear company Rosatom on Monday, hours after a POLITICO investigation revealed allegations of safety and engineering failures at one of the company’s flagship projects.

“Rosatom is not just another energy company — it is the instrument of Russia’s ambition to secure a global monopoly in nuclear energy,” Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha wrote on X.

He said the findings were further evidence that Rosatom was “not a reliable partner” and urged capitals to restart talks on EU sanctions. “No state should be doing nuclear business with a company complicit in war crimes,” he added, sharing a link to POLITICO’s article.

POLITICO’s investigation revealed warnings from Egyptian authorities and internal assessments by Rosatom regarding the construction of the El Dabaa nuclear plant. The documents obtained by POLITICO raised concerns ranging from the quality of concrete work to delays and management problems, while an Egyptian agency alleged “deliberate negligence” and violations of “nuclear safety culture.” Nuclear material has yet to be introduced at the site.

Rosatom previously defended its safety record at El Dabaa and pointed to regular scrutiny of the project by Egyptian, Russian and International Atomic Energy Agency officials. None of the allegations contained presented to Rosatom by POLITICO, have been “confirmed within the contractual, technical and oversight procedures envisaged by the project,” the company said in a statement.

It did not respond to a request for comment on Sybiha’s remarks on Monday.

Sybiha’s call puts renewed pressure on EU governments that continue to cooperate with Rosatom despite Russia’s war in Ukraine. In Hungary, the company is building two new reactors at the Paks II nuclear plant using the same VVER-1200 technology planned for El Dabaa.

Hungarian Prime Minister Péter Magyar last week challenged Rosatom’s claim that construction for the reactors remained on schedule, saying his government was carrying out a full review of the project.

A major military music festival in Moscow has been canceled four days before it was due to start, the organizers said on Telegram.

The lavish parade, known as the Spasskaya Tower International Military Music Festival, attracts thousands of visitors and brings together dozens of military bands in the heart of Moscow on Red Square near the Kremlin.

The event, which began in 2007 at President Vladimir Putin’s orders, is one of Russia’s most prominent military-themed events, alongside the May 9 Victory Day parade in Moscow and the Navy Day show in St. Petersburg. Spasskaya “Tower was only canceled once before — in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

In its early years, military bands from EU countries, Australia and Canada took part in Spasskaya Tower, though the number of international participants has declined since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

According to the festival’s Telegram channel, “the event has been postponed until 2027 due to circumstances beyond the organizers’ control.”

The move comes amid an increase in Ukrainian drone attacks on the Russian capital.

Overnight, Kyiv’s forces launched one of the largest assaults on Moscow in recent months, with more than 600 drones directed toward the Russian capital and surrounding region. The strikes, which, according to Russian media, targeted the facilities of Wildberries, a major Russian online marketplace, as well as logistics warehouses, sparked massive fires and killed one person.

Earlier in June, the Kremlin canceled another event in Moscow’s Red Square — a gala concert marking Russia Day. The Victory Day parade on May 9 was held on a limited scale and, for the first time in nearly 20 years, without heavy military equipment.

RIGA — Latvian Prime Minister Andris Kulbergs wants Brussels to hand over €7 billion to help cover the military and economic costs of confronting Russia, as pressure grows over the price of the country’s hard line on Moscow.

The money should come from the EU’s next seven-year budget, under a new Competitiveness Fund, to offset higher defense spending and the collapse in trade with Russia since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Kulbergs told POLITICO’s Brussels Playbook in an interview.

The cash, which Riga wants to come on top of other funds earmarked for the country, would amount to almost half of Latvia’s projected €15.1 billion defense bill over the seven-year budget period.

The demand comes at a sensitive moment. Latvia has been one of Europe’s staunchest supporters of Ukraine, sharply increasing defense spending since Moscow’s full-scale invasion, even as sanctions and the collapse of bilateral trade have cut deeply into economic links that once ran eastward. But ahead of an Oct. 3 national election, parties arguing that Riga should demand more in return for sanctions and military support are gaining ground.

The European Commission has proposed substantially increasing EU-level defense funding in the 2028-2034 budget, including a €125.2 billion security, defense industry and space pot in the European Competitiveness Fund. That money is designed to finance projects across the bloc rather than provide Latvia with a pre-agreed €7 billion allocation, and the entire budget remains subject to negotiations between EU governments and the European Parliament.

Kulbergs argues that Latvia deserves special consideration because it is borrowing to provide security for countries much farther from the front line. “We are getting our budget deficit to the maximum […] and from that debt we’re paying […] the defense of the whole [of] Europe,” the prime minister said at the government chancellery.

Much of Latvia’s military spending ultimately flows back to richer Western European economies, Kulbergs added, pointing to arms purchases from Germany, France, Spain, Sweden and the Netherlands. “We fuel their economies,” he added.

Election pressure

A sharper version of the same argument is emerging on the campaign trail.

Ainārs Šlesers, a veteran populist businessman whose party sits with the far-right Patriots for Europe group in Brussels, says Latvia should demand compensation when it backs EU sanctions on Russia. Šlesers condemns Moscow’s invasion and says support for Ukraine should continue, but argues that Latvia cannot absorb the costs indefinitely.

“We are losing money … we are talking about how to support Ukraine, but we are a victim,” he told POLITICO at his Riga campaign headquarters.

When EU sanctions come up for renewal, Šlesers said Latvia should “get in return support.” Asked whether that could mean withholding Riga’s backing for sanctions, he stopped short of threatening a veto but did not rule it out. “I don’t want to talk about [a] veto [now],” he said. “I guess that we […] will find a peaceful solution.”

Šlesers, who has business ties with Russian oligarchs, said the country needs to eventually restore economic ties with Moscow, and advocated for a quick end to the war. “There are things which we cannot replace because if it’s your neighboring country and you’re connected historically […] we need to find the right model.”

He argued that whether to hand over territory to Russia should be “a decision by Ukraine” but argued that other countries have lost territory to Russia after conflicts, including Latvia, “to reach [a] peace agreement.”

Kulbergs’ center-right party currently leads the polls, but coalition arithmetic could determine how far Latvia’s Russia policy shifts after October.

The far-right, pro-Russia Sovereign Power party, polling second, wants to restore ties with Moscow but is considered off-limits by mainstream parties. Šlesers, polling third, is a more plausible coalition partner — and Kulbergs has left the door open to governing with him.

The center-left Progressives, polling fourth and also hoping to enter government with Kulbergs, warn that bringing Šlesers into the coalition would gradually soften Riga’s line on Russia.

“I’m 100 percent sure Latvia’s foreign policy towards Russia is going to soften over time,” the party’s prime ministerial candidate Andris Šuvajevs told POLITICO outside parliament. He pointed to possible sanctions exemptions for Russian business interests and ministers “speaking in a more friendly tone towards Russia.”

Tough on Russia

Ahead of a new sanctions package due in the fall, Kulbergs called for a total EU visa ban on Russians. EU countries granted more than 630,000 visas to Russian citizens in 2025.

In the last sanctions package, France and Italy resisted a blanket ban on Russian combatants, arguing this issue should be covered by EU visa rules rather than as part of sanctions, while northern and eastern countries pushed for tougher restrictions. The eventual deal created the legal and political basis for barring Russian combatants and ex-combatants who took part in the war — leaving it up to EU countries to decide when the ban would take effect. 

“Are we nuts?” said Kulbergs on the delay. “We allow Russian military soldiers to be given visas, the ones killing [Ukrainians] on the field.”

He also urged EU countries to revisit sending Russia’s €210 billion in sovereign assets frozen in Europe to Ukraine, dismissing concerns Moscow could challenge the move after the war.

Kulbergs also rebuked European Council President António Costa’s decision to open a communications channel with the Kremlin, saying doing so should be “a decision of all the countries together.”

He called any Kremlin outreach “a useless exercise,” arguing there’s no sign President Vladimir Putin is ready to negotiate and that talks would merely give Russia “breathing time” to make its “next move.”

Despite Latvia severing ties with its eastern neighbor, and Kulbergs’ hawkish position on relations with Moscow, he said “we have to be open” to reestablishing ties once Russia pays reparations to Ukraine and those responsible for war crimes face justice, pointing to postwar Germany as the example to follow. “Do we isolate Germany because of that? No, it’s acceptance of guilt, acceptance of wrongdoing, punishment, and retribution,” he said.

After a ceasefire, Kulbergs concluded, “the insecurity of the border will only rise” as the real threat will be a wave of migration as hundreds of thousands of “screwed up” soldiers return from the battlefield seeking a better life and other citizens flee as Moscow’s war economy crumbles.

Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš apologized Sunday for picking flowers in a protected area on Lysá hora, a mountain in eastern Czechia, saying he would pay a fine if necessary.

Babiš said in a Facebook video that he plucked the flowers while remembering a late colleague from his ANO movement with whom he had previously climbed the mountain.

“Maybe I broke some law, for which I apologize and I will definitely pay a fine if necessary, of course,” he said.

Footage from Saturday’s hike posted to Babiš’ Facebook page showed the prime minister climbing with a small bunch of flowers before laying them at a monument on the summit. Babiš was joined by two ministers, ANO politicians and supporters on the 1,324-meter peak, the highest point in the Moravian-Silesian Beskids.

An environmental expert working for an organization overseen by the Czech Environment Ministry told Czech local media outlet iDNES that Babiš had picked two thoroughly ordinary species — narrow-leaved willowherb and Fuchs’ ragwort — and was unlikely to face punishment.

“They are completely common flowers,” said the expert, whom the outlet did not name. “Absolutely no problem, not even in a national park.”

LONDON — U.K. Prime Minister Andy Burnham engaged with messages from somebody impersonating one of Donald Trump’s closest advisers, four officials have told POLITICO.

The new PM communicated with someone posing as White House chief of staff Susie Wiles before becoming suspicious that the contact was illegitimate, the officials said.

“We do not comment on national security matters,” Downing Street said. One person briefed on the communications said a “few messages” were exchanged after the PM entered No. 10 but insisted they were “of no significance.”

The British embassy in Washington was so concerned about the incident that it raised it with the White House, two of the officials said. Like others in this article, they were granted anonymity to discuss a matter of national security.

Inside the U.K. government, there were fears that Wiles’ phone had been hacked again.

A White House official said: “This incident had nothing to do with the Chief of Staff’s devices being hacked.”

Last year, the White House and the FBI launched an investigation after senators, governors and U.S. business executives received texts and phone calls from someone claiming to be Trump’s chief of staff.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Wiles told associates her cellphone contacts had been hacked.

What was discussed in the exchange with Burnham — and when the messages were sent — is unclear, with the erroneous contact kept a closely-guarded secret.

Burnham became PM on July 20, but it was clear he was on course to succeed Keir Starmer from the moment he won the Makerfield by-election on June 18.

This story has been updated to include a comment from a White House official.

Dave Brat, Australia’s freshly confirmed U.S. ambassador, didn’t need to learn another language to qualify for his new gig. But he’s coming into the job fluent in a niche dialect that could give him a big advantage.

“He can speak Trump,” James Braid, President Donald Trump’s director of legislative affairs, said in a recent interview. “He can understand Trump, and he’s recognized as a longtime Trump ally. And I think that will really help him facilitate Aussie-United States relations.”

This dynamic could be key as Brat gets to work in Canberra, where political leaders have been rattled by the Trump administration’s aggressive trade agenda resulting in the implementation of a 12.5 percent tariff on Australian goods.

A longtime economist and academic, Brat is an avowed free trade advocate, which could quell some nerves on the ground. But Brat has also defended the Trump administration’s tariff regime as a kind of reset of the U.S. economic relationship with the world, telling a local news outlet in his home state of Virginia last year that “these tariffs are an attempt to bring some balance.”

At the same time, he has the ear of the White House, having earned Trump’s trust and respect long ago as a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 2014 to 2019. There, Brat was a member of the House Freedom Caucus — a contingent of conservative hard-liners known for taking uncompromising positions on federal spending — and in 2016 he embraced then-presidential candidate Trump as other more establishment Republicans turned their noses.

“The president hasn’t forgotten that,” said Braid, who was policy director of the Freedom Caucus during that period.

The Freedom Caucus was, as it is now, perpetually at war with party leadership on Capitol Hill, but the group harnessed Brat’s affable disposition and deft touch in high-stakes policy negotiations. He was obsessed with making sure that the group’s goals would be understood both by negotiators across the table and the public — something his former colleagues expect him to bring to the international stage.

Justin Ouimette, a former longtime executive director of the House Freedom Caucus, said in an interview that Brat’s approach has always been, “here’s the message and here’s where it is coming from” — a tactic that “tends to lower the temperature.”

“He was one of those guys that’s typically dispatched to disagree without being disagreeable,” Braid agreed. “Brat is really effective at stating a position, being firm while also collaborating to reach an outcome, and so that that experience will serve him well in his new diplomatic post.”

There’s hope among some in Washington that Brat’s views on trade, coupled with his ties to the Trump administration, could help soothe existing tensions and result in a positive working relationship between the U.S. and Australia. That optimism is shared by Virginia’s two Democratic U.S. senators, Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, who supported Brat’s nomination.

“He will be very focused on commerce, trade, and economic opportunity. You know, things that are good for the U.S. and good for the Australian economies,” said Kaine, who as governor once relied on Brat’s contributions to a bipartisan economic advisory panel to build the state’s budget.

“He’ll be very mindful of the commercial relationship, and I think that’s something that will be viewed positively by the Aussies,” Kaine added.

He noted that Virginia’s massive naval base would now have an advocate in Brat amid the continued implementation of AUKUS, a trilateral security pact among Australia, the U.K. and the U.S. in 2021 aimed at helping Australia acquire nuclear-powered submarines.

Warner was less effusive, saying he has “disagreed with Dave on a lot of issues,” but acknowledged he also was “a smart guy” he supported for the ambassadorship.

Brat also has long been vocal about the competitive threats to the U.S. posed by China, a concern shared by Australia in its diplomatic engagement with the Pacific region. Ouimette speculated that “his clear-mindedness and alignment with the administration on that particular issue weighed in his favor” as the White House was making its ambassador selection.

There are still some unknowns, however, including whether Brat will be living in Canberra full time and how he’ll handle staffing issues at the U.S. Embassy.

“I understand that Mission Australia’s current staffing and facilities are insufficient to meet the demands of our expanding Alliance activities,” Brat said in a written response to U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz, a Hawaii Democrat, as part of his confirmation proceedings. “Our investment in diplomatic infrastructure reflects our commitment to this vital partnership.”

Brat’s arrival heads a wave of new senior appointments at the embassy including Robert T. Koepcke as deputy chief of mission and Jonathan A. Habjan as counselor for political affairs.

A slew of new military postings at the embassy includes Col. Richard Bush as defense attaché; Col. Pete Roongsang as Army attaché; and Col. Kabir Rao as chief of MILGROUP, which manages security cooperation, foreign military sales and defense relations with the Australian Armed Forces.

Brat also hasn’t spoken publicly or at length about how or why he was recommended for this particular posting, though he said during his confirmation hearing that he “loved the Australian people I have met in my life and appreciate their decency, wit and sense of humor” — as well as being a “tennis fanatic” eager to engage in “sports diplomacy across the board.”

Australian Prime Anthony Albanese is also a keen tennis player, known to invite dignitaries and journalists to play on the court at his official Canberra residence, The Lodge.

“I’m very much looking forward to having a hit of tennis with David Brat,” Albanese told POLITICO, adding that he believes Brat’s appointment will “bolster” the existing alliance.

Brat did not respond to POLITICO’s requests for interviews.

But Braid made clear that sending Brat to Australia is not a vanity posting or just a favor for a longtime Trump loyalist, calling Brat “a serious lawmaker with serious chops.” He conceded that while Brat “comes from a political tradition that may be a little bit unfamiliar to the Australians,” he brings relationships and experiences to the table a career foreign service officer could not.

“This is a serious person,” Braid said.

Germany’s political parties have converged on an unusual point of agreement: A law penalizing citizens for insulting politicians needs to change, following controversial investigations of people who mocked Chancellor Friedrich Merz as “Pinocchio” and “Lying Fritz.”

But while politicians across the spectrum agree the law needs fixing — they just can’t agree how, or when, to change it, according to a POLITICO survey of the lawmakers responsible for the issue from each of the parties represented in the Bundestag. 

“We take seriously the criticism that, in practice, it may have created the impression of a special legal privilege for politicians,” said Susanne Hierl, a lawmaker from Merz’s center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU). “Such preferential treatment was never the intention of the legislature.”

Moritz Oppelt, the CDU justice minister of Germany’s southwestern state of Baden-Württemberg echoed the sentiment, arguing the law should serve only its original intent of protecting local politicians, who are often subject to particular vitriol.

“Top politicians can and must be able to withstand tough criticism,” he said. “It is fundamental to our democracy, and part of our understanding of democracy in Germany, that people are free to discuss political decisions at the federal and state levels and criticize them very harshly. That does not mean that insults in the political sphere should become normalized. There are, of course, limits.”

Variations of this view find consensus across Germany’s fractured political spectrum. The far-left Left Party and far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party want the law abolished outright, while the CDU, Greens and center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) all support revising it. 

“Politicians like Friedrich Merz insult ordinary people in this country every day by calling them lazy or malingerers,” said Luke Hoss, a Left lawmaker, referring to the chancellor’s remarks that Germans should work more to boost economic growth. “The provision creates a special criminal offense that applies only to politicians and should be abolished.”

Tobias Peterka, an AfD lawmaker, said tough criticism comes with the job. “Anyone who voluntarily enters politics and exercises public authority must — as Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court has repeatedly emphasized — tolerate harsher criticism than private citizens, not less,” he argued.

While a version of the law giving special protection to politicians, Section 188 of the criminal code, has existed since 1951, former Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government in 2021 strengthened the legislation as part of broader efforts to combat right-wing extremism and hate speech.

The reform came after the 2019 murder of CDU lawmaker Walter Lübcke by a far-right extremist and amid verbal and physical attacks on local politicians amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Lübcke had been an outspoken supporter of Germany’s refugee policy under Merkel.

The law applies to insults made publicly or through social media posts when they are linked to the politician’s public role and are deemed to significantly impede their work. Offenders face up to three years in prison or a fine for insulting politicians; defamation and “malicious gossip” carry stronger penalties.

But opinion has turned against the law following several recent investigations and prosecutions of regular people for insulting politicians. One man was fined for calling Merz “Lügenfritz,” or “Lying Fritz,” another for calling him “Fotzenfritz” (“pussy-hound Fritz”), a defamatory nickname coined by a satirical magazine. “Fritz” is a common nickname for Friedrich.

Andy Hüttner, a 66-year-old retiree from southwestern Germany, was investigated for writing “Pinocchio is coming” on a local police Facebook post about security measures for a planned visit by Merz.

“I thought calling Mr. Merz ‘Pinocchio’ was absolutely fitting because he promised so much and delivered so little,” Hüttner told POLITICO. “It never crossed my mind that anything could happen because of that comment.”

After the news of the investigation kicked off a media furor — and condemnation from U.S. Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy Sarah Rogers — the case was dropped.

Under German law, insulting any person (Beleidigung) can be a criminal offense, but the law for politicians makes the potential punishment for insults and defamation more severe.

But there’s growing agreement that the law attempting to provide extra protections for politicians has gone too far.

CDU lawmaker Hierl said local politicians still need protection. “We will therefore carefully review both the wording of Section 188 and the way it is applied,” she said.

The opposition Greens agree that the law should focus on protecting local politicians.

“Repealing Section 188 of the German Criminal Code would send the wrong signal,” Lena Gumnior, one of the party’s lawmakers, wrote in a statement. “I could, however, envision reforming Section 188 so that it applies only to elected officeholders at the municipal level.”

SPD Justice Minister Stefanie Hubig said in June that politicians must be able to bear more criticism than regular citizens, broadly echoing the position of the Greens and CDU. In June, Germany’s state justice ministers called for the law to be narrowed so that it applies to municipal officeholders. 

For the moment, however, neither Merz’s governing CDU nor the opposition Greens are preparing a legislative push for after the summer recess. 

An AfD bill to abolish Section 188 was voted down by the Bundestag, and while the party has since introduced another bill, centrist parties have vowed not to work with the far right, maintaining a so-called “firewall” around the party.

The Left party has also introduced a parliamentary motion addressing Section 188, more evidence of the broad consensus around changing the law — even if mainstream politicians haven’t gotten around to it yet.

BRUSSELS — A Russian state-controlled corporation building a nuclear power plant in Hungary is facing allegations of safety, security and engineering failures at another project in Egypt that uses the same technology, according to internal documents obtained by POLITICO. 

In a confidential letter dated June 4 and addressed to a Rosatom executive, Egypt’s Nuclear Power Plants Authority describes “defects” affecting multiple reactor units and violations of “nuclear safety culture” as it builds the El Dabaa nuclear plant. The letter also cites “deliberate negligence” on the part of an official at the project. 

The tranche of documents was shared through an intelligence official who was granted anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the media, and it has never previously been made public. It includes confidential company documents that describe construction delays and engineering concerns coming from Rosatom’s own reviews of the project. 

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 prompted Europe to impose sweeping sanctions on the country, Rosatom has tried to convince European governments that it remains a reliable and competent supplier in the nuclear power market. But the accusations of safety breaches could add to existing concerns over the Kremlin-controlled company’s operations in the EU.

In an emailed statement to POLITICO, Rosatom said it upholds the highest levels of nuclear safety and had done so throughout the construction of El Dabaa. The company declined to comment on whether it had received the letter or the complaints from Egypt’s Nuclear Power Plants Authority, which did not respond to multiple requests for comment about its communications with Rosatom.

“The high standard of work organisation, the quality management system and the safety culture are affirmed by the sustained attention paid to the project by the political leadership of the Russian Federation and the Arab Republic of Egypt, as well as by the leadership of the International Atomic Energy Agency, whose representatives regularly attend key project milestones,” said the company by email, adding that a recent ceremony for one of El Dabaa’s reactor units was attended by Russian, Egyptian and IAEA officials.

None of the allegations contained in the letter, presented to Rosatom by POLITICO, have been “confirmed within the contractual, technical and oversight procedures envisaged by the project,” read the company’s statement.

Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly said in July he expected the construction of all four El Dabaa reactors to finish by 2030, with the first reactor unit set to begin producing power by 2028. No nuclear fuel has yet been introduced to the site. Rosatom’s Egyptian plant will use the same technology at the heart of Hungary’s Paks II project, the Kremlin-backed nuclear expansion that has repeatedly raised tensions between Budapest and the European Commission.

The Commission told POLITICO it was not aware of the confidential documents and allegations they contain. “For the EU, nuclear safety is a key priority,” said a Commission spokesperson. 

They added that while the Commission was following the project’s developments, “issues of nuclear safety are [the] responsibility of the EU Member State concerned.”

Initially green-lit by Hungary’s former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in 2014, the Paks II project became emblematic of Budapest’s alignment with Russian President Vladimir Putin and provided a foothold for Russian energy technology inside the EU. Work began on the project in February this year.

The Kremlin-controlled corporation also has plant projects in Turkey and China, while Germany is under fire for green-lighting a deal in July that will allow one of Rosatom’s subsidiaries to help produce nuclear fuel rods for a plant in Lower Saxony. The German government said the deal would be under strict national security controls.

The Egyptian government and its embassies in Belgium and the United States did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

The allegations

Once fully operational, the El Dabaa complex will contain four Russian-designed nuclear reactor units under the supervision of the Nuclear Power Plants Authority. In the letter sent by the Egyptian authority to Rosatom, an official at the agency wrote that uncompleted reactor units have already encountered defects.

Originally sent to Rosatom in English, the letter appears to have been translated into Russian for internal circulation. POLITICO is citing a version of the letter translated back into English.

“There has been a re-emergence of serious concrete defects, including voids behind the metal cladding at Unit 4, defects in the foundation slabs of Units 1, 2 and 3, which took a year to repair, and defects in the cellular structure in the cylindrical wall of the reactor building at Unit 4,” details the letter. 

The Egyptian agency then accuses Rosatom of “misleading methods” and “fictitious work” attempting to prove the plant’s construction is over halfway complete, “while a visual inspection at the site clearly shows that the main buildings of the nuclear island are still in the underground construction phase.”

Rosatom, the Egyptian authority alleges, also presides over an unprofessional workplace culture in which workers were caught in possession of  “prohibited alcoholic beverages” on the work site, used “forged passes and impersonated others to gain unauthorized access,” and took several “photos and videos taken at the construction site” that ended up on social media, “which negatively affected the reputation of the project.”

The letter makes reference to a serious accident on the construction site, which resulted in a worker suffering “a severe open fracture” and then being smuggled to a private vehicle, not to an “equipped ambulance,” which the Egyptian authority claims was done “intentionally” to cover up the incident.

“Such behavior represents a serious disregard for both human well-being and professional responsibility, and constitutes a gross violation of workplace safety regulations, nuclear safety culture and reporting obligations,” said the letter.

Four additional internal Rosatom business documents reviewed by POLITICO reinforce aspects of the Egyptian authority’s concerns, detailing delays, construction-quality problems and project-management failures. One Rosatom draft audit prepared internally in 2025 warned of a “significant risk of failure to fulfill” the company’s contractual obligations and forecast that the preliminary schedule of El Dabaa’s first reactor unit could slip by 18 months, from September 2028 to March 2030.

Future in doubt

The allegations contained in the documents cast a shadow over the Paks II project in Hungary and are likely to reinforce concerns in Brussels about entrusting critical European infrastructure to a company under the Kremlin’s control.

In a lengthy commentary by the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based defense and security think tank, researchers warned Western countries against doing business with Rosatom, citing its deep connections to Russian intelligence and its problematic role in forcibly running the occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine through military force.

For the government of Hungary’s newly elected Prime Minister Péter Magyar, the Rosatom revelations also present a new headache: Paks II remains indispensable to Hungary’s plans to decarbonize its electricity system and replace aging nuclear capacity. In an effort to reexamine Orbán-era policymaking, Magyar’s government recently opened a review into Paks II, questioning its hefty price tag and connections to Putin. 

Former Hungarian Green lawmaker Benedek Jávor, who focused on Paks II and was critical of the Orbán government, cautioned other governments about working with Rosatom. He told POLITICO he now believed the allegations coming out of El Dabaa could have far-reaching consequences for Rosatom and the fate of Paks II.

“They’ve already decided to reconsider the contract, and this was already communicated during the election campaign,” he said of Magyar’s government. “[This] information from Egypt will definitely be part of the evaluation.”

President Donald Trump directed the Pentagon on Sunday to substantially scale back planned joint military exercises with South Korea, saying that South Korea declined to help with denuclearizing Iran.

“These exercises are not only costly, with much of these costs paid for by the United States of America (as usual!), but send a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, while emphasizing his “very good relationship” with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

The move directing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — who in May praised South Korean leaders for their commitment to “alliance burden-sharing” in defense of the Korean Peninsula — to scale back the plans comes just a day before the 11 days of exercises were set to start on Monday, part of an annual practice to deter threats from North Korea.

Trump also sought to end the exercises during his first administration, similarly arguing at the time that doing so “will save us a tremendous amount of money.”

North Korea launched its latest round of ballistic missile tests just last week, seen in part as a response to the announcement of the U.S. and South Korea’s planned military exercises.

The U.S. and South Korea have held joint military exercises for more than 70 years. This year’s iteration, termed Ulchi Freedom Shield, was expected to involve about 18,000 South Korean troops and a sizable portion of the 28,500 American troops stationed in the country.

Pentagon leaders are considering plans to withdraw about 4,500 troops from South Korea, to be redeployed elsewhere in the Indo-Pacific region.

Congress has generally opposed the idea, including language in last year’s national defense authorization act to prevent the administration from reducing the American footprint there below the 28,500 level.

ROME — In the barns where the milk for Italy’s most famous cheese is produced, the fans have barely stopped whirring for two months. As temperatures across northern Italy push close to 40 degrees Celsius, cows stand almost motionless, tongues lolling, while automated sprinklers soak their backs.

Italy is now enduring its fourth major heat wave of an exceptionally brutal summer. The prolonged heat is piling costs on the €4 billion industry behind Parmigiano Reggiano, forcing farmers to spend heavily on cooling their animals while drought and dwindling water supplies make it harder and more expensive to grow the forage needed to feed them.

Farmers have received support from regional authorities, the EU and a producers’ consortium to help them adapt to the heat, but they say the funding falls short of the investment increasingly required.

For producers of the protected cheese, there is no possibility of escaping somewhere cooler. Under the strict rules governing Parmigiano Reggiano’s EU Protected Designation of Origin — that secures its added value on the market — the cows, their milk and the cheese must remain tied to a defined area of northern Italy. At least 75 percent of their forage must also be grown locally.

Dairy cows can begin suffering from heat stress at around 25C, depending on humidity, according to Giovanni Buonaiuto, a vet with the Parmigiano Reggiano Consortium, which defends producers’ interests. Their digestive system generates considerable heat as they break down food, while cows have relatively few sweat glands with which to disperse it. “It’s as if the cow has a radiator inside her,” Buonaiuto told POLITICO.

As temperatures rise, cows eat less and stand for longer to expose themselves to moving air. They rest and ruminate less, milk production falls and prolonged heat can also affect fertility.

Buonaiuto said milk production has fallen by about 10 percent on average during the summer, although the impact varies sharply between farms depending on their cooling systems.

Overheating herds

Federica Dall’Aglio, who raises 400 cattle on the plains near the city of Parma, said each cow was producing five to six kilograms less milk a day, a fall of roughly 20 percent, despite fans and water sprays installed to protect her herd.

The cows now spend much of their time beneath the fans and water sprays, she added, as they’re reluctant to move away from the cooling systems.

Outside the barns, farmers are reorganizing their working days around the heat too. Some now cut and collect hay at 3 a.m. or 4 a.m., Buonaiuto said, before the morning heat causes the hay to crumble. By 8 a.m. or 9 a.m., it can already be too hot.

Keeping the cows cool comes at a high cost.

Luca Cotti, a sixth-generation dairy farmer and president of farmers’ association Coldiretti in the northern Emilia-Romagna region, said electricity consumption in barns can double or even triple during extreme heat as cooling systems run almost continuously.

He recalled worrying about winter 20 years ago, with the weather freezing drinking water and other systems in the barn. Now investment is directed toward surviving summer.

The new normal

Extreme summer heat was once exceptional and might last a week before temperatures eased, Cotti said. Now, he said, “it’s normal.” This year, “since June, it has never let up.”

For some smaller producers with older facilities, the question is whether the investment is still worthwhile.

Dall’Aglio’s family has been investing in cooling systems for around 15 years, recently adding solar panels to help offset their growing electricity needs.

Across the Parmigiano Reggiano supply chain, such technology is becoming commonplace. Around half of its dairy farms, responsible for 70 percent of its milk, have invested in advanced cooling systems, including fans, motion-sensitive water sprays and automated temperature monitoring, according to the consortium president, Nicola Bertinelli.

The remaining 30 percent of milk comes largely from farms in the cooler hills and mountains, he said.

With persistently high temperatures, insufficient rainfall and water levels in major Alpine lakes approaching historic lows, authorities in the Po River basin, which supports agriculture across northern Italy through a network of tributaries and canals, have declared a high level of drought severity.

Alfalfa, an important source of forage for the cows, is relatively resistant to drought because of its deep roots. But Dall’Aglio said her family had already been irrigating heavily to ensure a good hay crop this year.

When rivers run too low for irrigation, some farmers have to pump groundwater instead, which can make irrigation around five times more expensive because of the energy required to extract it, according to Lorenzo Catellani of farmers’ association CIA Agricoltori Emilia-Romagna.

Coldiretti is calling on politicians to treat water storage as infrastructure rather than emergency relief.

Cotti said regional and national authorities need to invest in reservoirs and other water-storage infrastructure, arguing that individual farms cannot solve the growing problem of water scarcity alone.

Paradoxically, Parmesan producers normally worry about producing too much, not too little — and had sought to curb output this year. “We always have the brake on,” Cotti said, adding that high prices mean farmers have little difficulty increasing production when needed.

Despite the strain, producers insist there is no danger of Italy running short of Parmesan.

The cheese’s strong global market gives farmers greater scope to invest than producers in more fragile agricultural sectors.

For now, those investments are keeping Parmigiano production stable, although smaller farmers with aging barns may eventually choose to close rather than spend the money needed to adapt. For now, there is little to do but wait for the temperatures to fall. “We keep going like this,” Cotti said. “We hope it ends as soon as possible.”

Wie konnte ein polizeibekannter Gefährder das islamistische Attentat in Berlin auf den CSD verüben? Rixa Fürsen analysiert mit Extremismus-Expertin Gülden Hennemann, warum es bei den Behörden womöglich zu Fehleinschätzungen kam. Hennemann ist Politikwissenschaftlerin und Orientalistin. Sie leitet die Zentrale Koordinierungsstelle für Maßnahmen gegen Extremismus im bayerischen Justizvollzug.

Hennemann warnt, dass eine bloße Distanzierung z.B vom IS mögliche Täter nicht gleich ungefährlich mache. Sie fordert einen lückenlosen Informationsaustausch zwischen Polizei und Gerichten, der nicht durch falschen Datenschutz blockiert werden dürfe.

Im „Beraterkreis Islamismusprävention und Islamismusbekämpfung“ des Bundesinnenministeriums kämpft Hennemann dafür, Radikalisierungsprozesse frühzeitig zu stoppen, ganz besonders an Schulen. Zudem müsse die Gesellschaft aufhören, Islamismus aus falscher Angst vor Stigmatisierung zu tabuisieren.

Das Berlin Playbook als Podcast gibt es jeden Morgen ab 5 Uhr. Gordon Repinski und das POLITICO-Team liefern Politik zum Hören – kompakt, international, hintergründig.

Für alle Hauptstadt-Profis: Der Berlin Playbook-Newsletter bietet jeden Morgen die wichtigsten Themen und Einordnungen. Jetzt kostenlos abonnieren.

Mehr von Host und POLITICO Executive Editor Gordon Repinski:
Instagram: @gordon.repinski | X: @GordonRepinski.

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CANBERRA — Australia’s social media restrictions came into effect in December 2025, triggering a domino effect across the globe as countries in Europe and Asia debated or adopted similar rules. Together these legal reforms form the biggest regulatory and cultural overhaul faced by tech platforms since the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation came into effect in 2018.

Here’s how things are playing out in Australia — and some of the biggest questions surrounding the restrictions’ implementation.

What is the political background to the Australian law?

Australia’s then-Opposition Leader Peter Dutton pledged in June 2024 to raise the social media access age to 16 within 100 days of becoming prime minister.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, pressured to match the commitment, adopted the policy in November 2024 and rushed a bill through Parliament later that month.

This happened against a backdrop of advocacy by parts of the media, public figures and parents whose children had suffered or died by suicide after social media bullying.

The Senate committee tasked with examining the legislation received roughly 15,000 submissions.

The Greens and most crossbench members of parliament and senators opposed the bill, calling for more time and scrutiny.

What problems did the law attempt to tackle?

Public debate around the law focused on addictive platform design and the risks of those design choices leading to negative mental health effects on developing minds.

The government framed the law as a response to problematic or compulsive platform use, cyber bullying, harmful content, unwanted adult contact and mental health risks.

While extensive research supports concern about adolescent vulnerability, it does not establish that an age ban alone will reduce mental health problems.

Why is the focus on banning accounts for under-16s?

The Australian government says that being logged into an account increases the likelihood that children will be exposed to “negative, upsetting or manipulative content.”

It considers the legislation to be a “delay” rather than a “ban” on accessing social media, stressing that it gives young people the time and space to develop skills such as digital literacy, impulse control and resilience before being inundated with challenging content online.

What the law does:

It makes clear that under-16s are not able to give consent to share their data via a platform’s terms of service, and designates social media platforms as age-restricted services.

This makes it illegal for prescribed platforms to offer accounts to Australians aged under 16 and requires them to take reasonable steps to prevent Australian children under 16 from holding accounts.

The law places legal responsibility on platforms, not children or parents, and it currently applies to Facebook, Instagram, Kick, Reddit, Snapchat, Threads, TikTok, Twitch, X and YouTube.

They can use a range of age assurance methods, such as analyzing users’ biological or behavioral features, using information other than date of birth to infer an individual’s age.

What the law doesn’t do:

Subject children, their parents or carers to penalties.

Ban under 16s from accessing public content on social media platforms.

Cover every online service. Messaging, education, health, professional networking and many gaming services are excluded.

Enforce a single type of age assurance. Instead platforms are expected to demonstrate to the Australian regulator, the eSafety Commissioner, that they’ve taken reasonable steps to prevent children from opening accounts. While the platform may rely on government-issued identification, they’re not allowed to force Australians to use these.

Make it an offense for a child to use a VPN or attempt to access a platform.

Popular services such as Discord, Messenger, WhatsApp, Roblox, Steam and Google Classroom were among services eSafety identified as outside the restrictions. The classification can change, as the purpose of a platform evolves.

What impact was the law expected to have?

Albanese has said he wants to keep young Australians safe, reduce screen time, and encourage better educational outcomes, behaviour and social interaction. The government has not set explicit targets for reducing screen time, account ownership or mental health symptoms.

Julie Inman Grant, the eSafety Commissioner whose term ends in 2027, said meaningful effects may take years and could ultimately be generational.

eSafety launched a study of the impacts in 2025 in partnership with Stanford University’s Social Media Lab and 11 academic advisers. It will follow more than 4,000 children and families for over two years and publish the results online.

Where did the Australian government cut corners?

Social media platforms criticized the Australian government for rushing to pass the legislation in 2024, before its regulator had completed a trial into the age assurance technologies that would underpin it.

What are the initial impacts?

There is a clear decline in account ownership among under-16s, but also substantial continued access. In an early parent survey, 31 percent said their child still had at least one social media account after implementation, compared with 49 percent before it.

In the months after the ban, at least 4.7 million accounts were removed, deactivated or restricted.

TIME reported that data from the parental control company Qustodio showed that after the age minimum went into effect, Snapchat monthly usage dropped roughly 40 percent among 13- to 15-year-olds, while YouTube usage dropped just 3 percent. YouTube does not require a user to have an account, so many YouTube users access content without an account.

After an early compliance report found a “substantial proportion” of children still held social media accounts, the Australian government sought to increase penalties for noncompliance and introduce stronger powers for the eSafety Commissioner.

Amendments to the legislation are being considered at the time of publication.

Has the law affected VPN uptake?

A University of Newcastle study of 408 teenagers aged between 12 and 16 found that VPNs were rarely relied upon to circumvent age verification.

The study found participants were most often being asked to self-declare their age as a means of verification.

Are other governments following suit?

Yes, but approaches have varied. Jurisdictions that have taken steps to restrict social media access include Brazil, Indonesia, Canada, Malaysia, the UAE, France, Spain, the U.K. and the EU.

What do parents say about the impacts?

In a YouGov survey of just over 1,000 Australian adults, conducted from Jan. 12-14, 2026, parents polled reported some early positive feedback.

This included 38 percent of them finding their children to be more present and engaged during interactions, with the same proportion noticing their relationships had improved.

However, some parents also reported negative impacts, including 25 percent noticing reduced social connection, creativity, or peer support online.

Media reporting has also captured this range of views.

What’s the quiet bit officials aren’t saying out loud?

Keeping teenagers off social media, when they have already been exposed to such platforms from a young age, is an uphill battle. The biggest beneficiaries of the policy are likely to be younger children, who have the chance to develop different habits.

What are the risks of kids handing over sensitive data to tech companies?

Australia says privacy was a central consideration in the implementation of its restrictions, with platforms still required to comply with the Privacy Act.

That legislation restricts how information is collected, used and disclosed.

Is there any evidence of deeper culture change occurring?

A spokesperson for eSafety said its early findings suggest a shift in expectations around social media use.

“Some children are less likely than before the commencement of the social media minimum age restrictions to believe that most children their age use social media, or that children without social media accounts are missing out,” eSafety said.

“Some parents also report less perceived pressure to allow social media use simply because other families do.”

Is anything being done to help teens keep access to important information they were getting on platforms?

Australia’s regulator points children to support networks if they’re feeling isolated, but ultimately its stance is that children under 16 can still access the internet generally.

“Young people can continue to access publicly available social media content that does not require an account, including searching for and viewing information where platforms permit logged-out access,” the spokesperson said.

“Many standalone messaging, gaming, education and health services are also not currently covered by the social media age restrictions.”

SYDNEY — Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese listens not only to his advisers, or Foreign Minister Penny Wong, when it comes to Australian foreign policy. Increasingly, he makes a call to former Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating.

This is one of the intriguing revelations in my new book, “Grand Ambition: Paul Keating’s Global Vision for Australia.”

It shows that after Labor’s 2025 landslide reelection, a more confident Albanese wanted to hear more of what the former prime minister had to say.

That’s not only because Keating’s critique of the government in its first term had stung — he described AUKUS support as the worst Labor government foreign policy decision in a century — but because Albanese had upcoming meetings with China’s President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Donald Trump.

How to handle these two great powers? Albanese wanted another view beyond what the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet was sending to his office. The need became more acute as the second Trump administration, which was applying the blow torch to its European allies to increase defense spending, put pressure on Australia to do the same with respect to China.

Keating bristled, telling Albanese privately that he was now “sitting between two sharks,” those being “the China threat brigade on the one hand and the Americans on the other.”

Before Albanese headed to China for a six-day visit in July 2025, Keating met for several hours with him at Kirribilli House, the prime minister’s Sydney residence.

The former leader took a briefing note with him to hand over to Albanese, replete with talking points that Albanese could use with Xi, highlighting the key points in yellow.

In Keating’s telling, Albanese asked, “Paul this is terrific, but what should I do with it?”

Keating said: “Anthony, I’ll tell you what you do with it, you fold it up a few times and pop it into your left breast pocket, so that you have access to it when you might need it.”

POLITICO offered Albanese the opportunity to describe his version of the exchange. “We don’t discuss private conversations,” said a spokesperson for the prime minister.

The essence of Keating’s briefing was that Albanese had to break free from the mantra of “stabilization,” which, in its assumption of perpetual Australian frailty in the face of Beijing, Keating believed to be a straitjacket on improving the relationship.

Keating’s key points were that Australia and China had no historical conflicts, which brought with it a responsibility to work together and find common problems; that moving from “stabilization” to “engagement” means greater foreign investment by China into Australia; that Canberra should back China’s membership of the upgraded Trans-Pacific Partnership; that the two countries establish a joint commission on energy and climate cooperation; and that Albanese tell the Chinese Australia will not “automatically dovetail in with the U.S. in the event of a war over Taiwan.”

Keating told Albanese he did not think the Australian people will support involvement in any conflict. The point, Keating said as he left the meeting that day, was that Australia was at a pivotal moment.

“Thirty years ago,” he told Albanese, “the Americans could have their aircraft carriers off the Chinese coast and we could deal with both the U.S. and China. [former Prime Minister John] Howard could. I could. But we have reached a fork in the road.”

Albanese reported to Keating on his return from China that Xi had offered significant goodwill, leading Keating to reply by text that China’s “gravitational pull is only going to get stronger.”

Keating said he was trying to edge a cautious Albanese closer to a new arrangement with China, irrespective of what Washington might think about it.

Keating reinforced this message ahead of the prime minister’s meeting with Trump in Washington in Oct. 2025.

Albanese’s struggles to gain an audience with the president had become a media fixation in Australia, dogging the prime minister in press conferences.

Lost in that commotion was the advantage in escaping Trump’s attention while adjusting Australian policies to the new world Trump was introducing.

Keating got Albanese’s attention en route to the long-awaited encounter, during a stop by Albanese’s party in the Western Pacific.

Keating’s message was blunter this time. “If Australia was not hosting U.S. military assets,” he wrote in a text to the prime minister, “including nuclear-armed ones, Australia would not have an enemy in the world, including China. By our free will, by hosting U.S. bases, we have become the southern flank of the US in the Pacific, marrying off with the Philippines, Japan and South Korea.”

The text message finished with a brutal assessment about how America handled the period from 2020 to 2024 when China was economically coercing Australia: “When China in dispute with [former Prime Minister Malcolm] Turnbull and [former Prime Minister Scott] Morrison banned the purchase of Australian soybeans, America took China’s side by selling American beef in displacement of Australia’s. Not a bit of trade support for Australia. The reverse. America actually sold us out.”

James Curran is Professor of Modern History at Sydney University and the author of “Grand Ambition: Paul Keating’s Global Vision for Australia,” forthcoming from Simon & Schuster, Sept. 1.

CANBERRA — When a new British prime minister speaks to their Australian counterpart for the first time, it’s a reset of Australia’s oldest and deepest relationship.

The agenda seems obvious: Intelligence sharing. Tariffs. Hot war and simmering conflict.

If the conversation turns to sport, cricket has often been the obvious choice.

But as Andy Burnham began his introductory calls to world leaders, he and Anthony Albanese got to rugby league.

On their July 23 leader-to-leader call, the two men talked animatedly about the sport they have each spent a lifetime inside.

Albanese told Burnham he would love to see the Kangaroos, the Australian national side, tour the United Kingdom soon.

“I used to love watching the old Kangaroo Tours to the U.K.,” Albanese told POLITICO, reminiscing about “Mal Meninga’s try at Old Trafford in the green and gold” in 1990, in Burnham’s home town of Manchester, one of “those small grounds where the fans are right there on the tiny dead ball lines.”

By the end of the call, according to Burnham’s office, he agreed to support Albanese’s team, the South Sydney Rabbitohs. “I’m happy to barrack for Prime Minister Burnham’s Leopards in return,” Albanese said.

It wasn’t just small talk.

The AUKUS military alliance requires London and Canberra to operate at a level of trust that treaties and memorandums can’t manufacture. Delivering nuclear-powered submarines to Australia to ward off Chinese aggression will take decades of shared industrial secrets, shipyard schedules and nuclear technology.

Personal chemistry between leaders is not a substitute for institutional machinery, but it is the lubricant.

Burnham and Albanese have a shared, unfakeable claim to a working-class sport at exactly the moment both left-wing leaders are trying to hold onto working-class voters in the face of a right-wing populist challenge.

Burnham told POLITICO that deep love of the sport is “one of the many reasons the friendship between our two countries runs as deep as it does.”

“In the North of England, rugby league is in our blood. It is played and watched week in, week out, rain or shine, and I know that is a feeling shared in communities right across Australia too,” he said.

The code of collective action

Burnham’s urgent political mission is to stem the flow of working-class voters who have switched from Labour to Nigel Farage’s hard-right Reform UK, in many post-industrial Northern towns of Lancashire and Yorkshire, and nearby Cumbria and Cheshire, where rugby league is played.

Reconnecting with these communities is critical for Burnham’s hopes of saving Labour from defeat at the next U.K. general election, which is not due until 2029 but could potentially come sooner.

And the culture of rugby league is one that aligns closely with Labour’s left-wing history and its mission in these very same parts of the country: The sport only exists because of a fight about money and class

In 1895, clubs in the north of England broke from Rugby Union over the refusal of the sport’s authorities to compensate players for wages lost to injury or time away from work.

Wealthy players didn’t need the support, while working-class players decided their only option was to quit, and set up a rival code that allowed them to receive a wage for their efforts.

Players in Australia — formed out of British colonies and still firmly in the British Empire — soon followed suit, and the split never healed. Neither did the class coding.

Union, which was devised in a historic, prestigious private school, remains a fixture of British and Australian fee-paying schools.

Australia’s opposition leader, Angus Taylor, a Rhodes Scholar and former McKinsey consultant, plays Rugby Union. Albanese, who grew up with a single mother in social housing, played league.

Burnham’s Northern assets

League “has a very particular culture,” said Tony Collins, emeritus professor of history at De Montfort University and the author of several books on the sport. It understands itself, he said, as working-class, democratic and inclusive — and reflexively anti-establishment.

That is a useful thing for a politician like Burnham to be fluent in. Their League connections present them, he said, as ordinary blokes voters could have a pint with. “It’s the man in the pub thing,” Collins said.

Burnham’s northern identity is one of the few assets his party has that Farage cannot replicate.

The British leader has decades of involvement in the sport, serving as honorary chair of Leigh Centurions (Now Leigh Leopards), a team dating back to 1895. In 2018 he served as president of Rugby Football League, the sport’s governing body, an appointment he described as “one of the greatest honors I’ve ever been given.”

Burnham’s advocacy for greater investment in community-driven sport mirrors Albanese’s passion.

“Rugby league is about community. It’s about local identity,” Albanese said, and those who see the sport, its teams and its players as commodities to be traded or cut “don’t understand the sense of belonging it fosters.”

The pair talk about rugby league in the way Labor leaders were once able to talk about their own parties: mass movements marked by their sense of tightly-knit community.

Albanese’s 118-year grudge

Named for hawkers who walked Sydney’s streets selling wild rabbits to those too poor to afford other meat, Albanese’s Rabbitohs were founded in 1908 by working men from the city’s factory belt.

The club went on to win 20 premierships between 1908 and 1971 — still a record — the year Albanese’s mother took her starry-eyed 8-year-old son to watch the sport’s Grand Final.

Albanese played the sport for practical reasons: he could reach the training ground at inner Sydney’s Redfern Oval by bus — his family could not afford a car.

His days ended after school as he climbed the Labor ranks, becoming one of its youngest officials and an MP from his early 30s. Then came Rupert Murdoch.

In 1996, the newly-elected Albanese rose in the House to condemn a Federal Court decision clearing the establishment of Super League, a breakaway Murdoch-funded competition.

Calling it a battle between the community history of the game and the “private domination of this game by an individual,” Albanese risked his political career in labeling Murdoch’s venture “un-Australian”.

Famous for brow-beating Labor politicians, Murdoch’s newspapers controlled more than 70 percent of Australian news print circulation and set the daily agenda.

While Super League eventually collapsed back into the non-profit National Rugby League, the Rabbitohs did not survive the wreckage. Administrators cut the club in 1999, seeking a leaner competition and clubs with bigger fan bases and deeper pockets.

Albanese used his office to cultivate a backlash that became the largest sustained sports protest in Australian history.

As a Rabbitohs board member, Albanese tabled motions in Parliament, helped organize rallies and joined nearly 100,000 people marching through Sydney demanding their team back.

“This debate goes to the very heart of the alienation which people are feeling about our society,” he told the House in Nov. 1999. He was in the Federal Court in 2001 when it ordered the Rabbitohs readmitted to the competition, finding their exclusion breached the Trade Practices Act.

Authenticity dividend

While many would find it hard to outdo life membership of their favorite team — an honor Albanese received in 2013 — he took his fandom a step further: marrying a Rabbitohs fan who shouted the club’s battle cry from the audience during a speech by Albanese.

A first date with pension fund executive Jodie Haydon followed just before Covid lockdowns, and the pair married in 2025.

Businessperson Peter Holmes à Court in 2006 bought a 75 percent stake in the Rabbitohs with actor Russell Crowe, with Albanese’s blessing. He argues the prime minister’s obsession is the rare kind voters detect as genuine.

“His love for the Rabbitohs is absolutely authentic,” Holmes à Court told POLITICO. Instead of seeing a politician looking for photo opportunities, with Albanese his team pride is “like an organ, another arm.”

Albanese’s fandom occasionally overwhelms his official role.

In March 2026 he joined an on-field invasion draped in club colors after the Rabbitohs’ Alex Johnston broke the NRL’s all-time try record, telling Nine Television “it was worth it to be part of history.” In July he told comedian podcaster Nikki Osborne that a Souths win is “always a good aphrodisiac.”

“Anti-snobbery is the new movement, right? You can’t be too woke, but you also can’t be too elite in a populist revolutionary world,” Holmes à Court said.

Albanese rallies to the defense of his sport at the dispatch box on the floor of Parliament, and promises to use his relationship with Burnham to “discuss getting more kids off screens and onto sporting fields in our two great countries.”

Burnham keeps it similarly practical: “Together we are delivering good jobs through our AUKUS programme, ensuring young people get a good start in life, and driving down the cost of living. I know as two progressive Labour leaders we have a close friendship ahead of us.”

Albanese won’t be getting his desired Kangaroos tour of the U.K. this year.

England’s team is headed Down Under instead, for the Rugby League World Cup, beginning Oct. 15.

POLITICO is now live in Australia — welcome to our community!

Our flagship Playbook franchise drives the conversation with urgent, in-depth reporting across the United States, London, Brussels, Berlin, Paris and Ottawa — and we’re thrilled now to be launching in Canberra.

Consider Playbook your guide to the day ahead in Canberra — a neutral place to gather for every decision-maker with a stake in Canberra, and those who aspire to become one.

We don’t take sides, we won’t waste your time, and we’ll spotlight the best journalism, whoever produces it.

Timing is everything. Over the next month we’ll be marking five years of AUKUS, 25 years since the 9/11 attacks and 75 years of the ANZUS Treaty: all reminders of the global and endlessly connected era we live in.

Today the first ever National Youth Parliament kicks off under the auspices of Speaker Milton Dick — a full circle moment for Playbook’s Ryan Heath, who first arrived at Parliament House in 1999 as a member of John Howard’s National Youth Roundtable (along with Andrew Charlton and ex-minister Kelly O’Dwyer).

Come say hello to us at Aussie’s cafe. Or find us on X. Send tips to WhatsApp 0494 380 487 and canberraplaybook@politico.com.

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Ryan, Finn and Miriam (soon to be joined by Paul Karp)

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ESSENTIALS

• Parliament is moving on from Melongate to grown-up negotiations on disability support, gambling ads and tech regulation
• Read Paul Keating’s China text messages to Albo in a POLITICO exclusive
• Learn how the new U.S. Ambassador “speaks Trump”
• Burnham’s a Bunny! Two PMs discuss their shared passion for Rugby League
• A Labor migration insider urges hard cap on arrivals in our Playbook Interview

DRIVING THE DAY

TODAY’S VIBE: Constructive.

We’ll see legislative action only from Tuesday afternoon. Today in Parliament, the parties are heads down finalizing positions on disability support, gambling ad reforms and reining in big tech.

Anthony Albanese and Angus Taylor are keeping up parallel bilateral negotiations. Labor’s still figuring out how hard to clamp down on migration numbers — more on that in our Playbook Interview.

BETWEEN THE LINES: The Opposition’s tightrope is proving it can get legislation done through cooperation with Labor — something One Nation can’t do — while seeming tough on the prime minister.

NDIS TEA LEAVES: Jenny McAllister — the Minister for National Disability Insurance known for choosing every word with precision — is “hopeful” legislation will pass this week, and called the Coalition’s negotiation approach “extremely constructive” on Insiders.

The political danger for Labor is that failure to reform could mean the public views NDIS numbers the way they view migration numbers: out-of-control. McAllister calls 10 percent spending growth per year “unsustainable,” and wants savings of around $5,000 per year per beneficiary. She rejected the idea of an independent NDIS Inspector-General.

GAMBLING BENCH PRESS: Major party backbenchers and crossbench MPs are both pushing for a gambling ad bill with teeth. Don’t rule out more Teal stunts.

MIGRATION NUMBERS GAME: Everyone wants to cut migration, no one agrees on how.

It’s on today’s Cabinet agenda and if there’s a deal, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke could be back to the National Press Club as soon as Thursday to deliver his postponed speech. Whatever happens, he won’t be going rogue: “[For] what happens when you don’t do your policy work collegiately, I give you Senator Andrew Bragg as Exhibit A,” Burke said yesterday.

Reminder: Pauline Hanson wants net migration capped at 130,000. Bragg is angling for 180,000. Net migration was 301,000 in 2025.

EXCLUSIVE — KEATING COACHED ALBO ON XI HANDLING AT KIRRIBILLI

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese increasingly turned to Paul Keating for advice on managing Australia’s relationships with China and the U.S. after his 2025 reelection.

In Keating’s telling, the PM wanted a counterpoint to departmental briefings and Washington’s pressure on Australia to increase defense spending.

Keating’s answer was to do several hours of Xi Jinping meeting prep with the PM at Kirribilli House and pass him talking points to keep in his pocket.

Albanese was warned he was “sitting between two sharks,” Keating told his biographer James Curran, whose book “Grand Ambition: Paul Keating’s Global Vision for Australia,” is out Sept. 1.

KEATING CAN’T QUIT KIRRIBILLI: Albo asked him at Kirribilli how he should deploy the memo. “You fold it up a few times and pop it into your left breast pocket, so that you have access to it when you need,” Keating said.

POLITICO reached out to the PM for his side of the story. “We don’t discuss private conversations,” said a spokesperson.

Keating urged Albanese to move beyond “stabilization” and pursue deeper “engagement” with China and wanted Albanese to say Australia would not “automatically dovetail in with the U.S. in the event of a war over Taiwan.”

Ahead of Albanese’s October 2025 meeting with President Donald Trump, Keating texted the PM a blunt warning that Australia should not host nuclear-armed U.S. military assets, given perceived American disloyalty during China’s 2020 trade coercion: “America actually sold us out.”

Read more about Keating’s advice in this excerpt from Curran’s new book.

THE PLAYBOOK INTERVIEW

Henry Sherrell has been visiting ministers and pushing them to ink a harder migration deal in Cabinet this morning. The former Ministerial immigration adviser, now expert member of the Ministerial Advisory Council on Skilled Migration, wants a hard cap on migrants at 1 percent of the population per year: 280,000.

If the government rejects your central proposal, what’s a credible compromise? 

The government is clearly doing a lot of work to hit their forecasts. We need a long-term plan, as well as a target for next year as no single change will fix our visa system.

Which of the six levers in your proposal is the government engaging with?

Points-test reform was flagged in the Budget. That wouldn’t have happened without a lot of effort behind the scenes.

Which lever would produce the clearest reduction in migration while creating the least economic damage?

International vocational education fees line the pockets of a few businesses. A new rule requiring 50 percent domestic students at education providers would reduce the number of people in Australia on a temporary visa by about 100,000 over the next few years. Sydney University flirted with more international students than domestic students recently, undermining its social responsibility to Australians. 

In your years advising Ministers, what did the department understand about the system that Labor struggles to confront? 

Ministers understand the public much better than bureaucrats, which pushes them towards trying to fix things quickly. Too often, the bureaucracy is deeply risk averse and unwilling to try or suggest new ideas.

Which workers and industries could feel benefits first from your plan? 

The visa system should improve the lives of Australians, not any single interest or sector. A system geared towards high-wage jobs across the economy would do that better than the status quo.

Are migration levels at risk of becoming for Anthony Albanese the noose that border control became for Joe Biden? Why?

No. Australia’s debate is about the pace of migration. Australia has strong control of our border. The U.S. has over 10 million undocumented migrants. We have less than 100,000.

Which migration proposals in Andrew Bragg’s National Press Club speech could the government cherry-pick without accepting the speech’s broader political framing?

He’s right about backpackers. We have destroyed a wonderful cultural exchange visa with visa rules that drive down wages via exploitative work. Ill-defined diplomatic objectives undermine visa policy. Migration and trade agreements should never go together.

Read Sherrell’s 13-page paper for Inflection Points here.

CANBERRA MEETS WORLD

LEAGUE LOVE-IN ZOOMS UP DIPLOMATIC AGENDA

We’ve been seeing the fruits of rugby diplomacy in the Pacific, but did you know that new British PM Andy Burnham served as chair of Britain’s equivalent of the NRL?

Given the PM’s Rabbitohs obsession, and that AUKUS requires London and Canberra to operate at a level of trust that treaties and memorandums can’t manufacture, we’re now in possession of prized political social lubricant.

Burnham’s a bunny! Now a signed-up Rabbitohs fan, the British leader told POLITICO’s Tim Ross that deep love of the sport is “one of the many reasons the friendship between our two countries runs as deep as it does. In the North of England, rugby league is in our blood. It is played and watched week in, week out, rain or shine.”

“I’m happy to barrack for Prime Minister Burnham’s [Leigh] Leopards in return,” Albanese told Playbook. Whether Burnham shares Albanese’s relish for “Mal Meninga’s try at Old Trafford” in 1990, in Burnham’s home town of Manchester, is another question.

The pair talk about rugby league in the way Labor leaders were once able to talk about their own parties: mass movements marked by their sense of tight-knit community.

Reconnecting with League-supporting communities is Burnham’s urgent political mission in the face of Nigel Farage’s surge. Playbook bets Albo’s going to become very familiar with that mission. But where does that leave Rugby Union-playing Angus Taylor?

What we’re watching: If Australia and English make the final, will we see Burnham head Down Under for the Rugby League World Cup Nov. 15?

Read more from Ryan and Tim here.

THE AMBASSADOR WHO CAN SPEAK TRUMP

Once an insurgent Tea Party rabble rouser in Congress, Dave Brat is now a Trump world insider fluent in a niche dialect, writes POLITICO’s Katherine Tully-McManus in Washington.

“He can speak Trump,” James Braid, Trump’s director of legislative affairs told POLITICO. “I think that will really help him facilitate Aussie-United States relations.”

Not obvious from his CV is that Brat is also known for collaborative approaches to negotiations. “This is a serious person,” Braid said.

A longtime economist and academic, Brat is a free trade advocate from Virginia — home of the massive naval base delivering AUKUS submarines — and Virginia’s two Democratic U.S. senators, Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, told us they share the White House optimism. “He will be very focused on commerce, trade, and economic opportunity,” said Kaine, who as governor relied on Brat’s contributions to a bipartisan economic advisory panel.

Brat is a self-confessed “tennis fanatic” and Albanese confirmed to Playbook he’s “very much looking forward to having a hit of tennis” with the new arrival in town.

EMBASSY ROW

MORE STARS AND STRIPES? “I understand that Mission Australia’s current staffing and facilities are insufficient to meet the demands of our expanding Alliance activities,” Brat said in a written response to U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz, a Hawaii Democrat, during his confirmation proceedings.

Brat’s not the only new American in town. Robert T. Koepcke is now Deputy Chief of Mission and Jonathan A. Habjan is Counselor for Political Affairs.

Colonel Richard Bush joins as Defense Attaché; Colonel Pete Roongsang as Army Attaché; and Colonel Kabir Rao as Chief of MILGROUP, which manages security cooperation, foreign military sales and defense relations with the Australian Armed Forces.

Consul General Colin Crosby is now in place in Melbourne, previously State Department’s Deputy China Coordinator.

Flip and reverse it: The Australian Embassy in D.C. is also hiring.

FLYING: Richard Marles is wrapping up a Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands trip, doing what he loves best: meeting prime ministers, this time James Marape (PNG) and Matthew Wale (Solomons).

ARRIVING: Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul, he’ll meet Albanese Wednesday. Thailand is our 11th-ranked trading partner.

Japanese Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi will visit Canberra Tuesday, h/t Andrew Greene.

CELEBRATING: Albo lived out a multicultural Sunday at Sydney’s Ferragosto festival, telling Italian-Australians “I’m very proud to be the first Prime Minister of Australia, out of the 31 that we’ve had, to have a non-Anglo Celtic name.”

Penny Wong warned in a lecture Friday that monoculture would leave Australia ”lonely in a dangerous world.”

PARTY ROOM

NATIONAL PARTY GROUNDHOG DAY: The Nationals held a conference at lobbyist hangout Hotel Realm on Saturday and have tabled a bill to repeal Labor’s gun buyback scheme, which starts Nov. 2 in NSW. (That idea won’t make the House or Senate floor.)

The last time the Nationals dug their heels in over gun reform, in January, the Coalition split and Sussan Ley was toppled as Liberal leader six weeks later. But Liberal MPs Playbook spoke to on Sunday see this Nats move as merely irritating, and Angus Taylor declined to comment.

But it is existential for the Nationals. They’re fighting for survival against their former leader Barnaby Joyce, now with One Nation, and don’t appear to have new ideas ready to outflank the insurgent party.

Next stop, NSW election: The ailing Labor government in Victoria balked at joining the gun buyback scheme, fearful of losing their regional strongholds. That brings everything into a NSW focus, which is just where NSW Premier Chris Minns and Albanese want it: “One Nation has said they’re scrapping all of this … so it is on the ballot,” Albanese said Sunday.

ON OUR RADAR: A civil war inside the environmental movement (h/t Nick O’Malley for the deep dive) is going to hit Parliament this week. Officially, the debate is about a new type of carbon offset for native forests, but the fight is really about identity crisis in multiple parties. One plausible outcome is the Nationals, One Nation and Greens teaming up to sink the offset plan in the Senate. That’s meltdown territory for warring Greens factions.

BY THE NUMBERS

PUBLIC SECTOR GRASS IS ALWAYS GREENER

Sen. Jane Hume will be interested in this one. Miriam has uncovered a new public sector work from home impact: A nearly empty new Tax Office HQ. Just seven months into a 15-year lease worth $323 million, the ATO is looking to sub-let part of its glistening new office in Canberra’s parliamentary triangle. Playbook hears the office is deserted, with bureaucrats opting to ditch their expensive ergonomic chairs to work from home instead of trekking to Barton.

Parliamentary triangle? That’s the land that spills out before Parliament House managed by the National Capital Authority. You’ll find many national institutions, government departments and lobby groups there. The area has an irresistible pull for public service leaders wanting to be near to Parliament’s power. Underlings, less so.

“Large”: That’s how one insider describes the 33,500 square meter, six-story development by Doma and Kenyon Investments [video here]. It’s feeling especially cavernous these days.

If you know more about the vibe down in Sydney Avenue, write in. If you’re Tax Commissioner Rob Heferen: also write in.

Media team gymnastics: “ATO’s continued move to modern work practices, including a shift to unallocated workspaces and hybrid arrangements, is now enabling us to achieve greater value for money for the Commonwealth by sharing of office space,” ATO said in a statement.

Prime real estate alert: Foreign Affairs and Trade is telling staff they’ll ditch the R.G. Casey Building to take up their spot in the highly secretive (yet highly visible) National Security Office Precinct, now under construction in the triangle. DFAT’s custom-built, so-called “Taj Mahal” could be back on the market in 2031.

If you’ve ever hoped to work across the road from 5,000 spooks, get in line.

STATE OF THE NATION

CANBERRA VS. WESTERN AUSTRALIA VS. EVERYONE

Albo won’t be going anywhere near the Productivity Commission’s new report urging Canberra to rip up W.A.’s 2018 GST deal (which tripled the share of revenue collected in W.A. that is returned to Perth’s coffers).

Why the report is dead on arrival: Australia might have a productivity crisis, but W.A. delivered Albanese his majority government in 2022, and Labor holds 11 of 16 seats in the state. Premier Roger Cook immediately lashed at “east coast clowns” aiming to “prop up other lazy states.”

How do we know? Aside from the risk of Kerry Stokes and Gina Rinehart-affiliated Seven West Media outlets destroying the PM, Albanese will spend six days in W.A. starting Aug. 23 — there’s no way to conduct that fundraising tour if the GST deal is tinkered with.

But expect a blowup at the National Cabinet: Chris Minns compared W.A. to bullying Gulf States and declared “every other state” wants change.

Tell ’em, they’re dreaming: NDIS advocates could think of a lot of good uses for the $6 billion the GST deal hands back to W.A. each year.

CANBERRA VS. BIG TECH

NO LOVE LOST: If you rolled out of Parliament Thursday evening, you missed a packed day of committee business, including the inquiry grilling Meta, Google, TikTok and Snap over proposed government amendments to teen social media restrictions.

Vibe check: “Our approach has been to disagree, but to commit,” said Meta regional director of policy, Mia Garlick, on the company removing more than 750,000 accounts under the law.

Tech platforms have an incentive to stress this, given the proposed amendments would double maximum penalties for noncompliance.

What’s next: More detailed understanding of what is not working, with Liberal Sen. Sarah Henderson and Greens Sen. Sarah Hanson-Young both pursuing this line of inquiry.

Our public service journalism for the week is this myth-busting guide to the Australian social media laws, courtesy of Miriam Webber.

COMMITTEE COUPLE: Rachel Lord, appearing for YouTube, is married to Liberal Sen. Dave Sharma, who was locked up in another committee room dealing with explosive KPMG evidence around allegations the firm gave “misleading, if not directly deceptive” answers to questions asked by its own lawyer, AFR reported.

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“Should I reconsider my membership of an exclusive club, now that I know they welcome the Russian ambassador for lunch, but tell my guests their $300 sneakers are not welcome? Asking for a Ukrainian friend.”

THE TAPESTRY THAT CAME IN FROM THE COLD: How many art curators and handlers does it take to maintain Arthur Boyd‘s Great Hall Tapestry? Fifteen. The mammoth 20 meter by 9 meter work went into a freezer during Parliament’s winter recess, to kill off bugs making a home in the masterpiece. The little corpses were then gently vacuumed out, and after several days of repairs it was rehung.

AFTER HOURS

DID YOU KNOW? Senior political reporter at The Australian Sarah Ison spent her winter recess performing her standup comedy show “Hot Seat” at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

COMMUNITY CORNER

This is your place to share tips about life and drama in Canberra. WhatsApp 0494 380 487 or email canberraplaybook@politico.com

PRO TIP: You can BYOB to The Kingo (from the Bottle-O out front, $5 corkage). That’s a $60 saving on bar bottle prices for French champagne and Tasmanian sparkling.

WERE YOU AT OZ COMIC-CON? Terrible timing to start Playbook the day AFTER this event. Send pics please.

CHERRY BLOSSOM WATCH: Early Playbook subscriber Gavan Mackenzie already spotted one in Kingston.

COFFEE TIP: Barrio Collective in Braddon is holding its annual sale of the cups and mugs used to serve its microlot coffee. They’re $45 a pop, if handmade pottery and hipster smugness is your thing.

STARTING TODAY: Parliament House’s annual squash tournament kicks off — lasting six weeks. Catch Playbook’s Ryan Heath in the intermediate division.

MOVES, APPOINTMENTS AND PROMOTIONS

Ex-Albo adviser Katie Connolly starts today as Chief Communications Officer at the Clean Energy Council.

Former Albo adviser Tim Christadoulou joins American Chamber of Commerce, as General Manager, Strategic Initiatives and Corporate Affairs.

Wei Tien Sng is moving from Melissa McIntosh MP’s office to Angus Taylor’s team as an advancer.

Canadian Ambassador Julie Sunday returned to Ottawa to join the Privy Council Office.

Catherine Bouris, formerly of POLITICO and Daily Beast, has joined AAP in Sydney.

Moksha Watts is now a board member at Generation Steel, and Paul Myler is now a Board Member at Perth USAsia Centre.

Fiona Ward is now Chief of Staff to Victorian MP Anthony Carbines.

Will Roche has left his role at Canberra Liberals to become Associate at Delta Advisory.

Stephanie Gheller becomes Senior Director, Public Affairs at GRACosway, and Angelica Snowden is now Senior City Reporter at The Age.

ANNIVERSARIES AND BIRTHDAYS

ANU celebrated its 80th birthday Saturday — watch out for an announcement today on who’s replacing former foreign minister Julie Bishop as Chancellor.

Ben Rillo is celebrating 10 years working for Trade Minister Don Farrell.

Happy Birthday for today to Dan Jervis-Bardy, chief political correspondent for Guardian Australia, who’s on paternity leave. Gordon Reid MP (ALP, Robertson) and Madonna celebrated Sunday (hopefully together).

Belated wishes also for Future Fund chair and ex-Treasurer Peter Costello, journalist supreme Laurie Oakes, and Julie-Ann Campbell MP (ALP), who celebrated Friday. Because we can already hear the cries of “what about me!”, a belated clink of the champagne coupe for Christopher Pyne, who turned 59 on Thursday.

CONDOLENCES

Roger Pegrum, former Commonwealth Government Architect; Zhu Rongji, China’s former Premier, who oversaw China’s accession to the WTO in 2001.

It takes a village. Playbook is brought to you by a global team, today including editor Joe Schatz and producers Sophie Blaylock and Emma Cordover, with thanks to Tim Ross, Paul Karp and Emma Dumain.

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Belgium authorities were awaiting crucial air support Sunday to help battle the largest wildfire in the country’s modern history, which has been ablaze since Friday.

More than 250 firefighters and emergency personnel worked through the night in the High Fens nature reserve near the German border to stop the spread of the wildfire, which has scorched 3,000 hectares.

Firefighters said they are relying heavily on aircraft Sunday to bring the blaze under control, with reinforcements arriving from several European countries.

Belgian federal police helicopters and Dutch aircraft were already operating Sunday morning, repeatedly collecting water from a nearby lake. Additional helicopters from the Czech Republic and Sweden were expected to join later in the day after Belgium activated the EU’s Civil Protection Mechanism. Germany and Norway could also provide aerial support, European Commissioner for preparedness and crisis management, Hadja Lahbib, told AFP.

“Thank you to our European partners for the assistance they are providing,” Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever wrote on X.

Europe has been battling wildfires throughout a summer marked by repeated heatwaves and drought, with blazes forcing thousands to evacuate in Croatia, France, Germany, Greece and Spain. Firefighters in France on Sunday continued battling several wildfires, including one that was nearing the Belgian border.

Belgium’s wildfires are tearing through fragile peatlands and pine forests in the High Fens, which were devastated by wildfires during a similar period of heat and drought in 1911. It is Belgium’s largest wildfire since then. No homes have been damaged so far, but residents of two villages have been evacuated and authorities say the fire remains out of control.

Twelve people were killed and dozens more were injured when a bus transporting Catholic pilgrims back to Poland veered off a Hungarian motorway early Sunday.

Police said the bus overturned after coming off the M3 motorway, which connects Hungary’s capital Budapest with the northeastern city of Nyíregyháza, at around 1:00 a.m. Sunday. Officers have reported that the driver may have fallen asleep at the wheel.

The tour group was returning from Medjugorje in Bosnia and Herzegovina, a popular pilgrimage site for Catholics where multiple visions of the Virgin Mary have been reported.

“I spoke on the phone with the Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk. I expressed my condolences to the Polish people for the terrible night bus accident,” said Hungarian Prime Minister Péter Magyar on Facebook.

Fifty-seven passengers and two drivers were on the bus, according to Hungarian news agency MTI reports. Emergency services had attempted to lift the rear axle of the 24-ton bus to remove the people trapped underneath before cranes arrived to lift the entire vehicle, the MTI report added.

Hungarian Interior Minister Gábor Pósfai confirmed that the death toll stood at 12, with several of the injured in serious condition, while the driver was taken into custody.

A Spanish F-18 fighter jet on a NATO air-policing mission Sunday shot down a drone that had illegally entered Romanian airspace.

The drone was detected by radar about 24 kilometers north of the eastern city of Galați after entering Romania from Moldova. Having established radar contact, the fighter jet was authorized to shoot it down at 5:01 a.m. Authorities said debris from the destroyed aircraft had fallen in an uninhabited area between two villages.

Martin O’Donnell, spokesperson for NATO operation headquarters, said additional details regarding Sunday’s incident remained under investigation but that the drone “appears to be Russian.”

“The Ministry of National Defence is constantly monitoring the situation and informs in real time the allied structures about such events,” the ministry added in a statement.

It is the fourth drone shot down by NATO over Romania since the beginning of 2026. In July, Romanian F-16s downed three Russian drones that breached the country’s airspace — the first such interceptions after dozens of incursions since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In May, a Russian drone crashed into an apartment building in Galați, injuring two people.

Meanwhile, Russia and Ukraine traded strikes over the weekend. Russian forces launched missile and drone attacks on Kyiv early Sunday, sparking fires in at least two districts and injuring three people, according to the city’s military administration.

Ukrainian drones also struck the Moscow region overnight in what the regional governor Andrei Vorobyov described as one of the largest attacks to target the area, killing an 83-year-old man.

Hungary is sinking two barges to ensure a key nuclear power plant stays online, Prime Minister Péter Magyar said Saturday.

Europe’s summer of extreme heat has caused the Danube’s water level to hit record lows, affecting power production at the Paks nuclear plant. Nuclear power stations are typically built by rivers and along coastlines so they can use water to cool down reactors.

Hungarian authorities are sinking the two barges to raise water levels so Paks, which provides the country with more than a third of its electricity, can continue to operate normally. The sinking began Saturday morning and Hungarian media are quoting the prime minister saying the water level at the plant has risen by 1 centimeter.

Magyar said on X that the current water level near Hungary’s only nuclear energy facility is 122 cm lower than normal and it is projected to drop below 132 cm on Monday, which would force one of the plant’s two turbines to shut down.

On Wednesday, Magyar announced that they would be building a riverbed sill with 150,000 cubic meters of stone and was considering sinking the two 80-meter barges. A sill is an underwater dam meant to slow down the current and raise water levels. Hungary’s Defense Ministry has assigned 100 troops to work around the clock on the project, the prime minister said on X.

Nuclear energy facilities across Europe have been affected by this summer’s droughts and soaring temperatures. Romania shut down a nuclear power plant earlier this week due to the Danube’s water levels.

France — one of Europe’s biggest producers of nuclear power — has seen its fleet of nuclear power plants affected throughout the summer. Le Monde reported authorities had to shut down six of the country’s 57 nuclear reactors as yet another heat wave broiled much of the country. Earlier in the week, a climate change-fueled jellyfish invasion forced workers to bring parts of a different plant offline.

Magyar has also cast doubt on completing an expansion of the Paks plant by a Russian state-owned firm in a deal signed by Magyar’s predecessor, the Kremlin-friendly Viktor Orbàn, citing the water issue.