Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

US President Donald Trump confronted his South African counterpart, Cyril Ramaphosa, over widely discredited claims of a white genocide in South Africa, during an Oval Office meeting on Wednesday. Mr Trump said that white farmers are “fleeing South Africa”, playing footage to the room showing people chanting “kill the Boer, kill the farmer”. Responding, Mr…

A number of countries have condemned the Israeli military’s actions after troops fired warning shots in the vicinity of a diplomatic delegation on a visit to the occupied West Bank. The Israeli military accused the group of straying from an approved route and said warning shots were fired into the air “to distance them away”.…

The US has accepted a plane from Qatar, a gift that sparked criticism including from some of President Trump’s biggest supporters. “The secretary of defense has accepted a Boeing 747 from Qatar in accordance with all federal rules and regulations,” Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement on Wednesday. The plane will need…

Italy has approved a law that tightens the rules for people with Italian heritage to get passports. Previously, anyone with an Italian ancestor who lived after 17 March, 1861 – when the Kingdom of Italy was created – qualified to be a citizen under the ‘jus sanguinis’, or descendent blood line law. Under the amended…

The UK has exposed what it says is a “malicious cyber campaign” targeting multiple organisations, including those involved in delivering foreign assistance to Ukraine After a joint investigation with allies including the US, Germany and France, the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) said a Russian military unit had been targeting both public and private…

Access to the social media platform X has been restricted in Tanzania after some official accounts of government and private institutions were targeted by hackers. On Tuesday, the official police account was compromised, with sexually explicit material and false information that the president had died being posted. The police dissociated itself from the information and…

A former leading Ukrainian official has been shot dead outside an American school in the Spanish capital Madrid, reports say. The 51-year-old man, named by Ukrainian and Spanish sources as Andriy Portnov, had just dropped his children off at the school in the Pozuelo de Alarcón area of the city, reports say. At least one…

US singer Chris Brown has been freed on bail by a court in London after being charged with inflicting an “unprovoked attack” in a nightclub in 2023. The Grammy-winning 36-year-old star, who has not yet been asked to enter a plea in the case, is able to begin his world tour next month as planned…

The LTA said in 2024 there were about 1,300 clay-courts in Great Britain. That is around 5% of the 23,000 total number of courts. In contrast, about 60% of courts in Spain – one of the leading nations on the surface – are clay. The National Tennis Centre has four clay courts, external and the…

Fragments of West Nile virus have been detected in UK mosquitoes for the first time, the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) said. A research programme by the UKHSA and the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA) found the genetic material in mosquitoes collected in Britain in 2023. West Nile virus is a vector borne disease…