World

Friday

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Are the Democrats paralysed?

35 min listen

The first phase of Trump’s presidency has been a whirlwind of news. The President signed a succession of executive orders, which overwhelmed and confused the Democratic Party with the amount of ‘energy in the executive’. But there are signs of life, particularly in opposition to Trump’s attempts to freeze federal grants and loans. What’s going on? Are the Democrats finding their feet? To discuss, Freddy is joined by Damon Linker, senior lecturer in political science at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of the Notes from the Middle Ground substack.

Philip Patrick Philip Patrick

Japan’s smoking ban is a sham

The Japanese city of Osaka has banned smoking on the streets in an apparent effort to smarten up the city and make it more ‘visitor-friendly’ ahead of this year’s World Expo, which begins in April. Smoking had been prohibited in six zones, including around the central station prior to the announcement. But on Monday, all public streets, buildings, parks and plazas in the city became smoke free. Smoking and vaping in all but the smallest eateries has been banned too, though designated smoking rooms will still be permitted. The fact that the smoking ban is getting significantly more coverage than the Expo itself highlights the difficulties organisers have had in rousing

Thursday

Kunwar Khuldune Shahid

Who killed Salwan Momika, the Iraqi who burned a Quran?

Salwan Momika, the Iraqi man who spearheaded the Quran burning protest in Sweden, was shot dead today. Five men have been arrested for the murder, which was committed in front of an online audience, with the victim livestreaming on TikTok at the time of his killing. While police in Stockholm haven’t formally announced the motive for the crime, Momika isn’t the first critic of Islam to have been brutally murdered in Europe – and I expect he won’t be the last. Momika had repeatedly received threats, from radical Muslims and Islamic countries alike, following the 2023 Quran burning demonstration, during which he had been attacked. He was initially provided with protection, but local authorities revoked it after a

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Why are ‘anti-racists’ silent about Arbel Yehud’s terrible ordeal?

Watching Arbel Yehud being freed in Gaza today, I thought to myself: this is what it must have been like at Salem. Here we had a diminutive woman being paraded through a baying mob of hollering men. They barked religious slogans at her. They shoved and jostled to get a better view of the marked woman. They thrust their mobile phones in her face to capture her terror for posterity. They’ll no doubt share the clips. ‘Look! See how scared she was!’ Mercifully, Ms Yehud was being marched, not to the gallows, but to liberty. She was kidnapped from her home in Kibbutz Nir Oz during the Hamas-led pogrom of

Tatyana Kekic

Is Serbia heading for its 1968 moment?

Serbia has been gripped by months of student protests in response to a tragic accident at Novi Sad railway station in November 2024, when the collapse of a concrete canopy roof claimed 15 lives. The protests have come to resemble a sort of May ’68 moment. Not in the sense that they are occurring in the same global context of cultural change, social liberation and anti-war activism. The demands of the protesters today are much narrower. But the students’ inventive tactics, grassroots organising, daily blockades and sit-ins at universities invite such comparisons. The president offered his condolences for the dog Donna, who was run over during a protest What began

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

The many questions of the Washington plane crash

‘What a terrible night this has been,’ writes President Donald Trump on his Truth Social platform. ‘God bless you all!’ Trump also expressed his bafflement as to how a Black Hawk military helicopter, operating out of Fort Belvoir in Virginia, managed to collide with American Eagle Flight 5342, a commercial passenger plane carrying 64 passengers, directly over the Potomac river as the aircraft came into land at Reagan National Airport in Washington, DC.  The airplane was on a perfect and routine line of approach to the airport. The helicopter was going straight at the airplane for an extended period of time. It is a CLEAR NIGHT, the lights on the plane were

Lisa Haseldine Lisa Haseldine

Friedrich Merz turns up the heat on Germany’s migration debate

Last night, Friedrich Merz, leader of the opposition and the man most likely to become the Germany’s next chancellor, came one step closer to ending freedom of movement into the country. In a tense vote in the Bundestag, Merz and his conservative CDU party managed to pass a motion designed force the government of Chancellor Olaf Scholz to tackle illegal migration head on by just three votes. Controversially, they were only able to win it with the help of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party. Merz’s motion was a political gamble. Designed to drive a wedge between his party and the centre-left SPD and Green parties in particular, Merz’s

Owen Matthews

Is Europe about to switch Nord Stream back on?

Could Gazprom’s Nord Stream undersea gas pipelines, partially destroyed by saboteurs in September 2022, eventually be reopened? This week, Denmark’s energy agency authorised Nord Stream 2 AG – the Russian-owned company that operates the pipelines – to begin work capping the severed ends of the three destroyed pipelines. That will be the first step to restoring the link that before Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine used to supply up to a 40 per cent of Germany’s gas.   The move comes just days after Alice Weidel, leader of Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland party or AfD, told a party conference in Riesa that ‘we will put Nord Stream back into operation, you can

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

How to solve a problem like the Chagos Islands

Very soon – as soon as the mutual courtesies now being exchanged between the new American President and his British counterpart are over – our government is likely to be at loggerheads with Donald Trump over our plan to cede the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), the Chagos archipelago, to Mauritius, then take out a long and expensive lease on the island of Diego Garcia so we can secure the operational status of our base there. This accommodates an American base of great importance to US defence. The agreement with the new Mauritian government has yet to be signed. It has been widely criticised here in the United Kingdom as

The Spectator

DeepSeek’s cheap information comes at a high price for the West

This week, Chinese technology has shown the West the challenge it faces – ruthless, implacable and impossible to ignore. The unveiling of the Chinese artificial intelligence model DeepSeek has not only disrupted the business models of America’s tech behemoths; it has also shown that, in the race to develop the tools for economic hegemony, Beijing is set on supremacy. The launch of DeepSeek came just days before the CIA’s conclusion that, on the balance of probabilities, the Covid virus was incubated in a Wuhan lab – a man-made killer, not a product of nature’s evolutionary mischief. China stands revealed as a power bent on using science to secure not human

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: DeepSeek, Duke of Sussex’s damages and an iceberg the size of Cornwall

Home The government would invest 2.6 per cent of GDP a year to create growth, Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said in a speech. Standing behind a placard reading ‘Kickstart economic growth’, she kept repeating the word ‘growth’. Welfare and the visa system would be reformed. A third runway at Heathrow would bring 100,000 jobs. But net zero, she said, was the ‘industrial opportunity of the 21st century’. Earlier she had said that the government’s own Finance Bill implementing October’s Budget would be amended to soften the effects of its tax measures against non-domiciled residents. The Ministry of Defence ordered £9 billion worth of nuclear submarine reactors from

Wednesday

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Is AI the new arms race?

22 min listen

This week, a Chinese-made AI model called DeepSeek shot to the top of the Apple Store downloads – it stunned investors and sunk some tech stock. DeepSeek claims it was built at a fraction of the cost of American leading models. Chip-making giant Nvidia shed almost £482bn of its market value as a result.  What is DeepSeek, and what does it have to do with US-China relations? Freddy Gray is joined by Joe Weisenthal to explain exactly what’s happened with the AI platform DeepSeek, why it has sparked chaos in the US markets, and how it raises questions about the future of AI globally.

Jonathan Spyer

Trump has exposed the hypocrisy of Gaza’s allies

US President Donald Trump has reiterated his call for Egypt and Jordan to accept residents of Gaza into their territory, as part of arrangements to end the current war with Israel. Further explaining his idea on Monday, the President said that he would ‘like to get [Gazans] living in an area where they can live without disruption and revolution and violence so much’.  It’s difficult to see anything coming of this idea. Both Egypt and Jordan have already, predictably, rejected it absolutely. Hamas, which is currently re-establishing itself as the de facto ruler of the Gaza Strip, would obviously act to prevent any attempt to implement it.   The politics of

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Like the Louvre, Macron’s presidency is falling apart

Emmanuel Macron has promised to return the Louvre to its former glory in an ambitious renovation project that is forecast to cost between €700 and €800 million (£586 and £670 million). The French president outlined details of what he called his ‘New Renaissance’ project on Tuesday as he stood in front of the Mona Lisa. As part of the revamp, Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece will have its own room and visitors will pay for the privilege of seeing the enigmatic smile. Other initiatives include a second entrance – to ease the current congestion of 30,000 visitors a day – and a new entrance fee from next January that will require

James Hanson

Hollywood luvvies have become Donald Trump’s useful idiots

In events that were foreseeable to anyone outside America’s cultural elite, the actress and popstar Selena Gomez is facing an online backlash to her now-deleted Instagram post decrying Donald Trump’s immigration policy. The offending video featured a sobbing Selena, who has Mexican heritage, wailing into her phone camera that ‘all my people are being attacked’ and that ‘I wish I could do something but I can’t’. It was a performance of such histrionic hamminess it’s little wonder Miss Gomez missed out on an Oscar nod for Emilia Perez. The reaction has been swift and unforgiving. Many were quick to point out that, contrary to Gomez’s assumptions, Trump’s plan to deport unlawful

Tuesday

Jonathan Sacerdoti

Is it time to take Trump’s Gaza resettlement plan seriously?

As Donald Trump toys with the audacious idea of relocating Gaza’s population – whether to neighbouring Jordan and Egypt, or even as far afield as Albania and Canada – he touches on one of history’s most contentious and emotionally charged issues: the relocation of peoples. Resettling large populations is never easy. History is full of cautionary tales The concept carries the heavy weight of historical precedent, fraught with both tragedy and necessity. Refugees, displaced by war or persecution, have long been subject to the capricious winds of political interest and international indifference. The Jewish people, exiled and scattered for centuries, endured persecution before reclaiming sovereignty in Israel. Refugee crises in

Svitlana Morenets Svitlana Morenets

Why Putin is feeling more confident

At a recent closed-door session in Ukraine’s parliament, Kyrylo Budanov, the country’s spy chief, was asked how much longer Ukraine could hold on. His answer reportedly stunned the room: ‘If there are no serious negotiations by summer, very dangerous processes could begin, threatening Ukraine’s very existence.’ Ukraine’s military intelligence rushed to deny the statement, but his warning rings true. Vladimir Putin has every reason to believe he can still break Ukraine into submission later in the year, and plans to stall any peace settlement in the upcoming talks with Donald Trump. Russian troops are advancing faster than they did in 2022. Last year, they captured more than 1,600 square miles

Sam Olsen

How DeepSeek can help Britain

Sometimes a new technology comes along that immediately shakes the world. The release this week of the new Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) tool, DeepSeek-R1, is one such moment. Despite Washington’s efforts to restrict Beijing’s development of AI, including an export ban on advanced microchips, researchers in China have created an AI tool that not only exceeds the performance of American AI models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, but does so at a fraction of the cost. If we are to believe the hype, it took just $6 million (£5 million) to build DeekSeep-R1, compared to more than $100 million (£80 million) for ChatGPT. This is the equivalent of building the fastest Formula

Monday

Michael Simmons Michael Simmons

How to outsmart DeepSeek

For nearly a decade, the Chinese Communist Party has censored Winnie the Pooh, owing to internet memes comparing the slightly rotund President Xi Jinping to the cheerful yellow bear. So, what happens if you ask China’s new budget AI chatbot, DeepSeek, about him? Computer says no. But how rigorous were DeepSeek’s creators?  When we asked our first question, DeepSeek began to answer – only for its censorship to activate, overwriting the reply with an anodyne attempt to change the subject. Early adopters, however, had discovered a loophole: by replacing certain letters with numbers (e.g., A with 4, E with 3), users could bypass some of the restrictions. Here’s what happened

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

How is round one of Trump’s deportations plan going?

33 min listen

Colombia has agreed to accept military aircraft carrying deported migrants from the US – avoiding a trade war between the two countries. Donald Trump had threatened sanctions on Colombia to punish it for initially refusing military flights following a rapid immigration crackdown. What are the challenges of deportation flights, and what’s Trump’s vision for Latin America? Freddy Gray is joined by Todd Bensman, Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, and author of ‘Overrun’.