World

Sunday

Joe Bedell-Brill

Sunday shows round-up: terror in Australia

As Trevor Phillips began his Sky News show this morning, news broke of a mass shooting at Bondi beach in Sydney, where over a thousand people had gathered to celebrate Hanukkah. New South Wales Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon said at least 11 had been killed, with 29 injured. State premier Chris Minns said the attack was ‘designed to target Sydney’s Jewish community.’ One of the suspected gunmen is dead, another is in a critical condition. Police are investigating if a possible third gunman was involved. Lanyon said the violence was not ‘our way of life’ and called for calm in the community. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said an ‘act

Terry Barnes

Australia must be purged of its festering anti-Semitism

It breaks my heart to write this piece. Today, the resurgence of anti-Semitism that has percolated and festered in Australia for the last two years has come to a murderous, horrific climax. In a balmy early summer evening a few hours ago, Sydney’s Bondi beach was the scene of appalling carnage, At least 11 people are dead, and more than two dozen wounded, including two police officers. One of the gunmen is also now dead. Fanatics, zealots and political activists who preach or abet Jew hatred must be held to account and punished – not, as they have been, treated by the authorities with kid gloves ‘This attack was designed

Jonathan Sacerdoti

For Jews, the Bondi beach shooting is grimly recognisable

The attack at Bondi beach during a Hanukkah celebration, killing nine, has sent a fresh wave of horror through the Jewish diaspora. What might once have been regarded as unthinkable – a targeted assault on a Jewish gathering in the heart of a peaceful, democratic society – has now become grimly recognisable. It must be placed starkly within the context of a global surge in antisemitic violence. What might once have been regarded as unthinkable has now become grimly recognisable To grasp the scale of what is unfolding, one must look beyond Bondi. Australia has seen an alarming escalation of anti-Jewish violence throughout 2025. From the firebombing of the Adass

Philip Patrick

The strange world of ‘2D exclusive’ Japanese women

For those trying to understand Japan’s plummeting birthrate – which some fear could eventually lead to Japanese people ceasing to exist – evidence of where the problem might lie emerged this week. Old tweets from Japan’s new minister of state for economic security, Kimi Onoda, have surfaced in which the 43 year-old describes herself as ‘2D exclusive’. For the unenlightened, this means this very eligible young woman only forms romantic attachments with animated characters.  Onoda is far from alone is being smitten with 2D characters and untempted by the real thing In the tweets Onoda explained that human romance is ‘uncomfortable’ and that her affection for ‘2D men’ leaves her no

Niko Vorobyov

The long, awful shadow of the siege of Sarajevo

They call them the roses of Sarajevo: scars ripping through the concrete and painted red, marking where an artillery round claimed a life during the longest siege of modern history – a full three-and-a-half years, longer than even the siege of Leningrad.  From May 1992 until December 1995, an average of 329 shells struck the Bosnian capital each day, while snipers took aim at passers-by from vantage points on the mountains surrounding the city. More than 11,000 lives were lost in the siege, including 1,600 children, a memorial to whom now stands in a park. A closer look reveals some of the lost etched into the memorial are simply listed

Saturday

Druin Burch

How terror triumphed at the Christmas market

Mulled wine and Heckler & Koch assault rifles don’t belong together, except in Christmas films like Die Hard. Festive visitors to Christmas markets in Berlin, London or Strasbourg this year will notice the pairing all the same. Concrete blocks surround fairy lights, and the scent of cloves and cinnamon wafts over armed police carrying submachine guns. Concrete blocks surround fairy lights, and the scent of cloves and cinnamon wafts over armed police carrying submachine guns Since an Islamist drove a lorry into the Breitscheidplatz market in Berlin in December 2016, killing twelve and injuring dozens, we deck the halls with blast protection. There are still tacky wooden chalets selling sausages, but

Friday

Owen Matthews

The war in Ukraine is reaching its endgame

Painfully and chaotically, the outline of the peace deal that will eventually end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is emerging as the US leans on Kyiv to abandon key red lines. It may still be months before the guns finally fall silent. But one by one various roadblocks to an eventual agreement are falling away. Crucially, this week Volodymyr Zelensky conceded that his country needed new presidential and parliamentary elections. Moreover, for the first time, he floated the possibility that a Ukrainian military withdrawal from Donbas could be put to a national referendum.  ‘The Ukrainian people must answer the territorial question,’ Zelensky told reporters on Thursday. ‘I say clearly: yes, I

Gavin Mortimer

Stopping the boats will be harder than Jordan Bardella thinks

France’s Jordan Bardella has promised to stop the boats. Now where have we heard that before? The president of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally made his boast on a day trip to London on Tuesday. After lunching with Reform UK’s Nigel Farage, the 30-year-old outlined his strategy for curtailing the passage of illegal immigrants between France and England. ‘My ambition is to make France the least attractive country for mass immigration in Europe,’ explained Bardella. ‘From there, if it is no longer possible to cross, then there will be no one left in Calais.’ Bardella said he will make France unattractive for migrants by abolishing the right of asylum, expelling

Henry Donovan

When will Europe's leaders wake up to the Russian threat?

Europe’s leaders flocked to London this week, determined to show the world a united front. Like school boys at a bus stop, Ukraine’s president Zelensky stood beside Keir Starmer, German chancellor Friedrich Merz and French leader Emmanuel Macron in a carefully staged tableau of Western resolve. It was designed to send a message to Moscow: Europe is ready. Yet the spectacle only highlighted the uncomfortable truth: Europe talks like a military power, but behaves like a political debating society. The continent insists it has woken up to the new reality, yet it still refuses to build the armies required to confront it. Europe talks like a military power, but behaves

Thursday

A.S.H. Smyth

The charming side of elections in the Falklands

It’s election time in the Falklands, where every four years we choose eight members of the Islands’ legislative assembly. They say you don’t want to know how laws or sausages are made. But the way such a far-flung and tiny parliament is put together is actually pretty interesting. In the Falklands there are only two constituencies. Stanley has five seats, with 15 candidates this year and 1,590 registered voters. ‘Camp’ (the rest of the Falklands, including any ‘outer’ islands big enough to have human inhabitants) has three seats and only four candidates, with 239 registered voters. Camp voting is achieved by the rather charming solution of the polling booth coming

Caleb Quinley

Myanmar's junta has stooped to a new low

Myanmar’s junta has once again shown its true self: calculated, despicable, and violently unrestrained. Last night, warplanes dropped two 500-pound bombs onto a crowded hospital in Rakhine State. The blast tore through the building with surgical cruelty, sending glass and metal through wards where patients slept. Dozens were killed instantly; others bled out in the darkness as the hospital collapsed around them. Many of the victims were children and infants. This wasn’t a tragic misfire Many of the victims were children and infants. This wasn’t a tragic misfire, nor a reaction to combat nearby. It was a targeted strike: planned, ordered, and executed in the dead of night. The generals

The Spectator

Portrait of the year: Trump's tariffs, the definition of biological sex and the fall of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor

January Downing Street said Rachel Reeves would remain in her role as Chancellor of the Exchequer ‘for the whole of this parliament’. She made a speech standing behind a placard saying: ‘Kickstart economic growth.’ Axel Rudakubana, 18, was sentenced to at least 52 years in prison for the murder of three girls in a knife attack at Southport. Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, announced a ‘rapid audit’ of grooming gangs by Baroness Casey of Blackstock. Wildfires raged around Los Angeles. Luke Littler, 17, became world darts champion. The aftermath of the Palisades and Eaton fires in California (Mario Tama/Getty Images) February President Donald Trump of the United States and the

Ben Shapiro

Don't listen to those who tell you America is over

What has gone wrong for Americans? To listen to an increasing number of politicians and pundits on both sides, from Tucker Carlson to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, from Nick Fuentes to Zohran Mamdani, the answer seems to be: everything. Americans are unable to get a job; to afford the necessities of life; to get married or have children; to find religious meaning or form friendships. And all of this can be laid at the feet of corrupt institutions and a corrupt system. This conspiracy-tinged vitriolic take on the American system is a lie. Yet it contains a grain of truth. Our institutions have been led self-servingly by a coterie who disdain American

Joan Collins

LA lacks London’s Christmas spirit

‘Never again!’ I sigh every 6 January, as I pack away the abundance of Christmas decorations and baubles lovingly collected over the decades. ‘It’s too much!’ I moan to Percy. ‘Let’s go to a hot island next year and get away from it all…’ But I never do, because I just love Christmas. Every year in early November I eagerly unpack multiple boxes tenderly packed two years earlier, and the reason is because we like to spend Christmas in London one year and in LA the next, as we love both cities. I have quite a lot of extended family in each, so we know that celebrating in either one

Avi Loeb

The scientific case for the existence of intelligent alien life

The foundation of science is based on the humility to learn, not the arrogance of expertise. When comet experts argued that the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS must be a familiar water-rich comet as soon as it was discovered in July, they behaved like artificial intelligence systems: only able to reflect the data sets they were trained on. For decades, the data set that established comet expertise largely comprised icy rocks in the solar system. My counterpoint is simple: humanity launched technological objects into space, so we must conclude that alien life forms could do the same. This possibility must be added to the training data set of comet experts when studying

William Atkinson, Lara Brown and John Power

‘I’ve been allergic to AI for a long time’: an interview with Peter Thiel

Peter Thiel has been described variously as ‘America’s leading public intellectual’, the ‘architect of Silicon Valley’s contemporary ethos’ or as an ‘incoherent and alarmingly super-nationalistic’ malevolent force. The PayPal and Palantir founder, a prominent early supporter of Donald Trump, is one of the world’s richest and most influential men. Throughout his career, his principal concern has always been the future, so when The Spectator asked to interview him, he wanted to talk to young people. To that effect, three young members of the editorial team were sent to Los Angeles to meet him. What follows is an edited transcript of their conversation. WILLIAM ATKINSON: Following Zohran Mamdani’s victory in New

Wednesday

Philip Patrick

How an Iran-Egypt Pride match threw the World Cup into disarray

Fifa looks set to face its first major scandal of the 2026 World Cup – if you don’t count the exorbitant cost of the tickets, that is. The Egyptian FA has made a formal request for the cancellation of an LGBTQ+ celebration planned to take place at their Group G game against Iran on 26 June in Seattle. The game roughly coincides with the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots of 1969. The Seattle Pride match committee are planning to combine celebrations of the anniversary with the game.   The game between Iran and Egypt will be the first Pride match in World Cup history A Pride match or Pride night

Patrick West

Pantone’s 'colour of the year' isn't racist

For those of you dreaming of a white Christmas, here’s some advice: keep your thoughts to yourselves. Or at least select carefully who you share such sentiments with. That’s because there are some people today who even find the concept ‘white’ offensive and unacceptable. For those of you dreaming of a white Christmas, here’s some advice: keep your thoughts to yourselves Pantone has nominated a shade of white – ‘Cloud Dancer’ – as its 2026 ‘Colour of the Year’, describing it as ‘a symbol of calming influence in a frenetic society’. That alone would seem unremarkable, seeming to be just one of those harmless and inane corporate publicity ruses that

Alexander Horne

Keir Starmer's call for ECHR reform is a risky gamble

Ahead of a Council of Europe summit in Strasbourg today to discuss the future scope of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), Keir Starmer has called for ‘practical action’ to fix the asylum system and deal with irregular migration. In a joint letter with the Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, Starmer argued that ‘modernisation’ of the ECHR is essential and that the Convention system needs to ‘evolve to reflect the challenges of the 21st century’. The two leaders acknowledged that responsible progressive governments need to ‘control our borders’ in order to ‘protect our democracies’. This is a tacit admission that Labour is concerned that Conservative and Reform UK proposals