World

Liberation Day? Pshaw. President Trump may be gloating about imposing sweeping tariffs on America’s allies and adversaries abroad, but he is beginning to face blowback at home for his strange farrago of policies that are upending the federal government and threatening to plunge America into a self-induced recession. First Senator Cory Booker raised the flagging spirits of Democrats by holding a 25-hour speech denouncing all things Trump, thereby setting a record for the longest floor speech in Senate history. Next, in two key special congressional races in Florida, Democrats did not win but narrowed the gap sufficiently in red districts to cause palpitations among Republican politicians heading into the midterm

Ever since Donald Trump’s now-infamous phone conversation with Vladimir Putin last month, Russia has been buzzing with speculation that Western companies which left the country after the 2022 invasion, especially US ones, will be returning. For some, this is a dream, for others a nightmare. Either way, it seems to be an overblown prospect fuelled by a refusal to accept just how toxic the Russian market will be for the foreseeable future. Under the headline ‘Now Hello Again? How American Companies Will Return to Russia,’ the popular tabloid Moskovsky Komsomolets yesterday confidently asserted that ‘American business wants to return to Russia, but now the game will be played by Russian rules’.

The US-led coalition to help Ukraine was always more than just a production line of arms deliveries to the Kyiv government. Much of what has been going on over the last three years has been secret: a covert collaboration between Ukraine and the West involving commanders at the highest level, and special forces out of uniform. Now the full extent of the extraordinary partnership between Ukraine and the West has been revealed after a year-long investigation by Adam Entous, a reporter at the New York Times. While the sheer detail of the covert meetings and level of high-powered cooperation provides an insight for the first time into the extent of the

‘Every single political group, every single national delegation, has violated the same rule that Ms. Le Pen did – the employment of staff to work on non-EP related affairs.’ That was the reaction of Connor Allen, a former Parliamentary Assistant in the European Parliament, following Marine Le Pen’s disqualification from the French presidential race. Allen is no fringe partisan. He’s worked for multiple MEPs across the aisle and was recently named in Politico’s ‘Power 40 – Brussels Class of 2023.’ His comment lifts the lid on something Brussels insiders have always known: that the rule Le Pen has been convicted under isn’t just bureaucratic – it’s universally ignored.  Let’s be clear:

War in Ukraine, and the arrival of Donald Trump in the White House, is forcing Europeans to prioritise defence. Keir Starmer has slashed Britain’s aid budget to pay for an increase in defence spending to 2.5 per cent of national income by 2027. But how should the UK use that uplift in order to keep itself safe? The challenge posed by the Northern Fleet is – alongside Norway – essentially the UK’s problem to deal with Many of the core assumptions which have underpinned British strategy for decades are being called into question. Amid the discussions centred on what a ‘Nato first’ policy for the UK looks like, there is

Myanmar, or Burma as it used to be known, has experienced far more than its fair share of tragedy over the past 75 years or more. The death and destruction caused by yesterday’s 7.7-magnitude earthquake is the latest in a litany of suffering which this beautiful but benighted South-East Asian nation has endured. I have visited the areas close to the epicentre of the earthquake many times in the past. I have been in Sagaing, Mandalay and the capital, Naypyidaw. The scenes of the devastation there are heartbreaking, because they are scenes of devastation affecting places and people I know well. Roads, bridges and buildings have been destroyed in a

Hundreds of people are feared dead after a 7.7-magnitude quake struck Myanmar. Tremors from the quake, which had its epicentre near Mandalay, caused devastation across Southeast Asia, including in Bangkok. Over 80 construction workers are missing in the Thai capital after a 30-storey building that was under construction collapsed. Search and rescue teams are scrambling to locate those who are trapped under the rubble. Over 80 construction workers are missing in the Thai capital In Myanmar, a country already facing a brutal civil war that has claimed thousands of lives, buildings have collapsed and hundreds of people are missing. The junta has declared a state of emergency in six regions,