World

Friday

Terry Barnes

Why Australia's sharks keep on targeting tourists

Thursday dawned bright and warm over the beaches of northern New South Wales. It was a perfect morning to enjoy sun, surf and sand. One young couple, tourists escaping the Swiss alpine autumn, couldn’t resist the temptation of a 6 a.m. swim at the remote Kylies Beach in Crowdy Bay National Park, a beautiful and rugged natural coastal haven, accessible only by dirt track. The holidaymakers expected a refreshing dip in sun-dappled waves, and it now appears they took to the water to film dolphins with their underwater camera. Instead, death and tragedy found them. Without warning, the pair were attacked by a three-metre bull shark and savaged brutally before

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: a shambolic Budget, Ukrainian plan and justice overhaul  

Home Before Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, delivered the Budget, the Office for Budget Responsibility accidentally released its contents. She will increase the tax take to an all-time high of 38 per cent of GDP in 2030-31. She froze tax thresholds until the end of 2030-31 and introduced a council tax surcharge on properties worth over £2 million from 2028. She scrapped the two-child benefit cap. She froze fuel duty for only another five months but brought in a tax of 3p per mile on electric vehicles. The amount that can be added annually tax-free to a cash Isa was reduced from £20,000 to £12,000 (except for over-65s)

Tuesday

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Why is it left to Trump to highlight the persecution of Christians in Nigeria?

20 min listen

Fr Benedict Kiely, founder of nasarean.org, and Freddy Gray join Damian Thompson to discuss the persecution of Christians which has reached new and terrifying levels. Since this podcast was recorded last Friday, we have had the further news that over 300 children and staff were abducted from a Christian school – while around 50 of the children have since managed to escape, the rest remain missing and a local Bishop has criticised the Nigeria government for its failure to act. Over 185,000 Christians are estimated to have been killed in Nigeria in the past 15 years – so why has it taken the efforts of President Trump to push this

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

What's going on with Marjorie Taylor Greene?

22 min listen

Freddy Gray speaks to the Washington correspondent for Vanity Fair Aidan McLaughlin about his interview with Marjorie Taylor Greene. The Congresswoman, who was formerly a MAGA loyalist, announced her resignation having fallen out with President Donald Trump. Freddy and Aidan discuss the fallout, her unpredictable views on current issues & why the media loves a political convert.

Kunwar Khuldune Shahid

Nigeria's mass school abduction is its worst yet – but the West doesn't seem to care

The kidnapping of over 300 students and teachers from a Catholic school by armed men in the Papiri area of central Nigeria is one of the worst mass abductions the country has ever witnessed. The horrifying incident on Friday is far from isolated: more than 2,500 students have been taken in at least 70 raids on schools in the last decade. The St Mary’s School attack came in the same week that gunmen killed a teacher and abducted 25 students from a girls’ secondary school in Nigeria’s Kebbi State. More than 2,500 students have been taken in at least 70 raids on schools in the last decade While no one

James Tidmarsh

The report that lays bare France’s Islamist networks

Bruno Retailleau, France’s former interior minister, has with his Senate group just published the toughest report on Islamism in a generation. They warn that Islamist networks have taken hold of entire swathes of French public life – from schools and sports clubs to student housing, neighbourhoods and councils. In the report, 29 Republican senators set out what they describe as a coordinated effort by Islamist networks to impose parallel norms and bypass republican authority. They argue that only urgent, hard-hitting measures can halt the advance and are calling for banning the hijab for girls under 16, prohibiting fasting for minors, enforcing strict neutrality in sport and local government, cutting foreign

Yossi Melman

Could Israel bring back the death penalty for terrorists?

For years, there was a broad consensus in Israel that there was no benefit to reintroducing the death penalty. But now, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is reportedly considering supporting a bill which would bring back capital punishment for convicted terrorists. The bill, which has passed its first reading in the Knesset, would introduce the death penalty for those who murder Jews – specifically, Palestinian terrorists. It would not apply to Jews who commit acts of terrorism and murder Palestinians. And it would not apply if Israeli Arabs, who are full citizens, are murdered. The bill, which has passed its first reading in the Knesset, would introduce the death penalty for

Monday

Jacob Heilbrunn

Elon Musk's Doge was a damp squib

Doge has been Doge’d. Elon Musk’s once fearsome US Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) has been shut down eight months before its contract officially ends in July 2026. What was supposed to be an organisation that exploded traditional ways of running the federal government has turned into a damp squib. Doge was established by President Trump on the first day of his second term in office. Headed by Tesla chief Musk and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy (who resigned early on to run for governor of Ohio), it struck the kind of fear into government bureaucrats that a visit from the Red Guards might instill during Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Musk’s minions rampaged

Terry Barnes

How a burka brought bedlam to Australia’s parliament

Australia’s parliament is a curious place when it comes to its dress code. Suits without ties: frowned upon. Dresses made from the national flag: absolutely not allowed. Keffiyehs in solidarity with the Palestinian cause: most definitely permitted. On Monday, another piece of clothing caused an uproar in Australia’s Senate, so much so that it had to be suspended for 90 minutes. The leader of the populist One Nation party, 71-year-old Pauline Hanson, grabbed global headlines by striding on the floor of the Senate wearing, a skirt, heels – and a full-length burka, covering her face but flapping loosely like Robert Donat’s tattered academic gown in Goodbye Mr Chips. Hanson was

Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

Russia is willing to keep on fighting in Ukraine

At a time when Western commentators are tying themselves in knots trying to parse the ongoing Ukraine peace discussions, the Russian media is suddenly strikingly united in its coverage. There is a common misperception that, like their Soviet forebears, the Russian press simply reproduces some standard party line, day in, day out. In fact, there is often surprising pluralism, with different newspapers having their own interests and angles. However, the Kremlin does impose its will when it comes to especially important or sensitive matters, with editors receiving tyomniki, informal but authoritative guidance from the presidential administration on lines to take and topics to avoid. When the press is speaking in

Sunday

Jonathan Spyer

Isis is stirring once more

Indications that the Islamic State (Isis) has begun to employ artificial intelligence in its efforts to recruit new fighters should come as no surprise. At the height of its power a decade ago, Isis was characterised by its combination of having mastered the latest methods of communication with an ideology and praxis that seemed to have emerged wholesale from the deserts of 7th century Arabia. In 2014 and 2015, Isis recruitment took place on Twitter and Facebook. YouTube was the favoured platform for the dissemination of propaganda. The group’s videoclips of its barbaric prisoner executions, including the beheadings of a series of western journalists and aid workers and the immolation

James Tidmarsh

France’s integration nightmare

France has spent decades telling itself the same comforting story: that the children and grandchildren of Muslim immigrants would become more French than their parents. Secular, republican, integrated. The older generation might cling to conservative religious values, but the young raised on liberté, égalité and fraternité would drift towards the mainstream. That assumption has taken a serious blow. A country that once prided itself on assimilating newcomers has spent the past several decades dismantling the very idea of a dominant national ethos According to a new IFOP poll, 57 per cent of French Muslims aged 15 to 24 place the rules of Islam above the laws of the Republic. This is

Jason M. Brodsky

Why Venezuela matters to Iran

The aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford and three warships have been sent to the Caribbean, where they are joining a dozen Navy warships already off the coast of Venezuela, in an unprecedented show of military force. President Trump and his administration are taking aim at the administration of Nicolas Maduro, over his alleged role in the drug trade which presents a national security threat to the United States. It’s clear that if the US succeeds in destabilising and displacing President Maduro’s regime, it would be a blow to the region’s drug traffickers. What is less known is that it would also hit Iran. Venezuela has long served as a launchpad

Saturday

Patrick Gibbons

Will Mahmood's asylum reforms force Ireland's hand?

Labour’s plans to overhaul Britain’s overstretched asylum system have forced the Irish government to do the same. As the Northern Irish border is the only international border across these islands, Shabana Mahmood’s pledge to create ‘by far the most controlled and selective [asylum system] in Europe’ left Dublin with little choice. Ireland’s Minister for Justice, Home Affairs and Migration – Ireland’s equivalent to the Home Secretary – Jim O’Callaghan warned that Ireland must be ready to adjust its own policies to prevent a surge in applicants travelling via Northern Ireland.  Labour’s announcement has heightened fears that Ireland could be seen as a ‘soft option’ compared with its neighbour Labour’s announcement

Owen Matthews

Was Nathan Gill recruited by the Kremlin?

Was 52-year old Anglesey man Nathan Gill, a member of the European parliament, taking money from the Kremlin, or just from a corrupt Ukrainian oligarch? We may never know. But on Friday Gill was sent down for ten-and-a-half years at the Old Bailey, after he was found guilty of accepting bribes from Ukrainian operatives in exchange for delivering scripted speeches in the European Parliament defending pro-Kremlin TV channels and hosting an event for Viktor Medvedchuk, a close ally of Vladimir Putin. Gill sat in Strasbourg as an MEP for North Wales representing the Brexit party, and was later leader of the Welsh branch of Reform UK. Party leader Nigel Farage, who

Philip Patrick Philip Patrick

'Monster parents' are terrorising Japan

If you want to make a Japanese high school teacher break out in a cold sweat and suffer heart palpitations, just whisper the word ‘monpa’ in their ear. For ‘monpa’ or ‘monster parents’, the bane of a Japanese educator’s life, are serial complainers notorious for their persistence, aggression, unreasonableness and irrationality. They have become such a problem that the city government has decided to take cation. There is nothing uniquely Japanese about overprotective, unrealistically ambitious or just plain pushy parents (‘helicopter parents’ are the US version) but Japanese monpa are in a league of their own. Monpa are characterised by a tendency to demand repeated lengthy meetings with teachers over

Friday

Svitlana Morenets Svitlana Morenets

Volodymyr Zelensky is facing the ultimate test

Standing outside his presidential office in Kyiv tonight, on the same spot as on the second day of Ukraine’s full-scale war with Russia, Volodymyr Zelensky addressed Ukrainians. He said he hadn’t betrayed the country then and wouldn’t do so now. Ukraine faces ‘one of the most difficult moments in our history’, he said, while the Trump administration presses it into a deal with Russia. The US, once Ukraine’s biggest ally, has issued an ultimatum: either Zelensky signs the framework of the 28-point peace plan drawn up by Washington and the Kremlin by next Thursday, or Trump will cut intelligence-sharing and weapons supplies for Ukraine.  The pressure on Ukraine right now

Ben Clerkin

Ukrainians think Trump is putting the screws on Zelensky

Kyiv, Ukraine The rumour reverberating around Kyiv is that the FBI has been leaning on Ukrainian anti-corruption police to investigate Zelensky’s inner circle in order to force him to swallow the bitter US peace deal. Trump, as they say, has put the screws, or the feds, on Zelensky. Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau (Nabu) – which is currently unravelling a $100 million war profiteering scandal that has implicated many of Zelensky’s closest political allies – has denied the accusation point blank, and there’s not a single shred of evidence that it is true. Nevertheless, Mykola Kniazhytskyi, a member of the opposition in the Ukrainian parliament and hardly a friend of Zelensky,

Jake Wallis Simons Jake Wallis Simons

Will no one acknowledge how Mossad helps Britain?

Let’s imagine that an international jihadi network, with cells in London and Europe, had just been busted, with dramatic arrests in Britain, Germany and Austria. Let’s imagine that the group had been planning a string of atrocities, with a weapons cache discovered in Vienna. Let’s imagine that security services had unearthed ‘tens of thousands of Euros in cash, numerous data storage devices and mobile phones, gas pistols, firearms, ammunition, knives, and related literature’. You’d have expected such a story to make the news, right? Wrong. On Monday, the Israeli prime minister’s office announced that this precise scenario had unfolded, with Mossad handing intelligence to MI5 and European agencies that enabled

Limor Simhony Philpott

Violent settlers must be stopped

A crisis of authority now festers at the heart of Israel. A shrill, violent fringe of extremist settlers in the West Bank is not only terrorising Palestinians, but undermining the authority of the Israeli state, its security and diplomatic relations. This week, there have been reported attacks by settlers near Deir Istiya, near Nablus, and in Jaba, southwest of Bethlehem. These settlers’ growing impunity, and the government’s failure to rein them in, is no longer a side issue. Settler violence is emerging as a national security crisis. This is not hyperbole. These hilltop radicals act with a confidence that is backed by far-right politicians and suggests de facto immunity: arson, intimidation, physical violence, price‑tag attacks,