World

Tuesday

Paddy Stephens

Does Taiwan have a free speech problem?

These are jittery times in Zhongzheng, Taiwan’s Westminster. The island’s most important supporter, the United States, is now led by a man who resents, rather than is grateful for, the island’s enormous high-tech exports to the US. A few commentators wonder out loud whether Taiwan has become too economically dependent on America. There’s another large economy nearby that would happily boost ties. Then there’s the military drills. The two Chinese characters for ‘Liberation’ have dominated the front pages here recently: some in reference to Trump’s tariffs bonanza, others referring to two days of surprise live-fire exercises by the People’s Liberation Army around the island. The median line in the Taiwan

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Europe’s annual migrant crisis is just getting started

Irregular border crossings into the European Union dropped by 31 per cent in the first quarter of 2025 to 33,600. The figures, released by Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, appear to show that the EU is getting a grip on illegal immigration. The gangs in charge of the people-smuggling trade are becoming ever more sophisticated and cunning But figures can be misleading. The biggest fall in irregular entries was the Western Balkan route, down 64 per cent on the same period in 2024. This is largely attributable to the accession of Bulgaria and Romania to the Schengen Zone on 1 January this year. As a result, more

Monday

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

How the kebab mafia took over the French high street

Last week, the police in Britain launched a three-week operation codenamed ‘Machinize’. It began with nearly 300 raids on nail salons, vape shops and barbershops, which in recent years have become a common sight on British high streets Thirty-five arrests were made and 97 people suspected of being victims of modern slavery were placed under police protection. More than £1 million was frozen, money the police believe is ‘dirty’, generated by Albanian and Kurdish gangs that control much of Britan’s organised crime such as drugs and prostitution. They also are heavily involved in the people smuggling business, a fact noted in 2022 by Dan O’Mahoney, then the Clandestine Channel Threat

Jonathan Sacerdoti

Hamas is exploiting the freedoms it wants to destroy

In any sane world, it would be dismissed as grotesque fantasy: Hamas – the Iranian-backed terror group responsible for the 7 October massacre – petitioning British courts to lift its designation as a terrorist organisation. But this is one of those times it seems the entire world has gone mad.  For here we are, in Great Britain, witnessing Hamas, aided by British lawyers, seeking to launder its blood-soaked record under the false banners of ‘liberation’ and ‘resistance’. This is not mere absurdity. It is a direct assault on the integrity of British democracy – and on very survival of western civilisation. While our principles of justice rightly insist that all

Sunday

Svitlana Morenets Svitlana Morenets

Dozens dead after Russian strike on the city of Sumy

Two Russian missiles loaded with cluster bombs hit the city centre of Sumy this morning – on Palm Sunday, when Ukrainians traditionally go to church ahead of Easter. At least 32 people were killed, including two children. More than 80 were injured. The deadliest hit was on a trolleybus, pictured above. After the strike, a Russian military blogger calling himself ‘Terem’ posted this: ‘My opinion as a good Christian – the Russians must destroy these people. They are preventing us from building the Third Rome… they must pay with their blood. The end justifies the means.’ The attack on Sumy comes just a week after another Russian Iskander missile, also

Jim Lawley

Why Spain is cosying up to China

‘You’ll be cutting your own throat,’ US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent warned countries thinking of aligning with China. The remarks were made just before Spain’s prime minister, socialist Pedro Sánchez, arrived in Beijing on Thursday with a delegation of ministers, seeking to boost trade, attract investment, and to position Spain as the EU’s chief interlocutor with China. Bessent’s threat came as no surprise. President Trump had just lifted global tariffs above 10 per cent for 90 days for everyone except China, which instead now faces a staggering 145 per cent rate. Bessent’s message couldn’t have been clearer: any friend of our enemy is an enemy. To an extent the hostility

Jason M. Brodsky

Can Trump reach a nuclear deal with Iran?

On Saturday, Iranian and American diplomats met in Oman to discuss a nuclear deal. The talks were a clash of styles, tone and substance. In the past, talks in locations like Vienna allowed the international press to watch the Iranian and American delegations leaving and arriving at different hotels. This time, the discussions are hidden away from prying eyes and journalists inside Muscat’s palaces.  Iran’s foreign ministry began by seeking to tightly control and dominate the early media narrative. Iranian diplomats told media outlets that the talks took place in a positive atmosphere. These Iranian expressions of optimism were commonplace during the Iran nuclear deal revival negotiations from 2021 to

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Why do the French hate J.D. Vance so much?

At the start of the month, J.D. Vance delivered the address at the Heritage Foundation in Washington for the premiere of a documentary. ‘Live Not By Lies’ is based on the book by Rod Dreher, who is a friend of the American Vice President’s. Vance informed his audience that backstage Dreher told him of a recent interview he had given to a French newspaper. Broadcast on Le Figaro’s online channel, Dreher was described in the tagline as an ‘American intellectual and friend of J.D. Vance’. As Vance joked, maybe that ‘was meant to tarnish [him] in that country’. It may have been. France does appear to have an axe to

Edward Howell

North Korea will never give up its nuclear ambitions

Earlier this week, Kim Yo Jong proclaimed that North Korea has no intention of abandoning its nuclear weapons. ‘If the US and its vassal forces continue to insist on anachronistic denuclearisation… it will only give unlimited justness and justification to the advance of the DPRK aspiring after the building of the strongest nuclear force for self-defence,’ she said, adding that North Korea’s nuclear status could ‘never be reversed by any physical strength or sly artifice’. This may have been stating the obvious, but this declaration by Kim Jong Un’s vitriolic sister dashed any optimistic hopes that the arrival of a new administration in Washington could lead to Pyongyang treading one

Saturday

Michael Simmons Michael Simmons

Tariff turmoil: the end of globalisation or a blip in history?

17 min listen

Globalisation’s obituary has been written many times before but, with the turmoil caused over the past few weeks with Donald Trump’s various announcements on tariffs, could this mark the beginning of the end for the economic order as we know it? Tej Parikh from the Financial Times and Kate Andrews, The Spectator‘s deputy US editor, join economics editor Michael Simmons to make the case for why globalisation will outlive Trump. Though, as the US becomes one of the most protectionist countries in the developed world, how much damage has been done to the reputation of the US? And to what extent do governments need to adapt? Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

Katja Hoyer Katja Hoyer

Merz’s coalition treaty is an empty, promise-free shell

It took just over six weeks for the new German coalition to form. That is very quick: in the past it has often taken months for parties to come to an agreement after elections. So what has made this process so smooth? I would like to think it was a sense of urgency, but I suspect it’s more to do with the programme being easy to agree on. The coalition treaty put together by the CDU and SPD parties is decidedly non-committal and unimaginative – a far cry from the change voters were promised. The 146-page document had barely been released on Wednesday before one of its architects warned that

Dwayne Ryan Menezes

Orkney could be Britain’s gateway to the Arctic

Orkney is a charming archipelago of some 70 islands and skerries – 20 of which are inhabited – ten miles north of mainland Scotland. It’s closer to the Arctic Circle than it is to London. It is also at the heart of the wider geographic and cultural Nordic region, with Greenland, Iceland and the Faroe Islands to its west and Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland to its east. North Ronaldsay, its northernmost island, is nearer to Tórshavn than it is to Glasgow, and to Bergen than it is to Dumfries. As Arctic shipping routes become more navigable, Orkney’s strategic location between the North Sea and the Greenland-Iceland-UK gap may make

Friday

Nicholas Farrell

How Italian communists tried to indoctrinate King Charles

Dante’s Beach, Ravenna On the final day of their state visit to Italy the King and Queen were in Ravenna to mark the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the area in 1945 by the British Eighth Army. What they probably did not realise is that Ravenna is a left-wing stronghold in a region – the Romagna – which was the birthplace of Italian revolutionary socialism at the end of the 19th century. Mussolini, a revolutionary socialist before he invented fascism, was born elsewhere in the region. From 1945, Ravenna, like everywhere else in red Romagna, was run by the Italian communist party – the PCI – until the fall

Katy Balls Katy Balls

The Lindsey Hilsum Edition

34 min listen

Lindsey Hilsum is the International Editor for Channel 4 News, where she has worked for over 25 years. Having started her career as an aid worker in Latin America, she transitioned to journalism, and she has now reported from six continents for over three decades. She has covered many major conflicts including Kosovo, Iraq, Syria, Ukraine and across the Middle East during the Arab Spring. Her third book I Brought the War with Me: Stories and Poems from the Front Line is out now. On the podcast Lindsey tells Katy Balls about starting out her career in Guatemala and in Kenya, what it was like being the only English-speaking journalist in Rwanda

James Tidmarsh

Donald Trump is taking on China in Africa

Donald Trump has opened a new front in his trade war with China, deploying a family confidant to Kinshasa to challenge Beijing’s control of critical minerals. Almost unnoticed amid the tariff battles, Trump is working to reclaim the mineral supply chains that power the modern world – starting in the Democratic Republic of Congo at Africa’s heart. His plan is to give US military assistance to the beleaguered government of President Félix Tshisekedi in return for access to cobalt and copper reserves worth trillions. Congo produces 70 per cent of the world’s cobalt – used in electric vehicles, smartphones, and advanced weaponry. It also exports copper, tantalum and lithium – everything

Thursday

Jane Stannus

Trump is making showers great again

Sometimes it’s the little things. Get ready, world. America is back – with shiny, clean hair, glowing skin and a faint aura of L’Occitane Cherry Blossom. And all thanks to Donald Trump, who has just signed an executive order unleashing the power of the American showerhead. The order rescinds an Obama era rule which limited the flow of water, as part of ‘a radical green agenda that made life worse for Americans’, as the White House puts it. 2.5 gallons per minute, did you hear? That’s the big, beautiful volume of water roaring through America’s waterpipes now – or at least, it will be, once the freest people in the world have

Philip Patrick Philip Patrick

Trump’s tariff pause has given Japan time to plan its next move

Asian markets are rebounding after President Trump announced a 90-day ‘pause’ in the implementation of the ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs that had sent shock waves through the financial community. Most dizzying perhaps were events in Japan, where after a vertiginous plunge on Monday, the Nikkei surged over 8.5 per cent on this morning’s trading. Japan’s iconic companies had a good day: Toyota was up 6 per cent, Sony 12 per cent and Mitsubishi 10 per cent. Elsewhere in Asia, the South Korean KOSPI rose 6 per cent, the Hang Sang climbed 2.69 per cent, the Singapore Composite Index 1.29 per cent and Taiwan’s stock exchange was up over 9 per cent.

Elisabeth Dampier

Why the AfD is leading in the polls

Germany has a new government. It may also have a new government in waiting. On the same day that the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and centre-left Social Democratic party (SPD) announced they had concluded coalition talks to form a government, a poll showed the hard-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) is the most popular party in Germany. A quarter of all voters now support the AfD. Since the election in February, the CDU has lost 5 per cent of its support. It’s easy to see where it all went wrong for the CDU. Having promised fiscal responsibility, moderate right-wing governance, and the return of controlled borders, the party has instead

William Moore William Moore

Trump shock, cousin marriage & would you steal from a restaurant?

39 min listen

This week: Trump’s tariffs – madness or mastermind? ‘Shock tactics’ is the headline of our cover article this week, as deputy editor Freddy Gray reflects on a week that has seen the US President upend the global economic order, with back and forth announcements on reciprocal and retaliatory tariffs. At the time of writing, a baseline 10% on imports stands – with higher tariffs remaining for China, Mexico and Canada. The initial announcement last week had led to the biggest global market decline since the start of the pandemic, and left countries scrambling to react, whether through negotiation or retaliation. China announced a second wave of retaliatory tariffs – to

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

What if Trump is just bonkers?

‘I wonder what he meant by that,’ King Louis Philippe of France supposedly remarked on the death of the conspiratorial politician Talleyrand. Whenever a person behaves in ways we had not anticipated, it is a Darwinian and often useful human instinct to suspect a rational motive, and seek it out. So it’s unsurprising that in the world of commentary a whole industry has now arisen in search of an ‘explanation’ of Donald Trump’s various démarches concerning, for instance, Gaza, Greenland and Canada. And now he’s trying to wreck world trade. Academic economists have been hauled from their ivory towers, business journalists from their statistical charts, public opinion pollsters from their