World

Tuesday

Daniel DePetris

The Israel-Lebanon ceasefire is in danger of shattering

It’s been almost a year since Israel and Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia that arguably held more power in Lebanon than the government itself, signed a ceasefire to end a ferocious two-month long war. The deal couldn’t have come at a better time; thousands of Israeli air and artillery strikes had pulverised southern Lebanon, Hezbollah’s traditional base of operations, leading to a displacement crisis and killing close to 4,000 Lebanese. Whole swaths of northern Israel had been vacated due to Hezbollah missile attacks, forcing the Israeli government of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to spend money on tens of thousands of civilians bunking in hotel rooms. But the agreement is wearing thin. The

Monday

Eliot Wilson

Don’t take away Andrew’s Falklands medal

When the King ‘initiated a formal process to remove the Style, Titles and Honours of Prince Andrew’ last week – reducing his brother to plain Andrew Mountbatten Windsor – the Royal family might have hoped that it would draw an end to the scandal. But public opinion has scented blood, and righteous outrage is building. Andrew’s brave service in the South Atlantic is a matter of record, for which he earned his South Atlantic Medal. It does not make him a good person, nor give him immunity for any later conduct Defence Secretary, John Healey, has revealed that the process of removing Andrew’s last remaining military distinction, his rank as Vice-Admiral,

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

France is in the grip of a heist epidemic

The good news for the French police is that three of the four people suspected of carrying off the ‘heist of the century’ at the Louvre last month are in custody. The bad news is that the crown jewels they stole, worth an estimated €88 million (£76 million), have yet to be recovered. Given the audacity of the robbery, committed on a Sunday morning as the museum opened its doors to the public, it was assumed by many that the theft was the work of seasoned professionals. The profile of those arrested paints a different picture: they are petty criminals, hailing from Seine-Saint-Denis, the impoverished department north of Paris. The DNA

George Llewelyn

Chernihiv is on the frontline of Russia’s cruellest winter campaign yet

First, the power went out in the bar. A few minutes later came the familiar low, concussive thud of an explosion nearby, the kind that makes the walls tremble and the glasses rattle on the shelves. Somewhere close, a few streets perhaps, a Russian drone had found its mark. Almost as quick as it came, the sound dissipates, leaving an ambivalent quietness in its wake. Inside, the waitress lights candles, which flicker as if battling to keep darkness at bay. From a phone sitting on the bar, she plays music, the sound, tinny and weak, fighting to drown out the silence. Outside, buses speed along the street, clamorous beacons of

Sunday

James Tidmarsh

Britain’s trains are dangerously exposed

Europe has seen this nightmare before. On 21 August 2015, a gunman armed with an AK-47-style assault rifle, a pistol and a knife opened fire on a Thalys train travelling from Amsterdam to Paris, wounding three passengers before being overpowered near Arras. The attacker, Ayoub El Khazzani, a 25-year-old Moroccan who had trained with Islamist militants in Syria, boarded the train intending to commit a massacre in the name of jihad. He was stopped only because three off-duty American servicemen happened to be on board and tackled him as he tried to reload. Without them, the carriage would have become a slaughterhouse. El Khazzani was sentenced to life by a

James Tidmarsh

Macron has declared war on free speech

Emmanuel Macron says Europeans should stop relying on social media for their news and turn back to traditional public media. Speaking in Paris on Wednesday, he said people were ‘completely wrong’ to use social networks for information and should instead depend on journalists and established outlets. Social platforms, he argued, are driven by a ‘process of maximum excitement’ designed to ‘maximise advertising revenue’, a system he said is ‘destroying the foundations of democratic debate’. His vision is of a Europe where free speech is tolerated only when it is traceable, and where platforms pre-emptively silence anything that might draw a regulator’s glare He accused X of being ‘dominated by far-right

Yossi Melman

The assassination that changed Israel forever

Few political assassinations of a political leader have fundamentally and dramatically altered the course of a nation. American democracy, for instance, endured the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in 1865, and black Americans continued to enjoy their hard-won freedom. About a century later, the murder of President John F. Kennedy did not halt the legislative process that secured civil rights for African Americans. The most consequential political assassination in modern history was that of the Austro-Hungarian heir to the throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, in Sarajevo in June 1914. His death at the hands of Serbian nationalist revolutionaries served as the spark that ignited the first world war. There is little doubt

Philip Patrick Philip Patrick

Is the British Council worth saving?

The British Council, the cultural arm of the UK government, is in deep trouble. The 91-year-old organisation is struggling to repay a £200 million-pound loan from the Covid era and there is anxious talk of up to 40 centre closures and a possible 2,000 job losses. Assets are being sold off to try and keep the show on the road. There is a problem that the Council does not really know what it is for – or perhaps it knows, but does not relish, its mission ‘We really need help on that loan,’ says Scott Macdonald, the Council’s beleaguered chief executive. ‘The government has got to turn it into something

Saturday

Julie Burchill Julie Burchill

The trouble with Louis Theroux

We’re woefully resigned to the strange situation whereby if an alien landed, they’d believe that being famous was hereditary, like being royal. But when I looked at the Wikipedia page of Louis Theroux, I almost fell out of my wheelchair chuckling. Not only is he the son of the ‘noted travel writer and novelist’ Paul Theroux, ‘he is the nephew of novelist Alexander Theroux and writer Peter Theroux. His older brother, Marcel, is a writer and television presenter. His cousin, Justin, is an actor and screenwriter.’ Theroux – educated at Westminster and Magdalen College, Oxford, naturally – is said to be a ‘massive hip hop head’ Kind of like the Beckhams without the beauty;

Michael Day

Venezuela isn’t to blame for America’s drug problem

There are plenty of accusations you could level at Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, the ex-union leader and bus driver, whose corruption and incompetence is steering the economy of his oil-rich Latin American nation off a cliff. But responsibility for America’s lethal drug habit is not one of them. That hasn’t stopped Donald Trump trying, however. ‘We smoked a drug boat, and there’s 11 narco-terrorists at the bottom of the ocean,’ Hegseth bragged Thus, we’ve seen Trump’s doltish ‘Secretary of War’ Pete Hegseth gleefully bombing small Venezuelan boats that he claims were carrying drug smugglers. ‘We smoked a drug boat, and there’s 11 narco-terrorists at the bottom of the ocean,’ Hegseth bragged

Alexander Baker

Sharing our nukes with Germany would be madness

‘Utter and complete poppycock’: that was Viscount Montgomery of Alamein’s verdict on an US proposal in the 1960s for a multilateral nuclear force crewed by international Nato personnel. Famed for defeating the Nazis in North Africa, Monty didn’t mince his words about that plan. There’s little doubt what he’d make of the quiet resurgence of multilateral nuclear thinking. Defence chiefs in Britain – including a former chief of defence staff and Nato secretary general – have been urging the government to consider sharing Britain’s nuclear arsenal with Germany, which has none of its own. This would, the officials argue, help to counter the threat that Russia poses to European security

Friday

Lynne O’Donnell

Pakistan has lost control of the Taliban monster

The futile peace talks taking place between Pakistan and the Taliban over cross-border terrorist attacks have produced at least one revelation: Islamabad has become the Dr Frankenstein of the region. For decades, Pakistan’s generals believed they could manipulate Islamist militants and use them as instruments of their foreign policy. They thought it would be simple to create pliant proxies for ‘strategic depth’ in Afghanistan and leverage against India. Now the Taliban – battle-hardened, emboldened by victory and appeased by super powers – appear to be dictating the terms. The monster has turned on its master. Islamabad, long the sponsor and protector of the Taliban, now finds itself negotiating from a

Svitlana Morenets Svitlana Morenets

Who will save Ukrainian troops in Pokrovsk?

What matters more – land or the lives of soldiers? For each side fighting in Ukraine, the answer is different. For Vladimir Putin, every metre of captured Ukrainian soil is worth the lives of tens of thousands of Russians. For Kyiv, the priority is to stop the invaders while keeping casualties to a minimum. Ukraine’s military command has not always managed to hold that balance, at times allowing its troops to be encircled and slaughtered rather than ordering a timely retreat. Today, that same choice between territories and lives is being made in Pokrovsk. The battle for this fortress city in the Donetsk region has raged for nearly two years,

Jonathan Sacerdoti

Hamas’s return is revealing Gaza’s true colours

Remember that weird little Covid ritual of 2020, when every Thursday at 8pm people stepped out onto their doorsteps and applauded? Banging saucepans, clapping their hands, they lit up the miserable skies with cheers for the National Health Service. It was mawkish, and orchestrated to the point of theatre. But its aim was to express a kind of collective gratitude for those who had become the most visibly important figures in the national story. Nurses and doctors were held in the highest esteem. They were ‘society’s best’. That’s why all those people applauded. Crowds of Palestinian Arabs whooped and whistled, and filmed on their smartphones. They called out ‘Allahu Akbar’

Harry Halem

The luck of the Irish is finally running out

For the past twenty years, Ireland has been Europe’s improbable overachiever. A small island nation on the fringe of Europe managed to turn EU membership, American corporate investment and allegedly shrewd strategic diplomacy into an economic success story. While the Celtic Tiger whimpered following the 2008 crash, it leapt back into action with remarkable agility, creating a low-tax, free-market economy. Dublin became the unlikely bridge for American tech and pharmaceutical giants to meet the European market, a centre of financial services and an agile diplomatic operator. As the US counts costs, not cousins, Ireland’s mix of moral posturing and strategic freeloading will wear ever thinner Throughout the Biden years, Ireland

Thursday

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Brigitte Macron has lost France’s sympathy

Ten people have been on trial this week in Paris, accused of transphobic cyberbullying against Brigitte Macron. France’s first lady, the wife of Emmanuel Macron, pressed charges after a claim that she was in fact a man went global. Some of those in the dock have apologised for spreading the allegations online but others have said that it’s just a bit of harmless fun and that in a free country one should be able to say what one likes. This argument was dismissed by Brigitte Macron’s lawyer, Jean Ennochi, who said: ‘They all talk to you about freedom of expression, defamation, they completely deny cyberbullying [and] mob harassment.’ Prosecutors have

Arnout Nuijt

The Dutch elections are still a victory for the right

Early coverage of the Dutch elections has inevitably focused on Geert Wilders – still the bogeyman of the country’s political establishment. Wilders lost seats and saw some of his support drift towards other parties on the right and to the liberal centre of Democrats 66 (D66). His Freedom party and D66 are leading in the polls, with both set to take 26 seats. Yet the real story lies elsewhere: in the spectacular downfall of former EU Commissioner Frans Timmermans, whose brief and ill-fated return to Dutch politics as leader of the Labour party has ended in a shattering defeat. Timmermans was as divisive a figure to the Dutch right as Wilders is

Ian Williams Ian Williams

Trump and Xi’s South Korean meeting changed little

Donald Trump says his meeting with Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the APEC summit in South Korea today was ‘amazing’ and that, on a scale of one to 10, it merited a 12. Which means that on a scale for scepticism, it probably deserves a 13. Its biggest achievement appears to have been to at least put the trade war between the world’s two biggest economies on hold, though stock markets, excitable all week as the summit approached, opened flat this morning. Fundamental issues remain unchanged, the momentum towards economic separation will continue, possibly accelerating during the breathing space provided by an extended truce that is unlikely to last.

Senay Boztas

Have the Netherlands rejected Geert Wilders?

With the most dramatic result in the history of Dutch elections, the liberal democratic D66 appears to have inched ahead of populist Geert Wilders and his Party for Freedom, winning an election for the first time. On Thursday morning, both parties were projected at 26 seats out of the 150-seat chamber, neck-and-neck but with a 2,000-vote lead for D66. Under its dynamic 38-year-old leader – and former junior athlete – Rob Jetten, the progressive party made a last-minute sprint in the final week of the campaign, when a third of Dutch voters make up their minds. It has almost tripled its current nine seats and scored the best result in

Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

Why is Putin obsessed with nuclear ‘wonder weapons’?

I don’t think it’s accurate or helpful to think of Vladimir Putin as some Bond villain figure – but he certainly does make it harder to hold this line sometimes. In particular, his enthusiasm for ‘wonder weapons’ – often of questionable strategic value – does suggest a certain grandiose vanity. Some have genuine military utility, but others seem more useful in psychological than actual warfare. Last week, the Russians announced a successful test of the 9M730 Burevestnik (‘Storm Petrel’), a nuclear-armed and -powered cruise missile. Its reactor allows it to travel further than any regular cruise missile, manoeuvring at altitudes as low as 50 metres. This would mean that it