World

Wednesday

Jonathan Spyer

Pager bombs won’t stop Hezbollah

The killing of 12 people, including several Hezbollah members, and the wounding of thousands more when 5,000 pagers simultaneously exploded in Lebanon yesterday represents an obvious tactical triumph for Israel (or whoever carried it out). The sight of members of the Iran-supported Shia Islamist group suddenly collapsing in agony while performing mundane daily tasks was met with great amusement by the movement’s many enemies across the region. Displaying the somewhat gleeful and malicious humour which characterises all sides in the Levant, a variety of memes mocking the hapless victims of the grim beeper soon proliferated.   Hilarity aside, the operation displays the extent to which Hezbollah has been thoroughly penetrated by its

Paul Wood

The mad, bad, sad world of Ryan Routh 

Any journalist who has covered a war will recognise Ryan Routh’s type immediately – the war zone nutter. Routh is currently all over America’s front pages, accused of trying to assassinate Donald Trump. The photograph used by most news outlets shows a grizzled-looking character with a flak vest, a stars-and-stripes neckerchief, and a troubled stare. Back in 2022, he travelled from his home in the US to Ukraine, shortly after Russia invaded. He ended up in Independence Square in Kiev, setting up an open-air camp adorned with flags and handwritten placards – open air camps with placards being another reliable sign of nutterdom. But then warzones have always attracted the mad,

Arieh Kovler

The Hezbollah pager bomb plot has Israel’s fingerprints all over it

At the end of the 2014 film Kingsman: the Secret Service, the plucky spy hero is in trouble deep in an enemy base. Suddenly his tech wizard figures out that he can hack into the microchips inside the enemies’ heads and make them all explode. The bad guys all go boom. Hezbollah fighters must be asking themselves what other tricks Israel might have up its sleeves On Tuesday night, the spy thriller trope became real. Across Lebanon, Hezbollah operatives’ secure pagers exploded. Security camera footage showed the small explosions in supermarkets and shops, leaving Hezbollah terror operatives bleeding or worse. More than 3,000 people were injured in the hundreds of blasts,

Tuesday

Jonathan Miller Jonathan Miller

It’s a pity Thierry Breton didn’t resign sooner

The spectacular resignation of Thierry Breton from the European Commission suggests that the president of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen is not quite as useless as her numerous critics suggest. Breton’s departure was overdue. Credit to von der Leyen for wielding the long knife. Breton’s arrogance was exceeded only by his uselessness. After Mario Draghi’s taxonomy of European decline last week, the role of Breton as commissioner in charge of the single market was a nonsense. Draghi said Europe is on a path to self-destruction, becoming nothing more than an open-air museum, sustained by tourism. Breton’s arrogance was exceeded only by his uselessness Gavin Mortimer wrote here that Draghi

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Donald Trump could have the last laugh on crypto

A day after nearly being shot again, the 78-year-old Donald Trump is once more being mocked for sounding like a fool while talking about cryptocurrency. In an interview with Farokh Sarmad, another of these hugely popular male influencers whom the vast majority of people have never heard of, Trump ruminated on the importance of making America the ‘crypto capital’ of the planet.  Sitting in Mar-a-Lago, underneath the hilariously kitsch ‘Visionary’ portrait of young Donald in white trousers and a tennis jumper, Trump told the Persian-Canadian Farokh that he learns about crypto from his sons. ‘Barron is a young guy,’ he said. ‘He’s got four wallets or something. I’m saying “explain this

Damien Phillips

Labour can’t afford to ignore the war in Sudan

‘The UK-UAE relationship is central to driving economic growth – it’s our largest trading partner in the region.’ So tweeted David Lammy earlier this month following a meeting with Sheikh Abdullah Bin Zayed, the Emirati foreign minister. Perhaps the Foreign Secretary should think twice before making such boasts. The UAE is up to its neck in the crisis unfolding in Sudan – and the United Kingdom’s warm relations with Abu Dhabi may soon develop into a diplomatic minefield for the government. Between the latest offensives in the Russo-Ukrainian war and the ongoing conflict in Gaza, there has been too little space even in the international pages of the papers for

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Are Democrats to blame for the repeated attempts to kill Trump?

23 min listen

As if there hadn’t been enough drama in America in 2024, Donald Trump has survived another assassination attempt. The attempted killing of the 45th president at his golf course in Palm Beach, Florida yesterday afternoon was not nearly as threatening or deadly as the shooting nine weeks ago in Butler, Pennsylvania – but questions remain about how the incident could have happened.  Freddy Gray is joined by Kate Andrews to discuss the second assassination attempt, the state of the race, and what’s next for Donald Trump. 

Monday

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

A father and son at the edge of the Chinese empire

39 min listen

As a child, the New York Times journalist Edward Wong had no idea that his father had been in the People’s Liberation Army. But as he grew up, a second generation immigrant in the United States, Edward was hungry to find out more about his father and mother’s pasts in the People’s Republic of China. That hunger took him to study China at university and eventually to become the New York Times’s Beijing bureau chief. Edward’s new book, At the Edge of Empire, is a marvellously constructed work that traces his father’s journey through China as a soldier in the PLA, and his own reporting in China as an American journalist. It reveals how

Eliot Wilson

Ukraine can’t wait for a decision on long-range missiles for ever

Last week was electric with anticipation. The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, visited London for a UK-US ‘strategic dialogue’, then he and Foreign Secretary David Lammy both travelled to Ukraine to meet with political and military leaders and discuss the ongoing conflict. Heading in the other direction was the Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, who made for Washington DC with his outgoing national security adviser, Sir Tim Barrow, to meet President Joe Biden and hold talks on the global situation. By accident or design, the government allowed speculation to grow that the United Kingdom and the United States were close to an announcement that they were lifting restrictions on

James Tidmarsh

The lesson Keir Starmer could learn from Francois Fillon

Sir Keir Starmer, the man often dubbed ‘Mr. Rules’ for his reputation as a stickler for ethical conduct, now finds himself facing an ethics probe over undeclared gifts. The accusations concern luxury suits gifted to Starmer and dresses for his wife, Victoria, reportedly paid for by Lord Alli, a Labour peer and supporter. Starmer’s team failed to declare the gifts given to Lady Starmer, a mistake apparently made after receiving incorrect advice from Downing Street. The suits themselves were declared in line with parliamentary rules, but the same was not true for the dresses. Now, questions are swirling as the Prime Minister scrambles to explain the late declaration. This recalls

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Does Starmer have the gall to send asylum seekers to Albania?

Sending asylum-seekers to Rwanda would, of course, be a moral outrage. We know this because Labour shadow ministers kept telling us so when the previous government wanted to do just this. Fortunately, however, there is a far more ethical alternative: to send them to Albania instead – something which Keir Starmer is considering after meeting with Italian prime minister Georgia Meloni to learn how her government has successfully reduced small boat arrivals over the past year. Starmer said he was ‘interested’ to see how the Albania processing scheme developed by the Italian government would work. This is just one example of a schizophrenic government weighing up a policy which is almost

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Will Michel Barnier govern for the provinces or for Paris?

Michel Barnier will unveil his government in France this week, a fortnight after the 73-year-old was nominated by Emmanuel Macron as the fifth prime minister of his presidency. It will be a government composed overwhelmingly of people from Barnier’s own party, the centre-right Republicans, and Macron’s centrist coalition. Marine Le Pen’s National Rally have ruled themselves out of contention for any posts, as have most political figures from the left. They may be out of touch with the rest of France but they don’t care It is a curious state of affairs that the Republican party, which won just 47 of the 577 seats in July’s parliamentary election, is now

Nigel Jones

Is Austria’s far-right Freedom Party heading for victory?

Amidst all the focus on the triumph of Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in Thuringia’s local state elections earlier this month, less attention has been paid to another upcoming European election in which the far-right is expected to do well: the general elections in Austria on 29 September. Kickl has made opposition to immigration the main platform of his appeal to voters Just as the polls in Thuringia and neighbouring Saxony saw a dramatic rise in support for the hard right AfD – with the party also set to win in Brandenburg’s state elections later this month – the Austrian Freedom Party (FPO) is forecast to triumph and hoover up a quarter

Sunday

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

What doesn’t kill Trump makes him stronger

As if there hadn’t been enough drama in America in 2024, Donald Trump has survived another assassination attempt. The attempted killing of the 45th president at his golf course in Palm Beach, Florida yesterday afternoon was not nearly as threatening or deadly as the shooting nine weeks ago in Butler, Pennsylvania, which so nearly ended Trump’s life, killed a spectator and injured others. The Secret Service, who have faced so much criticism for their failings in Butler, found the would-be killer’s weapon before he was able to target Trump, shots were fired, and the suspect appears to have been arrested fleeing the scene. Nobody was seriously harmed. What took place

Ian Williams Ian Williams

What’s behind China’s overseas policing drive?

So China wants to make the world more ‘safe, reasonable and efficient’ by training thousands of police officers from across the globe to ‘help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities’. The offer came this week from Wang Xiaohong, China’s minister for public security, at a police forum attended by officials from 122 countries in the eastern city of Lianyungang. There were few details, but then few are needed. Authoritarian countries will see China’s frequently brutal approach to law and order, coupled with its zero tolerance for dissent, as rather appealing – and many will already have invested in the technical side of China’s surveillance state. However, even

Saturday

Ian Williams Ian Williams

Are Hong Kong trade offices just Chinese propaganda machines?

China has reacted with anger at American threats to close Hong Kong’s trade offices in the United States, pledging to ‘take practical and effective measures to resolutely counteract it’, while the territory’s Commerce Secretary accused Washington of ‘slander’. In reality, Hong Kong Economic and Trade Offices (HKETOs), which were set up to oversee the territory’s external commercial relations and have some diplomatic privileges, are an anachronism. Now that Hong Kong has been stripped of its autonomy, they appear to have little purpose other than to parrot Beijing. There are three such offices in the US – in Washington DC, New York and San Francisco – and on Tuesday the US

Michael Evans

Biden inches towards authorising Storm Shadows in Russia

Storm Shadow, Britain’s highly-prized, air-launched cruise missile, is not going to win the war for Kyiv against the Russian invaders. However, this particular weapon, along with the American ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile System) are literally waiting in the wings for Kyiv to launch a new-style, more deadly and more provocative strike on air bases and missile sites deep inside Russia. They could transform the near-31-month war into the biggest confrontation between Moscow and the West since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. President Putin has warned that if authority is given for these weapons to be used against targets inside Russia, it would mean war between Russia and Nato. Storm

Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

Moscow wants to ruin your weekend

When is slower internet better than none at all? When are travel delays more serious a political challenge than threats of nuclear war? These questions acquired particular significance with the news that Stockholm’s Arlanda airport was temporarily closed this week when several drones intruded into its airspace. Investigations are still in progress, but the police are suggesting this was deliberate sabotage and suspicion is already falling on Moscow. It has highlighted what is likely to be a central element of Russia’s emerging political warfare against the West: a strategy of inconveniences. What is the strategic value in such seemingly petty and spiteful acts? The FBI has been accusing Moscow of

Rev'd Dr Helen Hall

Witch hunting is no longer a thing of the past

Witch hunting didn’t end in the Middle Ages. Along Kenya’s Kilifi coast, elderly people are being accused of witchcraft, attacked and killed. At least one person a week is targeted and left unable to return to their own land. One man who did survive recently, 74-year-old Tambala Jefwa, lost an eye and is now covered in scars. Something terrifying seems to have escaped the pages of the history books and is stalking the present. Belief in witchcraft remains common in parts of Africa and, indeed, around the world. Recent events in Kenya are by no means isolated: in the early 2020s, the Democratic Republic of Congo saw an alarming surge

Friday

Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

Why is Putin expelling more British diplomats?

Another six bite the dust. The British Embassy in Moscow, already pared to the bone, is being reduced by another six diplomats. Their accreditation has been withdrawn because they were ‘threatening the security of the Russian Federation’ by ‘conducting intelligence and subversive work.’ It is bad news for international stability as diplomatic links become more and more attenuated, but perhaps something of a tribute to Britain. The expulsions reflect a sense that Britain is both a tempting and a legitimate target The Russian media today has been running two strikingly similar stories, one built around a statement from the Public Relations Centre of the Federal Security Service (FSB), the other