Latest from Coffee House

Latest from Coffee House

All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories

Monday

Chris Smith

How dangerous is the cruise ship hantavirus?

Virologists, the imaginative bunch that we are, often name new viruses after the places they were first found. Zika virus was initially described in Uganda’s Zika forest, while the Ebola river, flowing through what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, needs no explanation for the dread disease documented there. There are existing case reports of human outbreaks in South America stemming from gatherings and parties. That said, the documented efficiency of the transmission under these circumstances is extremely low Hantaviruses are chips off the same block.

Sam Leith

TV doesn’t ruin childhood, but phones might

When I was a nipper, a staple of children’s television was a show called Why Don’t You? The full title, as the theme song made clear, was: “Why don’t you just switch off your television set and go and do something less boring instead?" Very “meta”, as we didn’t then say. And, of course, generations of children sat on the sofa gormlessly drinking Um Bongo while we watched the show’s cast demonstrate all the wholesome arts-and-crafts activities we could have been doing instead of watching TV. This was a few years before our parents discovered the joys of eating microwave TV dinners while watching Master Chef. A previous generation feared that the rise of television would put an end to children reading. It didn’t I start with this to give a bit of context.

Sunday

Ian Williams

China’s theft of American AI tech is becoming more brazen

Despite the hype surrounding China’s artificial intelligence capabilities, progress remains heavily dependent on theft and smuggling. The Chinese Communist party (CCP), meanwhile, is determined to maintain tight control. That has become increasingly clear ahead of this week’s Beijing summit between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping. The Chinese leader is determined to lead the world in what he terms an "epoch-defining technology." He appears confident that Trump, preoccupied by his war against Iran, has limited options to counter Beijing’s increasingly brazen activities. Last month, the White House accused Beijing of "industrial-scale" theft of know-how from American AI labs.

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Saturday

Alexander Kolyandr

What Putin’s Victory Day says about war-time Russia

For the first time in 18 years, Russia’s Victory Day parade will have no tanks. There will be no missile carriers and no armored columns on Red Square. Several regions have canceled their parades altogether. Muscovites had been told to expect no mobile internet on the day itself or this evening. The Ministry of Defense has declared a unilateral ceasefire for May 8 and 9 and warned, in the same breath, that any Ukrainian attack will be answered by "a massive retaliatory missile strike on the center of Kyiv." The Russian Foreign Ministry has helpfully advised foreign embassies in the Ukrainian capital to consider evacuating their staff. The official explanation for the missing weaponry is the threat from Ukrainian FPV drones.

Ameer Kotecha

The simple truth at the heart of Reform UK’s success

As the scale of Reform’s success in the British local elections became clear, the Reform Member of Parliament Danny Kruger noted, "What is happening is seismic…The public have decided they don't want the failed consensus of the last 25 years." What is this "failed consensus"? Here is my take: what the voters have announced this week – in the most unambiguous terms since the Brexit vote – is that they’re calling time on the idea that we have to prioritize other people and other things over what is in the interests of ordinary working British people. The public will no longer allow a discredited, globalist notion of treating national self-interest as a second-order priority – which has found its most devoted proponent in Keir Starmer – to be foisted upon them.

Friday

Owen Matthews

The Kremlin’s secret plans for post-war Russia

A top-level Kremlin policy document discussing post-war political planning and how to neutralize potential ultranationalist discontent has been leaked to the Russian investigative site Dossier Center. Entitled "Images of Victory," the paper gives a rare insight into the inner workings of Russia’s political machine. Crucially, it shows that while the Kremlin remains officially indifferent to peace talks, behind the scenes apparatchiks are working hard on selling an inevitable stalemate to the Russian people by dressing it up as a species of victory. The document was leaked before President Trump's announcement today of a three-day ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine.

Putin
Freddy Gray

All roads lead to Rome for Rubio

"What to get someone who has everything, I thought," said Secretary of State Marco Rubio yesterday, as he handed Pope Leo a funny little crystal-football present. "Wow, OK," replied Leo, stiffly. It was a useful reminder that Rubio is not always a smooth operator. For all the articles suggesting he has now overtaken Vice President J.D. Vance as favorite to be the 2028 Republican nominee, for all the media gushing over the "Secretary of Everything" in the White House briefing room, Lil’ Marco can still be something of a robotic plonker on the big stage. Lil’ Marco can still be something of a robotic plonker on the big stage It was Rubio, after all, who was the first cabinet official to suggest in public that Israel had strong-armed America into attacking Iran.

Thursday

Owen Matthews

Russians no longer believe Putin’s war propaganda

A year ago, Russia marked the May 9 Victory Day celebration with a spectacular display of fireworks that lit up the Moscow sky. This year the fireworks have again been spectacular – but this time they have been caused by long-range Ukrainian attack drones slamming into refineries, pumping stations and factories deep inside Russia. In the Black Sea port of Tuapse, fireballs of burning gasoline 15 stories high erupted over the local oil refinery, while rivers of burning fuel ran down the city’s streets. Firefighters took three days to extinguish the inferno, which created a plume of smoke so high it was filmed by skiers from the slopes of the Caucasus mountains more than 60 miles away.

russia putin russians
Matt Ridley

How dangerous is the cruise ship hantavirus outbreak?

Here we go again, or maybe not. The World Health Organization is reassuring us that the public health risk from hantavirus is low, after the outbreak on a cruise ship. Hantaviruses are a classic zoonosis: caught from animals. You have to inhale dust containing infected rodent droppings or – in the case of this Andean variant, which has shown limited human-to-human transmission before – to have close and prolonged contact with somebody who has already caught the virus. That means being coughed on, not just sharing the same air in a room. Zoonotic agents are often very good at killing people – Ebola, Marburg, Nipah, Hendra, SARS and Hanta have high fatality rates – but are not so good at infecting people Trouble is, of course, WHO said the same about Covid.

hantavirus
John Power

Hantavirus doesn’t look like the next Covid

Over the past few days, more parts of the press have been reporting that the hantavirus outbreak aboard the MV Hondius has spread beyond the boat, and that health authorities are "racing" to track people who have been on board. "Why rat virus patients could become super-spreaders" is the headline of one Telegraph article. "Superspreader fears" is the caption of one image in the Sun. The Daily Express is even running a poll asking its readers "are you worried about the hantavirus cruise outbreak?" – a vote which they may have somewhat prejudiced by dubbing MV Hondius the "Horror Hantavirus cruise" in another article published just yesterday. The Daily Mail has gone one further, alternatively calling MV Hondius the "Death Cruise" and the "Doomed cruise.

Jacob Heilbrunn

Trump is clinging to a mirage in the Middle East

Well, well, well. For all the head-scratching that it initially occasioned, President Trump’s hasty abandonment of "Project Freedom" – his grandly titled plan to open the Strait of Hormuz – turns out not to be so mysterious after all. Trump’s reversal, NBC News revealed late yesterday, came at the behest of America’s Gulf allies, foremost among them Riyadh which told Washington that it would suspend the US military’s right to use its airspace. Now Trump, who has described his current exchanges with Iran as "very good," is breathing optimism about a one-page peace memorandum that he claims will be completed by the end of the week. Iran, by contrast, merely says that Trump’s proposal is “under review.

Wednesday

Nicholas Farrell

Meloni is being haunted by the ghost of Berlusconi

The late Silvio Berlusconi has come back from the dead –  momentarily, it is hoped – to torment Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni in the guise of the old rogue’s "bunga bunga" woman-in-chief. As a result, Meloni’s opponents and their many friends in the media are baying for the blood of her justice minister Carlo Nordio in a bid to cause her fatal damage. Normal people cannot help but wonder why on earth an Italian president is granting a pardon to someone like her, who has not spent even one single day in prison Italy’s 69 governments since the foundation of the Republic of Italy in 1946 have lasted on average little more than a year.

meloni
Joanna Williams

The slow death of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

For the past few years, woke has been on life support. Back in 2020, police officers knelt for Black Lives Matter, children were taught that boys could become girls, and the trans-inclusive Pride flag seemed to fly from every building in the country. Since then, there has been something of a retreat. The Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) industry still has a pulse and is more than capable of reinvention, but it is less confident and more defensive. Human Resource officers were able to rule the roost Why the change? Donald Trump’s second term in office is one reason for the vibe shift. The President punctured all manner of sacred convictions as he signed executive orders to keep DEI out of education and men out of women’s sports.

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germany
Lisa Haseldine

Trump’s missile cut has left Germany exposed

It has been a choppy 12 months for transatlantic relations since Friedrich Merz was sworn in as chancellor of Germany a year ago today. Fittingly, he is marking one year in office by dealing with the fallout of a spat with Donald Trump which has resulted in very real consequences for German – and potentially European – defense. On Friday, the Pentagon announced that 5,000 American troops would be withdrawn from German soil over the coming six to 12 months. Additionally, contrary to an agreement struck between Merz’s predecessor Olaf Scholz and Joe Biden, no new intermediate-range missiles would be stationed in Germany in the immediate future.

MAGA
Roger Kimball

MAGA isn’t finished. It’s just getting started 

What’s the one thing that every pundit and certified member of the Fourth Estate knows? Why, it’s that MAGA is finished.  How many stories have we been treated to about “the fracturing of MAGA?” NPR knows it, Politico intuited it, Salon bet on it and the New Republic salivated over it. “Trump’s MAGA Base Splits Dramatically,” that anti-Trump orifice recently crowed, “New Poll Shows Donald Trump’s support continues to drop.” Then of course there is the New York Times, which has predicted and rejoiced in the death of MAGA again and again. That is – that was – the narrative. What is the reality? Yesterday’s primaries tell a very different, in fact a contradictory story.

Andrea Miotti

We are closer to AI extinction than we think

A specter is hanging over humanity: the specter of superintelligent AI. While governments busy themselves with the mundane work of politics and putting out the fire of the day, the most consequential technological development since the splitting of the atom is accelerating beyond anyone’s ability to control it. We are entering an era where the AI systems themselves are threats, not just humans Anthropic, one of the world's leading AI companies, recently announced a new AI system, Claude Mythos. The model can autonomously find and exploit critical security vulnerabilities in every major operating system and internet browser underpinning our digital infrastructure, including flaws that survived decades of human review.

Andrew Cockburn

What today’s Iran headlines don’t reveal about ‘Project Freedom’

"Operation Epic Fury is concluded," declared Marco Rubio, holding his first White House press conference yesterday. The Secretary of State explained that the new mission – reopening the Strait of Hormuz – would essentially be a humanitarian operation, resulting in military exchanges only if US ships came under fire while clearing the passage of mines and other obstacles. Later, President Trump went further, saying that "Project Freedom" (the Hormuz operation) had been paused "to see whether or not" a "Complete and Final Agreement can be finalized and signed." “Project Freedom” is unworkable because the Navy cannot complete the de-mining operation Today, the markets have rebounded on news that US and Iranian officials are discussing "a memorandum of understanding.

Tuesday

Corey DeAngelis

Why is the teachers’ union targeting ICE, not education?

Randi Weingarten is using mafia tactics to bully Target into denouncing immigration enforcement by ICE. As president of the American Federation of Teachers – which holds at least 7 percent of Target stock through teacher pension funds – Weingarten sent a letter to Target’s CEO explicitly threatening the company’s relationship with her union’s massive pension holdings unless it publicly opposes ICE operations in Minnesota. This move was not subtle. Weingarten made clear that the AFT viewed the retailer’s refusal to denounce federal law enforcement as a threat to “shareholder value.” She followed up with additional pressure, leading her union to pass a resolution directing its 1.8 million members to boycott Target for back-to-school shopping.

Randi Weingarten teachers union
iran ceasefire
Jawad Iqbal

Is the Iran ceasefire crumbling?

Is the fragile Iran war ceasefire over? It would appear so, with American and Iranian forces exchanging fire in the Strait of Hormuz. The renewed clashes follow President Trump’s launch of "Project Freedom," which aims to use the US military to escort stranded ships out of the critical waterway. Trump said American forces had hit seven Iranian small boats, with the US military claiming to have intercepted cruise missiles and drones launched by Tehran. Trump earlier warned that Iranian forces would be "blown off the face of the Earth" if they targeted US ships in the strait or the Persian Gulf. Tehran says it fired "warning shots" at US warships, and said it would attack any foreign force that tried to enter the strait.

Monday

Alexander Kolyandr

Russia is running out of workers

Vladimir Putin likes good statistics. At a government meeting on April 15, even as he acknowledged that growth was slowing, he pointed proudly to Russia's unemployment rate: 2.1 percent, a record low. Proof, he suggested, that the economy remains fundamentally sound despite everything the West has thrown at it. The Russian President would do better to worry. A record low unemployment rate is not, in normal circumstances, cause for alarm. In Russia's case it signals something closer to a slow-motion emergency. For the first time in its post-Soviet history, Russia has run out of workers.

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Niko Vorobyov

Venezuela has become another American puppet state

Venezuela’s deposed president, Nicolás Maduro, never enjoyed the charisma or genuine popularity of his predecessor, "El Comandante" Hugo Chávez. So all the murals, billboards and installations dotted around Caracas urging the release of the 63-year-old statesman – along with his wife Cilia Flores – from American captivity, don’t exactly feel like a grassroots effort. "Bring them home!" reads one mural, evoking the Israeli hostages kidnapped by Hamas. Meanwhile, a stopwatch installed in Caracas’s Bolivar Square counts how long it has been since the presidential couple were abducted by the US army in early January.

venezuela
islamist
Simon Diggins

Britain is facing an Islamist insurgency

The recent horrific attack in Golders Green has generated much anger and despair at this latest in a series of concerted, violent assaults currently aimed primarily at the Jewish community, but with a clear lineage to earlier Islamist outrages such as the murder of Fusilier Lee Rigby and the London Bridge attacks of 2017 and 2019. The UK terrorism threat level was raised to "severe" following the attack on Thursday. But terrorism, "an action or threat designed to influence the government or intimidate the public," is an inadequate descriptor of what we face in Britain. Instead, I believe we face a different problem: a full-blown insurgency.

coup
Mark Galeotti

No, Russia is not on the verge of a coup

However much Western leaders inveigh against Russian disinformation (which, yes, is a real issue), we should never pretend this is not a two-way street. The sudden spate of news stories reporting that a conveniently anonymous "European intelligence agency" claims that the Kremlin fears a coup looks suspiciously more like a psy-op meant to generate paranoia in the Russian elite than a serious assessment. The claim is that Putin’s personal security has been dramatically stepped up, not simply to protect him from increasingly frequent and far-ranging Ukrainian drone strikes but, in particular, because since the beginning of March, the Kremlin and Vladimir Putin himself have been concerned about the risk of a plot or coup attempt targeting the Russian President.

RFK
David Mansdoerfer

MAHA must resist purity tests to survive

The Make America Healthy Again movement has already accomplished more in its first year than many reformers dared to hope. Major food companies are starting to phase out those artificial dyes. States are testing ways to remove junk food from SNAP benefits. The MAHA Commission delivered a refreshingly honest assessment of the childhood chronic-disease crisis. Vaccine schedules have been thoughtfully adjusted toward the shots with the broadest consensus, and federal attention is finally turning to ultra-processed foods, seed oils and environmental toxins. These are real, tangible wins we can build on. Yet there’s a quiet risk brewing within the movement: the temptation to slide into puritanism.

Saturday

Patrick West

Mental health is an inauthentic crisis

When it reaches the stage when everyone in the entire country is diagnosed as having mental health problems, will we have to accept that being mentally ill represents mankind’s new norm, thus rendering the whole concept meaningless? This is not some idle philosophical hypothesis. This is a question we will one day have to ask ourselves if matters continue on their current path. According to new research from Zurich Insurance, 51 percent of people aged between 15 and 19 now have a mental or behavioral disorder such as anxiety, depression or ADHD, and if present trends continue as they have, by 2030 this figure will hit 64 percent. We have indeed crossed a momentous boundary.

Mamdani
Ben Clerkin

Zohran Mamdani’s toxic social media socialism

Zohran Mamdani is discovering how much more difficult seizing the means of production is than posting about seizing it on social media. To date he has delivered just one of the many radical campaign promises he algorithmized to become New York City mayor. And when he took to social media to crow about that partial win on taxing the rich, he may have inadvertently ripped a new financial blackhole in the city’s budget. Nevertheless, the Democratic party establishment, that pointedly refused to back the radical’s mayoral bid, is being seduced by his social media socialism. Barack Obama recently visited New York to be photographed with him, and Governor Kathy Hochul caved to some of his tax and spending plans. Unsurprisingly, when she gave an inch, he took a mile.

Friday

Freddy Gray

Lorna Hajdini and the willing suspension of disbelief

"A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on." That old saw is now hopelessly out of date. These days, an apparent malicious falsehood can become global news in a matter of seconds, especially if it contains suggestions that pants might have come off. Human beings love to share shocking gossip, and internet technology means that we can do so at terrifying speed and scale. Social media now resembles the lower-rent tabloids of old, rife with fantastical pieces about aliens or sex slaves and the occult Take, for instance, the incredible tale of the feline JPMorgan executive who "sexually harassed" a junior male staff member.

King Charles
Paolo Odoli

Why Bermuda is loyal to the King

At St. Peter’s Church in St. George’s, Bermuda, the oldest Anglican church in continuous use in the Western Hemisphere, a photograph of the late Princess Diana with the then-Prince Charles has just been taken down. Removing the reminder of the King’s last visit to the island in 1982 was a matter of administrative prudence ahead of his arrival on Friday. A small gesture that reveals much about the respect and deference Bermudians feel towards the British monarchy. The 2022 royal tour of the Caribbean by the Prince and Princess of Wales was defined by protest, demands for reparations and independence from the British Crown. Bermuda will not repeat that performance.

Thursday

Jawad Iqbal

Why does Zohran Mamdani want Charles III to return the Koh-i-Noor?

Even those who don’t think much of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s politics might grudgingly concede he has a knack for jumping on causes that resonate with his achingly progressive voter base. The idea of righting the wrongs of imperial history – anywhere, even thousands of miles away – is high on the tick list. Hence Mamdani’s call for King Charles to return the Koh-i-Noor diamond, one of the world’s largest and most controversial jewels, to India. The 105-carat diamond, part of the Crown Jewels, is the subject of a fierce historical dispute, with India claiming that it was stolen during British colonial rule. Leaving aside Mamdani’s political opportunism, what is it about the fate of the Koh-i-Noor diamond that seems to agitate so many Indians?

koh-i-noor
Daniel McCarthy

The Democrats’ race-based regime is collapsing

The Supreme Court’s decision yesterday in Louisiana v. Callais et al has inevitably drawn strong criticism. In ruling that electoral districts cannot be redefined along racial lines, the Court stands accused of "gutting" the Voting Rights Act, crippling civil-rights law and effectively disenfranchising minority voters.  What the Supreme Court has "gutted" is not the Voting Rights Act of 1965 – but a nakedly racial form of gerrymandering But the Court’s decision was correct on the merits. It also represents a great retrenchment that’s taking place in American politics.

Jacob Heilbrunn

For Trump, it’s lonely at the top

King Charles III and Queen Camilla were at their most emollient in Washington, where they exchanged a flurry of presents with Donald and Melania Trump. The King’s gifts to President Trump included a framed copy of the design plans for the Resolute Desk, which was originally given to President Rutherford B. Hayes by Queen Victoria in 1880. Trump appeared to shelve his hostility toward the United Kingdom for declining to participate in the Iran war, but he quickly made up for his forbearance by pummeling another NATO ally.

Charles Lipson

Does Trump have to ‘finish the job’ in Iran? 

The missiles and bombs may have stopped, at least for the moment, but the war between the US and Iran continues. The Strait of Hormuz remains closed, the US sanctions remain in place, and the fundamental issues separating the combatants remain unresolved. The bilateral negotiations have gone nowhere, and the two sides remain far apart. This stalemate has puzzled observers since it’s not hard to see the outlines of a deal. For Iran, the minimum acceptable goal is regime survival. For the US, it is the end of the Iranian nuclear program, which poses an existential threat to America’s regional partners and, eventually, to Europe and South Asia. Since the regime’s survival and the end of its nuclear program are compatible goals, a deal should be possible.

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