Latest articles in this section.
As Israelis head to the polls on October 27 one major issue that has not received serious attention during the campaign is Israel’s flat rejection of Palestinian statehood. This puts Israel seriously at odds with world opinion. As it stands, 159 countries around the world recognise Palestinian statehood, including diplomatic heavyweights such as the UK […]
Serbia’s student-led political movement has secured a historic election victory. Preliminary results suggest the so-called Student List has won 141 of the 250 seats in parliament, with the ruling Serbian Progressive Party taking 104. The result brings the 12-year rule of Alexander Vučić to an end. The Student List’s story is remarkable. It has no […]
Israelis head to the polls on October 27 for a general election that will pit the right-wing bloc of current prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu against a bloc consisting of centre and left-wing parties. The governing parties and the opposition grouping both look set to fall short of an outright majority. Everything may now hinge on […]
For anyone even remotely interested in US politics, the midterm elections are the only game in town at the moment. In fact, there has already been plenty of ink spilled about what a “blue wave” landslide for the Democrats might mean for Trump and Trumpism – and how likely that outcome even is. If polling […]
Russian hostile activity costs the UK at least £2 billion annually, according to a recent report by Scottish MP Graeme Downie, who has called on the government to measure what these actions cost Britain. But this figure is just the baseline. In reality, a profound shift in Moscow’s approach to sabotage means the true cost […]
Prime Minister Andy Burnham recently announced the creation of a National Centre for Information Defence that will disrupt disinformation campaigns by states hostile to the UK. The centre will bring together security services, police, tech firms and government departments. But this new centre will have its work cut out. State-backed adversaries are supported by huge […]
Argentina is trying to stop a planned oil project near the Falkland Islands. On October 13, the government asked the International Tribunal for the Law of the Seas (Itlos), a court in Hamburg that deals with disputes over the sea, to halt the project. Argentina says the UK approved the drilling without its agreement and […]
And so France continues to smoulder. Two weeks after the first mass demonstrations in support of increased funding for French state schools, events reached a peak on Saturday October 17. Widespread destruction of small businesses, cafés, town halls and chain shops have brought the French economy even further to catastrophe. The scenes of mass looting, […]
Some wars are predictable. There are conflicts past and present which have been more or less expected because of economic and social conditions, a country’s history or that of its neighbours. In today’s geopolitical landscape, one warning sign that really stands out is the buying and selling of weapons. There is good evidence that a […]
The drone has become the signature weapon of the Russo-Ukraine war. On any day in Ukraine, tens of thousands of drones are out hunting the battlefield for targets. These could be individual enemy soldiers or vehicles, or they could be larger targets such as depots, headquarters, bridges or power plants. Yet, this drone war has […]
As the November midterm elections approach, many people in the US are feeling rather pessimistic about their futures. An Economist/YouGov survey in the US completed on October 12 asked how respondents felt about about their futures compared with ten years ago. Altogether, 23% said they were more optimistic, with 48% saying they were more pessimistic. […]
Britain’s prime minister, Andy Burnham, has said the recent suspected terror plot targeting RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire was “almost certainly” directed by Iran. The allegation has centred attention on how Iran projects power beyond its borders. The case comes at a time of rising concern about Iranian-linked activities in the UK. In early October, two […]
PRESS ASSOCIATION SPORT BIRTHDAYSMartina Navratilova (tennis) – nine-time winner of the women’s singles at Wimbledon and 18-time grand slam singles champion, born 1956.Thomas Hearns (boxing) – former world champion, born 1958.Robbie Savage (soccer) – former Leicester, Birmingham, Derby and Wales midfielder, now a TV and radio pundit and Forest Green head coach, born 1974.Emma Hayes […]
Fentanyl and other synthetic opioids are still the single biggest driver of overdose deaths in the US. They were involved in around 38,000 of the roughly 70,000 deaths recorded in 2025, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Europe’s figures are of a different order. In 16 countries that reported data, fentanyl and […]
More than 25,000 police officers were deployed across New Delhi recently to prevent demonstrations led by India’s new youth-led political movement, the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP). Government authorities had denied the CJP permission to protest on public-order grounds. The ensuing security operation saw the authorities shut one in six metro stations in the capital, barricade […]
Overnight on October 13-14, Russia launched 39 ballistic missiles and more than 120 drones at Kyiv and Kharkiv in one of its heaviest bombardments for some time. We already knew that Russia’s new-generation jet-powered drones pose a significant threat to Ukraine’s air defences. They are simply too fast to intercept consistently – so many more […]
The drone has become the signature weapon of the Russo-Ukraine war. On any day in Ukraine, tens of thousands of drones are out hunting the battlefield for targets. These could be individual enemy soldiers or vehicles, or they could be larger targets such as depots, headquarters, bridges or power plants. Yet, this drone war has […]
Ukrainian president, Volodymr Zelensky, recently told journalists that the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has instructed his military commanders to abandon the rules of war that protect civilian targets. “He said there are no rules now,” Zelensky said – reporting that this information had been picked up by intelligence intercepts of Russian communications. That Putin’s commanders […]
It’s surely no surprise that amid today’s geopolitical turmoil, filmmakers are turning to the events of the cold war for inspiration. A flurry of productions set in the 1980s have been released just this year. See, for instance, The Brink of War, a political drama focused on the 1986 summit at Reykjavik between Ronald Reagan […]
Russia’s drone and missile attacks on Ukraine’s population and infrastructure continue to dominate coverage of the conflict. But on the ground, Ukraine has been making significant, if still limited, gains. In mid-September, Ukraine formally announced the existence of Operation Vivaldi, which has retaken territory near Lyman and disrupted a Russian advance toward the fortified cities […]
It’s one year since the US-brokered ceasefire for Gaza formally came into effect. On October 9 2025, Hamas handed over the 20 remaining hostages and the bodies of four Israelis who had died while being held captive. In return, Israel released almost 2,000 Palestinians held in Israeli jails. The ceasefire officially began the following day, […]
Russia’s international standing collapsed within weeks of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Sanctions swept across Russian banks, businesses and political elites, while western companies exited the country en masse. For those living inside Russia, it was the everyday, tangible shifts that made this feel real. Western goods disappeared from supermarket shelves, direct flights to Europe […]
The student demonstrations that have spread across France in recent weeks are not unprecedented. Indeed, commentators have been quick to point to comparisons with the events of May and June 1968, where, at their peak, more than 10 million students and workers took to the streets. In 1968, as now, there were legitimate reasons for […]
The deal struck by Donald Trump with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, on October 9 to allow Russia to sell millions of tonnes of diesel is a major departure from US policy and runs counter to Ukrainian and European interests. It also directly contradicts a law signed by the US president in September to authorise […]
Two giant pandas recently landed in Atlanta, a week after Donald Trump and Xi Jinping met in Washington. The summit produced no immediate breakthrough on trade deals, Taiwan or AI, but it did produce something cuddly for the American public: a pair of giant pandas, Ping Ping and Fu Shuang, which are on a ten-year […]
In his speech at the UN General Assembly in September, Andy Burnham announced that his security chiefs would begin work on a new National Centre for Information Defence. The UK prime minister said the centre was necessary because of Russian attempts to “spread lies and disinformation”. He added: “Faced with this information warfare, security starts […]
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and leading opposition figure Gadi Eisenkot took to social media as their country marked three years since the devastating Hamas attacks of October 7. As the country mourned, the rival politicians played the blame game. Eisenkot is the man widely thought to be most likely to beat Netanyahu in […]
Within two months of it being signed, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan invoked the Mecca mutual defence pact in response to attacks by Yemen’s Houthi rebel forces. The three countries agreed on October 5 to activate what Saudi defence minister Khalid bin Salman called collective deterrence measures against the Houthis. Islamabad and Ankara have undertaken […]
Andy Burnham’s decision to choose Berlin for his first trip to an EU member state on October 8 will have delighted many in the German capital’s political circles. In our recent analysis of the UK-Germany relationship, we noted some disappointment among political figures in Berlin that it took Rishi Sunak 18 months to make a […]
Protests have erupted in New York City after a federal immigration agent shot and wounded a man in the Bronx on Thursday afternoon. As masked agents reportedly posing as construction workers attempted to arrest 28-year-old Oscar Belgal, they opened fire on his car. Belgal was shot in the neck. His 5-year-old child, who was in […]
The past few weeks have seen aerial duels being fought over the North Sea and a naval vessel being sunk off Scotland’s west coast. Fortunately this was not a case of hostile combat – these episodes took place during two major multinational military exercises: Exercise Atlantic Thunder and Exercise Cobra Warrior 26-2. Further north, across […]
The recent incidents concerning RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire have highlighted that fact that the US military does have quite a significant presence on UK soil. What this presence fully amounts to, though, is unclear. According to news reports there are “at least” 15 US military bases in the UK, while other sources have the figure […]
Seventy three years ago Tenzing Norgay stood on top of Everest, known as Chomolungma in Tibetan, which roughly translates as “Goddess Mother of the World”. A new biopic of Norgay’s life and that first ascent, along with Edmund Hillary, of the highest mountain in the world portrays beautifully, and with compassion, his humility, and intimate […]
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and leading opposition figure Gadi Eisenkot took to social media as their country marked three years since the devastating Hamas attacks of October 7. As the country mourned, the rival politicians played the blame game. Eisenkot is the man widely thought to be most likely to beat Netanyahu in […]
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and leading opposition figure Gadi Eisenkot took to social media as their country marked three years since the devastating Hamas attacks of October 7. As the country mourned, the rival politicians played the blame game. Eisenkot is the man widely thought to be most likely to beat Netanyahu in […]
A placard held by a young man as school protests continued across France appeared to capture the mood on the streets. Young people, it said: “want the Bac (high school diploma), not the BAC”. The Brigade Anti-Criminalité (BAC) is a police unit widely known for its aggressive tactics in tackling street crime. The protests, which […]
The student demonstrations that have spread across France in recent weeks are not unprecedented. Indeed, commentators have been quick to point to comparisons with the events of May and June 1968, where, at their peak, more than 10 million students and workers took to the streets. In 1968, as now, there were legitimate reasons for […]
More than 27 years after the end of the Kosovo war, former prime minister and president Hashim Thaçi and three other leaders of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) have been found guilty of war crimes and sentenced to up to 25 years in prison. Thaçi and his fellow defendants faced charges including arbitrary detention, cruel […]
The 2026 Asian Games in Japan drew to a close on October 4 following two weeks of competition between 45 countries and territories across 43 sports. Despite the official slogan “imagine one Asia”, fragmented regional politics came to the fore as the event unfolded. Just days before the games officially began, tensions between Japan and […]
Nearly 2,000 French high schools are blockaded or closed today amid massive student-led protests over school funding and inequality. The demonstrations began in September at a single school in the economically deprived suburbs of Paris, where students protested teacher shortages, overcrowded classrooms and dilapidated school buildings beset by rats, falling debris and more. But the […]
A year or so after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the city of Murmansk in Russia’s Arctic north-west marked its annual regional day with a celebration for children. Alongside the sons and daughters of Russian soldiers stood children taken from the occupied Prymorskyi district of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region. Ukraine’s authorities have verified 20,651 cases of […]
More than half of the Ecuadorian Amazon has been marked for oil drilling, overlapping with Indigenous territories and areas of high biodiversity. The ecological and cultural impacts of oil extraction are well documented, and have fuelled some of Latin America’s most prominent environmental movements. Yet at the local level, extraction is not always met with […]
In China, young people are encountering myriad challenges, from societal pressures around success to existing in a highly surveilled society, that have made them turn to the internet in search of a balm to soothe their pain. What has emerged is a host of content called digital ibuprofen – viewed as a way to numb […]
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) will introduce new fees for the EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program from November 30, 2026. The agency said the fee adjustments are intended to ensure that charges paid by EB-5 applicants cover the cost of administering the programme, while helping USCIS meet statutory processing-time targets and strengthen programme integrity. […]
Overnight on Wednesday, which marked 1,680 days since Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia unleashed a heavy barrage of strikes against energy infrastructure in Kyiv and other major cities. As weather forecasters predict freezing overnight temperatures in coming days, many suspect this is the beginning of a campaign to knock out Ukraine’s […]
Over the past few weeks, a striking theme has emerged in discussions surrounding Nato. Senior political figures and former Nato officials have raised the possibility of invoking article 5 in response to severe cyber-attacks. Military leaders have warned that Russia may seek opportunities to test the alliance’s resolve. These developments have prompted an obvious question: […]
Vast quantities of plastic and fishing gear are washing up along the shores of the Seychelles, destroying fragile ecosystems and causing significant economic problems. Aldabra Atoll, a Unesco world heritage site in this archipelago nation of 115 islands, is estimated to have accumulated more than 500 tonnes of plastic on its shores alone. Most of […]
In a speech to the European Parliament, Canadian prime minister Mark Carney declared that “Europe and Canada are stronger together”. He also backed an offer made by the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, one day earlier for Canada to become the first “associate member” of the bloc. “Canada welcomes this ambition,” […]
In this extraordinary and deeply worrying year for international security, some weeks nevertheless stand out as particularly momentous. Events in Yemen now threaten to escalate the war between the US, Israel and Iran into a regional conflagration. Houthi rebels have captured strategically important positions on the Red Sea coast that will give them the potential […]
For the past decade, global diplomacy has been dictated by one man’s social media musings. Since Donald Trump first glided into the Trump Tower atrium on his golden escalator, he – and what he has to say – has been the story, throwing red meat to the media and shaping the affairs of the US […]