Forty-two athletes, including swimmers, weightlifters and sprinters, will compete in Las Vegas on Sunday in the first Enhanced Games.

Little in sport has “caused as much controversy – nor provoked as many questions – as the Enhanced Games”, said BBC sports editor Dan Roan. “Those behind it claim it is here to stay, and could soon expand to more events and other disciplines.”

But there is another side to the spectacle of juiced-up competitors trying to beat the world record in their discipline. Earlier this year, the company behind the event, Enhanced, launched a range of personalised performance and longevity medicines to sell to the public.

What did the commentators say?

Proponents of the games say the aim is “to challenge sporting norms by allowing athletes to push their potential with legal drugs under strict medical oversight”, said Chris Kenning in USA Today. “The approach is, let’s not be naive and pretend it’s not happening,” said Enhanced CEO Max Martin. “Let’s just take what’s happening in the shadows, put it out in the open.”

But that’s not sensible, say some sports medicine experts. “It’s akin to me saying I’m going to make smoking safe by supervising you while you’re smoking,” Aaron Baggish, professor of medicine at the University of Lausanne, told Yahoo Sports.

Most critics though “overlook the fact that the Enhanced Games is making obvious what society has always quietly accepted”, said Byron Hyde, philosopher of science and public policy at Bristol University, on The Conversation – namely “that most people are willing to watch athletes risk harm when the entertainment is good enough”. Brain trauma is the “potential price of boxing entertainment”, so “why the outrage about pharmaceutical enhancement risks?”

For Baggish, the “primary concern” is the message the event sends to the public that using these substances when taking part in sports “is in any way, shape or form OK. That’s the really scary thing.”

That appears to be one of the goals of the organisers. Aron D’Souza, founder of the Enhanced Games, told The Independent in 2024: “This is the route towards eternal life.” The games will “bring about performance-medicine technologies that then create a feedback cycle of good technologies, selling to the world, more revenue, more R&D, to develop better and better technologies”. Ultimately, “it’s about being a better, stronger, faster, younger athlete for longer. And who doesn’t want to be younger for longer?”

But, said The Economist, “the real purpose of the games is to push the limits of what the public sees as the acceptable use of performance-enhancing drugs”. The event is taking place “at a time when concerns are being raised over the medicalisation of Western society”, said Roan. Social media and ‘looksmaxxing’ are being “blamed for fuelling demand for weight-loss injections, cosmetic treatments and performance substances”.

What next?

The Enhanced Games “speak to a vision of the future in which medicines, rather than being simply used to treat disease, can extend human longevity and enhance well-being”, said The Economist.

But on Sunday, the athletes involved will effectively be the guinea pigs for this idea, albeit ones who have “burned bridges, risked their future livelihoods or their health”. And with the launch of Enhanced’s consumer business, “more and more people may soon be wagering their bodies on a chance to roll back the clock”.

Two things are true: Cruise ships can be breeding grounds for disease. Americans love cruises anyway.

Expedition cruise lines “haven’t experienced any slowdown in bookings” following the deadly hantavirus outbreak on the MV Hondius, said The Wall Street Journal. Oceangoing travelers “generally understand the realities” of long boat journeys, Expedition Cruise Network CEO Akvile Marozaite said to the newspaper. Despite the scary headlines, industry experts “expect a record number of people” to take cruises this year, said The Associated Press. The sector “seems to be somewhat Teflon” to the bad publicity, Cornell University’s Robert Kwortnik said to the outlet.

What did the commentators say?

“Why would anyone go on a cruise?” Dave Schilling said at The Guardian. The Hondius drew worldwide attention, but a separate ship that was briefly quarantined with a rash of stomach flu cases was largely overlooked by the media. The stories are “piling up” about cruise ships being ocean-bound “fetid petri dishes.” There is not “one thing” a cruise offers “that isn’t available in the safe bosom of dry land.” Cruises will remain popular anyway. If Covid-19 “didn’t kill” enthusiasm for the excursions, “I think the industry is safe.”

People who criticize cruises are “wrong about nearly everything,” Nicole Russell said at USA Today. The hantavirus outbreak “won’t dampen my desire to go on a cruise.” There may be many stories of “terrible things happening on cruise ships,” but they are “worth the risk” because they can provide an “affordable, joy-filled family vacation.” Cruises, like life, are a “trade-off.” And life is “meant to be lived.“

“Do I think cruises are worth it, health-wise?” epidemiologist Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz said at Slate. The answer is a “bit complicated.” Cruises are “absolutely great places for illnesses to thrive,” but there is not a “great deal of evidence showing that infections are more likely” than on land. It is possible that people “just generally come into contact with lots of others on vacation.” Meyerowitz-Katz is considering taking his own family on a cruise. After weighing both the risks and benefits, “it doesn’t seem like the worst idea in the world.“

What next?

People planning to take a cruise should “practice great hand hygiene,” said CNBC. They should also “get up-to-date on your vaccines” before departing. And they should “keep a safe social distance” if illness rears its head. Best to stay clear of anyone who is coughing, “has difficulty breathing or is exhibiting fever,” Wellness Equity Alliance’s Dr. Tyler B. Evans said to the outlet.

The Hondius’ next voyage is already planned, said Forbes. After arriving in the Netherlands, the ship is to be “disinfected using chlorine and peroxide,” and the crew quarantined. Two scheduled voyages for the Hondius were canceled, but the plan “pending successful cleaning” is to sail in June from the Svalbard islands to the North Pole.

The UK’s net migration dropped sharply to 171,000 in the year to December 2025, the lowest outside the pandemic since 2012. But nobody seems to care.

A survey commissioned by the think tank British Future found only 16% of people believed net migration had fallen in 2025 compared with the previous year, while 49% thought it had increased. The poll of 3,003 adults in the UK “also suggests public concern is being shaped more by asylum and small boat crossings”, said the BBC Verify’s Rob England.

While net immigration figures have been falling (the number to December 2024 was 331,000), Labour and Conservative MPs “are speaking in a more hostile way about immigration than at almost any other time in the last century”, said The Guardian. The number of far-right and anti-immigration protests “has increased 15-fold since Labour took power in July 2024”, said The Telegraph.

What did the commentators say?

“It’s little wonder voters think net migration is going up when the only debate we have is about how to bring it down,” British Future’s director Sunder Katwala said. “We should be having a conversation about how to manage the pressures and gains of migration to Britain.”

“The difference in tone towards issues relating to asylum, immigration and human rights under this Labour administration compared to previous ones is stark,” said Alexander Horne in The Spectator. “These issues are now portrayed as problems to be solved.” New polling from YouGov also showed that Labour Party members have backed Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood’s tougher immigration policies by a two-to-one majority.

The net migration figures came as Andy Burnham’s allies signalled he would back Mahmood’s controversial immigration policies should he become Labour leader. “For Andy, migration is a moral issue as much as anything, showing people who’ve lost faith in politics that we do have control and we can do good,” one source told The Guardian. “We need to tell a positive story about the contribution of migration to our country, but we cannot do that unless people trust that the people they vote for have control over our borders.”

Mahmood’s closeness to Keir Starmer has led many to believe that she and her reforms will be jettisoned if the PM leaves Downing Street. “This is a pity for the country,” said Andrew Tettenborn in The Critic. Mahmood has thought deeply about immigration and she “overtly embraces the idea that settlement in the UK must be a privilege and not something there almost for the taking”. Despite criticism from within her own party, the voters Labour needs to woo – “the just-about-managing, the fed-up and those from the Red Wall” – care a “great deal for immigration control and a great deal for removing obstacles to it”.

But politicians should be wary of swinging too harshly one way or the other on immigration, said Sarah O’Connor in the Financial Times. “After the 2016 Brexit referendum, public concern about immigration fell”. Then it surged again “when the Conservative government liberalised visa routes for students and care workers between 2019 and 2022”. Now Mahmood has taken a restrictive turn.

What is happening is that successive governments are over-interpreting and over-reacting to a change in public opinion, “which reacts in turn, prompting a sudden swing the other way”. These frequent changes in immigration policy are bad for employers, migrants and the economy but also corrosive of trust between politicians and the public.

And yet “the tragedy of all this is that it’s not happening because politicians ‘aren’t listening’ to the public on immigration”. Rather, “it’s because they are listening too much”.

What next?

Mahmood’s proposed reforms “have caused a slow-bubbling revolt on the backbenches”, said Ethan Croft in The New Statesman, so whether they will survive a Commons vote remains to be seen.

Russian forces last month lost more territory to Ukraine than they were able to capture. The first of such occurrences in nearly two years, this marks an ignominious milestone and potential turning point in Moscow’s years-long invasion effort. At the same time, Russia is losing soldiers faster than it can recruit and deploy them. While the Ukraine front remains an active war zone that has left deep scars on both nations, there is a growing sense among observers that momentum has shifted in Kyiv’s favor.

What did the commentators say?

Russia’s conspicuously “diminished” Victory Day parade this month “signaled its vulnerability,” said The Economist. That sentiment was an “accurate reflection of Russia’s battlefield setbacks,” as well as the country’s “fear of the growing effectiveness of Ukraine’s long-range strikes.”

Russia’s weakened position can be traced to a confluence of three factors, said The Economist, citing research from the Institute for the Study of War: Ukrainian “ground counter-attacks and mid-range strikes,” the end of Russia’s “illicit use of Starlink terminals in Ukraine” and the Kremlin’s “paranoid throttling of the Telegram messaging app at home.” At the same time, Russia’s “exaggerated territorial ambitions and aggressive territorial demands” have run “completely counter to battlefield reality,” said the Institute.

May marks the fifth consecutive month in which Russia has lost “more soldiers than it can replace,” said National Security Journal. Ahead of an expected fifth summer of violence, Russia’s invasion “continues to falter” as the “fortunes of the war” seem to be “trending less and less in Russia’s favor.” Ukraine’s military technological advances have “not been the only key element” in Kyiv’s “recent battlefield gains.” Rather, they come amid Russia’s “growing command-and-control problems within its own military.”

Communications failures “contributed significantly to Russia’s problems” on the battlefield, said the Atlantic Council. After SpaceX “cut the Russian army’s illicit access to the satellite-based Starlink system” this spring, some Russian commanders were “forced to rely on inaccurate maps” showing “exaggerated gains.” In other cases, clusters of Russian troops were deployed “without adequate communication tools or coordination,” leaving them “highly vulnerable to Ukrainian counterattacks.”

All this comes as the public mood within Russia is “souring,” said Alexander Baunov at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. The Putin government has “unceremoniously violated” the terms of its social trade-off offered to the public — that “you can live outside of the war, but you cannot be against it” — and now “society is angry.” Russian authorities have also banned the use of “popular foreign messaging apps” because they are “nontransparent” and boosted the “homegrown” Max app as an alternative. But the “implication” of Max’s transparency “has not gone unnoticed, and people feel their privacy has been rudely invaded.”

Russians “increasingly chafe” at the “restrictions on their liberties” imposed “in pursuit of a battlefield victory that now appears to be unattainable,” said Noah Rothman at the National Review. Moscow lacks “freedom of action” in the theater of battle and has “lost the ability to dictate the tempo of events,” while its economy contracts “following several years of war-driven growth.”

What next?

The Russian military’s “recent communications problems” are “unlikely to persist in their current form indefinitely,” said the Atlantic Council. Moscow has already explored a “range of alternatives, including relay drones and satellite links.” But it will probably take a “number of years for the Russian military to replicate the same level of efficiency previously provided by Starlink.”

Russia’s flagging battlefield progress is a problem for Putin, who has “insisted that Russia’s victory in the war is inevitable,” said CNN. That promise has “always been flawed,” given how “slow and incredibly costly the Russian advances have been.” Still, the momentum shift of late “feels like an inflection point in the war,” said Sir Lawrence Freedman, an emeritus professor of war studies at King’s College London, to The Economist. “If the Russians have nothing to show for their efforts, I would not be surprised if in some places things start crumbling.”

Rising Ebola cases in the Democratic Republic of the Congo are ringing alarm bells across a region still scarred by previous outbreaks of the highly contagious viral disease. The World Health Organization has declared a “public health emergency of international concern”.

At least 540 suspected cases and 131 suspected deaths have been reported by DR Congo’s health minister, and two cases have been confirmed in neighbouring Uganda. But the WHO’s initial sampling suggests the outbreak is potentially much more widespread.

And what makes this outbreak “extraordinary”, said the WHO, is that it’s caused by the rare Bundibugyo strain of the Ebola virus. This has a lower fatality rate (about 35%) than the more common Zaire or Sudan strains (up to 90% and 50% respectively) but there is no licensed Bundibugyo-specific vaccine or treatment – and the tests for it do not appear to work very well.

What did the commentators say?

Experts are alarmed that this outbreak “has been able to spread for weeks undetected across a densely populated ​area”, said Reuters. It took weeks to identify it as the Bundibugyo strain and then pinpointing cases was “slowed by limited diagnostic capacity”, with only six tests possible per hour.

The lack of a vaccine is why I am in “panic mode”, Jean Kaseya, the director-general of Africa-Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, told Sky News. And ongoing attacks by Islamic State-backed militants in Ituri, the province at the centre of the outbreak, are “restricting surveillance and rapid response operations”.

Ituri is “rebel-held territory”, close to “porous borders” with Uganda and South Sudan that communities cross constantly, said The Times. That’s certainly one factor that’s “making containment so difficult”. Bundibugyo is also “among the least studied of the Ebola strains”: this is only the third outbreak on record.

We reached a “critical moment”, said the BBC’s health correspondent James Gallagher. Most Ebola outbreaks are small but specialists are still “haunted” by the largest, which started in 2014 and killed more than 11,000 people in West Africa. This time, there is a “significant threat” not only to DR Congo and Uganda but also South Sudan and Rwanda. But that doesn’t mean we’re “in the early stages of a Covid-style pandemic”. The risk to the rest of the world “remains tiny”.

DR Congo has “extensive experience in dealing with Ebola outbreaks”, and its response is “significantly stronger today than it was a decade ago”, Daniela Manno, of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, told the BBC’s Gallagher. But recent US-led foreign-aid cuts have taken their toll. Containing the 2014 outbreak “relied on US leadership from USAID”, said Devi Sridharm, chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh, in The Guardian. But “the USAID team dedicated to Ebola-like diseases was cut by Elon Musk”. Since Donald Trump withdrew the US from the WHO, the organisation’s emergency-response budget has shrunk by 37%. UK foreign-aid funding has also “fallen to its lowest level in two decades”.

The worry “is less about this becoming a global pandemic” (unlikely, as Ebola only spreads through contact with infected body fluids), and more about “the devastation it can cause” to the region and its “already fragile” healthcare systems. But this is an “interconnected world”: “if your neighbour’s house is on fire, you don’t wait and watch; you help to put it out before the fire spreads to yours.”

What next?

The WHO is sending a team of experts to Congo and, on Friday, will host an emergency scientific consultation of researchers, clinicians, public health bodies and funders. “The cash-strapped organisation has already released almost $4 million (£3 million) to combat the outbreak,” said the BBC, “but much more may be needed.” Public health officials are also considering using a combination of the existing approved vaccines for the Zaire and Sudan strains.

But communities in the region “have little trust in government or external aid agencies”, said Sridhar. If Ebola spreads to a major urban hub, it will be “much more difficult to stop”.

“I don’t think that, in two months, we will be done with this outbreak”, Anne Ancia, the WHO’s representative for the DRC, told reporters in Geneva at the World Health Assembly. The 2014 Ebola outbreak took two years to end.

Just days after he waved goodbye to Donald Trump, Xi Jinping is hosting another world leader, a man the famously opaque Chinese leader has described as his “best friend”.

Vladimir Putin arrives in Beijing today for the two-day summit, their second in less than a year and their 40th, at least, overall. Their “carefully cultivated friendship” is defined by “highly personal rituals” involving vodka, lakeside tea, sports events and even making pancakes, said the South China Morning Post.

It’s obvious what a war-fatigued and internationally isolated Russia seeks from China, on whom it relies for drones and economic support. But it’s less obvious what the now far more powerful China wants from its unstable neighbour.

What did the commentators say?

The timing of Putin’s visit, days after Trump’s, “sends an unmistakable signal”, said The Economist. Xi is emphasising that even if he can “stabilise relations” with the US, it won’t “come at the expense of his ‘no limits’ partnership” with Putin. Those ties could “grow deeper yet” because of the US war in the Middle East. Xi and Putin could share intelligence about Trump’s military action against Venezuela and Iran, whom both count as allies.

Xi could “exploit his newfound leverage” – the balance of power has “shifted dramatically” since Russia’s full-scale invasion – to “secure more sensitive military technology and know-how”. China now produces most of its own weapons, many based on Russian designs; it could now seek “more high-end assistance” in nuclear and ballistic missile areas. Russia is “thought to have been sharing” drone data and expertise garnered from its experience in Ukraine.

A “key aim” for China is “more reliable and sustainable energy supplies”, said Deutsche Welle. China is concerned about dependence on seaborne imports, which account for about 90% of its oil. The blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and the global disruption to supplies make Russian oil a “more attractive” prospect, and Western sanctions on Russian exports mean China can “secure Russian energy at a discount”.

“China and Russia are like a couple in the same bed with different dreams,” said Claus Soong of the Mercator Institute for China Studies. A weakened Russia, or even the collapse of Putin’s regime, would “pose immediate strategic risks for Beijing”. There are signs of cooling since the unlimited friendship they proclaimed in 2022, before Russia invaded Ukraine, but “Russia still has more to offer” than Europe.

Any deals will likely be on Chinese terms, Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center think tank, told the BBC. “Russia is fully in China’s pocket, and China can dictate the terms.”

But despite the asymmetry of power, the pair share vital interests – security along their 2,670-mile (4,300km) border, and China’s market for Russia’s oil, gas and other materials, said Ankur Shah, BBC Global China Unit editor. Russia’s war in Ukraine is also an “asset to Beijing as it considers its options for a potential invasion of Taiwan”. Russia still has some niche military technologies it can sell. But Moscow’s “big advantage” is “its ability to stand its ground”. Russia “may be the junior partner, but it’s also a proud one”.

What next?

Xi’s meeting with Trump, the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, and cooperation across energy, trade and security are all expected to be part of the discussions tomorrow, said CNN’s senior China reporter, Simone McCarthy.

Both Beijing and Moscow are “weighing up whether to play any role in helping to end a US-Iran conflict”. This could “potentially win each goodwill” with the US, but both also want to use Trump’s actions to “advance their own vision of a world that’s not dominated by American power”.

Any concrete agreements, however, are “unlikely to be made public”, said The Economist. “As during previous visits, announcements are likely to be broad in scope but thin on detail.”

Ukraine in recent months has slowed Russia’s invasion to a near-halt and forced Moscow to ramp up its own security measures. Kyiv’s homegrown drone technology and techniques are now in demand around the world. These accomplishments have come despite diminished U.S. support for Ukraine’s warfighting efforts.

What did the commentators say?

The fight against Russia is “going better than you think,” said Vox. Kyiv still relies on the “fickle U.S. government” for Patriot missiles and battlefield intelligence, but Ukrainian leaders have “more confidence” in their ability to withstand the invasion than they did a few months ago. The “Ukraine line is not really in danger of breaking” even though Russia has “sustained enormous casualties” in attempts to advance, military analyst Franz-Stefan Gady said to the outlet. Ukraine might not be winning the war at this point, said Vox, but it “doesn’t appear to be losing.” Its leaders now believe Ukraine “no longer needs the United States as much” as it did early in the war, said The New York Times.

Ukraine “has finally given up” on President Donald Trump, Phillips Payson O’Brien said at The Atlantic. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is “aggressively seeking new diplomatic and military partners” and has sent drones to strike Russian oil facilities despite U.S. warnings against doing so. American leaders have “reduced what little weaponry” they were sending to Ukraine and pressured Zelenskyy to cede territory in exchange for peace. But Ukraine’s ability to adapt with reduced American support “has been startling.”

It is “significant” that Ukraine is “reversing the trend” of Russia’s progress in the war, The Wall Street Journal said in an editorial. One sign: Russian leader Vladimir Putin scaled back his country’s usual Victory Day parade in early May out of apparent fears of a Ukrainian drone strike. It is clear the “tide may be turning against Russia” after four years of war. That is an opportunity for the U.S. to “increase support for Ukraine so it can keep the pressure on Russia” and bring the struggle to an end.

The war will not end unless Ukraine inflicts a “decisive defeat” on Russia that poses a “direct threat to Putin’s regime,” Andrew A. Michta said at 19FortyFive. Putin’s military is “well positioned to continue” thanks to the backing of China’s industrial might and money flowing in from oil sales. Trump’s pressure on Zelenskyy to negotiate is a “signal to Moscow that its strategy is working.”

What next?

The U.S. is now looking to Ukraine for help in the war against Iran. The two sides this month signed an agreement to potentially “export military technology to the U.S.” and manufacture Ukranian-designed drones in the United States, said CBS News. Kyiv has “sent drone interceptors and pilots to the Middle East” to defend Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates against Iranian attacks. Ukraine is a “hub for drone innovation,” said the Financial Times. That is expertise the U.S. now needs.

Is Britain ungovernable? That is the question many are asking after a dramatic week in Westminster that potentially fired the starting gun on a Labour leadership race that could give the UK its seventh prime minister in a decade.

This latest political “merry-go-round has prompted soul-searching”, said Charlie Cooper on Politico. A G7 economy and “former global hegemon”, Britain is “increasingly a picture of political instability and economic stagnation”.

What did the commentators say?

After securing his election win, Keir Starmer promised to be honest with voters about “how tough this will be. And frankly, things will get worse before they get better.” But less than two years on, said Cooper, it is the parties on the extremes “offering quick and direct solutions” – such as Reform’s pledge to slash immigration or the Greens with promises of wealth taxes – “that now win a hearing with voters”.

With few in parliament able to “combine policy nous, real-world experience and the ability to sell a vision and convey hard truths”, the “constant churn” among PMs is “an indictment of leadership in the country”, said Tej Parikh in the Financial Times. “In a democracy, politics and policies are a reflection of the public too”, but “Britons struggle” to accept some necessary “trade-offs”.

Ending the pension “triple lock” is just one example of this. Throw in rising “expectations of government”, the electorate’s lack of patience and the declining “calibre of public discourse” and “it is little surprise Britain gets cakeist and myopic leaders, who are low on reform and high on easy answers”.

The electorate is “furiously disillusioned and disappointed” but the hard truth is that this “omnicrisis” of low productivity, a housing shortage, social care strain, welfare reform and ballooning national debt is not “easy to answer”, said Isabel Hardman in The i Paper.

“Failing to answer” these questions “leaves Britain hobbled in the long-term” and leaves voters feeling “let down by the politicians who they elect and pay to be honest and take the difficult decisions on their behalf”. Doing something about this would require “a leader who doesn’t care about social media storms or polling fluctuations or the complaints of focus groups” and is able to “switch off all that noise and fixate on the real problems”.

What next?

For too many people, the change they voted for in 2024 and repeatedly tell pollsters and focus groups they want “hasn't come fast enough”, said TUC general secretary Paul Nowak in The Mirror. It “hasn’t been all doom and gloom” but “the good work the government has done” – renationalising the railways, ending the two-child benefit cap and upgrading workers’ rights – “has been overshadowed by too many self-inflicted mistakes and a failure to shout proudly about those achievements”.

“Anyone who wants to replace Starmer has to start by accepting that he has done good things – just not enough and not at scale”, said Aditya Chakrabortty in The Guardian. Then they must “turn and face the country and tell us what they would do better”.

A “deep and justified pessimism” is gripping the UK. The feeling is that “tomorrow will be worse than today, that our children will not enjoy the same standards of living that we have done. That is what any Labour leadership contest must address.”

Many voters have a “palpable sense that the system is rigged against them”, said Nowak. Whoever is in No. 10 “today, tomorrow, in five years or in 10”, they “will have to fix the broken social contract”.

Wes Streeting, who quit as health secretary yesterday, has endorsed Andy Burnham as having the “best chance of winning” the Makerfield by-election. That fact should “override factional advantage or propping up one person”, Streeting said on X.

Pending approval from Labour’s ruling National Executive Committee, Burnham is set to stand in the northwest constituency, providing him with the chance to return to Parliament and challenge for the party leadership.

But with rising support for Reform UK in the region, and Labour plummeting in the polls, this will not be easy. How this by-election plays out “could decide the future direction of the country”, said the Manchester Evening News.

What did the commentators say?

Burnham contesting a seat vacated by Josh Simons, former chair of the Labour Together think tank, was “not high on my bingo card for this year”, said Ben Walker in The New Statesman. “Yet the logic behind the move is clear.” It is clearly “a pitch for prime minister”.

But Burnham’s return to Westminster is a “difficult proposition”, if the recent by-election in Gorton and Denton is anything to go by. “Yet, to state the obvious, this would be no ordinary by-election.” Makerfield is a “very different” constituency, and though it is only a “railway line away from Gorton, politically and culturally it is another world entirely”.

Taking into account Burnham’s popularity having been mayor of Greater Manchester since 2017, and exit-poll data from the Gorton and Denton contest, Britain Predicts forecasts a Labour hold, but “only narrowly”, by three points ahead of Reform. Whatever the result, the Makerfield by-election could be “one of the most totemic and decisive” in modern British history.

This is a “high-stakes gamble for everyone involved”, said Tim Shipman in The Spectator. “But then, in Labour politics right now, everything is.” The Makerfield seat is far from safe, despite being held by Labour since it was created in 1983. Simons won with a “majority of only around 6,000 over Reform” in 2024.

Nigel Farage’s party will contest the seat “with all guns blazing” and would be wise to select a “hyper local” ex-Labour supporter to stand, depicting Burnham as a “carpetbagger” who “takes your vote for granted”. With Keir Starmer unlikely to block Burnham standing, as he did in Gorton and Denton, the PM’s position is now “somewhat in the hands of Farage”.

A lot rests on Burnham’s “personal popularity” to get him over the line, said Ollie Corfe in The Telegraph. A YouGov poll this month shows his +4% net favourability score as the only positive rating of any senior Westminster politician (Starmer -46%, Angela Rayner -33% and Streeting -28%).

He will have to combat the disintegrating “Red Wall” in the northwest, where Labour has just lost 372 councillors, while Reform gained more than 400. Neighbouring St Helens saw one of the “most dramatic results” in the entire local elections, with Reform winning 71% of all seats.

The path to Westminster is a “route paved with thorns” that might yet end with the mayor of Greater Manchester’s “hopes in tatters”, said Stephen Bush in the Financial Times. And for Labour, the “stakes could not be higher”.

If Burnham does win, his reputation as a slayer of Reform would “only be enhanced”, and “his march to the leadership he has coveted for so long would then surely be unstoppable”. But if he loses to a Reform candidate, the public will question whether any Labour candidate can win. “Burnham’s defeat would secure Starmer as prime minister: but it could well confirm that he is on course to be Labour’s last prime minister.”

What next?

For the by-election to go ahead, several processes need to happen, said Jamie Grierson in The Guardian. By convention, the Labour chief whip – currently Jonathan Reynolds – will start the process by “moving the writ”, formally asking Parliament to start the election process. Once the writ has been moved, a by-election must take place between 21 and 27 working days later, and usually held on a Thursday.

This should take “about five to six weeks”, said The Guardian, which means the earliest Burnham could return to Westminster, if he wins, would be “early July”. Once achieved, “he could trigger a leadership contest, which he would be expected to win, potentially unchallenged”.

The war in Iran is still simmering, but President Donald Trump may already have eyes on his next target: Cuba’s Communist government.

An invasion of Cuba “could be imminent,” said Axios. The administration last week “imposed additional sanctions on Havana” amid a “worsening humanitarian crisis” of food shortages and power blackouts exacerbated by a U.S. blockade of oil shipments to the island nation. The U.S. has also surged surveillance flights off of Cuba’s coast, said CNN, and Trump on Friday suggested he might send an aircraft carrier to the region.

The president is “growing impatient” that “months of sustained U.S. pressure” have not caused the Communist regime to collapse, said NBC News. Trump speaks about Cuba “as if he wants to make it the 51st state,” a former U.S. official told the outlet.

What did the commentators say?

Trump knows “he can’t bomb his way to victory” in Iran, Heather Digby Parton said at Salon. He instead appears willing to start “yet another military operation” closer to U.S. shores. Invading Cuba seemed “less likely as the quagmire in Iran has developed,” but the president may see pivoting back to the Western Hemisphere as a way to “distract from his failure in Iran.” Cuba is in weakened condition right now. A quick victory might be achievable. “The real question is what happens then.”

It is “not clear how it’s supposed to end,” Joseph Zeballos-Roig said at MS NOW. The Trump administration “has yet to release a basic strategic road map” of its aims or how to achieve them. The U.S. has long wanted economic and political reforms to “loosen the Cuban government’s tight grip on its citizens,” but Havana should not be underestimated. The regime has “managed to foil the well-laid plans of 13 presidents dating back to Dwight Eisenhower.”

The Trump administration is unlikely to install a “new democratically disposed government” in Havana, Renee Pruneau Novakoff said at The Cipher Brief. But it is “realistic” to demand the regime boot Russian and Chinese intelligence operations from its shores. That “important milestone” would allow the U.S. and Cuba to “move forward with the relationship” between the two countries. Beyond that, however, “regime change will have to be a Cuban affair.”

What next?

Senate Republicans are “cautioning” Trump against a Cuba attack, said The Hill. The U.S. should remain “focused on where we are and that is trying to get the Strait of Hormuz opened up,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said to reporters. “I want less war, not more,” said Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.). GOP senators last month blocked a resolution forbidding military action, said the outlet, but sentiment in the party is “shifting as a military operation against Cuba appears more likely.”

It is possible Trump will hold back, said Reuters. “Cuba is asking ⁠for help, and we are going to ​talk!!” the president wrote Tuesday on Truth Social. He did not provide more details.

The wait is over. Wes Streeting has resigned as health secretary, calling on Keir Starmer to “facilitate” a contest for a new prime minister. For Labour MPs to the left of Streeting, the question is now: who’s best placed to ‘stop Wes’?

“It’s on,” said Peter Franklin on UnHerd. In a leadership contest, Streeting would be “by far the best qualified” but he could be undone by “being outside the party’s powerful” soft-left faction – and less likely than other candidates to be preferred by the Labour party members who would ultimately decide the contest.

If the soft left’s Angela Rayner or Ed Miliband – or Andy Burnham, if he can find a way to return to Westminster in time – were to “run on a ‘Stop Streeting’ ticket”, they would “almost certainly succeed”.

What did the commentators say?

Former deputy PM Angela Rayner is “likely to be a decisive figure”, said Tom McTague, editor of The New Statesman. She believes a Streeting leadership would be a “continuation of what she sees as the Labour right’s disastrous control of the party”. Her “source of strength” is “her personality, her character” – things she‘s implied are “missing in the current occupant of No. 10”.

She also has a “cut-through with working-class voters”, said Simon Walters in The Independent. Nigel Farage may have gone down well on “I’m a Celebrity…” but the “plain-talking and mischievous ‘ladette’ Rayner could win it, were she ever to take part”.

Andy Burnham is “electoral gold dust”, said Neal Lawson in The Guardian. Unlike Streeting, Rayner and Miliband, he is “untainted by the past two years of government”. He has enjoyed success as Manchester’s mayor, and his popularity is “streets ahead of anyone else”. The problem? “Ten people stand in his way”: the officers of Labour’s NEC who blocked him from running for Westminster earlier this year. If they block him again, it would be a “political calamity”.

But first a Labour MP, such as Rayner or Miliband, would have to challenge Starmer with the “explicit intention” of bringing Burnham into the fold, said Jeremy Gilbert in The New Statesman. This is “unlikely” but “very unlikely things happen in modern politics”. And “if anyone has a better plan to save Labour from oblivion, and the country from Nigel Farage, then we’ve yet to hear it”.

“Logic, sadly, points to one all-too-likely victor”: Ed Miliband, said Ross Clark in The Spectator. With Burnham “marooned in Manchester”, and Rayner weakened by coverage of “her tax affairs”, he is the only credible “anti-Streeting challenger”. And he is the “most popular cabinet minister” among Labour members, too.

All politicians who claim the PM throne through a leadership contest rather than a general election tend to suffer from a “lack of personal mandate”. But Miliband would “enter office with something far worse: an anti mandate”. Voters have “already rejected him overwhelmingly” in a general election. “To have him lumbered on us anyway would be like telling the waiter we will have anything but the onion soup but then having it served to us anyway.”

What next?

If Burnham were able to stand for the leadership, and Rayner or Miliband also stood, it could “split the left-wing vote” and make it easier for Streeting to “snatch victory”, said Millie Cooke in The Independent. But a “Rayner-Burnham pact” could exert “formidable force” from the left that Streeting would find “extremely difficult” to overcome. “Such a possibility will only put pressure on” the former health secretary “to act quickly and trigger a contest” before Burnham “has a chance to return to Westminster”.

Andy Burnham might be the bookmakers’ favourite to replace Keir Starmer as Labour leader, despite his lack of a Westminster seat, but he certainly isn’t the bond market’s favourite.

In fact, gilt traders see the Greater Manchester mayor as the “biggest threat” of all the potential candidates, said the Financial Times. He troubled investors last year when he suggested the country should not be “in hock” to the bond market. Six out of 10 fund managers picked Burnham as the candidate that would “trigger the most negative market reaction”.

Burnham has said his comments on the bond market were misinterpreted, but the political project he espouses and the vision he offers for the country’s future – Manchesterism – remains highly divisive. Critics see it as “mostly vibes and boosterism” that “relies on a bottom-up localism” difficult to scale at a national level, said PoliticsHome. Others see it as our potential economic and political saviour.

What did the commentators say?

Manchesterism is a “horrifically overused phrase” about how my city “does things differently”, said Stephen Topping in the Manchester Evening News. But it’s true. Manchesterism is “‘place-based’ rather than party political”. It involves “public services working closer together, and in partnership with both the private sector and community groups, to ensure the benefits of a stronger economy can be felt by more people”.

The Greater Manchester region has become the UK’s fastest growing economy over the past decade, “at more than double the rate of the national average”. Devolution has been critical: the “trailblazer” deal struck in 2023 has allowed Greater Manchester to “take public control of key services” such as the bus network, which has improved living standards and boosted the local economy. Those who have worked closely with Burnham believe Manchesterism “could work in other parts of the UK”, though it would pose “a radical departure from the UK’s largely centralised economy”.

Burnham’s programme has begun “delivering affordability and economic dynamism” by “regaining public control” of essential services, said Mathew Lawrence, director of progressive think tank Common Wealth, in The New Statesman.

Energy, water, housing, transport and care are “domains of inelastic demand” and “existential need”. So market governance of the supply side “produces rent extraction” and underinvestment. The public “pays twice: through higher bills” and taxes to fund support. But public control of essentials eliminates the privatisation premium. “Rebuilding public provision is not the alternative to fiscal prudence. It is fiscal prudence.”

Manchesterism might be the “buzzword of the day”, but it’s simply people projecting their “pipe dreams” on to Burnham’s “blank canvas of soft-left localism”, said Daniel Johnson in The Telegraph.

“The irony is that 19th-century Manchesterism was more or less the opposite of what the Labour Party now thinks it means.” Manchester was “both the laboratory and the showcase of the Industrial Revolution”, the “citadel of free trade”. It had nothing to do with Burnham’s “municipal socialism”. His proposed solution to Britain’s economic woes is “a muddled melange of municipal meddling, including tax hikes and more borrowing”. What Britain needs is the 19th-century version, which Burnham doesn’t understand.

The vision of Manchesterism Burnham outlined in January is, in practice, an industrial strategy – and there is “nothing new about those”, said Christopher Snowdon in The Critic. Economists have long criticised them for “misallocating resources, crowding out private investment, picking losers, and forcing taxpayers to bail out industries that are only kept on life support for political reasons”. How, exactly, can Manchesterism “stop us being in hock to the bond markets” when Manchester City Council is “one of the most indebted in the country”.

What next?

Burnham is planning to reassure the bond market that his possible election to Labour leader would “not trigger a financial meltdown”, said The Telegraph. Sources say he is planning to endorse a pamphlet outlining a framework for Manchesterism, setting out how it could be rolled out across the UK and “the wider economic theory behind his ideas”.

But the uncertain national landscape, in which voters are moving both further left and further right, could make the success of Manchesterism “a challenge for anybody”, Sarah Longlands, chief executive of the Manchester-based Centre for Local Economic Strategies, told Manchester Evening News.

Manchesterism is still in its early stages, yet for all the benefits devolution has brought, Greater Manchester is still “a tale of two cities”, with a great income and opportunities divide exacerbated by the cost of living crisis. “Growth in Greater Manchester has to be for everybody – otherwise, what’s the point?” Longlands said.

El Niños arrive every few years, inflicting drought, flooding and other climate destruction across the globe. Climate scientists are predicting “potentially the biggest El Niño event since the 1870s” in the coming months, said State University of New York at Albany’s Paul Roundy, per The Washington Post. Rising temperatures in the equatorial Pacific Ocean waters could “shift patterns of droughts, floods, heat, humidity and sea ice across the planet,” said the outlet, as well as create a “higher frequency of heat waves” across much of the United States. Such dramatic shifts could have a “profound impact on human society and human well-being,” said climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe to the Post.

El Niños are natural phenomena, but could prove combustible when combined with global warming. The coming El Niño might “lock Earth into a hotter climate” with “lasting changes in heat, rainfall and drought patterns” around the world, said Inside Climate News. Researchers believe the newest cycle “could permanently push” the planet past the 1.5 degrees Celsius warming milestone long seen as the threshold for “potentially irreversible climate impacts” likely to affect food production, human health and the global economy.

What did the commentators say?

The world is about to learn “how much climate disruption we can manage at the moment,” David Wallace-Wells said at The New York Times. The biggest recorded El Niño in 1877 produced famine that killed millions of people in Egypt, India and China and elsewhere, often followed by epidemics of “malaria, plague, dysentery, smallpox and cholera” that further harmed “famine-weakened populations.” The next El Niño may not “produce nearly as much human suffering as the one of 150 years ago.” But it is “almost certain” to make 2027 the “hottest year on record by some margin.”

“Prepare for bedlam,” Bill McKibben said on The Crucial Years Substack. “We get lots more” fires and floods “when the temperature tilts sharply up” as happens during an El Niño. The coming cycle may offer “final proof that global warming is actually accelerating sickeningly,” coming atop a “higher baseline temperature” produced by the “steady warming of the planet.” The likely weather disasters could set in motion the “next, pivotal chapter of the climate fight.” The ugly truth: “We are ever further into the great overheating.”

What next?

“A lot has changed” since the 1877 El Niño, said The Washington Post. Advances in climate monitoring make the world “much more prepared to deal with the consequences” of massive weather shifts.

It will still be a challenge. “Hotter, drier weather across Asia” could damage crops while farmers on the continent “grapple with fertilizer shortages” caused by the Iran war, said Reuters. El Niño could also “dump more rain ​on Europe and the United States,” affecting U.S. corn and soybean harvests. The uncertainty may prompt farmers to hedge their planting plans. “Why spread expensive fertilizer on a crop that is going to be poor anyway?” said Vitor Pistóia at Australia’s Rabobank to the outlet.

For nearly a quarter of a century, Vladimir Putin has led the Russian Federation as one of the most successful authoritarians on Earth. But more than four years after launching an all-out invasion of Ukraine, the Russian president synonymous with Moscow’s kleptocratic rule finds himself in unfamiliar territory. Russia is now roiled by rumors of organized unrest with months to go before parliamentary elections, while Putin himself faces allegations of extreme isolation and a weakening grip on power.

What did the commentators say?

There is a sense of “mounting unease within the Kremlin” as it grapples with domestic and economic problems plus “increasing signs of dissent and setbacks on the battlefield in Ukraine,” said CNN, citing a report from a European intelligence agency. The Kremlin has “dramatically increased” Putin’s security, even installing surveillance systems “in the homes of close staffers” in measures “prompted by a wave of assassinations of top Russian military figures and fears of a coup.” Putin is “increasingly concerned” about an alleged “plot by members of the Russian political elite to topple him, or even assassinate him with drones,” said The Times. The president and his family have “stopped visiting their luxury residences” and Putin is spending “weeks at a time in bunkers.”

The report focuses on “growing internal tensions” between Putin and former Defense Minister and current Security Council Secretary Sergei Shoigu, said the Kyiv Post. Considered a “potential coup risk” for his “continued influence within the military leadership,” Shoigu has not “personally” been linked with hard evidence to “any wrongdoing.” The arrest this past March of one of Shoigu’s deputies was “presented in the report” as a “sign of weakening informal protections among the elite” that has contributed to the tensions.

Putin’s slipping power is “not only about falling approval ratings,” said The Economist. Russia’s future is “no longer discussed” in terms of what Putin “will decide” but as “something that will unfold independently of him — and possibly already without him.” This waning authority comes from a “confluence” of factors, including rising wartime costs and a “growing demand for rules among elites who have been forced back into Russia, along with their capital.” Shifting geopolitical winds and the collapse of Russia’s previous “social contract,” in which the state “stayed out of people’s private lives while citizens stayed out of politics,” have created a “situation which in chess is known as a Zugzwang: when every move worsens the position.”

This isn’t to say that “revolution is imminent” or that the 73-year-old Putin “will be sidelined soon,” said The Wall Street Journal. Nevertheless, the “change in mood is remarkable” compared to “just last December,” when Russia was “buoyed by hopes” of a Moscow-friendly, Trump-negotiated ceasefire with Ukraine.

Changes in national mood notwithstanding, the “sudden spate” of coup-oriented reporting stemming from the “conveniently anonymous ‘European intelligence agency’” looks “suspiciously more like a psyop meant to generate paranoia in the Russian elite than a serious assessment,” said The Spectator. Europe has a “desperate appetite” for a “deus ex machina, for some miraculous end to the Ukraine war,” and a coup to oust Putin “certainly fits the bill.” Still, this would “hardly be the first time” intelligence services “succumbed to the temptation to provide their masters with what they want, not need, to hear.”

What next?

For the time being, Moscow “understands that there could be serious discontent ahead” and has accordingly “decided to allow low-level discontent to manifest itself,” said former Putin adviser Marat Gelman at the Journal. As things stand, Putin has “enough resources to crush any civil revolt.”

“In Russia, they say that things don’t happen fast, but when they happen, they happen fast,” former U.S. Ambassador to Russia John Sullivan said to the Journal. While he “wouldn’t have said it a year or two ago,” civic revolt is “possible now.”

Keir Starmer has vowed to prove his doubters wrong in what was widely billed as his “make-or-break” speech.

He acknowledged that Labour’s local election losses were “tough” and that his government has made “mistakes”, but insisted he had got “the big political choices right”.

What did the commentators say? 

The initial reaction has been mixed, said ITV’s political editor Robert Peston on X. “Labour MPs tell me they admire Starmer’s performance”: he was “cheerful and resilient”, even as he “showed contrition for his party’s historically terrible performance in last week’s elections”.

This speech was “better than many” Starmer has given, “and he did show some passion”, said Peter Walker in The Guardian. But for his sceptics “to be mollified”, he needed to have produced “a giant-sized rabbit” from his policy hat – “something to make them sit up and think: oh, maybe this time things are different. But he did not.”

The prime minister said that “incremental change won’t cut it” and yet “his pivotal speech was inherently incrementalist”, said Steven Swinford and Oliver Wright in The Times. “Calls by some of those around him to be more radical appear to have fallen on deaf ears.”

With the King’s Speech and a new legislative agenda to come on Wednesday, Starmer wants his party to be “gripped by a new sense of purpose and energy”, said Nick Eardley, the BBC’s political correspondent. The hope is that they will “forget all about changing leaders and rally behind the man who delivered a landslide general election victory less than two years ago”.

“The next 72 hours or so of hysteria” will be “dangerous,” said Sean O’Grady in The Independent. But it’s “not at all obvious why a change of leader and prime minister would either be easy or even that advantageous to the party”. For all their “fratricidal habits”, Labour MPs “won’t kick Starmer out – not yet”.

But such is “the bearpit of British politics, the most perilous threat for prime ministers so often comes from behind them”, said Nicholas Cecil in The Standard. Hornsey MP Catherine West’s threat to trigger a leadership content “exploded at the weekend from an unexpected quarter” and, with “trusted colleagues withering in numbers by the hour”, Starmer “could be forgiven for jumping at shadows” in Westminster’s “dark and labyrinthine corridors”.

What next?

In Wednesday’s King’s Speech, there’ll be “plenty of Labour-friendly measures on offer”, a source told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg. But they “weren’t so sure” that “there be anything dramatic or dazzling to change the conversation”.

West has now stopped short of a leadership challenge but says she will write to her MP colleagues today asking for their support “to call on the prime minister to set a timetable for the election of a new leader in September”. So far, about 40 other Labour MPs have called for Starmer to quit.

The prime minister’s speech “was held in Waterloo,” said ITV’s Peston. “He wants to be Wellington but he may be Napoleon.”

“Labour has gone from its loveless landslide to having no political heartland in the UK to call its own,” said Adam Boulton in The i Paper.

Reform UK has made sweeping gains across England in the local elections, while the SNP is likely to be the largest party in Scotland. Labour has already admitted it is not going to form the next government in Wales.

Keir Starmer has declared he is “not going to walk away and plunge the country into chaos”. However, amid rumours of challenges from former deputy prime minister Angela Rayner, Health Secretary Wes Streeting and Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham, Labour’s poor performance in the local elections could prove the tipping point for the PM.

What did the commentators say?

“Kingmaker” Ed Miliband has reportedly privately suggested to Starmer he should set out a “timeline for his departure” after the results, said Steven Swinford in The Times. Though the former party leader is “supportive” of Starmer, he is worried that Labour may “descend into a bitter and damaging leadership contest”.

Both Rayner and Streeting are thought to have the support of the 81 Labour MPs needed to “trigger a contest”. Rayner reportedly does not see the ongoing HMRC investigation into her tax affairs as a “barrier to putting herself forward”. Burnham has also “emerged as the preferred candidate of powerbrokers on Labour’s soft left”. They believe an “orderly transition to his leadership over a period of months is the only way to avert a bloody civil war”, with reports of a backbench MP standing down to accommodate his return to Westminster.

Indeed, it may appear an “obvious conclusion” – that changing the leader would make its problems “go away”, said Boulton. “Obvious but wrong.” Inexperienced Labour MPs – “more than half” of whom were first elected in 2024 – had “supped full on the bloodshed” of five axed Conservative leaders before the general election. But they “failed to notice that such a butcher’s bill did not ultimately improve the Tories’ fortunes”. The reality is they have a “poor leader who has led them into an electoral catastrophe, but without him, things could always get worse”.

Starmer may be on the end of one of the party’s “worst set of election results in history”, but he may “take solace” in his potential challengers also “facing heavy losses in their own patch”, said Kiran Stacey in The Guardian. Labour lost control of Tameside in Greater Manchester, Rayner’s local council, and “struggled” across the northwest, impacting Burnham. Experts also expect Labour to “do badly” in Streeting’s home council of Redbridge in northeast London.

Labour MPs will have a “terrible sinking feeling”, said political strategist James Frayne in The Telegraph. They won’t know which way to turn, but the “great risk” for them is “looking like they’re part of the problem”. Staying silent implies a weakened party is becoming more divided, but appearing to “trot” out excuses for Starmer “risks downplaying the prospect of a straightforward Farage majority at the next election. That’s not a risk that anyone with any hope of a future in the Labour Party can take.”

It is “hard to deny” that Starmer’s days are “numbered”, said Simon Walters in The Independent. But the question remains: “how is any replacement going to make things better for Labour?” Starmer “may not set the pulse racing” but he is “decent and honest”, as well as making the right calls over Iran, and “standing up to Donald Trump with courage and quiet dignity”. Until someone raises “convincing solutions” to current issues, those who are “indulging in a petty blame game” in Westminster “should be careful what they wish for”.

What next?

Votes were still being counted, but the Labour “post-mortem” had already begun, said Ethan Croft in The New Statesman. Amid the “necessary evasions and sugar-coating of damage control”, there are “hard-headed calculations” about which direction the party should turn. Over the next few days expect everyone on the Labour left and right to use the results to “validate what they already believed”, and to “argue for policies and strategies they were already advocating for the party’s future”.

Those on Labour’s right are “confident” the results “vindicate” Shabana Mahmood’s “hardline” stance on immigration, believing the party must do more to “neutralise” Reform on Labour’s own terms. Those on the left of the party, however, think this is “precisely the consequence of pursuing that brand of politics”, and is also why they are being “walloped” by the Greens.

Zack Polanski has reason to be pleased with his ­leadership of the Green Party so far.

Membership has ­tripled since he took over last September, and the party has made “great electoral strides”, said The Times. It is polling strongly and is forecast to “make gains in Labour’s London strongholds” in today’s local elections.

But “there is a darker side”. Polanski, himself Jewish, “appears intent on exploiting” anger on the left over Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. As he works to cultivate a new, populist base, he “seems not to recognise”, or is unwilling to confront, antisemitism within his party – although it is “staring him in the face”.

What did the commentators say?

Greens are “often lionised as nicer and kinder than other parties”, said The Telegraph. But how do voters square the party’s “‘anti-racist’ credentials” with “the revolting online behaviour of many” of its candidates?

Two standing in Lambeth, Sabine Mairey and Saiqa Ali, were arrested last week on suspicion of stirring up racial hatred online. One shared a post suggesting an attack on a synagogue “isn’t antisemitism” but “revenge” for Israel “murdering people”. Other candidates have defended the 7 October massacres, questioned whether “Zionism is a mental illness” and “implied that antisemitism is justified”.

Polanski provoked outrage when he suggested police tackling the armed suspect in the Golders Green terror attack had used excessive force. Antisemitism “appears to have become normalised on the left, a dog-whistle used to win votes”, said The Telegraph.

No one is suggesting that Polanski himself is “some frothing-at-the-mouth anti-Semite”, said Tom Slater in The Spectator. But the accusation that the party “has become a magnet for anti-Semites”, and “a key voice” in downplaying the growing threat” to Britain’s Jews, is “hardly unfounded”.

Polanski, when asked about the spate of arson attacks on synagogues and the torching of four Hatzola ambulances, came out with “the already-infamous lines”: “Now, there’s a conversation to be had about whether it’s a perception of unsafety or whether it’s actual unsafety, but neither are acceptable.”

But those comments to Haaretz have been widely “misrepresented”, said Owen Jones in The Guardian. What Polanski said was that he feels pro-Palestine marches “have been perceived as unsafe by some Jewish people and safe by others, including himself”. Other journalists have accused Polanski of using his Jewish identity as “a political shield”. How does their treatment of Polanski square with his party’s “repeated, explicit condemnations of antisemitism?” Yes, there have been “allegations of vile antisemitism” by party candidates, and “a small number of examples” from a party that has nearly quadrupled in size since September – but “to extrapolate from these” and “smear an entire party” is “cynical”.

Polanski has condemned any antisemitic remarks, saying this was “not an abstract idea” for him. “As a Jewish person, those comments disgust me,” he told the BBC on Sunday. But, he added, “I don’t believe we have a particular problem compared [with] wider society and other political parties”.

What next?

Polanski’s vocal support for Palestine and his “consistent condemnation of Israeli crimes and excesses undoubtedly contributed to the party’s surge in support”, said Tony Greenstein, from the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, on Al Jazeera.

But it has also triggered an antisemitism smear campaign “almost identical to the one that eventually saw Jeremy Corbyn and his leftist, pro-Palestine supporters ousted from the Labour Party”. How the Green leader responds “will determine not only the future of his party, but potentially the direction of British politics”.

In effect, Polanski “still has a real shot at carrying his party to power”, but he could lose it all “if he repeats Corbyn’s mistakes and tries to appease his bad-faith critics”.

The Green Party is “facing a test on antisemitism”, said Ailbhe Rea in The New Statesman. In a “quite extraordinary development”, the deputy leader Mothin Ali encouraged some of the suspended candidates to “take legal action against the party”.

Polanski said the main lesson he needs to learn from Corbyn is to “navigate antisemitism allegations better”. He is “absolutely correct”. But how and when he plans to do so have “not yet become clear”.

Hantavirus is typically spread by exposure to rodent droppings. That’s concerning enough. But health experts are alarmed that a deadly ship-borne outbreak of hantavirus might be spreading from human to human.

The possibility of person-to-person transmission of hantavirus is “very, very surprising and obviously a very rare occurrence,” Kari Debbink of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health said to NPR. Three people aboard the MV Hondius cruise ship have already died from the outbreak, and there are several other suspected cases among the 147 passengers and crew.

A typical rodent-caused outbreak could be resolved by “taking people off the ship,” the University of Michigan’s Emily Abdoler said to the network. But the possibility of a human-transmitted disease means “taking folks off the ship doesn’t stop the spread.”

Passengers aboard the Hondius have been isolated in their cabins in a “lockdown reminiscent of the Covid-19 pandemic,” said The Associated Press. Authorities are being cautious but also warning the public against panic. The Andes strain of hantavirus at issue “requires very close, prolonged contact” to spread between people, KFF Health News’ Céline Gounder said on “PBS NewsHour.” That’s “very different” from Covid or flu viruses that can be “transmitted much more easily through the airborne respiratory route.”

What did the commentators say?

The outbreak is “serious and frankly a bit unnerving,” Katherine J. Wu said at The Atlantic. A human-transmitted hantavirus could “pose an additional threat” to people at the ship’s destination or to healthcare workers treating the sick. The ship’s passengers will eventually disembark, but officials cannot yet say the risk that passengers and crew “will pose to the broader global community.” Making the investigation more difficult: The cruise ship environment where “strangers are constantly schmoozing” makes it easy for people-to-people viruses to spread but difficult for medical professionals to track the source.

There’s “no reason for panic,” Lisa Jarvis said at Bloomberg. A “handful of cases of a deadly virus” is understandably sufficient to “raise all our hackles” following the Covid pandemic. Hantavirus is “ubiquitous” in parts of the United States such as the desert Southwest, while actual “infections are still rare.” The current outbreak is “unlikely to turn into anything bigger.”

The World Health Organization was “built to manage” emergencies like this, Krutika Kuppalli said at Stat News. Indeed, the WHO is “coordinating the response.” But the U.S. government has not been able to take advantage of the information generated by the agency, having withdrawn from the WHO in 2025. And the outbreak should be a “warning sign to the U.S.” of the costs of that decision.

What next?

The Hondius “remains at sea” while regional leaders “clash over its docking,” said The New York Times. Spain has said the ship can dock in the Canary Islands, but regional government officials have “objected to the ship docking there.” The isolated passengers are keeping themselves busy with “reading, watching movies, having hot drinks and that kind of thing,” said travel influencer Kasem Hato to the Times.

Donald Trump has paused the US operation shepherding ships through the Strait of Hormuz to see if a lasting peace deal with Iran can be agreed. But there remains scepticism on both sides that a permanent end to the conflict is near.

The ceasefire, which was extended indefinitely by Trump on 21 April, “opened up a chance for diplomacy that looked for a short time as if it might make progress”, said BBC international editor Jeremy Bowen. A first round of talks in Pakistan ended without agreement, but while both America and Iran “want to have a deal” they have “different deals in mind and are sticking to their red lines”.

Trump is demanding the immediate reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of global oil and gas exports pass, and cast-iron restrictions on Iran’s nuclear capabilities. Tehran wants an end to the war, guarantees against future attacks, a withdrawal of US forces from around Iran, the release of frozen Iranian assets worth billions of dollars and the lifting of sanctions.

What did the commentators say?

Iran has “slightly softened” its proposal around the US blockade of the Strait, but on the two biggest issues – enrichment of uranium and transferring its highly enriched uranium – both sides remain “far apart”, Paul Musgrave, from Georgetown University in Qatar, told Al Jazeera.

Kenneth Katzman, from the New York-based nonprofit Soufan Center, said Iran’s mistrust of Trump remains a bigger obstacle.

This is partly driven by the president’s “increasingly contradictory statements about the United States’ strategy” and the administration’s “shifting timeline for the war’s end”, which has been “one of the clearest examples of its flip-flopping messaging”, said Julia Ledur in The Washington Post.

Trump “clearly wants to end the war in Iran”, said Katrin Bennhold in The New York Times. At first, “he tried scare tactics” but his ultimatums “proved flexible and his threats to wipe out a civilisation empty (at least so far)”. He is now trying “to inflict financial pain on the Iranian leadership” but his blockade isn’t “faring much better”.

Trump’s “conviction that more economic or even military pressure will bring about Iran’s capitulation is deeply flawed”, said Steven Erlanger in the NYT. Officials and analysts say it is a “misreading of the Islamic republic’s strategy, psychology and capability for adaptation”.

What next?

For now, “diplomacy is not entirely frozen”, said Barak Ravid and Marc Caputo on Axios, as Trump’s envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff are still in contact with Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi.

But things could still go either way. One senior US official said: “There are talks. There are offers. We don’t like theirs. They don’t like ours. We still don’t know the status of the [Supreme Leader]. And they’re carrying messages by hand to caves or wherever he or whoever is hiding. It slows the process down.

“It’s either we’re looking at the real contours of an achievable deal soon, or he’s going to bomb the hell out of them.”

“But if history is any guide, there’s a real chance the war continues to drag on,” said Will Walldorf, from the Defense Priorities think tank, in Foreign Policy.

This is because a “few core elements that have turned past conflicts into forever wars are present in this one, too”. These include “high resolve by the weak, erosion of cost-benefit thinking by the strong, and weak institutional constraints to war-fighting on at least one side”. Combined, they mean that “resisting the expansion of the Iran conflict into a forever war won’t be easy”.

For more than a century, British politics has been a contest between two parties. That could end with Thursday’s local and devolved elections.

Reform UK is currently leading on 25%, said Politico’s poll of polls on 30 April, with the Conservatives and Greens tied on 18%, and Labour on 17%. The Liberal Democrats are just a few points behind. In Scotland, the Scottish National Party is hoping to secure an overall majority in Holyrood, while Plaid Cymru is on course to lead the devolved government in Wales.

“We’re going to see records tumble. We are living in unprecedented circumstances,” the UK’s leading polling expert, John Curtice, told The Times. “The basic assumptions of British politics – there isn’t enough space for a party to the right of the Tories or the left of Labour – have gone.”

What did the commentators say?

The fracturing of the electorate was already evident at the last general election, but has been turbo-charged over the past two years as “binary tribalism has been replaced by retail politics”, said The Times in an editorial. Voters are “more promiscuous in their favours” and, following a decade and a half of stagnant living standards, “they are prepared to take a punt on insurgent parties without kicking the tyres”.

The result is that a “nation that has long prided itself on moderation and stability” is now experiencing an “anti-establishment revolt of the sort that has gripped countries from the US and Argentina to Germany”, said Irina Anghel for Bloomberg. Reform and the Greens look set to pick up hundreds of former Labour and Conservative seats. This represents a “power shift” that would “reinforce insurgents’ local networks and party organisations across the country, helping to forestall any restoration of the two-party system by the next general election”.

“It’s the Dutch-ification of British politics,” said Simon Hix, a politics professor at the European University Institute. “Everyone used to make fun of the Netherlands, where 17 parties get elected to parliament, but this trend is happening everywhere in the world.”

“Of course, the popularity or otherwise of all parties ebbs and flows over time” and as recently as the 2017 general election Labour and the Conservatives won a massive 82.4% of the vote between them, said BBC political editor Chris Mason. “But the longer-term trend is clear”: in recent years, the “palette of popular political parties has widened” beyond the Tory-Labour duopoly.

What next?

The dawn of genuine five-party politics – or seven-way if you include nationalist parties in Scotland and Wales – in Britain “spells problems for the political system” beyond the immediate aftermath of Thursday’s vote, said Sky News data journalist Alicja Hagopian.

In the short term, electoral fragmentation “brings governability into question”, said the Financial Times. Voters are “largely moving from one left-leaning party to another, or from one right-leaning party to another, but coalitions of left and right can be hard to build”. Britain’s first-past-the-post system also “creates particular problems of democratic legitimacy”. It means that as voting fragments, candidates are elected with an ever-smaller share of votes cast. In January, Reform won a council seat from Labour in Wales with a vote share of just 22%.

“Choice is good for democracy. It gives a fairer representation of what people actually want,” said Rob Ford, professor of political science at the University of Manchester. “But this puts our electoral system for local elections under pressure, because first-past-the-post is not designed for fragmented competition between five strong parties.”

As the EU faces the encroaching threat of outside countries, one nation is taking matters into its own hands. Germany is heavily investing in its military budget, spending more money on defense in 2025 than in the prior 36 years, according to recent reports. Officials have stated their intentions to make the country’s military the strongest in Europe over the next decade and a half, all while President Donald Trump is ratcheting up German-U.S. tensions.

What did the commentators say?

Germany put significant resources into its military last year, with its defense expenditure “growing by 24% year-on-year to $114 billion,” said a report from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. The German government was the largest military spender among the 29 European members of NATO, and its military budget “exceeded the 2.0% threshold for the first time since 1990, reaching 2.3% of GDP in 2025.”

The country has “dramatically boosted its military spending as part of a long-term vision helmed by both former Chancellor Olaf Scholz and German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius,” said Military.com. Pistorius is overseeing a defense development plan whose aim is to turn the German Army into the “strongest conventional army in Europe” by 2039.

As part of this plan, Germany aims to continue upping its military spending in the near future. The country is “planning to increase defense spending by a fifth in 2027 compared with this year,” said the Financial Times, putting it ahead of NATO’s military budget goal by at least six years. To accomplish this, Germany “unlocked its constitutional debt brake last year to allow virtually unlimited borrowing for defense.” The military plan “dwarfs that of fiscally constrained France and the U.K., Europe’s two big nuclear-armed powers.”

The rearmament of Germany is a “marked turnaround from just a few years ago when the country was widely regarded as a defense spending laggard and security free rider by its critics,” said Stars and Stripes. Germany has also been increasing its wartime industrial capabilities, with “manufacturers opening new factories and converting old ones to churn out ammunition.” The country has signed $130 billion worth of weapons contracts since 2022, according to the German newspaper Der Spiegel, per Military.com.

What next?

This remilitarization is happening alongside the looming question of how Trump’s foreign policy will affect Germany. After German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said the U.S. has been “humiliated” by its war with Iran, Trump announced he was withdrawing approximately 5,000 American troops from Germany. The decision came “at a time of deep divisions between Washington and its European allies, with trans-Atlantic tensions already heightened by tariff threats,” said NBC News.

German defense analysts have “expressed little concern in the days following the announcement over losing a small chunk of the about 35,000 American troops currently stationed in the country,” said The New York Times. But some experts appeared concerned that the withdrawal may create an “economic hit that could be felt in communities that depend on American military institutions.” From “simple stripes to stars, I know all the ranks,” said Derya Uluc, who runs a dry cleaners near the U.S. Ramstein Air Base in southeast Germany, to the Times. “I have to be honest, business in Ramstein only works because of the Americans.”

It might be the ultimate clash of tech giants. Elon Musk and Sam Altman are in court this week, battling over the origins of OpenAI and its pivot from a nonprofit organization to a for-profit business. It’s a “deeply personal” civil trial, said The New York Times, featuring “two very different tales” of OpenAI’s founding.

Musk helped start the company as a nonprofit and contends it was “ripped from its promise of altruism” by Altman’s greed. It’s “not OK to steal a charity,” Musk said on the witness stand. Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, counters that the lawsuit is simply “sour grapes” for the success of OpenAI’s ChatGPT years after Musk parted ways in 2018, said the Times. Altman and OpenAI “had the nerve to go on and succeed without” Musk, said William Savitt, OpenAI’s lead counsel.

What did the commentators say?

The trial is “big in every conceivable measure,” said Slate. Musk is seeking $130 billion in damages along with the removal of Altman and another OpenAI co-founder, Greg Brockman, from the company’s board of directors. It also comes as both OpenAI and Musk’s SpaceX — which houses his current AI venture, xAI — prepare to take go public. The verdict “could change the very future of Silicon Valley and the future of tech throughout the world forever.”

Altman and Musk “sure dislike each other,” Matteo Wong said at The Atlantic. Altman and Musk founded OpenAI because they disagreed with Google’s approach to artificial intelligence then split up over their own disagreements. The trial is giving the public its “clearest glimpse” at a small clique of tech pioneers “whose bickering is shaping the most expensive infrastructure buildout in human history.” It is a technology that could “upend the labor market” and “reshape the geopolitical order,” and neither man wants the other to have that kind of power. The trial makes the AI boom “seem sordid and small.”

A “yearslong feud” between Altman and Musk means the trial is “going to get messy,” Elizabeth Lopatto and Hayden Field said at The Verge. Musk appears to be “trying to damage OpenAI’s reputation however he can.” His demands that the company change its operating structure and remove executives “are likely unrealistic.” But if enough ugly secrets are revealed at trial, Musk will “have made it look like it’s not worth keeping Mr. Altman in his position” at the top of OpenAI, Georgia Institute of Technology’s Deven Desai said to the outlet.

What next?

The trial comes at a “precarious moment” for OpenAI, Rob Nicholls said at The Conversation. Altman was recently the subject of an embarrassing profile in The New Yorker, and the company is “bleeding” money as rival Anthropic surges to the front of the AI conversation. OpenAI expects to lose $14 billion in 2026 and recently shut down its Sora video-creation product. A Musk victory might derail OpenAI’s IPO and leave “ripple effects” that “could be felt for many years to come.”

Indonesia, Qatar, Ecuador and Angola have all departed the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries in recent years. But the loss of the UAE, one of its longest-serving and most influential members, is seen as a major blow to the cartel.

The UAE said on Tuesday that quitting Opec and the broader Opec+ alliance next month reflects its “long-term economic vision” and desire to speed up investment in energy production. But Emirati officials had threatened for years to leave, blaming Opec’s production quotas for unfairly curtailing its oil exports. (The UAE has repeatedly been accused of exceeding those limits.)

Rising tensions with Saudi Arabia, Opec’s de facto leader, have also been greatly exacerbated by the Iran war; the UAE has criticised its Gulf neighbours for failing to defend it from Iranian retaliation. The question is whether the blow to Opec of losing its third-biggest oil producer will be a knockout one.

What did the commentators say?

This is “the beginning of the end of Opec”, energy analyst Saul Kavonic told the BBC. The group “loses about 15% of its capacity and one of its most compliant members”. Saudi Arabia “will struggle to keep the rest of Opec together”. This means “a fundamental geopolitical reshaping of the Middle East and oil markets”.

Opec’s ability to influence oil prices will be “clearly weakened”, said former International Energy Agency official Neil Atkinson. The UAE “will attempt to sell as much oil as they can to as many people as possible”. That “will run up against any attempts” Opec makes to “keep prices high”.

But when the UAE announced its decision, “oil markets merely shrugged”, said the Financial Times. The “muted” reaction is “a symptom of Opec’s declining relevance”. It was a “major power” in 1973 when its Arab members carried out a “devastating” embargo on countries supporting Israel. But despite its expansion to include 10 nations in Opec+, its influence has “waned” as non-members, particularly the US, boosted oil production.

Iran’s stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz is “a further blow to Opec’s ability to control the market”. Tehran showed it could halt most of the flow of oil from the Gulf – more than half the cartel’s oil production. “It completely dilutes Opec’s market power and puts Iran in control of the vast majority of Opec’s exports,” said Joel Hancock, senior commodities analyst. Opec “effectively becomes an instrument of Iran’s foreign policy”.

The UAE’s departure would probably not be “fatal” for Opec, said Raad Alkadiri of the Center for Strategic and International Studies – unless Venezuela, Iraq or Iran also quit.

And that’s “only a matter of time”, said Damien Phillips in The Spectator. “Opec has always been a tenuous and fractious alliance that just about holds together when convenient and nearly falls apart when it isn’t.” It has always been “beset by chronic quota cheating” and “wildly inconsistent” compliance. There are “endless disputes over baseline production levels”, which often lead to “full-blown price wars”. Membership has also become “increasingly toxic”; the West sees Opec’s attempts to tighten oil supply as “helping to fund Russia’s war effort and immiserating ordinary consumers”.

The UAE understands “energy security and abundance” is now a global priority. In a world of “drill, baby, drill”, “price-fixing relics like Opec are being left behind”. Opec members “can see that the end is nigh”.

What next?

Opec’s remaining 11 members, and 10 more in Opec+, will still account for about 40% of global oil output. But Kazakhstan and Iraq are seen as most likely to “soon start creeping toward the door”, said MarketWatch. Both have excess crude-production capacity that could “incentivise them to leave”. Kazakhstan, like the UAE, has been “chafing” under Opec’s production quotas.

The UAE, meanwhile, is “splashing cash on production infrastructure”, aiming to increase production from the current 3.6 million barrels a day to 5 million by 2027, said The Economist. But any increase in exports depends on when the Strait of Hormuz reopens. The UAE’s departure from Opec, long a “bugbear” of Donald Trump, may “endear” it to the US, but it will “further sour its relations with Saudi Arabia”.

Saudi Arabia “might respond with an oil price war” that poorer Opec members might not be able to withstand, said the BBC’s economics editor Faisal Islam. “Much depends” on their response. Emirati officials also talk of building new pipelines from the Abu Dhabi oil fields towards “the underused port of Fujairah”, bypassing the strait entirely. If they do so, “Emirati oil will flow like never before”. “It will have little effect on the current blockades. It could change everything afterwards.”

When the 2026 FIFA World Cup kicks off in June, it may be missing something important: fans. Several factors, including political unrest and high transportation costs, are causing host cities across the United States to worry that the presumed economic bump from the World Cup may not occur.

What did the commentators say?

Eleven U.S. cities will be hosting World Cup games: Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Houston, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Miami, New York City, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Seattle. These cities are dealing with everything from “labor strife and high ticket prices to geopolitical turmoil and culture-war politics fanned by President Donald Trump,” factors that are “turning the event into a nationwide stress test for the governmental institutions charged with pulling it off,” said Politico.

Many were hoping the World Cup would provide a “triumphal turn in the international spotlight,” but it is instead becoming a “case study in the local hazards of staging a spectacle at a moment of global disruption,” said Politico. Cooling forecasts are largely due to “ticket prices, inflation fears and anti-American sentiment,” said the Financial Times. Many hotels are reflecting this reality: Room rates for game days in “Atlanta, Dallas, Miami, Philadelphia and San Francisco have dropped about a third from their peak earlier this year.”

FIFA originally predicted the World Cup would give the U.S. a $30.5 billion economic boost. But the “demand has certainly not been at anywhere near that level,” Vijay Dandapani, the president and CEO of the Hotel Association of New York City, said to Forbes. International soccer fans were expected to provide a lifeline, as they typically “spend four times as much as domestic travelers,” said the outlet. But it is “unclear if foreign visitors will come in the numbers necessary to drive the promised economic boost.”

The White House’s “‘America First’ agenda and rhetoric have also fueled widespread perceptions that the country is unwelcoming,” said The Athletic, causing many international soccer fans to rethink their plans. The potential presence of immigration officers is worsening things for Europeans. The Trump administration’s immigration agenda has created “heightened anxiety about travel and attendance for both fans and teams,” said Politico. The tension is especially increased for Iran, as the ongoing war “has raised questions about whether that country’s squad will even play.”

Transportation has additionally played a role, especially in cities where the cost of living is higher. In Massachusetts, a game day train trip to the stadium near Boston will cost $80. In New Jersey, where the New York City-area games will be played, a ride will be $150. This is over an 11 times increase from the standard $12.90 train fare in New Jersey. FIFA is also charging an average of $175 for parking at most venues nationwide.

What next?

Trepidation over hosting the games in the U.S. “could be sufficient motivation” for global fans to “hold off until 2030, when the tournament will take place in Spain, Portugal and Morocco,” said the Financial Times. Amid growing tensions, the head of Norway’s soccer association has also called for Trump to be stripped of his recently awarded FIFA Peace Prize. But FIFA officials seem not to be too worried. The organization is “confident that the event will be a resounding success for everyone involved, all the participating teams, the fans from all around the world and the hosts,” FIFA spokesperson Bryan Swanson told Politico.

Donald Trump has hailed the relationship between the US and UK as “a friendship unlike any other on Earth” during what is widely being seen as a hugely successful state visit by King Charles.

After delivering a much-praised speech to Congress, the King, with Queen Camilla, last night joined the US president and first lady for a star-studded banquet. In a playful toast, Charles joked about Trump’s “readjustments” to the East Wing of the White House following his “visit to Windsor Castle last year”, and presented the president with the bell from the British Second World War submarine, HMS Trump.

Officially a celebration of 250 years of American independence, the three-day visit “has also been billed as a rescue mission”, said the BBC’s North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher. With US-UK relations “strained” by Britain’s refusal to fully back the US-Israeli war against Iran, “the King’s goal has been to ease those tensions with a royal charm offensive”.

What did the commentators say?

King Charles delivered a “masterclass in Trump II diplomacy” at the banquet, said Shawn McCreesh, White House reporter for The New York Times. His speech had “all the right ingredients”: “dry British understatement”; jokes tailored to “Trump’s proclivities”; “a little obsequiousness balanced with a little prodding about Nato”, and “the shiniest, Trumpiest of gifts”.

The president was “on his best behaviour” and, apart from one protocol-breaking moment when he suggested that the King had agreed with his views on Iran’s nuclear ambitions, he “seemed like putty in the bejewelled hands of the monarch. There are few foreign figureheads who can work this president the way this king can.”

“Entirely predictably”, Charles’ speech to Congress did not directly mention Iran, Israel, climate change, immigration, Jeffrey Epstein, “nor a bunch of other hot potatoes in the Trump era”, said David Smith, The Guardian’s Washington correspondent. But it was “exquisitely measured” in its “less-is-more” emphasis on “common bonds that long predate” this president and – “hopefully! – will long outlast him”. Judging by the applause, this “soft power flex worked a treat”.

Charles showed “deep respect for his hosts”, said CNN’s Stephen Collinson. But it’s no small irony that “it took a king to remind America of its republican values: the rule of law, democracy and the power of its international example”.

What next?

After recent “fraught” weeks, this state visit will “probably help stabilise relations” between Britain and America, said former Tory foreign secretary William Hague in The Times. But “it cannot, on its own, reverse the trend of declining trust and mutual respect”. We will still look at Trump, “fearing this might be the future”, and the US will “look at us and worry that our glories are all in the past”.

The special relationship will endure, “whatever the quarrels over Iran”, said the Financial Times editorial board, but “Britain’s place in the world is not what it was” in its heyday. “In the harsh new world of the 21st century, other connections are going to matter a lot, too.”

Japan wrote pacifism into its constitution and culture following World War II, but that era may be coming to an end. Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last week moved to allow arms sales to foreign countries, signaling a pivot toward a more hawkish stance.

Many Japanese felt pride in the country’s postwar commitment to “never resort to force to settle international disputes,” said The Wall Street Journal. Pacifism “has been our moral compass after the tragedy,” 87-year-old Michiko Yagi said to the outlet. But growing tensions with China have sharpened a sense of alarm and increased support for Takaichi’s efforts to build the country’s defenses. Japan cannot expect the U.S. to come to the country’s defense “when our own people aren’t even defending our own country,” said Nagasaki resident Masashi Kajiyama.

The U.S. focus on Iran is a factor in the pivot: The Trump administration moved military assets from Asia to the Middle East to support the war, leaving Japanese leaders “rushing to find viable alternatives for its own security and defense,” Keio University’s Michito Tsuruoka said to The New York Times. Raising Japan’s defenses is a response to an “increasingly challenging security environment,” Takaichi said in a social media post.

What did the commentators say?

Japan’s pacifism “once served a purpose,” Kenji Yoshida said at Asia Times. Dovishness “reassured neighbors” threatened by the country’s former militarism and enabled a near-miraculous economic recovery from World War II. But such stances “can outlive their usefulness.” Tokyo has long found ways to stretch its supposed constitutional limits, dispatching minesweepers during the 1991 Gulf War and deploying “noncombat” troops to Iraq during the 2004 invasion. “Public opinion remains cautious” on such issues, but the time has come for Japan to shed its “unsustainable pacifist illusion.”

The Japanese public is “divided” on the move to a more hawkish stance, The Japan Times said in an editorial. Japanese people retain an “instinctive concern” about security issues that is a “remnant of the bitter experience of World War II.” But an “increasingly contested security environment” in Asia requires change. Tokyo must “value hard power as a contributor to deterrence” against threats. “Ideally, the provision of defense equipment will prevent conflict, not enable it.”

What next?

Japan has seen a “seeming erosion of pacifist norms” over the past decade, said The Diplomat. Mass protests greeted 2015 legislation to allow the country’s military to deploy overseas. But Takaichi’s recent popularity suggests the arrival of a “post-pacifist” era, giving her “unprecedented authority to expand Japan’s defense ambitions.”

Takaichi has suggested she will seek “changes to the pacifist clause” of Japan’s constitution, said The Washington Post. But the hints of change have also sparked “rare nationwide protests” by Japanese who fear the country might be “drawn into military conflicts if it drops its constitutional guardrails.” The “hollowing out of pacifism” could prompt a backlash from Japan’s neighbors, Hiroshima City University’s Shiro Sato said to the Post, making Japan less safe by “increasing insecurity and potentially worsening the security environment.”

The Trump administration’s threat to review its position on Britain’s claim to the Falkland Islands could have a significant impact on the future of the South Atlantic British Overseas Territory, analysts have said.

A leaked internal Pentagon memo published last week by Reuters revealed that, as punishment for not supporting Donald Trump’s war against Iran, the US could reassess diplomatic support for longstanding European “imperial possessions”, such as the ⁠Falkland Islands, which have been administered by Britain since 1833 but are still claimed by Argentina.

Argentina’s President Javier Milei is “upbeat about the prospects”, said Reuters, after the Trump ally told a radio show that “we are doing everything humanly possible to bring the Falkland Islands back into Argentine hands”.

On Monday, his vice president, Victoria Villarruel, ramped up rhetoric further by calling for Falkland Islanders to go back to England.

What did the commentators say?

Donald Trump “has repeatedly demonstrated his desire to use transactional diplomacy to pressure both allies and adversaries”, said the BBC. The Falklands are a “pressure point for the UK but irrelevant to the US”, making them a perfect target for this kind of “leverage”.

Given the current state of Britain’s armed forces, the UK would “struggle to defend the Falkland Islands if Donald Trump followed through on threats to withdraw American support for British sovereignty”, said The i Paper.

But while the loss of American backing for UK control of the islands would “make it easier for Argentina to press its claim more assertively”, said Dr Johanna Amaya-Panche, senior lecturer in international relations and politics at Liverpool John Moores University, an invasion remains unlikely.

“Argentina is not capable of retaking the islands militarily, and there is no credible indication that it intends to try,” but the Milei government “may adopt a more assertive diplomatic or legal strategy, seeking to internationalise the dispute and mobilise external support”.

Downing Street has insisted that the Falkland Islands’ status will remain unchanged, with the prime minister’s spokesperson saying “sovereignty rests with the UK and the islanders’ right to self-determination is paramount”.

“Such robustness is a welcome surprise,” said The Telegraph in an editorial. The government will be hoping the state visit by King Charles will help defuse tensions with the White House. The reality is that “casting doubt over the ownership of the Falklands would hardly be in Washington’s interests”. Even in 1982, the Royal Navy “had to leave other missions unresourced in order to retake the islands” and today its numbers are “so shrunken that it could never act meaningfully in the South Atlantic and in support of the US simultaneously”.

What next?

If the US did change its position to one in which it supported Argentinian claims over the islands, that would be “pretty significant”, Ed Arnold from the Royal United Services Institute security think tank, told the BBC, as “it might cause other countries to move that way as well”.

“You could potentially see a situation where Argentina pushes for some intervention at the UN and the US may support or just not actively block.”

“A change of US policy towards the sovereignty of the Falklands will not mean we will face a repeat” of the 1982 war with Argentina, said former defence secretary Penny Mordaunt in The Express. “But it should be a reminder that the world can change fast” and that “we owe it to all Brits, whether they reside in the UK or in her territories, that we are capable of defending them and their interests.”

As polarisation increasingly divides America, violence is becoming embedded in its politics.

“We do believe it was administration officials,” said Acting US Attorney General Todd Blanche, when asked for the target of the shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in Washington. “But as far as exacting threats that may have been communicated beforehand, we’re still actively investigating that evidence.”

For many Americans, Saturday night’s events were “at once shocking and familiar”, said Lisa Lerer in The New York Times. Politically motivated violence has become a “routine intruder” into our lives, bringing with it a “numbing narrative of assaults, bomb threats and assassination attempts”.

What did the commentators say?

“Instead of a speech stacked with heated barbs against the media, the event ended like many in the US do: with gun violence,” said Rachel Leingang in The Guardian.

The association’s initial decision to continue the event (it was later rescheduled) may have surprised some, but for many it “struck a chord about the regularity of gun violence in American life”. Trump said afterwards that the presidency is a “dangerous profession”, but the fact that violence in the political domain is a “feature”, rather than an “outlier, rang true on a night meant to celebrate the freedom of the press”.

Attacks like these are “convulsing” American politics from both sides of the partisan divide, said Guy Chazan in the Financial Times. The suspected gunman had barely been apprehended before “ranks of Maga influencers” were blaming Democrats, and left-leaning conspiracy theorists claimed it was a “staged” hoax to “advance Trump’s political agenda”.

So-called “conflict entrepreneurs” are “getting rich by making us angry at one another”, fuelled by a “loss of trust in democratic institutions that makes it easier to see illegal violence as a solution”, said William Braniff, from the American University. Modern assassination attempts are “backed by a growing public acceptance of the use of violence in the pursuit of political ends”, said Chazan. “Things could get even worse.”

Saturday’s events reveal how “dangerous” US politics has become over the last few years, said James Piazza, political science professor at Penn State, on The Conversation. Intense polarisation means opponents are “suspicious and hostile” towards each other, believing others to be “evil or immoral” instead of merely sharing a different view.

In turn, this has made violence more “normalised”, and because public backlash is “dampened” at each attempt, further violence becomes even “more likely”. Disinformation and social media have also accelerated this trend. Disinformed users are “hermetically sealed off” from alternative sources and this “facilitates radicalisation” for isolated communities.

Even with America’s “grim history of political violence”, Trump “certainly seems to attract a higher share than others of would-be assassins”, said Edward Luce in the Financial Times. He has now been the target of three assassination attempts: his “ear was grazed” by a bullet in Butler, Pennsylvania; there was the Mar-a-Lago golf course incident that was foiled by Secret Service agents; and then Saturday’s Washington dinner.

Nearly following in the footsteps of Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley and John F. Kennedy, Trump said that he was “honoured” by comparisons with the four assassinated presidents because he’s “done a lot”. Let’s not forget that eight children were killed in Louisiana last week, but it “only briefly made the headlines”: mass shootings are now “part of the texture of American life”, said Luce.

What next?

It is “absolutely critical” that both Democratic and Republican politicians “unite to condemn this attack and all political violence”, said Piazza on The Conversation.

Commentators should condemn any violence with political aims and political elites should “adopt rhetoric that does not normalise this sort of behaviour. If the message comes from across the political spectrum, it will be that much more effective at reducing the public attitudes that nurture political violence.”

Following the Pennsylvania assassination attempt the image of Trump with a bloodied face raising his fist “partly defined his campaign”, said Luce. This time around, “any sympathy wave is likely to be more limited”.

Before the incident at the Washington Hilton Hotel, Trump’s approval ratings hit a “personal low of below 40%” in some polls last week, and the “rising unpopularity” of the war in Iran is “driving his nadir”.

Though there is no doubt Trump will “try to make political hay” from the attempt on his life, “ironically” it has been his “early zeal for assassinating senior Iranians” that is “shaping his political future”.

President Donald Trump’s desire to outdo and undo the achievements of former President Barack Obama is well-documented. Trump in 2018 tore up the 2015 agreement by his predecessor to limit Iran’s ability to develop its own nuclear weapons. Now Trump faces a challenge of getting a better deal as he tries to wind down a costly war.

The president is “adamant” he can exceed Obama in Iran, said The Hill. The 2015 nuclear agreement was “one of the Worst Deals ever made,” Trump said on Truth Social. But foreign policy experts warn that getting a satisfactory deal with Iran will be “much easier said than done,” said The Hill. The “dizzyingly complicated” Obama agreement took two years to negotiate and involved experts “poring over the details of nuclear technology, sanctions and international banking.” The U.S. decision to abandon that agreement and go to war may have convinced Tehran that a “nuclear weapon would be the best deterrent they can pursue,” said Allison McManus at the Center for American Progress to the outlet.

The earlier agreement “capped Iran’s uranium enrichment for 15 years,” said CNN. Trump is now demanding a 20-year pause, while Iran wants limits for just five years. But Tehran is negotiating with new leverage: Its closure of the Strait of Hormuz is a “weapon that is far more usable than nuclear weapons,” said CNN’s Fareed Zakaria.

What did the commentators say?

Trump has sold himself as the “ultimate dealmaker,” but that image is in conflict with his “intensifying love of unilateral power,” Bill Scher said at Washington Monthly. A good negotiator has “knowledge, patience, creativity and flexibility,” but the president prefers “impatiently breaking laws and norms.” Trump launched the war with Iran amid weeks of negotiations, which have left the regime’s leaders leery of reengaging. Obama, it now seems clear, mastered the “art of the deal” and avoided a disastrous war. “Trump didn’t, and here we are.”

One big difference between the 2015 agreement and any deal the U.S. makes now: Iran’s nuclear program is “largely in rubble,” Eli Lake said at The Free Press. Tehran may still possess as many as 500 uranium-enriching centrifuges, but the country’s ability to quickly develop a weapon “has been taken away through military force” and will be difficult to rebuild. Even if Trump fails to get a deal at this moment, he has nonetheless “destroyed the nuclear program that Obama legitimized.”

What next?

Trump faces “major hurdles” getting a better deal than Obama did, said The Guardian. And if a deal is reached, he will be asked to demonstrate that the war with Iran provided a superior outcome than what pre-war negotiations in Geneva were set to deliver. Otherwise the president will have “inflicted massive damage on the world economy” when other options were available. Getting to an agreement will be a challenge. There is a “trust deficit” between the two sides that “makes a solution so difficult.”

The S&P 500, the benchmark US stock index, hit a record high on Wednesday. This is being mirrored in other major stock markets across Asia and Europe, despite growing concerns over global fuel and energy prices as a result of the war in Iran and the blockage of the Strait of Hormuz.

“There’s a lot of risk out there and yet asset prices are at all-time highs,” Sarah Breeden, deputy governor of the Bank of England, told the BBC’s business editor Simon Jack. “We expect there will be an adjustment at some point”, she said. What “really keeps me awake at night is the likelihood of a number of risks crystallising at the same time”.

As Jack said: “It is unusual for a senior figure at the Bank to be so forthright on market movements.” With confidence fluctuating around peace talks, and reverberations in energy markets continuing, what has gone up could just as easily come down.

What did the commentators say?

“Nothing, it seems, can dent the almost inexplicable optimism coursing through financial markets,” said the ABC’s chief business correspondent Ian Verrender. In the past, stock markets would “shudder” and “tumble”, then spend a decade recovering from economic “calamity”; nowadays the recovery time is cut down to weeks, “if they bother to react at all”.

Investors are not “oblivious” to what is happening in the world, said Joe Rennison, financial markets reporter for The New York Times. They are just attuned to “what exactly the markets are measuring”, looking beyond the “immediate upheaval from the war” to concentrate on its “long-term effects on corporate profits”. Americans may be struggling to afford fuel for their cars, but companies have been “very profitable indeed” for “quite a while now”. Big tech is “riding a wave of enthusiasm”, and it is these bigger companies, like Microsoft and Meta, who have been shielded from the war and tend to influence the market more profoundly.

Although the market “rapidly rebounded – and then some” after Trump’s ceasefire announcement, having been on a steady slide for most of March, investors are “not simply taking Trump at his word” that the war is “almost over”. Instead, they are responding to the White House’s “apparent eagerness” to find an end to the combat. “Investors might not believe Trump, exactly, but they do seem to believe that the worst of the war has already passed.”

After “years of headline-driven volatility” and a “dip-buying mindset”, investors have learned not to “stay bearish for too long”, said Bloomberg. The current pattern echoes the “Ukraine-war playbook from early 2022, when an initial equities sell-off and commodity price surge” soon reversed to normal.

“It is never easy to price uncertainty,” said Tej Parikh in the Financial Times. Investors have long relied on “ebitda”, or earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation, to ascertain the “core value of a business”. But it now appears they have changed their tune, relying on “earnings before Iran, tariffs and dubious announcements”.

What next?

Since the war in Iran began, analysts have “actually raised their expectations for upcoming profits” for S&P 500 companies, said The Associated Press. Major companies such as PepsiCo and GE Vernova have either “stuck by” or “raised” their revenue forecasts for the year, which were initially published before the start of the war. S&P 500 profits could “accelerate to 20% in the second quarter, and companies aren’t giving them many reasons to reconsider”.

Of course, the US stock market “can easily return to falling”. If US-Iran peace talks break down, or if oil supplies cause greater concern, Wall Street’s mood could “swing quickly back to fear”. If oil prices, in particular, stay elevated for long enough, that could “erode” profits and raise costs, not to mention “weaken the spending power” of consumers around the world.

Hungary’s ousting of longtime Prime Minister Viktor Orbán this month sent shockwaves across Europe and beyond. In Moscow, Hungary under Orbán had been a rare ally amid an adversarial EU. In Kyiv, Orbán’s intransigence had scuttled various European initiatives to aid Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government in the country’s with Russia. But with Orbán out, Hungary will seemingly focus on repairing and normalizing EU ties. Ukraine stands to benefit from this emerging era in Eastern Europe, even as it faces a host of risks.

What did the commentators say?

Over the past four years of war with Russia, Hungary has been a “persistent source of irritation” for Ukraine, The New York Times said. Orbán’s government “maintained friendly relations” with Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin while “blocking critical European Union funding” for Kyiv’s war effort and “stalling Ukraine’s path toward integration into the bloc.” Orbán’s ousting means “this sort of Trojan horse for Russia within the EU may disappear,” said Andreas Umland, a policy fellow with the European Policy Institute in Kyiv, to the Times.

Orbán’s “vociferous recalcitrance” toward Ukraine allowed him to cast himself as “virtually the only opponent of aid to Ukraine in the entire EU,” said the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. “In reality,” Orbán was “simply willing to wield his veto and absorb all the backlash,” allowing other antagonists to “remain in the shadows.”

The victory of Hungary’s incoming Prime Minister Péter Magyar “clears the way for greater European support for Ukraine,” said the Council on Foreign Relations. Already, that shift has seen Hungary lift a hold it placed on a 90 billion euro loan to Kyiv, which Orbán coupled with what he claimed was Ukraine’s destruction of the Druzhba oil pipeline (Ukraine contends the pipeline was damaged in a Russian strike). The “spat” over the Druzhba pipeline also blocked a round of Russian sanctions the EU had hoped to “adopt to mark the fourth anniversary” of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in late February of this year, the CBC said.

With Orbán’s hold lifted, Ukraine is expected to make short work of the initial EU loan payments, the first of which are supposed to arrive in Kyiv “as soon as next month,” said The Telegraph. To date, Ukraine has been “reliant on donations from allies to plug the gap left by the Hungarian veto” and will use the newly released funds toward “U.S.-made Patriot air-defense interceptors to protect against incoming Russian ballistic missiles, new-fangled drone technologies produced in Ukraine and other legacy weapons, such as British Storm Shadow missiles.”

Ukraine is also taking Orbán’s ousting as an “opening to expand its energy footprint in Europe and displace Russian crude oil in Eastern Europe,” said Politico’s E&E News. Ukraine’s state-owned Naftogaz oil company is “eying plans to ship about 100 million barrels of oil a year” from a Black Sea port to neighboring countries, including Hungary, which could “supplant the Russian deliveries.”

What next?

Although the “dramatic change in tone” from Hungary is “certainly encouraging,” Ukrainians are “well aware that Hungary is not likely to become a major supporter,” said the Atlantic Council. Incoming Hungarian leadership has already “ruled out” arming Ukraine and “underlined” opposition to “fast-tracking the country’s EU accession process.”

While Magyar is “expected to take conciliatory steps toward Ukraine,” said the Russia Eurasia Center, “expectations may be overstated.” Ukraine’s inclusion in the EU is “increasingly unpopular in the bloc’s eastern part,” where countries like Poland and Bulgaria see Kyiv as a “direct competitor for European subsidies, jobs and agricultural markets.” Ukraine is also seen by some of its neighbors as an “obstacle to accessing Russian energy supplies.”

Removing Hungary’s vetoes on Ukrainian aid improves the EU’s “decision-making capacity,” said Zsuzsanna Végh, an analyst at the German Marshall Fund think tank, to The Telegraph. But Hungary won’t contribute to the EU funds directly, as Magyar’s Tisza party is “unlikely to embrace expansive military support.”

Ukrainians saw Orbán as the “hostile actor,” said Kyiv Independent reporter Tim Zadorozhnyy to the Lowy Institute, “not Hungary itself.” With Magyar’s promises of eased tensions and EU backing, he “now has all the cards in his hands.”

The EU has finally signed off a €90 billion (£78 billion) loan to Ukraine after Hungary dropped its veto. The loan – agreed in December but blocked for months by Hungary in a row over an oil pipeline – is “a question of our life, of surviving”, said Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Without the money, his country was struggling to manufacture the number of weapons it was capable of producing, he told CNN.

“Ukraine really needs this,” said EU foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas. “It’s also a sign that Russia cannot outlast Ukraine.”

What did the commentators say?

“European officials had found ways” to get some funds to Ukraine during the delay but this no-interest loan provides “far more substantial financial support”, as Moscow’s full-scale invasion extends into a fifth year, said The New York Times. Ukraine will only need to repay the loan if a future peace deal includes Russia paying reparations.

Having finally secured the loan, Zelenskyy has renewed calls to restart peace talks with Vladimir Putin, said The Independent – although US mediators are currently “preoccupied with the conflict in Iran”.

A resumption of talks seems unlikely any time soon. Only a few weeks ago, the Russian president gathered key oligarchs behind closed doors and asked them to contribute financially to the war, said independent Russian news outlet The Bell. “We will keep fighting,” its sources reported Putin as saying. “We will push to the borders of Donbas.”

And it’s the question of Donbas that led to the most recent peace talks being “placed on hold”, said political scientist Samuel Charap and military analyst Jennifer Kavanagh in Foreign Affairs. Donald Trump’s administration had “centred the talks on a core bargain”: that Ukraine cede the roughly 20% of the Donbas region it still holds to Russia “in exchange for security commitments from the US and Europe”. This approach exaggerated “the significance of territory for Russia and the importance of Western assurances for Ukraine”. It also neglected to “address the key challenge in ending any war”: convincing each side that “its enemy will really commit to peace”.

What next?

A Kremlin spokesperson has been reported as saying Putin would only meet Zelenskyy “for the purpose of finalising agreements”, said The Guardian. Instead, Russia wants the US to send Trump’s delegates Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner – who “have repeatedly listened to Putin’s maximalist demands” – to Moscow.

While the EU loan is “sorted”, there is now “another issue altogether”: Ukraine gaining membership of the EU, said Henry Foy in the Financial Times. Zelenskyy has long seen this as key to securing Ukraine’s long-term security and prosperity. “Belligerent public opposition” to the idea from outgoing Hungarian president Viktor Orbán had long “provided a useful shield for many other EU leaders to huddle behind” but, with his departure, “they will be forced to clarify their positions”.

Claims that new AI models can outperform humans at some hacking tasks has sparked widespread alarm about the future of digital security.

Tech firms “usually create buzz around products they plan to release”, said The Economist. American artificial intelligence lab Anthropic, “has managed to create excitement – and a good deal of worry – around something it plans not to”, having announced that its new Claude Mythos model would not be released to the general public.

The problem is not that the new model is “buggy or unreliable” but rather “that it works so well that releasing it would put the world’s digital infrastructure at risk”.

What did the commentators say?

This next generation of AI models such as Anthropic’s Mythos or OpenAI’s new closed-version GPT 5.4-Cyber can not only write code, but also recognise errors – or “bugs” – in the code, which can be used to both identify potential weaknesses but also ways to attack computer systems.

“It’s impressive – and, at the same time, worrying” – because it makes cyberattacks “easier”, said professor of cyber security Florian Tramèr on ETH Zurich university’s website. A lone hacker “can suddenly try out thousands of variants” and “if one attack fails, he or she can simply try with the next one.” “This increases the risks for companies, state institutions or even private individuals,” especially “if such models become cheaper and more efficient”.

Recognising the danger this might pose, Anthropic has limited access to Mythos to a handful of trusted tech companies under an initiative called Project Glasswing. Similarly, OpenAI is providing limited access to GPT-5.4-Cyber to vetted security professionals so they can use it for defensive cybersecurity measures.

Yet even Anthropic’s strict security protocols appear to have been breached, after the company confirmed it was investigating how a group of users gained “unauthorised access” to Mythos Preview “through one of our third-party vendor environments”.

The risk of unauthorised access will only “add to anxiety” about Mythos, and “raises concerns” about whether Anthropic “can keep the technology it develops out of the hands of bad actors”, said Cristina Criddle in the Financial Times.

News of these new models’ cybercapabilities had already “sent shockwaves through the markets and prompted high-level discussions among financial institutions and global regulators”, with finance ministers from across the G7 hosting bank bosses to discuss what AI-enabled hacking might mean for their businesses.

What next?

Capitalising on a “mix of fear and excitement over AI and its future impact” has “become a hallmark of the sector and its marketing strategies in recent years”, said BBC reporters Liv McMahon and Joe Tidy.

In the case of Mythos, “we still do not know enough about it to know whether these hopes or fears are justified, or more a reflection of the hype surrounding the industry”.

In reality, “like other tools from the long history of cybersecurity”, the latest AI models “can be used for both offence and defence”, said The New York Times.

There is still disagreement on “whether one side of this struggle has gained a significant advantage through AI” and experts are “unsure how the battle will play out in the coming years”. Most agree, however, that “the companies and governments that do not embrace the latest AI for defensive purposes will leave themselves enormously vulnerable”.

With the cyberenvironment experiencing the “most change” ever, said Francis deSouza, the chief operating officer and president of security products at Google Cloud, “you have to fight AI with AI.”

Keir Starmer’s future once again hangs in the balance over his decision to appoint Peter Mandelson as UK ambassador to Washington, despite the peer’s well-known links to China and friendship with paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

The prime minister accused the Foreign Office of hiding from Downing Street that the UK Security Vetting organisation recommended that Mandelson be denied full security clearance. But today the former head of the Foreign Office, the recently sacked Olly Robbins, told a parliamentary hearing there was an “atmosphere of pressure” and a “very strong expectation” from No. 10 that Mandelson should be “in post” as quickly as possible. Robbins believes he and the Foreign Office “made the correct decision”, said the BBC’s Henry Zeffman – but Starmer’s position is “the exact opposite”.

What did the commentators say?

It’s far from ideal for a prime minister to plead to the House of Commons that he has not lied to MPs because “he didn’t know what was going on in his own government”, said The Independent in an editorial. His defence is that “nobody told me”, even when he asked. “So much for absolute prime ministerial power.” Until there’s evidence to the contrary, his defence has to be accepted, “even if it beggars belief”. Starmer will “most likely survive at least until the May elections and beyond” – but “his troubles and the weaknesses of the government remain”.

It could be worse, said John Crace in The Guardian. Many MPs long ago decided Starmer wasn’t the right person for the job, but the Iran war and local elections next month mean it’s not the right time to replace him. “The party and the country wouldn’t thank them for turning a drama into a crisis.” But clearly it doesn’t occur to Starmer to “ask the questions that any normal person would” – such as, did Mandelson pass his security vetting? Starmer’s credibility is “on the line”. Because if he didn’t know, it was his job to know. “It would almost have been better if he had known about the vetting and approved it regardless. At least he would have been in control.”

The latest twist is “not enough to oust Starmer, but it has undermined the faith of MPs in the PM” and “removed the gloss he had accumulated” by staying out of the war with Iran, said Tim Shipman in The Spectator. “It makes it marginally more likely that he will be removed after May’s local elections.”

It is “clearly absurd” that Robbins didn’t tell Starmer, regardless of the legality. But Starmer knew about the red flags and decided to appoint Mandelson anyway. “This remains the fundamental original sin of this episode, which no amount of gabbling about process can excuse.” Yes, there is a “damaging lack of coordination and cooperation” at the top of government, but Starmer remains a “semi-detached, bizarrely incurious leader who seems barely engaged” with its activities. About 53% of voters believe he has been dishonest about the whole affair, according to YouGov polling.

Starmer’s dismissal of multiple advisers has also “added to the sense that a scapegoat can always be plucked from officialdom”, said Dan Bloom and Sam Blewett in Politico. There could be a “chilling effect” – civil servants might become “more defensive and suspicious”. And what then? Plenty of prime ministers have discovered that the civil service – famously compared to a Rolls-Royce by Michael Heseltine – is “capable of growling, not just purring”.

What next?

Starmer has announced an inquiry into the security concerns raised during Mandelson’s vetting. But clearly the man appointed to handle “what is perhaps Britain’s most sensitive of foreign relationships” was doing so despite the recommendation that he be denied security clearance, said Politico.

One “huge potential curveball” remaining is the planned release of thousands of emails and WhatsApp messages between Mandelson and government figures in the coming weeks. “Not even Starmer can be sure how the story will evolve from there.”

For weeks, the Trump administration has waged a brutal war on Iran. But now that Iran has successfully shifted the conflict’s nexus to the oil-shipping bottleneck in the Strait of Hormuz, the White House has a new plan to inflict maximum pressure: economic warfare, the “financial equivalent” of a bombing campaign, said Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent during a White House briefing last week.

What did the commentators say?

Blocking Iranian ports and shipping lanes and pivoting from “kinetic to economic warfare” is an attempt to “end the conflict without a new U.S.-Israeli onslaught,” said CNN. Per the White House’s “rationale,” the “ruinous financial and humanitarian consequences” of being unable to ship and sell oil leave Tehran with “no choice but to accept U.S. terms” to end the conflict.

Although focused on Iran specifically, the administration’s threats stretch beyond the Islamic Republic to those who would do business with it. Countries that are “buying Iranian oil” or hold Iranian funds in their banks now risk “secondary sanctions, which is a very stern measure,” Bessent said on PBS News. Iranians themselves will feel the “financial equivalent of what we saw in the kinetic activities.”

Bessent’s threat came one day after his Treasury Department notified “financial institutions in China, Hong Kong, the UAE and Oman” that they are at risk of secondary sanctions for “allowing Iranian illicit activities to flow through their financial institutions,” said The Associated Press. The “argument being made to Trump” is that no matter if the Iranians think they can “weather the storm,” any inability to pay their “loyalists” could “pressure Iran to the table.”

Approximately one-third of the oil Iran exports through the Strait of Hormuz “directly funds the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps,” said The Foundation for Defense of Democracies Senior Fellow Miad Maleki on Fox News. Bessent’s threats will “shut down a lifeline that the regime desperately needs right now to keep its economy on some life support.”

Trump himself has been a “heavy user of financial sanctions” targeting “countries, individuals and companies,” The Washington Post said. At the same time, his administration seems to have been “caught unawares” when rivals like China and Iran “weaponized their economic advantages.”

While sanctions have long been the “instrument of choice for applying pressure on Iran,” the White House’s pivot toward “more kinetic forms of economic coercion” blurs the line between “financial restriction and military intervention,” said Harsh Pant, an international relations professor with King’s India Institute at King’s College London, at The Economic Times. “By physically interdicting maritime traffic” with its naval blockade, Trump is showing a willingness to enforce America’s “economic objectives through direct control of global commons.”

What next?

In many ways, the “damage” caused by economic weapons is already “sparking a response,” with nations that depend on the Strait of Hormuz “making plans to reduce their vulnerability to a future closure,” the Post said. But critics warn that attempts to impose other financial consequences on Iran could ultimately backfire on the United States and its allies. Much of the previous phase of war has “helped Iran’s economy,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), per the AP. Imposing further economic conditions is simply an attempt by Bessent to “mop up the mess that Donald Trump has created by initiating this war.”

The administration could still be making a “sound bet,” said CNN. Iran’s economy has been “shattered by sanctions” and could “quickly suffer critical food shortages, hyperinflation and a banking crisis” that would push Tehran to settle with the Trump administration. But this hope shared by “U.S. officials, conservative editorial pages and analysts” may ultimately “rest on an assumption” that has “led the U.S. astray in the Middle East” many times in the past.

What happens if two of the country’s largest airlines combine? It may not be a hypothetical, as American Airlines and United Airlines have reportedly discussed merging into one company. But experts say this move is likely to face antitrust scrutiny, and many are concerned about what a merger could do to airfares in a market already seeing rising prices.

What did the commentators say?

United CEO Scott Kirby has allegedly spoken with Trump administration officials about getting clearance for a merger. If United and American were to combine, it would “create an unprecedented concentration of power in the commercial aviation industry,” said CNN. The joint company would “control roughly 40% of U.S. capacity when the available seats are adjusted for miles flown.” This has aviation analysts worried about a potential monopoly.

The “idea that we would have one airline responsible for four out of 10 flights every day is beyond horrific,” William McGee, an aviation and travel fellow at the American Economic Liberties Project, said to CNN. But airline consolidation has long been a part of the aviation business, and the White House “has shown a warmth toward mergers in the industry,” said CNBC. Combining companies “allows carriers to better control capacity.” Consolidation could also create a lifeline for American, which has fallen behind United and Delta as it “struggled to capitalize on higher-spending customers who are driving major airlines’ revenue in recent years.”

The potential merger may create a problem for customers, with the “main concern” being “higher fares,” said MarketWatch. Fares have already been climbing due to fuel shortages from the war in Iran, and “your next plane ticket and the pile of unused miles sitting in your account could both take a beating” if United and American joined, said Money Talks News. The two airlines “overlap heavily in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and Washington,” which means customers should “expect higher fares on a lot of the routes you actually fly.”

When it comes to the less-traveled routes, airline consolidation means “secondary hubs tend to get thinned out,” said Money Talks News. It would put “pressure on cities like Philadelphia, Phoenix and Charlotte — places where American currently runs big operations,” and locals would “pay for it in both schedule choices and ticket prices.” People who take advantage of frequent flier miles may especially lose out, as “when airlines merge, the combining loyalty programs almost always end up repricing awards — upward.”

What next?

The details of the new proposed company are not yet clear. Any deal would “invite extraordinary scrutiny from regulators, labor unions and consumer advocates,” said Reuters. Prior governments have stopped smaller mergers in the past; the Biden administration “blocked JetBlue’s attempt to acquire Spirit Airlines, arguing it would eliminate ‌a low-cost ⁠competitor.”

The talks are also coming at a time when the Trump administration is “concerned about affordability issues,” and such a deal would “reduce choices and give the airlines more pricing power,” antitrust ⁠lawyer Andre Barlow told Reuters. “I would think this would get a rigorous review.”

The world is reeling from a war-induced oil shock, and China is poised to take advantage. The country builds nearly every component of the 21st-century electrical grid that will be needed to replace the oil currently bottled up in the Strait of Hormuz.

European and Asian countries facing oil shortages are realizing that “all paths to renewable power run through China and its exporters,” said The New York Times. Beijing has for decades “poured hundreds of billions of dollars into green energy” in its drive for energy independence, and its companies lead the world in producing solar panels, batteries and other equipment. The U.S. war against Iran will “catalyze even more investment and interest in renewables,” said Cory Combs, of analysis firm Trivium China, to the outlet. If Russia and Middle Eastern countries that produce the world’s oil are known as petrostates, China might be the world’s first electrostate.

“Consumers and governments around the world” are realizing their energy supplies are at the “mercy of wars and chokepoints,” said The Wall Street Journal. South Korea’s future “will be at serious risk if we continue to rely on fossil fuels,” President Lee Jae-Myung said to a town hall in March. Many are finding the answer in turning to China’s wind and solar power production, “even if that means more dependence on a single country.”

What did the commentators say?

The U.S. is pushing an “energy-hungry world” into China’s arms, Paul Krugman said on his Substack. President Donald Trump has been attempting to “stop the renewable energy revolution,” but he cannot because the “economics and the science are compelling.” What he can do is “ensure that the revolution passes us by.” His “debacle in Iran” may bring that future ahead of schedule, led by China. The U.S. may someday escape “Trump’s fossil fuel obsession,” but by that time “China’s lead in the manufacture of renewables will probably be insurmountable.”

There will be a “long-term psychological impact” from the Iran war, economist Andy Xie said at The South China Morning Post. The United States and Israel have been in conflict with Iran for nearly half a century, and a ceasefire now will not change the underlying dynamic. Other countries will expect more oil shocks in the future, which will “shape national policies for many years.” The upside: Reducing reliance on oil will take away incentive to wage war against countries like Iran. “Renewable energy makes the world safer.”

What next?

China is inaugurating the “electrostate era,” said Foreign Policy. Beijing spent recent decades plotting an energy strategy “designed precisely for moments like this.” Nearly a third of the country’s energy consumption comes from electricity, and “more than half of the cars sold in China are electric.” That has been the result of policies concerned less with reducing carbon emissions and more with energy independence. Beijing will not entirely avoid the consequences of the current oil shock, but the “push to become an electrostate” will reduce the pain.

Confusion reigns over whether there will be further direct talks between Lebanon and Israel.

Galia Gamliel, a member of Israel’s security cabinet, announced that Benjamin Netanyahu would be speaking to Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun today, following historic talks earlier this week.

However, a spokesperson for Aoun said they were “not aware of any call” taking place between Aoun and the Israeli prime minister. Aoun did confirm that a ceasefire is the “natural starting point for direct negotiations”, and called the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the country an “essential step towards consolidating” such a ceasefire.

As Israeli air strikes destroyed the last remaining bridge connecting southern Lebanon to the rest of the country, and civilians continue to flee their homes, diplomatic talks appear somewhat hopeless as Israel’s aims remain unclear.

What did the commentators say?

It is “hard to imagine much change resulting from the meeting” between Israeli and Lebanese officials in Washington on Tuesday, said The Economist. As things stand, Israel has an “overwhelming military advantage”, and Netanyahu has demanded Lebanon presents a “comprehensive plan for disarming Hezbollah” and “establishing diplomatic relations between the two countries”.

But the Lebanese government is “too weak” to disarm the militant group and has faced “thinly veiled threats of a violent coup” should it try. Even if Beirut were able to strive for “political consensus” in its “deeply fractured society”, it is “unlikely” Netanyahu would “give them the necessary time” to capitalise on it.

For most countries affected by war, ceasefires are a “welcome development”, but for Israel’s “maximalist” leaders, they are often “seen as getting in the way of efforts to finish the job”, said Mairav Zonszein in The New York Times. Just as the ceasefire was announced, the Israel Defense Forces hit 100 Lebanese targets in 10 minutes, killing 350 and wounding “well over 1,000, many of them civilians”. War, as seen in Gaza and now Lebanon, is “increasingly the state’s go-to response to geopolitical challenges – not just the strategy but the norm”.

Israelis’ problem is that their “definition of victory” is “framed by a distorted reality” that threats “can and must be eliminated through invasion and occupation”. The media rarely provides an insight into civilian casualties, and practically no one in the domestic political landscape is challenging the country’s tendency to “treat war as a tool of first resort in statecraft”. This could end badly for all sides involved: “when war becomes the norm, everyone loses”.

“Israel’s primary goal is simple: weaken Hezbollah,” said Daniel Byman from the Center for Strategic & International Studies. Its ongoing campaign against the group displays a “familiar but intensified strategic objective”: that of “mowing the grass”; so “not the elimination of Hezbollah, but its sustained degradation”.

Yet there are “enduring risks” with this strategy. Even a wounded Hezbollah can disrupt life in northern Israel and “escalate unpredictably”. “Ultimately, Israel appears to accept that the conflict with Hezbollah will persist as a recurring feature of the region’s security landscape.”

For Netanyahu himself, the “rhetoric about the war on Lebanon is simple”, said Ori Goldberg on Al Jazeera. He wants to be the leader who “emerged as clearly and absolutely triumphant” from the “longest war in Israeli history”.

After alienating much of the Western world – except for his closest ally Donald Trump – it seems removing Hezbollah is his “only remaining opportunity to claim victory” on the world stage and secure a legacy. In the region, and on the domestic front, tackling the “fictitious invasion” by Hezbollah is the “only political promise Netanyahu hopes he can fulfil for future voters” in the elections expected this autumn.

What next?

Though these talks should be welcomed, “significant hurdles remain”, said Bilal Y. Saab from Chatham House. Given the “deeply rooted” Hezbollah problem, both sides need to take “more concrete action”.

In order to preserve ties with the Lebanese government, Israel must “avoid further attacks on state infrastructure”, particularly in Beirut, to destroy Hezbollah’s “narrative of resistance”. The Lebanese government’s focus, however, is internal. It should consider “expelling Hezbollah ministers from the cabinet”, confiscate arms, “outlaw all of Hezbollah’s financial activities” and “arrest anyone endangering civil peace”.

There are hopes this would lead to a formal peace deal. “It’s a long and winding road, but there’s no better alternative.”

Democrats are ready to be done with Donald Trump’s presidency. Trump’s critics are starting to talk more openly about removing him from office, using impeachment or the 25th Amendment. They assert that his recent social media tirades against Iran and Pope Leo reveal he is unfit for office.

Democrats in Congress mostly “steered clear of threatening impeachment” since Trump’s return to the White House, said The New York Times. The president’s threat last week to wipe out Iranian civilization “dramatically” shifted their calculations, spurring dozens of “formerly hesitant” House Democrats to back articles of impeachment. Trump “seems to be taking us on a path to mass war crimes,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said on X. The president’s recent “erratic behavior and extreme comments” have “turbocharged” discussion of his mental fitness, said the Times. The challenge: Removal efforts are “doomed to fail so long as Republicans control Congress,” said The Associated Press.

What did the commentators say?

The “fate of the Earth depends” on Trump’s removal from office, Will Bunch said at The Philadelphia Inquirer. The president’s growing list of “embarrassingly profane and unspeakably evil” social media posts demonstrates that he is “mentally and physically deteriorating,” a danger given his command of the “planet’s largest air force and a large cache of nuclear weapons.” The threat is too urgent to wait for Democrats to win control of Congress in November. Americans should join a May 1 general strike called for by the organizers of the “No Kings” protests to make their feelings clear. “It is a time for action.”

Democrats’ talk of impeachment “plays into Iran’s hand,” Peter Lucas said at The Boston Herald. Despite his words, Trump “will not end civilization in Iran.” But he will end Iran’s attempt to develop its own nuclear weapon. Democrats are looking for an excuse to “impeach him anyway if they gain control of the House in November.” They should instead acknowledge that Trump “saved the day” by taking action against Iran.

The 25th Amendment is “having a moment,” Ian Millhiser said at Vox, but it is unlikely to be used against this president. The constitutional provision would allow the White House cabinet to “temporarily prevent Trump from acting as president,” but the process is designed to replace an executive who is “physically or mentally incapacitated” rather than one who is “merely bad at being president.” Other democracies make it easier to remove an “incompetent, unfit or unpopular leader.” The United States should join their ranks.

What next?

Democratic leaders are trying to “shut down” impeachment talk, said Axios. That is not the “best use of our time” given that the effort would inevitably fall short, Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-Pa.) said to the outlet. Dean and other senior Democrats want the party’s focus to be on “concrete issues like the war in Iran and affordability” as midterm elections approach, said Axios. An impeachment that fails to remove Trump, said Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.), “is worse than no impeachment at all.”

The tragedy of the Southport murders, in which three young girls were killed and several more injured in a random attack by knifeman Axel Rudakubana, “defies description”, said The Sun. The report on the first stage of the inquiry, released this week, “laid bare” what its chair called an “inappropriate merry-go-round” of public sector agencies handing off responsibility for the increasingly troubled teenager. “Catastrophe was inevitable”, said the newspaper.

The inquiry report highlighted five key factors that prevented an adequate response to the threat posed by Rudakubana: a lack of risk acceptance, poor information sharing, lack of examination of online activity, a “misunderstanding of autism”, as well as “significant parental failures” at home.

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said in a statement that the government has “already taken action to prevent such an awful tragedy from happening again”, but many are calling for concrete legislation to act on some of the 67 recommendations outlined in the inquiry.

What did the commentators say?

The murder of Bebe King, Alice da Silva Aguiar and Elsie Dot Stancombe was “one of the most depraved acts of violence ever seen on these shores”, said The Telegraph in an editorial. “But this did not come out of a clear blue sky.” Rudakubana’s “violent behaviour was known to his parents, his school, the police and to various agencies”. In the years leading up to the killings, he had attacked fellow pupils, been caught with a knife in public, and was referred to the Home Office anti-terror programme Prevent three times. Retired Lord Justice Adrian Fulford, who led the inquiry, said the culture of unaccountability “has to end”. “The trouble is we have heard that before”, said the newspaper, “and it never does”.

The “nightmare” of the July 2024 attacks in Southport “would never have happened if public bodies had done their jobs properly”, said The Guardian. The report did not “single out” any individual police or council officers, but “this does not make them any less culpable”: in fact, the “collective failure” to take responsibility for the events is the “single most disturbing conclusion”. The “grave failures” of those involved, including police, council officers, health professionals and Prevent, revealed the “deadly flaws” of the multi-agency systems linking them, said the paper. “Ministers must not wait for the inquiry’s second phase to explain how they plan to bring this dangerous culture of buck‑passing to an end.”

All those involved with Rudakubana’s case “should hang their heads in shame”, said Jawad Iqbal in The Spectator. The inquiry uncovered a “comprehensive” and “depressing” catalogue of “missed opportunities and systems of protection that were found wanting”. One such failure was officials using Rudakubana’s autism diagnosis to “excuse” his “increasingly erratic and violent behaviour”, rather than considering that, in this instance, his condition “heightened, rather than lessened, the risk he posed”.

“The Southport inquiry is damning in its clarity,” said The Mirror. “This tragedy was preventable.” But this report also “speaks to something far wider”: the roles and duties of parents. Fulford found Rudakubana’s parents bore “considerable blame for what occurred”, and that if they had “done what they morally ought to have done” by reporting his violent behaviour – including collecting knives and concocting poison at home – it is “almost certain” the attack would not have occurred. Parenting has “never been more consequential” in our age of “online radicalisation”, and children “disappearing into the darkness of their bedrooms”. “The duty to know your child, truly know them, and act on what you find has never mattered more.”

What next?

The next stage of the inquiry will consider the “need for a new mechanism” to manage the “growing threat” of Prevent being “overwhelmed” with referrals of teenagers who are “obsessed with violence” but do not display the “coherent ideology of political extremists”, said The Guardian. It will also consider “tighter regulation of social media use” and the “online sale of weapons”.

Any changes to the law will naturally need to be “carefully considered”, weighing up the risks of “making policy off the back of one case, however tragic”, but this case points to the need for “new policies”, “tighter processes and increased resources”. “The failures went beyond missed communications and overstretched staff.”

Questions of those who will take “organisational and individual accountability” and how government agencies will make meaningful change “remain unanswered”, said Iqbal in The Spectator. “Does anyone involved seriously reflect on their conduct and failures rather than simply seek to avoid blame and consequences?” One thing that the report makes “abundantly clear” is that “this culture must change”. “The tragedy of Southport demands nothing less.”

The divide between the American president and the American pontiff has exploded into view. Pope Leo has repeatedly rebuked President Donald Trump’s immigration policies and war in Iran, and Trump is now returning the criticism. Could the division prefigure a split in the Catholic Church?

Leo on Sunday delivered his “strongest condemnation yet” of war in a peace vigil at St. Peter’s Basilica, said CBS News. “Enough with war!” he said during the public service. Real strength is “manifested in serving life.” The president did not take kindly to the critique. Leo is “terrible for foreign policy” and should “get his act together as pope, use common sense, stop catering to the radical left,” Trump said on Truth Social.

The exchange followed a “bitter lecture” during a January meeting between Pentagon appointees and a Vatican diplomat, said The Free Press. The message from Defense Department officials: The church “had better take its side” on the world stage. One unnamed U.S. official “went so far as to invoke the Avignon Papacy,” the 14th-century period in which the French monarchy forcibly moved the papacy from Rome to France. Both sides downplayed the Free Press report. Even so, tension between Catholic leaders and the White House has “only risen since the start of the war with Iran,” said The Atlantic.

What did the commentators say?

“There will be no second Avignon,” Christopher Hale said at the newsletter Letters from Leo. Officials invoking that 14th-century history were making a “threat against the conscience of the world,” but the White House will be unable to repeat it.

A recent favorability survey published by NBC News found Leo finished first in a ranking of “14 public figures, institutions and political groups” by a wide margin. That makes him the “most popular public figure on earth.” Trump cannot compete. “The American people stand with Pope Leo XIV.”

Leo has “resisted Trump like a protester at a ‘No Kings’ rally,” said Gustavo Arellano at the Los Angeles Times. Critics will accuse the pope of “Trump derangement syndrome” and note that he stands “athwart the desires” of the 55% of Catholics who voted for the president in 2024. But Trump’s administration has pulled funding from Catholic charities and criticized bishops who dissent. Leo’s role is to “bear witness to the words of Christ,” who spoke more about caring for the poor than waging war. Unlike Trump, Leo “urges us to stand for something other than ourselves.”

What next?

The debate over the war is spilling into the wider religious sphere, “driving a wedge” between the president’s pro-Israel evangelical supporters and the Catholic commentators who are “increasingly hostile to Trump’s foreign policy agenda,” said Vox. The “Avignon-gate” report will continue to raise tensions “within the U.S. Catholic community and within the MAGA movement.”

Leo, meanwhile, will not return to the U.S. for the country’s 250th birthday celebrations in July, choosing instead to minister to migrants in Italy. Leo’s priority is to “be with those who are downcast and marginalized,” said Cardinal Blase Cupich on “60 Minutes.”

Viktor Orbán once described Hungary under his premiership as a “petri dish for illiberalism”. The end of his 16-year reign is, for many in the West, a sign that his Maga-style politics is on the way out. But Hungary’s future under new prime minister Peter Magyar, once a staunch Orbán loyalist, is far from certain.

Magyar only joined the centre-right Tisza party in 2024. “He has built an opposition movement at amazing speed,” Gábor Győri of Budapest think tank, Policy Solutions, told The Guardian. “Never”, since the fall of Soviet-based communist rule in 1989, has Hungary “seen a party rise this quickly”.

What the commentators said?

“Short of offering a bonanza of free oil,” it’s hard to see how Donald Trump could have done more to “shore up” Orbán, his “closest ideological ally in Europe”, said Oliver Moody and Michael Evans in The Times. He promised to strengthen Hungary with “the full economic might” of the US, and even parachuted J.D. Vance into Budapest to stand at Orbán’s side. But Hungary’s rejection of Orbán is a reflection of the broader sentiment across Europe, as “the populist right is either distancing itself from Trump or suffering by association with his brand”.

“There is no question that Orbán’s downfall is a loss for Maga-style politics,” said Alexander Burns on Politico. But “the sharpest message from Budapest should be for the Democrats” in the US. Orbán’s defeat is “a new triumph for a particular brand of disruptive politics”, in which reformists “launch new parties and blow up old ones, winning elections by rendering traditional political structures obsolete”. Currently, “there is no equivalent figure among Trump’s American opponents”.

There are warnings, too, for those in Europe who see Magyar’s win as a victory for liberal politics. Orbán’s fall “​​does not mean that Hungarian voters have rejected his tough-on-immigration, pro-natalist or Brussels-critical policies”, said The Telegraph’s deputy comment editor Michael Mosbacher. A former member of Orbán’s Fidesz party, Magyar is a social conservative who “on effectively every issue” comes down “firmly on the right of European politics”. Orbán may have been the EU’s bête noire over financial support for Ukraine, but his successor has said in the past that he is against sending weapons to Kyiv and opposes Ukraine’s push to join the EU.

What next?

“Despite more than two years of campaigning and a 240-page election manifesto, the details of what exactly Magyar will do remain vague,” said The Guardian. “He is very much a dark horse,” Győri told the paper. “We don’t know much about him.”

“There are both question marks and exclamation marks” about the consequences of Magyar’s victory, said Ákos Hadházy, an independent Hungarian MP and a long-time critic of Orbán. “But Hungarian society has accepted this.”

Elon Musk always does things in a big way. The same is true of his plans to take SpaceX public. But how investors will make out could depend on how much they like him. As Musk works to convince buyers that his rocket company could be valued at as much as $2 trillion, SpaceX is earmarking up to 30% of shares for “nonprofessional, noninstitutional investors” and “banking on the popularity” of the tech billionaire to help it raise as much as $75 billion from the stock offering, said The Guardian. And the so-called “retail” trade by his fans will be a “critical part of this and ​a bigger part than any IPO in history,” Chief Financial Officer Bret Johnsen told a meeting of bankers on April 6, per Reuters.

SpaceX is more than just rockets. It now includes xAI, Musk’s artificial intelligence company, along with Starlink, Grok and the X social media network. Money raised from the IPO would help SpaceX finance “launching artificial intelligence data centers into orbit, creating a colony on the moon and getting humans to Mars,” said The New York Times. But those are “expensive and unproven” technologies that could take “years and billions of dollars to achieve.”

What did the commentators say?

IPOs “used to fund growth,” Brad Badertscher said at The Conversation. Going public helped “young, cash-strapped companies” like Amazon and Apple get traction, and “much of their dramatic growth” happened afterward. These days, most companies “can now raise billions privately” and, like SpaceX, only go public after they have entrenched themselves in the marketplace. Investors are not getting in on the ground floor. Most “explosive growth in corporate value” comes while “companies are still private.”

The SpaceX IPO could “showcase the free market at its best,” Matthew Lynn said at The Washington Post. The company is “pioneering innovative technologies and generating jobs and wealth.” Bringing along ordinary investors might add to those accomplishments. Giving regular people ownership of stocks gives them a “stake in the free market” and makes them “far more likely to support the system.” Musk’s stock offering could convince Americans that “free-market, risk-taking entrepreneurship isn’t such a terrible thing after all.”

A “bumper crop of mega initial public offerings” is expected over the next year, Jonathan Levin said at Bloomberg. History suggests investors should “tread very, very carefully” when evaluating companies like SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic. Mega IPOs have “underperformed the market” on average in recent years. But some investors will inevitably decide that Musk’s company and its peers “are in a league of their own.”

What next?

SpaceX “could trade like a meme stock” after the IPO, said MarketWatch. Stocks driven by “social media trends” are often prone to “high trading volumes and price volatility.” The Musk-helmed company “clearly has some of the ingredients” to fit that profile, Roundhill Investments CEO Dave Mazza said to the outlet.

Nationwide fuel protests in Ireland are now in their fourth day – and the government has put defence forces on standby to help police clear vehicles blockading roads and fuel depots.

The protestors, primarily farmers, hauliers, and others who drive for a living, are causing “significant disruption” that threatens “critical supplies”, said The Independent. They are angry at the sharp rise in diesel and petrol prices, caused by the conflict in the Middle East, and are demanding “immediate government intervention” to protect the risk to their livelihoods.

With the International Monetary Fund warning that the world will experience diesel and jet fuel shortages “for some time”, there are signs, and concerns, that the protests in Ireland are spreading beyond its borders.

What did the commentators say?

The Irish government finds itself “locked in a highly polarised debate with an implacably opposed group”, said Johnny Fallon in The Journal. The protestors see it as a “straightforward”: they can’t afford fuel, and any “lack of political will” to cut costs means the government is “corrupt” or “misallocating funds”. But the government needs “sustainable, fact-based, long-term solutions rather than short-term fixes”. The wider public, “though sceptical of the protests”, is growing “impatient” for “meaningful government action.”

Over in Britain, the markets are “already reacting as if shortages are coming”, said Hannah Barnes in The New Statesman. “If they do materialise, they are likely to spread through the economy in ways that go far beyond queues at petrol stations”. And “the longer the disruption continues”, the bigger the impact on food prices, in particular. Some experts are already predicting a challenging winter ahead, with protests more than a possibility.

Protests at fuel shortages and rising prices for diesel have already spread to France, said Radio France Internationale. Landscaping firms have blockaded ring roads around Nantes, road-freight firms have organised protests in Lyon and Clermont-Ferrand, and fishermen in Corsica have been blocking the island’s six main ports. Nearly one in five French petrol stations were temporarily out of at least one type of fuel after the Easter weekend.

Last month in Germany, a “convoy of around 50 trucks drove through” Cottbus in protest, said Agnieszka Kulikowska on Trans.INFO. “Tensions are also becoming increasingly visible in Italy”, where truckers have protested in Ravenna.

What next?

“A situation that not long ago was described as difficult is now being openly called an existential crisis by many business owners,” said Kulikowska on Trans.INFO. “The protests that are just beginning may only be the start of a broader movement.”

If governments and industry regulators do not ease pressures on businesses, the next steps could be “far more radical”. “One thing is certain: road transport – the lifeblood of the European economy – has reached a critical point.”

Several thousand people have been killed in Iran since the U.S.-Israeli war broke out, and the conflict has created an additional humanitarian crisis: delays and shortages of medical supplies. Hospitals and health care clinics throughout the Middle East are reporting critical lapses in supplies, which experts fear could lead to a surge in deaths even as the U.S. agreed to a temporary ceasefire.

What did the commentators say?

With the war in a state of flux, humanitarian centers “across the Middle East, Asia and Africa are facing the risk of running out of basic medication and food” due to the “restriction of shipments in the Strait of Hormuz,” said NPR. Some of this food, especially dry and canned goods, can “be stored for a long time,” Bob Kitchen, the vice president of emergencies and humanitarian action with the International Rescue Committee, said to NPR. But health care supplies are a different story, as most of the “medicines or treatments for malnutrition will expire.”

Many of these countries rely almost entirely on foreign aid for medical supplies. Sudan, for example, has “no manufacturing capacity and is entirely dependent on imported medication,” Omer Sharfy of Save the Children in Sudan said to NPR. This means health care workers “won’t be able to find alternatives in the local market.” The war has also “disrupted the movement of medical supplies from WHO’s global logistics hub in Dubai,” said the World Health Organization. By March 11, just 12 days into the war, over “50 emergency supply requests, intended to benefit over 1.5 million people across 25 countries,” were “affected, resulting in significant backlogs.”

Even countries far away from the conflict are bearing the brunt of these scarcities. Fears of syringe and IV shortages in South Korea are “spreading through Korea’s health care sector, prompting authorities to urge medical providers to refrain from stockpiling,” said The Korea Times. The problem is not that the Persian Gulf countries are “major drug producers. They’re not,” said health care news nonprofit Healthbeat. But these nations do “form ‘a critical pharmaceutical transit hub,’ where drugs and their basic ingredients from India, Europe and China routinely pass before heading to Africa, Asia and the United States.”

What next?

Some are hopeful that the two-week ceasefire, announced by President Donald Trump and initially agreed to by Iran, will allow the flow of medicine to restart. But while the U.S. has backed a ceasefire, Israel has continued its assault on the region, carrying out a series of strikes in Lebanon. Iran reclosed the strait in “response to Israeli attacks against the Hezbollah militant group,” said The Associated Press. Iran later accused the U.S. of also violating the deal and claimed that a long-term ceasefire was “unreasonable.”

Even before the strait was closed again, experts say it is unlikely its opening would have made a huge difference in moving global medical supplies. The ceasefire deal would not lead to a “‘mass exodus’ of ships through the Strait of Hormuz,” said The Guardian. The deal also allows Iran and Oman to “charge a fee of up to $2 million a ship on vessels transiting through the strait,” which could further limit the amount of supplies that are able to pass.

With no end to the larger skirmish in sight, fears persist that the shipment of medical supplies could remain at risk. All of these events are happening in an industry that was “decimated by funding cuts from the United States and Europe last year,” said The Washington Post, and is “now straining to meet demand that grows with each additional day of war.”

After five weeks of war, Donald Trump has claimed “total and complete victory” over Iran. Tehran begs to differ. Agreeing to the conditional two-week ceasefire, Iranian officials said their country had dealt a “crushing historic defeat” to the US and Israel.

Meanwhile, commentators are pointing to real, quiet wins for both China and Pakistan, whose behind-the-scenes roles in pushing for the ceasefire have increased their global standing.

What did the commentators say?

Benjamin Netanyahu “looks set to be the biggest loser” of the conflict, said The Guardian’s senior international correspondent, Peter Beaumont. Pressuring Trump to agree to his decades-long goal of neutralising Iran has “turned out to be a bust”. The “political consensus” between Israel and the US is “visibly crumbling”, and there’s “domestic fallout” for Netanyahu in the run-up to an election.

Trump has also emerged as a “strategic loser”, said the South China Morning Post. Washington failed to achieve regime change in Tehran, and Iran retained control of the Strait of Hormuz, the conflict’s “most strategic asset”. Meanwhile, the US has used up “sophisticated air-defence missiles” intercepting “far cheaper Iranian drones and projectiles”. Iran’s nuclear programme has survived, along with the “stockpile of enriched uranium” from which it could “potentially produce a viable weapon”, said The Times’ Middle East correspondent, Samer Al-Atrush. That “will not be given up easily”.

Tehran’s blocking of the Strait of Hormuz was a “high-risk” strategy that “paid off”, said DW. It “secured a ceasefire without conceding defeat”, which it “can present as proof that it withstood the US and all its military might”. The Iranian regime “survived, and bought time to try to shape” the phase of negotiations “on more favourable terms”.

In the longer term, it is actually Beijing that most “stands to gain”. America has “moved many military assets to the Middle East to protect shipping”, which “leaves fewer resources for the Indo‑Pacific, where Washington and Beijing compete for influence”. China has also had the chance to present itself “as a responsible global actor”, with its power brokers widely credited with pushing Iran to agree to the ceasefire.

China is “shaping up to be the big winner”, said Roger Boyes, The Times’ diplomatic editor. Unlike the US, it expected Iran to seize the strait and “amassed large oil reserves”, making itself “more resilient” to an energy crisis. “As a significant exporter” of other goods, it was still initially “hit hard” by the strait’s closure but then the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps ordered that China-bound vessels could pass through “toll-free”.

Pakistan’s credentials have been burnished, too. Its role in brokering the ceasefire was “unexpected” but the Islamabad Accord is the country’s “most consequential diplomatic moment in a decade”, said former UN peacekeeper Anil Raman on NDTV. Capitalising on its good relations with both the US and Iran, Islamabad will “press hard to consolidate” this “return to global relevance”.

What next?

J.D. Vance is due to lead a US delegation in negotiations with Tehran in Pakistan this weekend. The White House said the ceasefire between the US and Iran has created an “opening for a diplomatic solution and long-term peace”.

But the specifics of the terms to be discussed “remain murky”, said the BBC, “as is the current state of shipping traffic” through the Strait of Hormuz. Iranian forces have warned that ships would be “destroyed” if they tried to sail through without permission.

“In the end, cooler heads prevailed – at least for now,” said North America Correspondent Anthony Zurcher on BBC News. After Donald Trump’s threats to launch attacks on Iran that would wipe out the “whole civilisation” in the country, both countries agreed a two-week ceasefire.

The President has since claimed that this could lead to a “Golden Age of the Middle East!!!”, while Vice-President J. D. Vance called the ceasefire a “fragile truce”.

As peace talks are expected to take place in Pakistan, both sides have claimed the ascendancy, though uncertainty surrounding key elements of the agreement, such as the Strait of Hormuz and Iranian nuclear capabilities, have left many sceptical of continued peace.

What did the commentators say?

This ceasefire move is “check, not checkmate”, said Jonathan Sacerdoti in The Spectator. In fact, we shouldn’t even consider this a proper ceasefire; it is merely a “fragile” and “conditional” “pause” in the conflict, which is “already under strain”.

“Beneath the surface, fundamental disagreements persist” in a logistical sense. There has been “no clearly defined start time” and “key uncertainties” remain. The proposed 10-point plan issued by Iran contains “discrepancies” between its Farsi and English versions, “most notably” over the state of uranium enrichment, as well as ambiguity surrounding movement through the Strait of Hormuz. “If this is the Third World War, it is not over.”

“It’s TACO Tuesday!”, said David Charter in The Times, using the Trump Always Chickens Out acronym coined last year during Trump’s “on-off tariff threats”. Even if the ceasefire holds, the US has “left in place a cadre of battle-scarred leaders, no doubt harbouring thoughts of revenge”.

As “king of the ultimatum”, Trump has “played fast and loose in pursuit of his goals”, isolating himself from “shocked” allies, who are now “on their guard” more than ever before. The “reckless” flip-flopping could have “far-reaching consequences for America’s standing in the world”. On the world stage, countries may come to fear America’s “increasingly unpredictable behaviour” more than its “terrifying” military might.

“Both sides have good reason to hope the talks succeed, despite the obstacles,” said The Economist. For the US, the war is “deeply unpopular at home”, and Trump is “keen to have it finished” before his mid-May summit with Xi Jinping in China. “For Iran, renewed fighting would be catastrophic,” with America and Israel expected to continue striking key economic assets. The only outlier may be Israel, which maintained that the ceasefire does not include Lebanon.

“Diplomatic jujitsu” will be required to bridge the gap between the views of a final peace agreement held by Iran and the US, said David E. Sanger in The New York Times. It is hard to imagine that a settlement between the nations could be reached in “two years, much less two weeks”. Neither Trump’s “tactic of escalating his rhetoric to astronomical levels” or the “down-to-the-wire” negotiations have resolved the “fundamental issues that led to the war”. It took the Obama administration two-and-a-half years to negotiate the 2015 nuclear accord – which Trump tore up in 2018 – “and that was in peacetime”. Notwithstanding, “this negotiation will be held under the sword of a possible resumption of hostilities.”

The last-minute ceasefire is “in theory, a victory for real-estate geopolitics”, said Senior Foreign Correspondent Adrian Blomfield in The Telegraph. However, “as any real estate agent knows”, the devil is in the detail, and “closer inspection suggests Mr Trump’s triumph may not be quite as unalloyed as he claims”. Iran’s position is stronger than before the war, and has now “agreed to allow shipping through the chokepoint”, but “on its own terms and has not relinquished its claim to control it”. The country may have agreed to a ceasefire, but its negotiating position, “rhetorically at least, is now more hardline than before the war began”.

What next?

“What is certain is that the clock has been reset yet again,” said Sacerdoti in The Spectator. Providing the ceasefire holds, the “decisive moment” will come in two weeks’ time, when the “temporary pause” ends and the “question of whether it can be extended, or gives way to renewed fighting, will be answered”.

“The talks in Islamabad will be complicated, to say the least,” said The Economist. Significant work needs to be done, as the positions of both sides “could not be further apart”. “If both sides stick to their current positions, the talks could end up at the same impasse they reached just before the war in February.”

If talks were to fail, we would likely see an “uneasy return to the status quo”. Iran would face American sanctions and the continued “threat of further American strikes”, as well as remaining a “menace” in the Gulf region, and have “strong motivation to build a bomb”. “That would be a bad outcome for everyone: a weakened, hostile regime; an impoverished Iran; and a lingering threat to the global economy.”

High-street retailers are demanding more action to tackle the shoplifting epidemic in Britain, after more than 100 young people stormed a Marks & Spencer store in south London last week.

Shoplifters have become “more brazen, more organised and more aggressive”, said M&S retail director Thinus Keeve in The Telegraph. He called on London Mayor Sadiq Khan and Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood to do more to address the problem, including providing “greater transparency” about its “true scale and impact”.

Shoplifting in England and Wales cost retailers £400 million last year, according to the British Retail Consortium. Iceland’s executive chair, Richard Walker, has likened it to a “daily low-level war”, and has called for supermarket staff to be given extra powers to deal with the most violent offenders – like in Spain, where “all the security guards have truncheons and pepper spray” and “don’t mess about”.

What did the commentators say?

“This is not just any intervention, this is a Marks & Spencer intervention,” said The Times’ editorial board. It is an “alarm bell from one of Britain’s most trusted and storied brands; its concerns are a cri de coeur from middle England”.

M&S has “articulated what small retailers, and what the voiceless and powerless ordinary people of this country” have been seeing in recent years, said Patrick West in The Spectator. Last week’s “scenes of mayhem” in Clapham are “distressingly familiar to the inhabitants of the towns and cities”, who are witnessing the “seemingly inexorable collapse in civic society and the breakdown of our formerly high-trust society”.

“This weakness percolates back to policing,” said former Met Police detective Dominic Adler in UnHerd; if criminals “know they’re unlikely to ever face imprisonment, they see little incentive to stop offending”, and, equally, overworked police officers “see little reason to arrest, either”. This government’s updates to the 2020 Sentencing Act abolished custodial sentences for a variety of petty offences, including most shoplifting, and “punches the bruise of the ‘broken Britain’ narrative”.

This is not “a matter for the retailers to solve on their own, as some have suggested”, said The Telegraph’s editorial board. “If criminals think they can get away with theft or even violence,” it will only get worse. “The police need the resources and the support to crack down.”

What next?

The government has made some “welcome efforts” to help retailers in its recent Crime and Policing Bill, said The Times. Chief among these is abolishing the “misguided” £200 threshold that made “low-value shoplifting” a lesser offence, “a measure that was designed to ease the burden on police, but that gave encouragement to opportunistic raiders”. But “there is clearly a need for more to be done”.

There is a surprising generational divide when it comes to people’s views on shoplifting. While 74% of all Britons consider it a fairly or very serious crime, this drops to 35% among 18- to 24-year-olds, according to a recent YouGov poll. Significant numbers of younger people polled say they think shoplifting is justifiable, given current cost-of-living challenges.

Oil prices jumped last night after Donald Trump said the Iran conflict was “nearing completion”. Despite the US president saying the attacks on Tehran would end in “two to three weeks” and America doesn’t “need their oil”, the markets were not soothed.

“A word – or social media post” – from Trump “used to spark big moves in prices”, said the BBC. Investors would leap on “signs” that things “could escalate or come to an end”. But now traders seem “to be growing more sceptical about the value of his comments”.

What did the commentators say?

At the outset of the conflict, oil prices were “sensitive to Trump’s comments” but his view of the war “seems to change hour by hour”, said Tom Saunders and Eir Nolsoe in The Telegraph. “His stream of often contradictory statements” have made many wonder “whether they can trust the messaging” coming from the US administration, and some traders have drawn back from the market, “leaving prices increasingly untethered from reality”.

However many solutions to the current global oil crisis Donald Trump comes up with, the oil market isn’t listening anymore – “and the price of oil keeps rising”, said Matthew Lynn in The Spectator. There’s simply no point in Trump “trying to talk the price of oil back down again. It just won’t work.”

His “Persian Taco” tactic “may have run its course”, said Eduardo Porter in The Guardian. “Making extreme threats” and then walking them back may “provide Trump with the illusion of agency” but he “no longer has control of events in Iran”. The markets are “figuring out” that it will probably be Tehran, not the US, that gets to decide when the conflict ends.

What’s next?

UK Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper is today chairing a virtual summit with almost three dozen nations, to explore measures to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz. And Prime Minister Keir Starmer has said his government is determined to find a solution to the energy challenges, although “it will not be easy”.

And yet, “after nearly three weeks of this conflict”, the global financial system is “functioning without panic or alarming signs of stress”, said Zachary Karabell in the The Washington Post. “It’s important to distinguish between price movements” and stability. “The smooth functioning” of the financial system, “in the face” of crises like the oil shock, “gets little attention, probably because stability is not news”. But central banks, financial institutions and governments have “improved at monitoring” risks, and that should “at least provide some relief in a world full enough of fears”.

The U.S. may soon put proverbial “boots on the ground” in Iran. President Donald Trump is considering an operation to seize Kharg Island, a key oil hub for the Islamic regime, as he tries to bring about the end of the war on terms favorable to the United States.

Kharg could prove an attractive target as Trump seeks to “hobble Iran’s oil industry for leverage in negotiations,” said The Associated Press. But experts say a U.S. attack “would risk American lives” and possibly “still fail to end the war.” Kharg is not far from Iran’s mainland, so the regime “can potentially rain a lot of destruction on the island, if they’re willing to inflict damage on their own infrastructure,” said Michael Eisenstadt of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. American forces will find the island “hard to take,” said Danny Citrinowicz of Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies. “It will be hard to hold.”

Iran will probably respond to a Kharg invasion with “escalating strikes on energy infrastructure across the Middle East,” said Bloomberg. That would create additional turmoil for global oil markets, “where prices have already topped $100 a barrel” because of the war.

What did the commentators say?

Seizing Kharg “could be militarily feasible,” former Gen. Mark Hertling said at The Bulwark. But to what end? The U.S. can “seize terrain, conduct raids” and conduct other military operations with “unmatched precision.” But military campaigns require “alignment between ends, ways and means,” and right now “that alignment is not evident.” If the United States attempts to seize Kharg without a clear understanding of the end goal — regime change, the end of Tehran’s nuclear program or something else — “success will be temporary.” U.S. leaders owe troops a “strategy worthy of the risk we ask of them.”

“There are grounds” to believe that taking Kharg could force Iran’s regime to “capitulate before it implodes,” Marcus Solarz Hendriks said at The Spectator. The country’s economy “cannot limp on without crude oil exports.” A political system should not deflect such economic pain on its people, but the “Islamic Republic is capable.” The regime does not appear amenable to compromise or surrender. Tehran will back down only if “America projects unwavering resolve.” Trump’s path to victory, then, is “through escalation, even if the stakes are immense.”

What next?

Kharg is not the only potential target for U.S. troops. They could also try to reopen the Strait of Hormuz or seize Iran’s nuclear material, said The New York Times. The risks of any of those options “are enormous.” If troops do take the island, they could “be there for a while,” Trump said to the Financial Times.

The Pentagon is preparing for “weeks of ground operations” in Iran, said The Washington Post. That does not mean a final decision has been made. The Defense Department is working to “give the commander-in-chief maximum optionality,” said White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt.