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.

With oil and gas prices soaring and supply severely disrupted by conflict in the Middle East, households fear a corresponding spike in their energy bills and calls are coming for the government to act.

Keir Starmer today outlined government measures to “bear down on costs”. The prime minister pointed to Ofgem’s new energy price cap, which amounts to a 7% decrease in energy bills, as well as increases to minimum wages. Starmer also pointed to the £1 billion-a-year Crisis and Resilience Fund that will help vulnerable households with heating oil prices. But the best way to bring down costs for families is to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, Starmer stressed. That means “pushing for de-escalation in the Middle East”.

The price cap resets at the end of June – and according to forecasts, the next is set to increase by 18%. The Conservatives have called on the government to remove VAT from household energy bills for the next three years, while the Green Party said ministers should increase the tax on energy firms’ profits. Reform UK’s Robert Jenrick accused Rachel Reeves of “acting like a bystander” and not the chancellor.

What did the commentators say?

“The prime minister seems to be suffering from a dangerous degree of complacency in the face of the mounting energy crisis,” said The Independent in an editorial. While other countries’ governments implement measures to conserve energy and support families, such as Australia making some public transport free and Ireland cutting fuel duty, Starmer “has merely urged the British people to ‘act as normal’”. The government is “silent” on any plans it might have to “ameliorate prospectively crippling gas and electricity bills later in the year”.

The soaring price of fuel oil and petrol is playing out against “stagnating living standards” and a “succession of tax rises on work and employment”, more of which kick in this month.

Charities say this month’s increases to council tax, water, broadband and mobile phone tariffs are also “threatening to stretch many households to breaking point”, said the Press Association.

Businesses aren’t protected by the price cap, either. They’re set for “painful increases in their gas and electricity tariffs” as the situation in the Middle East “sends wholesale prices soaring”. Electricity costs have already increased by between 10% and 30% since the conflict began, while gas prices have soared by between 25% and 80%, according to energy analyst Cornwall Insight.

This April 1st is “no joke” for millions of families and small businesses, said the Liberal Democrats in a statement. We need an “urgent cost-of-living plan”.

But we can’t afford more state aid in the form of energy bill subsidies, said The Times. Reeves talks of “targeted” help, but with millions of pensions and welfare claimants, “that could be a very big target”.

The “ruinous spending” of lockdown “crippled this country’s finances”, which Liz Truss ignored when she proposed a universal cap to blunt the impact of the Ukraine war. Gilts “went into freefall” and Truss “was toast”. Since then, the bond market has “consigned Britain to the naughty step”.

Our national debt is at a “crippling 96%” of GDP, the servicing of which will cost £112 billion this year. Inflation and interest rates are set to keep rising, and recession is a “distinct possibility” if the war continues. The government “dare not increase the debt with another universal handout”. The bond markets “will not wear it”.

What next?

Reeves told BBC Breakfast that any support for energy bills would be based on household income, targeted at those who need it most, unlike the universal support rolled out in 2022. “I want to learn the lessons of the past because when Russia invaded Ukraine, the richest, the best-off third of households got more than a third of the support,” the chancellor said. “That makes no sense at all.”

The chancellor said it was “too early” to say who would get help, as demand for energy is at its lowest in the summer. But she “hinted help might not come” until autumn, said the broadcaster.

The Bank of England published its financial stability report today, its first since the US-Israeli war broke out. Domestically, the “economic outlook has deteriorated”, but the UK banking system “has the capacity to support households and businesses”, it said, “even if economic and financial conditions were to be substantially worse than expected”.

As AI adoption across personal and professional vectors increases so do the risks the industry takes on in the name of commercial growth and financial dominance. Mere weeks into the Iran war, the conflict has laid bare many of the fault lines upon which the AI industry has built its foundations. The result is a potentially perfect storm of intersecting factors that could pop the artificial intelligence industry bubble.

What did the commentators say?

The sprawling artificial intelligence industry has “propped up global trade and investment” and “pushed stock markets from the U.S. to Asia to record highs” for the past three years, said the Financial Times. But as one of the most “power-hungry inventions ever,” with a “slick chip production line that can cross more than 70 borders before reaching the final consumer,” the “fragilities in the AI supply chain” are now at particular risk from the ongoing U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. “Hidden behind the fury” of the war have been new insights into AI and its mass adoption that will be “felt by all of humanity,” said Bhaskar Chakravorti, the dean of global business at Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, at Foreign Policy.

Admitting he’s been an “AI enthusiast since 1991,” Chakravoriti said that while research suggests AI “can be transformational in a breadth of areas,” he is now “placing a high probability on an AI doomsday.” Multiple distinct “horsemen” of possible disaster range from an “epistemic crisis” to “wars, hot and cold.” Industry observers have “fretted publicly about an AI bubble” for the “better part of the past year,” said The Atlantic. But where fears of an AI crash leading to a “chain reaction across the financial system” once “felt hypothetical,” they now seem “plausible and, to some, almost inevitable.”

The Iran war has particularly unveiled a “paradox” for AI, said Bloomberg. The war could “destabilize” significant monetary investment in AI from Gulf State allies, while “surging energy costs threaten to make data centers far more expensive to run.” The resulting “aftershocks of the conflict” seem “less likely to kill the AI boom entirely” than to “cleave the market in two,” leaving juggernauts like Microsoft, Alphabet and Amazon the “most exposed to the shifting financial landscape.” High-profile startups like OpenAI and Anthropic, conversely, are poised to be “more insulated” from the fallout.

If the Iran war is what truly “brought conflict to Silicon Valley,” said Fox News, then the industry “was not ready” for what this conflict would expose. “Consider the threat receiving almost no attention,” which also carries perhaps the “greatest economic consequence for Americans at home”: helium production, a third of which takes place in Qatar. “No helium. No chips. No AI.” Without these elements, the “military edge carrying this war degrades.” The Middle East conflict “is proving, in real time” that the large-scale data centers used to power AI platforms can themselves be “wartime targets.”

What next?

The present day AI industry is “not made for the turbulence its leaders have helped usher in,” said The Atlantic. Even if AI manufacturers are “merely forced to slow down,” the “viability” of the enormous amounts of money leveraged to support the industry will “likely be called into question” in ways that could be “devastating for many.”

Although the war, as it currently stands, won’t see hyperscalers “walking away” from their existing infrastructure in the Middle East, it may “impact future investment in the case of drawn-out hostilities,” said CNBC. The war could “reduce the region’s appeal” as an AI data center hub, said the Financial Times, while national sovereign wealth funds might move to “redirect planned AI investments to local security needs.”

Iran’s success at throttling fuel shipments through the Persian Gulf’s Strait of Hormuz has forced President Donald Trump to reframe his war in petrochemical terms. Bolstered by its ability to regulate oil shipping lanes, Iran has moved to weaponize its growing Gulf dominance. Last week, the Islamic Republic began to facilitate the passage of approved tankers through the bottlenecked waterway, a process that includes a reported $2 million transit fee to pass what is increasingly referred to as the Tehran tollbooth.

What did the commentators say?

Charging selective fees on ships hoping to move through the Strait of Hormuz is “another sign” of Tehran’s dominance over the world’s “most important maritime energy channel,” said Bloomberg. Although the current payment system is happening on a “case-by-case basis,” Iran has “floated the idea of formalizing the charges as part of a broader postwar settlement.”

Tehran is experimenting with a “new vetting and registration system” as part of its pivot toward a “selective blockade of the strategic waterway,” said Al Jazeera. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi’s pledge earlier this month that the strait is “open, but closed to our enemies,” signals a “de-escalation from earlier remarks” by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps threatening violent reprisals. Multiple nations, including India, Pakistan, Iraq, Malaysia and China, are “understood to be discussing vessel transit plans directly with Tehran,” said Lloyd’s List. Iran has created a “de facto ‘safe’ shipping corridor through its territorial waters” in the Strait of Hormuz, providing passage for approved ships in exchange for, “in at least one case, a reported $2 million payment.”

Collecting selective tolls is a sign of Iran’s new “sovereign regime” in the straits, said Iranian MP Alaeddin Boroujerdi in an interview with state media, per The Cradle. Charging $2 million “transit fees” from certain vessels “reflects Iran’s strength.” But this emerging toll system is a “shakedown” for which “tankers are happy to pay,” said the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. The dynamic is “only exacerbated” by the Trump regime’s decision to enact “effectively condition-free, monthlong authorization for the sale of sanctioned Iranian oil.”

Iran’s chokehold on the Gulf has forced the White House to explore previously unimaginable fuel futures, including what a “potential spike” of up to $200 per barrel in oil prices would “mean for the economy,” Bloomberg said. Domestically, the “most visible impact” to date of the growing fuel crisis is an estimated 30% increase in retail gasoline cost, which has wiped away declines that Trump had “touted as a key economic achievement.”

Even if crude shipping was at 50% of prewar rates in the Strait, rather than the near-zero it is at now, it would produce “strong global economic headwinds” that would hit the U.S. “in the form of high energy prices and a general ‘supply shock,’” said military historian Bret Devereaux on his website. “Historically at least,” these types of economic jolts have “not been politically survivable for the party in power.”

What next?

The White House has been “effective, so far, at jawboning” crude prices below the $120 to $150 per-barrel levels some analysts have predicted, said Fortune. This works “for now” because “physical shortage hasn’t actually reached most of the world yet,” resulting in a spread between actual barrel prices in the Gulf and, for instance, “Texas futures, which have hovered below $100.”

Opening the Strait of Hormuz has become a “clear objective for ending” the war, said NPR. Multiple oil executives who had “privately begun” to push for a permanent U.S. presence in the Strait of Hormuz that would “remove Iran’s ability to attack oil tankers in the strait” were “caught off-guard” by Trump’s sudden push for a negotiated ceasefire last week, said Politico. However much one might argue that “‘the world’ will not allow the Tehran tollbooth to persist,” and the U.S. military will ultimately intervene successfully, “current events in Iran have not followed the predicted course,” said Lloyd’s List. “So don’t be too sure.”

Pope Leo XIV has said God ignores the prayers of those who wage war and have “hands full of blood”. In what appears to be a clear rebuke of Donald Trump’s administration, the US-born pontiff, celebrating Palm Sunday mass in St Peter’s Square, called for an immediate ceasefire to the “atrocious” conflict between Israel, the US and Iran, and said Jesus cannot be used to justify war.

Leo is “known for choosing his words carefully”; he “did not specifically name any world leaders” but he has “been ramping up criticism of the Iran war in recent weeks”, said Joshua McElwee in The Independent.

What did the commentators say?

“The papacy has always been political,” said Pete Reynolds in The Wall Street Journal. And now “some of the biggest challenges to its vision of society are coming from the US”. As the first American leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics, Leo “brings a deeper understanding” of US society and politics than any previous pope, so “his critiques” can’t be as easily dismissed by US politicians. But he will also be well aware that “millions of American Catholics voted for Trump”.

In marked contrast to other senior Vatican figures – such as secretary of state Cardinal Pietro Parolin, who said American strikes on Iran risked setting “the whole world ablaze” – the pope’s initial response to the war had been “a tempered call for peace”, said Anthony Faiola and Michelle Boorstein in The Washington Post. Until now, Leo was delicately “navigating a minefield” with the Trump administration. Pitched by the Vatican “as a unifier and bridge builder”, he was striving to remain “above the fray”, while his allies in the Holy See, and cardinals and bishops in the US, “more directly challenge the administration”.

The problem is, said George W. Bush’s former speechwriter, William McGurn, in The Wall Street Journal, that “the moral witness of the papacy” has been diminished by successive popes’ “blinkered position on war”. “The kind of rightly ordered world” Leo “desires can’t be built by armies alone – but can almost never be built without armies and without the threat of force.” Traditional Catholic teachings, “grounded in the reality of man’s fallen human nature”, have been traded for “functional pacificism” that “risks being dismissed even by sympathisers”.

What next?

The Vatican potentially has great sway over US policy: Catholics, including Vice President J.D. Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, hold senior positions in the US administration, and are well represented on the Supreme Court and among leading House Republicans.

But a “major rift” has opened up in the Christian coalition that elected Trump, said John Grosso in the National Catholic Reporter. “Traditionalist Catholics and evangelicals” are split over the Iran war and, more broadly, “over the role Israel plays in US foreign policy”. Leo’s most recent comments could be “a moment of reckoning for Catholics caught up in Maga”, Austen Ivereigh, a biographer of Pope Francis, told the paper. How do they “reconcile obedience to church authority with support for Trump”?

This week saw what could prove to be an historic reckoning for Big Tech when a Californian court ruled that Meta and Google’s YouTube intentionally built addictive social media platforms. This came just a day after a jury in New Mexico found Meta liable for the way its platforms endanger children.

Critics are calling this “Big Tech’s Big Tobacco moment”, a reference to how cigarette makers in the 1990s had to overhaul their businesses after courts ruled that their products were addictive and harmful.

Meta and Google have invested heavily in safety tools for younger users and both companies dispute claims that their platforms are to blame for children’s mental health issues. But the verdicts this week are a “sombre moment for Silicon Valley and the implications are global”, said the BBC’s technology editor Zoe Kleinman.

What did the commentators say?

The cases this week are “the first of about 22 ‘bellwether’ trials”, said Stephen Armstrong in The Independent, brought by more than 350 families across 250 US school districts and are “expected to trigger thousands more”. It is like the “anti-tobacco legal actions on fast-forward”.

Judgments of responsibility “in cases like the one brought against Meta and YouTube are necessarily complex”, said academic and author Austin Sarat in The Guardian. And critics of the judgment in this case “will no doubt howl about greedy plaintiffs looking to make a haul from deep-pocketed defendants”. But it does seem “clear that companies knew of the addictive qualities of their sites and the potential damage to young people”.

For years, “technology giants successfully fought off efforts by regulators, lawmakers and others to put limits on their social media businesses”, said Andrew Ross Sorkin in The New York Times. The tide appears to be turning but so far “investors don’t seem to be fazed”, with Big Tech share prices only dipping slightly. The potential penalties too – $6 million for Meta and YouTube in California, and $375 million for Meta in New Mexico – “are a fraction of their immense profits”.

It’s for that reason that social media companies might not fret too much too soon. “The Big Tech firms are losing nearly every time,” Tom Smith, partner at legal firm Geradin, told The Independent. “But they have effectively unlimited legal budgets, and their calculation may be that as long as you can make sure these cases take a decade, then the extra profits will outweigh the damages.”

What next?

Meta and YouTube plan to appeal, but if unsuccessful “they could be forced to remove the features that make their platforms addictive, which would upend their business models and fundamentally alter the experience of users”, said Fred Harter in The Observer.

Regardless of whether Meta or Google appeal the decision, “this is going to redefine the landscape,” said the BBC’s Kleinman. “It could even be the beginning of the end of the social media era as we know it.”

If the price of oil continues to rise, it could trigger a “steep and stark” global recession, said Larry Fink, CEO of US financial giant BlackRock. There will be “profound implications” for the world economy if Iran “remains a threat” and oil prices hit $150 a barrel.

The BlackRock boss has a “unique insight into the health of the global economy”, said the BBC’s business editor Simon Jack, because of his investment management company’s colossal “size and spread”, controlling assets worth £11 billion across the world.

What did the commentators say?

“The Iran war is metastasising into a global economic calamity,” said the Financial Times’ editorial board. Until now, financial markets have been “lulled by the belief that the conflict would not last long” but, as hostilities enter a fourth week, the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, “lasting damage” has been inflicted on critical energy infrastructure in the region, and “the worst-case scenarios for investors and policymakers are coming into view”.

If this crisis continues, “no country will be immune to the effects”, said Fatih Birol, head of the International Energy Agency on Monday. The global economy faces a “major, major threat” as the Iran war has a worse impact on energy prices than the twin oil shocks of the 1970s and the Russia-Ukraine war.

“Prepare for the price of oil to reach $200 a barrel,” said Ebrahim Zolfaqari, spokesman for Iranian militias last week. And what seemed then “like bravado” is now “closer to becoming reality”, said Jesus Servulo Gonzales in El Pais. Were prices to rise above $150, let alone near $200, there would be “an inflationary crisis”: “the world would become poorer, and economic activity would grind to a halt until the situation recovered”.

The current oil-price “ructions” would have “to get much worse” to trigger a global recession but “less happily, they will almost certainly further stoke popular anger over the cost of living”, said The Economist. The price of Brent Crude is currently around $100 a barrel (it was $60 at the start of the year); two months at $140 “would push parts of the global economy” into a slump. Consumer confidence is already “close to an all-time low in America and scarcely higher elsewhere”, given many countries “seemed primed” for an economic downturn “even before the Middle Eastern chaos began”.

In the US, “many economists believe” the country “will scrape through this year without a recession”, said John Cassidy in The New Yorker. “But this is simply guesswork.” Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell has said the surge in oil prices is “an energy shock” that has created so much uncertainty, “we just don’t know” what will happen.

What next?

We urgently need to get the Strait of Hormuz opened, oil market expert Rory Johnston told The New Statesman. It’s “too important” to the global economy to remain closed. The most likely path “is that the Trump administration and Israel pull back on their attacks in Iran, and Iran says, OK, we’ll re-allow” tankers down the waterway. But even if the strait “reopened to 100% of its prior flow” today, it would take two to three months “to renormalise the global system”.

Under the “doomsday scenario”, in which the strait stays closed indefinitely, “we’re not talking recession; we are talking depression”.

President Donald Trump has worked to steer U.S. energy policy away from wind and solar and back to fossil fuels. But the economic aftershocks from the war against Iran are revealing the limits of his oil-driven energy agenda.

Trump’s efforts at “blocking clean energy” have left Americans “more vulnerable to supply shocks caused by the war,” said The Associated Press. The president has gone “all in on fossil fuels” in his second term, expanding tax breaks for drilling and fast-tracking federal permits while repealing a government finding that climate change “endangers public health and the environment.” He even ended the tax break that subsidized electric vehicle sales. Those decisions are leaving consumers in a lurch as gasoline and oil prices rise. Fossil fuels “have their own supply risks, and the administration has no answers,” said Tyson Slocum, the energy director at consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, to the outlet.

One result of the war will be the “acceleration of the global shift to low-carbon energy,” said the Financial Times. The Middle East crisis is an “opportunity to transition to renewable energy more quickly and at a large scale,” South Korean President Lee Jae-myung said at a cabinet meeting. Environmental advocates have made such arguments “for years,” said the Financial Times, but this time “they have an unusually strong chance of breaking through.”

What did the commentators say?

Americans are looking for ways to save money by “asking for quotes on home solar systems and looking up electric vehicles online,” Bill McKibben said at The New Yorker. The “good news” is that clean energy technologies like solar and wind can be purchased “more cheaply than we can buy oil.” And once in place, Americans who use those technologies will no longer have to depend on the flow of oil through the “indefensible, roughly twenty-one-mile-wide ditch” that is the Strait of Hormuz. They can rely instead on the sun, an “energy source that will last another five billion years.”

The Iraq war cost about $2 trillion. That is about the same amount of money it would take to build enough clean energy capacity in the U.S. to “make fossil fuels and their price swings irrelevant,” Paul Greenberg said at The New Republic. That enormous sum of money would pay for a “truly vast array of turbines and panels” across the country. And it would be more productive than waging war, “which destroys capacity of all kinds.” The question is what taxpayers “truly want our tax dollars to do.”

What next?

Oil executives have warned the White House that the war-driven energy crisis is “likely to get worse,” said The Wall Street Journal. The crisis is “going to cause economic destruction,” said Steven Pruett, the chief executive of Texas-based Elevation Resources, to the Journal.

Trump continues to fight the shift to clean energy sources. His administration on Monday agreed to pay $1 billion to a French company to “abandon its plans to build wind farms off the East Coast,” said The New York Times. In return, TotalEnergies will invest the money in U.S.-based oil and gas projects.

The targeting of Iranian missiles at the Diego Garcia UK-US military base on Friday has sent alarm bells ringing in Europe. Diego Garcia is over 2,500 miles (4,000km) from Iran and, if a missile from Tehran can reach there, it could also reach Paris, Berlin or even London.

“Previously, we thought Iran’s missiles had a range of 2,000km (1,245 miles),” General Sir Richard Barrons, former commander of Joint Forces Command, told BBC Radio 4 on Saturday.

One of the missiles fell well short of its target and the other was shot down, said Defence Secretary John Healey. But “the launch, however unsuccessful” has “fuelled fears” about the range of Iran’s ballistic missile programme, said the BBC’s defence correspondent Jonathan Beale.

What did the commentators say?

Israel has claimed Iran is developing weapons capable of travelling 2,500 miles (4,000km). “We have been saying it,” the Israel Defence Forces posted on social media. “The Iranian terrorist regime poses a global threat. Now, with missiles that can reach London, Paris or Berlin.”

This could “put continental Europe and possibly even Britain under threat”, defence analysts told The Telegraph’s Paul Nuki. Every European capital “now lies within credible Iranian reach”, Ran Kochav, former commander of the Israeli air and missile force told the paper.

Yes, it’s “conceivable” that an Iranian rocket “could reach London”, Sidharth Kaushal, of the Royal United Services Institute think tank, told the BBC’s Beale. But “so what?” We’re talking about “a small number” of conventional missiles over “well-defended airspace”, and they are “quite inaccurate at very long ranges”. The risk to London is “pretty low”, research analyst Decker Eveleth of the CNA Corporation told Beale. A missile could travel the distance but it wouldn’t be “particularly aim-able”. It would also be spotted quickly. Using a network of satellites and powerful radars, the US Space Force can track the trajectory of “any missile fired across the globe”.

“Various sources” agreed that it was unlikely that missiles launched from Iran would be able to hit London, said Jamie Grierson in The Guardian. Britain is protected by Nato’s ballistic missile defence, a shield “designed to detect, track and intercept” weapons in flight, bolstered by two Aegis Ashore defence sites in Poland and Romania.

The UK government is “not aware of any assessment at all” that Iran is “even trying to target Europe, let alone that they could if they tried”, said Communities Secretary Steve Reed on the BBC’s “Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg”. And “even if they did, we have the necessary military capability” to defend ourselves. “The UK is not going to be dragged into this war.”

What next?

Britain has “very little in the way of” independent “ballistic missile defences”, said the BBC’s Beale: “a glaring gap” acknowledged by the government’s recent Strategic Defence Review. But it’s “unlikely” that Iran has “large numbers of intermediate or even long-range ballistic missiles”. The fact that it only fired two towards Diego Garcia “suggests its long-range missile capability is limited”. For now, “the threat seems remote”.

Even if it were able, Iran is unlikely to single out the UK for a missile attack, according to a recent paper from the European Centre for Counterterrorism and Intelligence Studies. More likely would be “precision strikes on Nato logistics hubs, and economic disruption” through attacks on Mediterranean ports or liquefied natural gas terminals in Italy, Greece and Romania.

“Nato does have what it takes to defend alliance territory, to defend our one billion inhabitants,” said Colonel Martin O’Donnell, spokesperson for Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe. Europeans “should rest easy at night”.

The Iran war is unlike any other conflict of the modern era, marked by shifting justifications, mysterious end goals and growing friction between the two primary aggressors, the U.S. and Israel. A new generation of large-scale artificial intelligence tools is further reshaping the way both countries approach and execute their military operations.

What did the commentators say?

The Pentagon is “leveraging a variety of advanced AI tools” in the war on Iran to help “sift through vast amounts of data in seconds,” said Admiral Brad Cooper, the chief of U.S. Central Command, in a video on social media. The tools allow military leadership to “cut through the noise” and make “smarter decisions faster than the enemy can react.”

Pentagon AI systems can offer targeting recommendations “much quicker in some ways than the speed of thought,” said Newcastle University lecturer Craig Jones to The Guardian. The “scale” and “speed” of AI military systems means the Pentagon can conduct “assassination-style strikes” while simultaneously “decapitating the regime’s ability to respond with all the aerial ballistic missiles” in a process that would have taken “days or weeks in historic wars.” Battlefield AI programs from the MAGA-aligned software company Palantir can “identify and prioritize targets, recommend weaponry” and account for “stockpiles and previous performance against similar targets,” said The Guardian. Palantir even has access to “automated reasoning to evaluate legal grounds for a strike.”

At the heart of the Pentagon’s shift to AI-animated warfare is Palantir’s Maven Smart System and its integrated use of Claude, the AI platform from software company — and occasional administration foil — Anthropic. While Claude had been used for “countering terror plots” and in the kidnapping of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, the past several weeks mark the “first time it has been used in major war operations,” The Washington Post said. Over the past year, the government has allowed the Maven/Claude system to “mature into a tool that is in daily use across most parts of the military.” Ours is now officially an “age of AI warfare,” said Paul Scharre, the executive vice president at the Center for a New American Security, to CNN. Given the sheer volume and volatility of battlefield data needing to be assessed, “AI is incredibly valuable.”

State-level AI warfare isn’t “confined to physical territory” either, said The New Arab. Iran has deployed “AI-generated disinformation,” as well as “manipulated images and videos designed to create false impressions of events on the ground.” American and Israeli forces have meanwhile launched AI systems of their own to “detect and counter manipulation attempts in real time,” creating a “multi-dimensional battlefield” wherein information control is as “strategically important as control of airspace.”

What next?

We are currently in the “early stages” of what AI is “going to do to transform warfare over the next several decades,” said Scharre, particularly in terms of the “cognitive speed and scale” at which armies operate, which could “accelerate” the “tempo of operations” on the battlefield. But as AI use expands across the military, so has a commensurate effort to “focus on the protections that should govern its use,” said NBC News. Although none of the lawmakers contacted by the outlet said that AI should be “completely removed from military use,” many expressed a sense that “more oversight is needed.”

This is the “next era” of warfare, said Queen Mary University professor David Leslie to The Guardian. But overreliance on AI in the military might ultimately lead to “cognitive off-loading,” in which the human tasked with overseeing a particular operation feels “detached from its consequences” since the responsibility to “think it through” was made by a computer.

As an “inflection point” in demonstrating how “modern technology could work with existing military systems,” said The New York Times, the AI-fueled war in Iran is likely to “speed the adoption of more technologies” with “legacy and modern systems to be melded together, along with more powerful AI” in the coming decade.

Keir Starmer has condemned last night’s “horrific antisemitic attack” on four ambulances run by Jewish volunteers in north London. As police pursue three suspects for criminal damage and hate crime, the prime minster said Britons must “all stand together at a moment like this”.

This attack comes less than a week after two men were charged with spying on London’s Jewish community for Iran, and less than six months after the Yom Kippur attack on Manchester's Heaton Park synagogue – renewing fears that antisemitism in British society is on the rise.

What did the commentators say?

“The Jews of Britain are facing conditions not seen in my lifetime,” said Danny Cohen in The Telegraph. “There is a whiff of the 1930s in the air.” The antisemitism “is toxic and it is heart-breaking”. It has “come striding out of the shadows”, and “entered the mainstream” on a wave of social media and “age-old racist hate”. We’re facing constant harassment, “violent attacks on property” and “cold-blooded attempts to kill”. People in positions of power “must speak up consistently and unapologetically in support of Britain’s Jews”.

“Anti-Jewish hatred is now clear, present and mortally dangerous,” said Jonathan Freedland in The Guardian. Incidents of antisemitism are “through the roof”. Of course, “every minority faces discrimination”, but “next to no other diaspora community goes through this”. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine does not mean Russian Orthodox churches require “round-the-clock protection”; people may “loathe” Donald Trump’s aggression in the Middle East, but “US-branded stores on UK high streets are not smashed and daubed”. Yet “Israel and Jews are the exception”.

At British universities, “campus antisemitism has been a problem for decades”, said Stephen Pollard in The Spectator, but now it is a “critical problem that is out of control”. The “sheer scale of the hate” is borne out by last week’s Union of Jewish Students report that one in five students wouldn’t share a house with a Jew, and that 47% see the 7 October attacks as “justified”. This is “yet more evidence of the normalisation of Jew hate” and a “signal” that “we are heading to a dark place”.

What next?

Counter-terror police are investigating a claim from an Iran-aligned group that it was responsible for the ambulance attacks. “This will raise concerns that Tehran is mounting a concerted campaign of attacks across Europe,” said The Telegraph.

Simply taking “measures to ensure the safety of Jewish people” is not enough, said Prospect. They must be “supplemented by a politics that promotes broad alliances against racism, of which antisemitism is one example, and by the practice of anti-racist solidarity”. This won’t be easy while the Iran War continues and while the politics of Israel/Palestine continues to feed “distance and suspicion”.

As the Iran war enters its third week, there is a divergence between how the United States and Israel conduct its operations against Tehran and what each nation hopes to accomplish. While President Donald Trump and his administration struggle to articulate an overarching goal for the war, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pushed ahead with expanding the front lines of his army’s assault not only on Iran but across Lebanon and Syria as well. With little end to the fighting in sight, is this still a single war of unified purpose, two separate conflicts being fought concurrently or a bit of both?

What did the commentators say?

The war on Iran may have been launched by Israel and the U.S. “at the same time,” said CNN, but it’s “becoming clear” the two nations have “some differences in how they see the war proceeding.” The pair enjoys a “number of overlapping objectives,” said former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro to the outlet. But there remains “some divergence” between Israel and the U.S., which is only likely to increase “as time passes.”

The longer the conflict lasts, the more likely their “endgames and risk tolerance” may differ, said Axios. Trump, in particular, currently stands “more aligned” with the Israeli government’s “maximalist objectives” than many among his own staff. Israeli and American armed and intelligence services are “moving in concert,” although “their targets vary,” with the U.S. focused “almost exclusively” on military targets, while Israeli assassinations and other operations are “intended to lay the groundwork for regime change.”

Netanyahu may appear to be “flying high” after finding an American president “willing to go all the way” with his long-telegraphed war on Iran, but Israeli analysts are “increasingly aware of where the two countries’ strategies” may bifurcate, said The Economist. Netanyahu has been “blunt” about his nation’s wish for regime change in Tehran, even as Israeli leadership has come to feel that Trump’s goals rest “primarily on controlling the flow of oil from Iran.” Israel is “willing to use the war to inflict deeper damage” on Iranian state infrastructure, while Washington “shows little sign of a clear political endgame,” said Bloomberg. Netanyahu is thus “far more likely to favor a drawn-out campaign” than Trump, given the “growing economic and political pressure” the president faces domestically.

At the onset of this war, both Israel and the U.S. “stated their desire to lay the groundwork for regime change,” The New York Times said. But as the war goes on, Trump has acknowledged that a popular uprising “didn’t seem imminent.” Israel would “prefer” to extend their war “for as long as possible, potentially for weeks, to weaken the Iranians,” said Israeli policy analyst Ahron Bregman to Turkey’s Anadolu Agency. Trump, meanwhile, will “seek a way to end this war, especially as oil prices continue to rise.” His goals “did not include regime change,” said CIA Director John Ratcliffe at a House Intelligence Committee meeting.

It is within this context that Israel’s “related but separate agenda” of concurrent attacks on Hezbollah is taking place, said Shapiro to CNN. Netanyahu is waging an “ulterior campaign to try to do significantly more damage to Hezbollah” in the hopes of spurring a “diplomatic process” with, or within, the Lebanese government. Trump generally supports dismantling Hezbollah infrastructure, yet Israel’s operations in Lebanon are “not of the same level of priority for U.S. interests.”

What next?

For the time being, the Trump administration seems publicly comfortable with the U.S. and Israel’s parallel-and-diverging strategies in Iran. The Trump regime “holds the cards” and has “clear” objectives, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Thursday in a press conference. Israel is “pursuing objectives as well.”

Q: Why are we helping Israel prosecute this war if they're going to pursue their own objectives?HEGSETH: We hold the cards. We have objectives. Those objectives are clear. We have allies pursuing objectives as well.

— @atrupar.com (@atrupar.com.bsky.social) 2026-03-20T19:47:25.485Z

Netanyahu, for now, “appears to be operating on the assumption that Trump shares his goals,” said William Usher, a former CIA Middle East analyst, to Bloomberg. That may be true “regarding the total elimination of [Iran’s] nuclear program, but perhaps not much beyond that.”

As people up and down the country don red noses for Comic Relief, charities are warning that the culture of giving in the UK is starting to wane.

A new report from the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) found that just 55% of the UK population gave to charity last year, down from 69% a decade ago. So there are now around six million fewer donors supporting charities. Within the figures, there are starker declines in those supporting overseas aid and also among those most affected by the cost-of-living crisis.

The report comes as “consumer spending fell for the first time in five years, while inflation remained stubbornly above the Bank of England’s target”, said The Telegraph. Taken together, these shifts have led CAF to describe Britain’s culture of giving as “increasingly fragile”.

What did the commentators say?

Unquestionably the public “feel less financially secure than they did 10 years ago”, said CAF’s James Moore. But it is also true that “focusing solely on the finances is an overly simple interpretation of the issue”.

After affordability, the second most common reason for not giving is trust. Almost 20% of non-donors say they do not trust charities to use their money wisely and a further 9% say they have not found a cause that sufficiently interests them.

CAF “is right to highlight mounting scepticism and distrust as problems”, said The Guardian in an editorial. The finding that people who don’t trust charities are also less likely to be positive about their neighbourhoods “suggests an overlap with broader issues of low social engagement and morale”.

While stronger oversight would help tackle “the sector’s governance issues” that have contributed to the distrust, “there is no simple administrative fix for charities’ financial woes”. It is possible that “an economic upturn will deliver a boost”, but the sector “also needs to find new ways to appeal to people”.

Young people could show the way as charity shops have thrived, inspired by second-hand fashion websites such as Vinted and Depop. Save the Children’s retail sales rose 3% last year, helped by a surge in December when the charity took 11% more than the same month a year before.

“Platforms like eBay, Vinted and Depop have helped grow interest in second-hand shopping, which is positive for the whole reuse sector,” said Allison Swaine-Hughes, chief commercial officer at British Heart Foundation.

The public’s reluctance to donate to overseas aid causes – in 2016, about 19% of donors supported disaster relief or overseas aid charities; now that figure is 11% – is reflected in the government’s approach to overseas aid itself. Proportionately, the UK’s cuts to core international development spending are now deeper than those in the US, said Ian Mitchell and Sam Hughes on the Center for Global Development.

“The conclusion is uncomfortable: Britain is retreating further and cutting deeper than America,” said Adrian Lovett on Devex. “That matters for our standing in the world.” For two decades, the UK “prided itself on punching above its weight in global health, girls’ education, and humanitarian response”, but instead, today, “we look increasingly weak and isolated”.

What next?

Reviving a broad culture of generosity matters far beyond the future of charities, Mark Greer, chief executive of CAF, told The Guardian. “We need to revive that culture of giving and ensure it remains widespread” as it “matters for the fabric of British society”. “Civil society thriving makes the country a better place to live, to work, and to enjoy our culture.”

President Donald Trump wants to delay his upcoming summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, citing the demands of the Iran war. It’s a sign that the Middle East conflict could upend delicate relations with the United States’ most powerful rival.

The Iran war is “threatening a fragile détente” between the two superpowers, said The New York Times. Trump demanded China send ships to the region to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz, but Beijing has “reacted coolly.” Meeting Trump’s request would be “tantamount to entering the war,” said Ding Long of Shanghai International Studies University’s Middle East Studies Institute. But China’s reluctance to come to America’s aid “may jeopardize a trade truce” with the U.S., said the Times.

Trump’s call to delay the summit “casts a shadow” over what had been a stable relationship following last year’s trade war, said Reuters. The Iran war “makes U.S.-China interactions this year more difficult,” said Fudan University’s Zhao Minghao. Both sides are prioritizing “keeping relations on an even keel,” however, and China has signaled that it wants to reschedule the summit soon. Face-to-face diplomacy “plays an irreplaceable role in providing strategic guidance ​to China-U.S. relations,” said a Chinese government spokesperson.

What did the commentators say?

Beijing is “not going to bail Trump out” in Iran, Edward Luce said at Financial Times. His request that China send ships to the Strait of Hormuz is a “black swan moment,” when the world’s leading superpower is “inviting its main challenger to help extract it from the world’s most combustible region.” China gets half its imported oil through the strait, but helping the U.S. is a nonstarter. “Why interrupt your enemy while he is making a mistake?”

The Iran war “really is about China,” Doug Stokes said at The Spectator. Teheran and Beijing have developed a partnership in recent years, with the bulk of Iranian oil exports flowing to Chinese refineries “operating beyond the reach of American sanctions enforcement.” China also supplied Iran with weapons “specifically designed to kill American sailors and constrain American freedom of maneuver” in a future conflict. Making war on Iran weakens the “infrastructure of Chinese power projection.”

Trump’s war “could play into China’s hands,” Lyle Goldstein said at the Chicago Tribune. Beijing will benefit from the U.S. shifting forces to the Middle East. China’s strategists will also “get yet another chance to closely study U.S. military technologies and doctrines” and adjust their war plans accordingly. Going forward, China may be able to present itself as a defender of the global status quo, contrasting itself against a U.S. government “increasingly viewed as having gone rogue.”

What next?

China sees the summit delay as “less a setback than an opportunity to regroup” and meet when the U.S. president isn’t distracted by Iran, said Bloomberg. But the delay does “underscore the fragility” of both countries’ efforts to maintain trade peace, said Wendy Cutler, the senior vice president at the Asia Society Policy Institute, to Bloomberg.

The Bank of England today held interest rates at 3.75% and warned of higher-than-expected inflation, as the US-Israel war with Iran delivers a “new shock” to the UK economy.

“War in the Middle East has pushed up global energy prices,” said Bank governor Andrew Bailey. “You can already see that at the petrol pump and, if it lasts, it will feed into higher household energy bills later in the year.”

The direct impact of rising energy prices is likely to add about 0.75% to inflation this autumn, instead of an expected fall. And, if businesses pass their higher costs on to consumers, that could add a further 0.25%. All the signals point to “households and homeowners” suffering “further financial hardship”, if the Iran war does not end soon, said The Times.

What did the commentators say?

Seventy years ago, we had petrol rationing, triggered by the Suez crisis, said Gaby Hinsliff in The Guardian. That’s “ancient history now – or it would be, if it weren’t for what looks increasingly like” America’s “version of Suez”. Yet again, a global superpower is “starting a war it seemingly doesn’t know how to finish, against an enemy it woefully underestimated”.

Oil experts have warned that Britain “could be only weeks away from needing to ration fuel”, if tankers don’t resume sailing through the Strait of Hormuz soon. Other countries are “already being forced into drastic steps”. In Pakistan, schools have been closed and government offices have been put into a four-day week, Vietnam is “urging people to work from home”, and Bangladesh has stationed soldiers at fuel depots.

“The financial impact on the UK from” this war is “yet to fully play out, but the outlook is bleak”, said Rosa Prince on Bloomberg. Donald Trump’s “folly” has “kiboshed” Keir Starmer’s “economic revival”. For a “brief moment”, green shoots emerged, and a path opened up for him “to salvage his beleaguered premiership”, only for “Trump’s addiction to foreign escapades” to crush it.

The Iran crisis could “easily accelerate the death of manufacturing” in Britain if “vicious” energy-price rises last longer than a few weeks, said Ben Marlow in The Telegraph. They could crush “the life out” of our heavy industry, shutting down production lines and mothballing “entire factory complexes”. There is a “real risk of widespread de-industrialisation”.

There is “deep energy-linked frustration” in Europe, too, said the BBC’s Katya Adler. “The knock-on effects” of this Middle East conflict is “awakening ghosts of crises past” when Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine rocked the EU’s energy market. Europe has since ended its reliance on Russian gas and oil but it now depends heavily on the US and Norway for energy provision – “which won’t solve its problem with energy security” and won’t shield it from the current price spikes.

What next?

I see a “similar financial anxiety” in the UK as when Russia invaded Ukraine four years ago, said Albert Toth in The Independent. “And that had a long-standing impact on the cost of living.” Volatility in the oil market directly impacts household finances in various ways, some of them more “subtle” than others. People will expect energy bills and petrol prices to go up but “less obvious” will be the rising cost of food, pushed up by increasing transport costs and disrupted fertiliser supply chains.

For Starmer, dealing with Trump’s demands for military back-up may be difficult, but managing the “war’s economic blow is trickier”, said Bloomberg’s Prince. He may as well blame the US president for “sending Britain’s cost of living spiralling”. This week, he announced £53 million in support for low-income households who are most exposed to the sharp increase in heating-oil prices but his government “will need a much bigger package if the conflict drags on”. And “that won’t be easy, given existing strains on the public purse”.

President Donald Trump likes his military campaigns short and victorious. The quick overnight strike that removed Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro from power is his preferred model of warmaking. But the U.S. president may not be able to exit the war against Iran so easily.

Some of Trump’s supporters are concerned the president “no longer controls how, or when, the war ends,” said Politico. Iran’s Islamic regime still has a vote, and it’s voting to keep the conflict alive with its closure of the Strait of Hormuz. The resulting fallout for the global economy means Iran’s leaders “hold the cards now,” said a White House ally.

Trump’s advisers had hoped he could and would “declare victory whenever he saw fit” and end the war quickly, said Politico. But now the conflict appears stickier than they anticipated. The “off-ramps” to de-escalate things “don’t work anymore,” said a second Trump ally.

Trump “expects a quick, clear victory,” said Axios. But the war’s outcome is “beyond unilateral control and quick fixes.” The president could “pull out tomorrow.” Iranian officials, though, have made it clear they “could continue shooting missiles and rockets” unless they get a guarantee that the U.S. will not reengage at a future date. Iran wants more than “just a temporary ceasefire.”

What did the commentators say?

The president’s options to end the war “keep getting fewer and worse,” said Thomas Wright at The Atlantic. Trump is getting closer to a point where he can either pursue a “decisive tactical success” and “prepare the country for a prolonged conflict” or seek a settlement involving “real compromise” with Iran.

The regime has proven “more aggressive and more resilient” than he anticipated, and if the government does collapse, it could “take a long time,” said Wright. Most wars start with hopes of a quick victory. “Few end as expected.” Trump chose to start the war, but the decision to conclude it is “no longer entirely his to control.”

The strait’s closure is “giving the Iranians leverage,” said the National Review. If the strait remains closed for months “rather than a few more weeks,” the global economic damage may become “truly disastrous.” Iran could end the war with its regime still in place and in “de facto control” of the strait. If that happens, Trump’s war will end up “eroding American deterrent power rather than enhancing it.” His administration must have some “urgency about reopening the strait” to ensure that does not happen.

What next?

Military officials are routinely including “off-ramps” in their war plans if Trump wants to end the conflict quickly, said NBC News. “So far, he hasn’t” chosen to. Some administration allies are going public with their push to end the campaign. The U.S. “should try to find the off-ramp,” said David Sacks, Trump’s AI czar.

Trump himself is sending mixed signals. The war in Iran is “just a military operation to me,” he said to reporters on Tuesday. Iran is “something that was essentially largely over in two or three days."

As the US continues to attack Iran and Donald Trump continues to criticise Keir Starmer, calls are growing to delay or cancel King Charles’ state visit to America.

The visit hasn’t yet been formally announced but Buckingham Palace has been preparing for the King to visit Washington and New York in April, to mark the 250th anniversary of US independence. The hope was that the visit, the first by a British sovereign in nearly two decades, would help smooth fractured relations between the two nations.

But as violence in the Middle East intensifies, it may be “safer to delay it”, said Labour’s Emily Thornberry, chair of the foreign affairs committee. It would be going ahead “against a backdrop of a war and that, I think, is quite difficult”, she told BBC Radio 4’s “Today” programme. “The last thing that we want to do is to have their majesties embarrassed.”

What did the commentators say?

“While the war is continuing”, the visit is “problematic”, said Peter Westmacott, former British diplomat and former deputy private secretary to King Charles. The US is conducting a war that the UK “initially thought clearly was illegal”, he told The Times. The UK government has “a duty to protect the monarchy in a situation like this”, and “a duty to reflect public opinion in this country”. How will a state visit be perceived? Might the King appear to be “endorsing” what the US president is doing?

Nearly half (46%) of Britons think the visit should definitely be cancelled, according to a YouGov poll of 12,002 adults last week. Ed Davey, leader of the Liberal Democrats, has said going ahead with it would hand a “huge diplomatic coup” to Trump. But postponing, rather than cancelling, is the way to avoid offending “thin-skinned” Trump and protect the “special relationship”, said Westmacott. That’s “a statesmanlike way of managing the issue”.

A state visit would “be nothing but a show of political appeasement” towards an administration that is “leaning more towards authoritarian instincts every day”, said Alex Hannaford in The Independent. It is “betraying the very values” of democracy that America’s 250th birthday is meant to celebrate. Plus, the timing “could not be more fraught” for the King. Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s arrest last month “reignited the Epstein scandal”, and the “spectre of awkward questions” from victims’ lawyers and advocacy groups “looms over the visit”.

The case for cancelling is indeed “powerful”, said Simon Jenkins in The Guardian. Trump will certainly “exploit a royal visit” for personal gain. But if the King didn’t go, it might seem “prompted by domestic politics” and would be “a severe blow to Anglo-American relations”. It would be “better by far” to “elevate it well above the level of current events” and let it honour the tight links between Britons and Americans that have held since US independence. A state visit is “a bonding of nations”, not governments.

What next?

Trump said yesterday that Charles would be visiting “very shortly”. Hosting Irish Taoiseach Micheál Martin at the White House, he told reporters: “I do look forward to seeing the King.”

Official travel by the King and Queen is subject to the approval and advice of the government. Downing Street’s current refusal to comment on the matter “suggests an understandable indecision”, said The Guardian’s Jenkins. All could depend on how long the war continues. “Leaving the question open might add to pressure on Trump for an early ceasefire.”

Downing Street won’t want to risk “subjecting the monarch to Trump’s frequent rants against Britain”, Westmacott told CNN. Nor will it want to risk “angering the president” by cancelling. Still, “there could be a moment when the government decides that the risks of going ahead are greater than the risk of causing offence”.

In the immediate aftermath of Poland’s Communist collapse, the country was considered one of the most economically dire in Europe — but the status quo has changed in a major way. Poland now has the 20th largest economy in the world, the country’s statistics agency announced last week, marking its highest-ever global ranking. Experts say there are a variety of factors that led to Poland becoming Europe’s new economic gem.

What did the commentators say?

Poland entered the top 20 economies by leapfrogging Switzerland; it reported more than $1 trillion in economic output for 2025, with its gross domestic product increasing 3.6% year-over-year, according to Poland’s statistics agency. This is a far cry from the early to mid-1990s, when Poland “rationed sugar and flour while its citizens were paid one-tenth what West Germans earned,” said The Associated Press.

But in “35 years — a little less than one person’s working lifetime — Poland’s per capita GDP rose to $55,340 in 2025, or 85% of the EU average,” said the AP. One of the most important factors in Poland’s economic growth was “rapidly building a strong institutional framework for business,” economist Marcin Piatkowski of Poland’s Kozminski University told the AP. This includes the creation of antimonopoly agencies and regulatory bodies, ensuring that Poland’s economy “wasn’t hijacked by corrupt practices and oligarchs, as happened elsewhere in the post-Communist world.”

Poland was also given significant help from the European Union both “before and after it joined the bloc in 2004,” said the AP. Once Poland became an EU state, it got additional funding as a result of its membership that “helped modernize Polish industry and expand an increasingly digitalized services sector,” said The Wall Street Journal. Above all, Polish business leaders “do not feel intimidated or constrained by any lingering sense of inferiority,” Dominik Kopiński, a senior adviser at the Polish Economic Institute, told Deutsche Welle. They “take opportunities when they see them and, more importantly, they are trailblazing for other companies.”

What next?

Even as Poland enjoys economic prosperity, not everyone is convinced that it will last. The country has a low birth rate and an aging society, meaning that “fewer workers will be able to support retirees,” said the AP. Wages in Poland are “lower than the EU average,” and “while small and medium enterprises flourish, few have become global brands.”

The country “must also contend with rising public debt,” said the Journal. Poland’s budget deficit of 6.8% is “significantly higher than the 3% benchmark for EU member states.” If Poland wants to continue climbing the economic ladder, its government will “need to rein in spending and raise taxes in order to ease debts over the coming years.” But there is also some good news, as Poland’s private-sector debt “remains low by EU standards.”

There is also the possibility of Poland leaving the EU, which could create further economic turmoil; dubbed ‘Polexit,’ Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has accused “right-wing opposition parties of steering the country toward leaving the bloc,” said Politico. “Polexit is a real threat today!” Tusk said on X. If his country left the EU, it “would be a disaster for Poland. I will do everything I can to stop them.”

Five key Western allies have “urged Israel not to pursue a ground offensive in Lebanon” after Tel Aviv launched a “significant military operation” in response to Hezbollah missiles, said Politico.

Israeli troops on the ground “could lead to a protracted conflict” with “devastating humanitarian consequences”, said the leaders of the UK, Canada, France, Germany and Italy in a statement. “The humanitarian situation in Lebanon, including ongoing mass displacement, is already deeply alarming.”

Despite a ceasefire agreed in November 2024, tensions between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah have reignited, with reports of up to a million Lebanese citizens already affected by the renewed conflict.

What did the commentators say?

“Just how far the Israeli military intends to push into Lebanese territory – and for how long – remains unclear,” said Tom Ball in The Times. Troops are heading to al-Khiyam, a “strategically valuable” town just over the border and the “apex of several major routes leading deeper into Lebanese territory”. An Israel Defense Forces spokesperson said the operation is designed to establish “forward defence, which includes destroying terrorist infrastructure and eliminating terrorists”.

Israel’s “extended campaign” against Hezbollah is “likely to continue beyond the end of the war against Iran”, said James Shotter in the Financial Times. Israeli officials had said they expect the joint offensive with the US against Iran to last “weeks”, and the expectation is that the operation in Lebanon “would last at least as long”.

We are going to see a “major impact on the population” of Lebanon, Michael Young, from the Carnegie Middle East Center, told Time. Between 850,000 and one million civilians have been displaced in the Hezbollah-controlled south since the latest conflict began. Israel wants to “ensure that that area becomes uninhabitable”.

The conflict in Lebanon is the “price” international communities must pay for their “silence”, said Laure Stephan in Le Monde. Ever since the signing of the “theoretical truce” in late 2024, world leaders have been “implicitly accepting the rule of force over international law”. This “lopsided ceasefire”, which “Israel never respected”, is the “root of today’s war”.

Despite the “unprecedented efforts” of the US-backed Lebanese government to uproot Hezbollah, it has not made any tangible progress. In fact, “Hezbollah’s refusal to disarm has also weakened the authorities”.

Two “terrible experiments” are playing out simultaneously on the streets of Lebanon: “Israel’s theory of total war and Hezbollah’s theory of nihilistic power”, said Thanassis Cambanis, director of think tank Century International, in Foreign Policy. Like Iran against the US, Hezbollah won’t “slink away” from an existential fight. Even if it can’t maintain control of Lebanon, it can still “act as a spoiler”. “No amount of Israeli warfare will be able to eliminate Hezbollah by force.”

What next?

The French government has drafted a proposal to end the war in Lebanon, said Barak Ravid on Axios. The framework could “de-escalate the war, prevent a prolonged Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon” and “increase international pressure to disarm Hezbollah and open the door to a historic peace deal”. The Lebanese government has reportedly “accepted the plan as a basis for peace talks”, which are expected to take place in Paris.

President Emmanuel Macron is “ready to mediate a truce”, said Al Jazeera. Lebanese officials’ offer for direct negotiations with Israel could be seen as a “major concession in a country where ties with Israel, a longtime enemy, are a divisive issue”.

Donald Trump’s call for an international coalition to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz has been met with a muted response. Japan and Australia have definitively ruled out sending support and escort vessels, and Keir Starmer has said the UK “will not be drawn into the wider war”.

With the US-Israeli war against Iran now entering its third week, Tehran has effectively closed the waterway through which a fifth of all the world’s oil and gas passes. Trump first demanded the help of China, France, Japan, South Korea and the UK but he then extended the invitation on Truth Social to all “the Countries of the World that receive Oil through the Hormuz Strait”. Yet, despite threatening to cancel a planned trip to China unless Beijing offers support, and warning Nato that it faces a “very bad future” if it fails to come to Washington’s aid, his demands seem “to have fallen on deaf ears”, said Reuters.

What did the commentators say?

European governments in particular “have reacted cautiously to Trump’s persistent pressure to help him reopen the strait”, said Milena Wälde on Politico. Germany’s Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said he was “very sceptical” that widening the EU’s naval mission to the Strait of Hormuz “would provide greater security”.

Even if Trump is able to secure an international coalition, his “biggest hurdle” in any attempt to reopen the strait will be “interoperability”: “that’s the ability of crews to work together or with different units and different doctrine when basic communication would be an issue”, maritime security expert Alexandru Hudisteanu told Al Jazeera. There is also the challenging geography of the strait, which is only 31 miles wide at its entrance and exit, and narrows to 20 miles at one point. It is a “very unforgiving” environment to sail through, especially with “wartime threats”, such as mines or “unmanned systems that could damage or destroy ships”.

With growing unease in the US about the war and its economic impact on ordinary citizens, Trump has been forced to change tack in recent days. Having launched his campaign with Israel without consulting other allies, he clearly now needs other countries “to join a war that not only hasn’t been won, but is spreading and escalating out of control – and that the US is arguably losing”, said The Independent’s editorial board.

What next?

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has said that the strait is not open to vessels belonging to the US and its allies. But Tehran has “signalled it is considering allowing Chinese-linked ships through”, said The Telegraph – a move that would “spare Iran’s strategic ally the economic pain of the war, while doubling down on the impact felt by the West”.

EU foreign ministers are meeting in Brussels today to discuss ways of keeping the strait open. But any military assistance provided by European nations, including the UK, must come with “a say in US decision-making”, and a “demand that Operation Epic Fury be de-escalated before it becomes Operation Epic Disaster”, said The Independent. “This is a rare moment when medium-sized powers such as Britain, France and Japan can exercise some leverage on the White House; they must make full use of it.”

The British public was “expecting to be surprised” by the first tranche of the Mandelson files, said Ailbhe Rea in The New Statesman. Yet despite hopes for “damning correspondence” to be in the 147-page document, “there was very little I didn’t already know”.

As it turned out “the first drop of the Mandelson files contained neither a smoking gun nor bombshell revelation”, said Beth Rigby on Sky News. Details about Peter Mandelson’s severance payment after being sacked as the UK’s ambassador to the US, and the “rushed” vetting process for his appointment have made the headlines, but the number of documents withheld, redacted or yet to be released mean the picture remains incomplete.

What did the commentators say?

Keir Starmer “must release all the Mandelson files”, said The Telegraph in an editorial. It appears some of the files “may not see the light of day for years” due to ongoing police investigations. The police are “entitled to do their job and proceed with their investigation without undue interference”, but “questions about the prime minister’s judgment on this matter are not going away. The public deserve to know just how credulous Sir Keir really was.”

The comment in the files by Jonathan Powell, Starmer’s national security adviser who was also Tony Blair’s chief of staff, that the appointment of Mandelson was “weirdly rushed”, is a “quietly damning analysis that will haunt Starmer forever”, said Rea. And the decision to give Mandelson a “£75,000 payoff” after his dismissal, when his contract, also included in the release, showed that “he was owed precisely £0”, raises questions, too.

But there is undoubtedly a “missing piece of the puzzle”, such as the correspondence between the former No. 10 chief of staff Morgan McSweeney and Mandelson. Reportedly, McSweeney asked Mandelson “three questions”, which Mandelson claimed he answered truthfully, a comment the government disputes.

It was clear from the files we have seen so far that due process was not followed in the vetting of Mandelson for the US ambassador role, said The Times in an editorial. The documents show Mandelson was “offered classified briefings” by government officials before he was granted appropriate security clearance: “it is hard to imagine this being granted to other ambassadorial appointments”. The government refuted allegations that the vetting process was “fast-tracked”, yet now it is claiming this was allowed “because Mandelson was a privy councillor, which does suggest due process was not followed”.

The files released in this first tranche “failed to include any interventions, comments or guidance from Starmer himself”, said Anna Gross in the Financial Times. “The prime minister emerges from this admittedly partial picture less as the main character in his own drama than as an oddly disembodied presence,” said Gaby Hinsliff in The Guardian. We are left to wonder whether Mandelson’s appointment was the result of the PM’s readiness to “delegate” high-level decisions to McSweeney, or belief that the risk of having “his own personal Machiavelli” close to Donald Trump “was worth it”. Either way, as he was forced to admit this week, it was “his mistake”.

What next?

It will be several weeks at least before more documents are released, as they must first be examined by Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee. Senior government figures told The Guardian that Starmer “could suffer further resignations when ministerial WhatsApp messages are published in the next tranche”.

These files will include informal messages between Mandelson and government figures “for six months before his appointment, and during his time as ambassador”. These “could prove a powder keg for already inflamed tensions between Washington and London”, said Rigby. Only documents that pose “significant security concerns” will be withheld.

Tehran said today it will “not allow even a single litre of oil” to pass through the Strait of Hormuz to reach its war enemies. “Any vessel or tanker bound to them will be a legitimate target.” Tellingly, three cargo ships in the strait were earlier damaged by “unknown projectiles”, said UK Maritime Trade Operations.

Donald Trump has already said that he “will not allow a terrorist regime to hold the world hostage and attempt to stop the globe’s oil supply”. And, overnight, US Central Command said it had destroyed 16 Iranian mine-laying ships, in response to intelligence reports that Iran had begun laying explosives in the strait.

Since the conflict began, there have been 13 reports of ships being attacked in the strait. Global insurers are increasingly unwilling to allow oil tankers to pass through, and the world’s oil supply is now “at severe risk”, said Sarah Shamim on Al Jazeera. As prices per barrel spike, Trump has floated the idea of the US Navy escorting tankers through the shipping channel.

What did the commentators say?

Millions of barrels of oil “are now effectively stranded in the Gulf” because regional oil-producing countries, such as Iraq and Kuwait, have “no alternative” shipping channel. This is no small incentive for Trump’s naval escort plan, said Natasha Bertrand on CNN. But the risks are high, with the strait described as a “death valley” for vessels attempting to navigate it.

Escorting tanker convoys in the region has been “effective” in the past, said former Royal Naval officer Tom Sharpe in The Telegraph. Both the EU’s Operation Aspides and the US-UK Operation Prosperity Guardian – which “positioned warships in defensive missile boxes” – had success against Houthi engagements in the Red Sea. Given Iran’s “rapidly diminishing” missile threat, a “similar” approach to protecting tankers on their way through Hormuz “would work”. But the strait is shallow, “has a U-bend shape” and is the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s “home turf”.

Right now, there probably “aren’t enough” US ships “for the task”. Japan, South Korea, Australia and Italy could “help out” with “serious air defence warships”, and France has an aircraft carrier “en route to the Mediterranean” and “a frigate standing off Cyprus”. Britain’s destroyer, HMS Dragon, should arrive in Cyprus next week. But even with these reinforcements, it’s not clear “how long” such an operation “could be kept up”. I think “a short-but-unsustainable effort” is more likely. “Never underestimate what the demand for quick wins can do to political decision makers.”

Despite initial reports to the contrary, even Chinese vessels aren’t getting through the strait, said Harrison Prétat on the Center for Strategic & International Studies’ Commentary. China, an ally of Iran with an “outsized reliance on energy imports”, has “not yet received similar assurances” to those given to by Iran-backed Houthis in 2024. This not only underscores “China’s limited ability to shape the course of the conflict, even to protect its own strategic and commercial interests” but makes it clear how seriously Iran’s leaders are playing for the regime’s survival.

What next?

If the US naval escort plan goes ahead, it “may give Iran juicy American targets”, said The Economist. Despite being “pummelled from the air”, Iran still “enjoys layered defences and forbidding terrain” in the strait. It has “long prepared for such strife”, and its threat “comes in many forms”. In the air, it has missiles and drones; on the water, it has “fast-attack boats” armed with “missiles, explosives or rocket-propelled grenades”, and below the surface it can “deploy thousands of sea mines and unmanned vehicles” and “divers with limpet mines”. All that, and America’s “technological advantages are blunted” in such “confined waters”. Unlike modern oil tankers, “destroyers have single hulls, so are easier to sink”.

The Iranian regime seems “determined to set the terms for how the war ends” and, let’s not forget, “maritime chokepoints favour the defender”.

As the Iran war enters its second week, violence from the U.S. and Israel’s western assault and counterstrikes by Iranian forces and their allies threatens not only Iranian, Israeli and American targets but the broader region as a whole. While U.S. and Israeli forces have struggled with unclear and potentially conflicting orders, as well as questionable AI-influenced operations, Iranian forces have long been preparing for an attack of this sort in principle, if not in specific execution.

What did the commentators say?

With violence expanding across multiple fronts in the region, Iran is operating with a “complex strategy” designed to combine “military escalation, economic leverage, domestic mobilization and diplomatic signaling,” said Middle East Monitor. By resting on “several interconnected pillars,” Iran’s strategy is meant to address both military maneuvers and prevent the “broader objective” many officials believe animates this war: regime change.

Iran is “fighting for survival, and survival on its own terms,” said the BBC, with the nation’s leaders having been “preparing for this moment for years.” Although it would be “naive” to expect Iran to hope for a “straightforward battlefield victory,” the evidence instead suggests they have “built a strategy around deterrence and endurance.” Theirs is a calculus that “rests partly on the economics of war,” in which “prolonged conflict” forces the U.S. and Israeli militaries to expend “high-value assets” like missile defense systems to intercept “comparatively low-cost threats” like kamikaze drones.

During the Israel-Iran war of 2025, Tehran’s barrage against U.S. troops stationed at the Al Udeid airbase in Qatar was “prewarned and largely seen as a face-saving exercise,” said Al Jazeera. Now, Tehran has seemingly “revised its military strategy to a more aggressive one focused” on national survival.

The updates include repairing facilities damaged by previous air assaults and “fortifying” several nuclear facilities, using “concrete and large amounts of soil to bury key sites,” said CNN. Past conflicts have also highlighted “weaknesses in Iran’s command structures under pressure,” leading a “new authority, the Defense Council, to govern in times of war.”

Iran’s newly established Defense Council is led by Ali Larijani, the country’s “top national security official,” a “veteran politician” and a former commander in the Revolutionary Guard Corps, said The New York Times. Since the council’s creation in the wake of last year’s Israel-Iran war, Larijani, 67, has “effectively been running the country,” sidelining heart surgeon turned politician President Masoud Pezeshkian as someone who can’t be expected to “solve the multitude of problems in Iran.”

Iran is “definitely more powerful than before,” Larijani said in an interview in Doha before the Iran war began, according to the Times. Tehran has “prepared in the past seven, eight months” and “found our weaknesses and fixed them.”

In February, the Revolutionary Guard Corps moved to “revive its so-called mosaic defense strategy,” which gives field commanders the “autonomy to issue orders to their units,” making the country “more resilient to foreign attacks,” said The Wall Street Journal.

The RGC also established about “100 monitoring points” in Tehran to “block potential insurgents or foreign forces” in the days leading up to the U.S.-Israel assault to preemptively neuter any “disruptive antigovernment unrest,” said the Journal. While last year’s war with Israel highlighted Iran’s “military inferiority” and the “limits of regional militia allies” like Lebanon’s Hezbollah, it also gave Tehran an “opportunity to test and refine its war tactics.”

What next?

Iran’s military says it has amassed “enough supplies to continue their aerial drone and missile war” against U.S. and allied positions across the Middle East “for up to six months,” said the National Post. President Trump’s refusal to rule out a ground invasion has also pushed Iranian officials to address the prospect of foreign troops on Iranian soil. “We are waiting for them,” said Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi to NBC’s “Meet The Press” last week. Iranian forces are “confident that we can confront them, and that would be a big disaster for them.”

Ultimately, Iran’s planning and in-war actions rest on the belief that it can “absorb punishment longer than its adversaries are willing to sustain pain and costs,” said the BBC. Their “calculated escalation,” then, is to “endure, retaliate, avoid total collapse and wait for political fractures to emerge on the other side.”

“We’re winning this fight!” shouts the narrator, as the White House video cuts from clips of “Call of Duty” to footage of US fighter jets and slo-mo missile strikes on Iran. “Courtesy of the Red, White & Blue” clocked up 58 million views in three days. A second video, “Justice the American Way”, soon followed, blending bombing footage with memes and references to “Top Gun”, the “Halo” series and “Dragon Ball Z”.

The US administration’s use of imagery from video games and pop culture is, to some, just a modern way to celebrate “the nation’s war-fighting power”, said Drew Harwell in The Washington Post. But, to others, it’s a “sick and callous joke from the nation’s highest public office”.

What did the commentators say?

Donald Trump’s second presidential campaign was “marked by a rage-baiting style of communications”, and his social media output has “not shifted tone since he took office”, said Emerald Maxwell on France24. When millions took to the streets last October for anti-Trump “No Kings” protests, the president posted a “fake AI video showing himself wearing a crown and flying a fighter jet” that “dumps excrement on crowds of protesters”.

Now ,“the White House is transforming the Iran war effort into a meme campaign”, said Harwell in The Washington Post. By “mixing unclassified missile footage” with the kind of “fictional and fantasy content young people share online for laughs”, Trump’s digital team is attempting to “win political points by running serious policy issues through the irreverent lens of internet culture”.

They are harnessing “some of the most renowned slivers of 21st-century American popular culture” to “promote the freshly launched war with Iran”, said David Bauder and Lou Kesten on The Associated Press. “It’s hard not to see the thinking here: the more cinematic the content, the more people might support the war.”

The “sober charts and briefings” of past conflicts have “largely been replaced by a public relations campaign” with a “video-game vibe”, said Helen Coster and Tim Reid on Reuters. Past administrations used PR campaigns to “explain why the US has gone to war” but, for a Trump White House that has “struggled to articulate a clear case” for its operations in Iran, “it’s about how the US has gone to war” instead.

The “online propaganda campaign” is not about “intimidating Iran or projecting US strength abroad”, said J Oliver Conroy in The Guardian, but about getting support in future elections from “young right-wing American men who spend a lot of time online”. It is, as yet, “unclear” if those Gen Z males “universally appreciate the Trump administration’s narrowly tailored jingoism”.

What next?

Trump’s “precedent-smashing style of politics” has helped him “build a passionate bond with his political base”, said Michael Birnbaum in The Washington Post. But his “lack of visible effort” to expand support for the war to the wider public “carries risks”. While 81% of Republicans “supported Trump’s initial decision to strike Iran”, according to flash polling, “even at that early stage” only 54% of them supported a prolonged engagement. Support among independents and Democrats is even lower and falling. Trump’s “muscular, meme-driven imaging around the war effort” may be building support “within a slice of his existing base” but “it is less clear that it is winning over sceptics on either side of the political aisle”.