The question of whether Keir Starmer would resign in the wake of Andy Burnham’s victory in Makerfield has been answered. But the “slower-burning question”, said David Aaronovitch in The Independent, is whether Nigel Farage’s grin can really “grace the doorstep of No. 10” after four by-election defeats in a row.

The “solidity of the anti-Reform tactical vote” in last week’s by-election has shown that people “don’t want” him as prime minister. Reform UK appears to be “on a downward slope”, and the expected arrival of a “doe-eyed” Andy Burnham in Downing Street could make life trickier yet for Farage.

What did the commentators say?

This latest by-election “exposed many of Reform’s weaknesses”, several of which “stem from serious flaws in Farage’s character”, said veteran by-election reporter Michael Crick in The Times. He runs the party “as a personal dictatorship”; he alone picked the out-of-depth Robert Kenyon as Reform’s candidate. “No serious democratic party” can be run that way.

In Makerfield, as in Gorton & Denton, there are those who so “detest him”, they were “breaking habits of a lifetime” to vote “ABF – Anyone But Farage”. He looked “fed up and exhausted” after it was over, and “it wouldn’t surprise me if he quits” before the general election, “perhaps claiming illness”.

He was also “beaten at his own game” by “Reform’s yet more evil twin”, Restore Britain, said Jonn Elledge in The New Statesman. Farage “now faces the same dilemma he once posed to the Tories: stand firm and lose votes” to the right, or “move right and alienate those closer to the centre”. Watching him “flail” is “extremely funny”.

Rupert Lowe’s “ultra-right splinter group” succeeded in mobilising “disaffected white working-class people” in a constituency where there was “support for the British National Party” 20 years ago, said Kitty Donaldson in The i Paper. Their “desire to give the Establishment – which now apparently includes Farage – a kicking seemingly knows no bounds”.

If Restore’s current polling holds up, “it could cost Farage victory in other constituencies” in a general election, political scientist Rob Ford told Politics Home. Reform would “really would like to be able to say X and Y seats are in the bag” but now there’s “this additional element of uncertainty”.

Makerfield was clearly “a setback” for Farage’s “ambitions of winning power”, said Nick Gutteridge in The Telegraph. But “there is no sign” within Reform’s ranks that “fatalism has set in”. One party source told me it’s like “the scene in the movie that comes just before the end, when it looks like the bad guy is resurgent and the hero has taken a knock” but “you’re actually just before the glorious victory”.

What next?

The morning after Reform’s Makerfield defeat, Farage appealed directly to those who switched from his party to Restore: “What do you want? We are the challenger party to the left in this country, and I would urge you to think again.”

But a new threat could emerge from within his own party ranks, said Aaronovitch in The Independent. If Farage’s waning popularity and “diminishing energy” mean he’s no longer up to “making a serious bid for power”, then “that quintessence of pushiness”, Robert Jenrick, will “have to do something about it”.

Today marks 10 years since Britain voted to leave the EU. And ever since, “Westminster has been in a state of almost constant upheaval”, said Tom McTague in The Times. Six different prime ministers have struggled to deal with the realities of Brexit, in what has been “quite comfortably, the worst period of governance in Britain’s modern democratic history”.

Public opinion has decidedly shifted in the past decade. In 2016, we voted 52% to 48% in favour of Brexit, but now 57% of Britons think the UK was wrong to vote to leave the EU, according to a YouGov poll this month. And that includes 23% of Leave voters. A majority (59%) support a closer relationship with the EU but opinions are divided about exactly what that should mean.

What did the commentators say?

“Life in Brexit Britain is simply harder,” said The Economist. Since leaving the EU, we have “mostly failed to pursue the radical deregulation that small-state Brexiteers promised”. Many European rules have “stayed on the books”, including restrictions on Britons’ working hours and a fair few animal-welfare protections. Some estimates put the GDP-per-person “damage from Brexit” as high as 8% but “it would be churlish” to say leaving “has hurt everyone” when “puffins and lobsters are among the winners”.

A decent proportion of Starmer’s “nugatory” achievements in office “simply would not have been possible if we had stayed in the EU”, said Brexit campaigner Michael Gove in The Spectator. A steel tariff package, a cut in tariffs on “more than 100 foodstuffs”, trade deals with the US and India – not to mention gaining a “decisive edge in AI” outside of the EU’s Digital Markets Act – were all secured by “our Brexit freedoms”. People say Brexit is “tawdry and compromised” or even a “self-inflicted wound that makes seppuku look like keyhole surgery” but “we have taken back control”.

The referendum result “sent shockwaves across the world”, said Laëtitia Langlois, a French lecturer in British political studies, on The Conversation. But, rather than delivering greater social or economic prosperity, it triggered a “major recomposition” of the UK’s political landscape. It has “normalised and mainstreamed populist discourse” and contributed to “the erosion of the two traditional parties”. Divisions exposed by the referendum “created the conditions for culture wars” that map less easily onto conventional party politics and “continue to tear British society apart”.

“Little that most people care about has improved since 2016, while much has got worse,” said McTague in The Times. This past decade “has exposed a political class that appears unable to govern, sitting atop a state no longer fit for purpose”. We voted to regain control and “discovered our leaders couldn’t handle it”.

What next?

The UK “needs to move on from Brexit”, said the Financial Times’ editorial board. But that does not mean we should “ignore its consequences”. The best way to proceed is to move closer to the EU, stopping “short of rejoining”, through an “evolving, bespoke arrangement”. We cannot “rewind the clock” but we “can, and should, seek to regain more” of what we have lost.

The balance of opinion has certainly “shifted” against Leave since 2016, said Sunder Katwala in The Independent. But Britain faces “years of negotiation about how to have a closer relationship” with the EU again. I hope we can find “common ground”, instead of gearing up for “another uncivil war between our new post-Brexit tribes”.

Keir Starmer announced his resignation this morning, saying he had heard the answer to the question as to whether he was the right person to lead Labour into the next election and would “accept that answer with good grace”.

The pathway from landslide electoral victory in 2024 to candidate for most unpopular prime minister of all time must be “one of the shortest honeymoon periods in British political history”, said Becky Morton and Brian Wheeler on the BBC.

What did the commentators say?

Shortly after becoming prime minister, Starmer boasted “that there would never be such a thing as Starmerism”, said Morton and Wheeler. But what he saw as a lack of ideological baggage ultimately translated – in the eyes of the public and many within his own party – to a perception that the prime minister “was, simply, not very good at politics”.

“There is something lame about him that Starmer has struggled from the start to shrug off,” said Ameer Kotecha in The Spectator. His lack of charisma was sold as a sign of the dutiful competence that was supposed to distinguish him from the perceived frivolity of the Liz Truss and Boris Johnson eras. But over the course of his premiership, the Starmer who has emerged “appears constantly at the mercy of events”, his occasional moments of “startling ruthlessness” somehow “even more unattractive than his mere ineptitude”.

Starmer “arrived for a career in politics unprepared for what a career in politics actually means”, said Andrew Marr in The New Statesman. The former director of public prosecutions went from courtroom to “cage fight”, and never managed to sell himself or his messaging “in a raucous, jeering environment where many assumed he was a compulsive liar”. In taking on the premiership of a fractured, stagnating Britain, he “chose a painful, treacherous path at an unusually difficult time”. If it “hasn’t worked”, it is “by no means all his fault”.

What next?

“The beneficiary of Starmer’s demise is all but certain to be Andy Burnham,” said Sonia Sodha in The Times. Burnham is “a warm and effective communicator” – but he must use that charisma to “strike a realistically ambitious tone” and sell the public on “hard truths” about the road ahead, rather than quick-fix solutions whose inevitable failure will only benefit populist parties.

A Burnham administration “will test the power of personality over policy”, said The New York Times. His allies pin their hopes on his talents as “an effective storyteller who can counter the inflammatory rhetoric of populist rivals” in a way that always eluded Starmer. But so far his vision for the nation has been confined to “sweeping generalities” that offer little insight into how he will address huge challenges like “economic stagnation”, public sector funding and “ascendant, anti-immigrant populism”.

Tim Bale, a professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London, said the picture for Labour has become so “bleak” that most party insiders will be happy if Burnham can simply “persuade people to give the party a second look”. But “if the sausage isn’t going to change, when it comes down to it, all he’s really offering is some sizzle”.

If Andy Burnham wins today’s Makerfield by-election, Wes Streeting won’t be letting him have a clear run at No.10. “For the avoidance of doubt, for the umpteenth time, I will be standing” for the Labour leadership, he told Politico.

Rumours are swirling that Andy Burnham “is preparing to launch an immediate leadership challenge against Keir Starmer” if he secures his return to Westminster, said The Times. His team are “confident that the challenge could be uncontested”, and are already “drawing up plans for what his first 100 days in government would look like”.

But the former health secretary is determined to spoil any Burnham coronation. He claims to have the backing he needs to enter any leadership contest, and made a major speech earlier this week setting out his own economic plan for government.

What did the commentators say?

Streeting’s speech was impressive, said City A.M. editor-in-chief Christian May. “In under an hour,” he displayed “more intellectual flair and more interest in economic growth than Rachel Reeves has offered in two years” and “certainly offered more than Burnham appears capable of”. He represents “a chance to revive this country’s economic fortunes and repair our frayed social bonds. Labour MPs and party members should seize it.”

Streeting has “had a good week” but he faces a “formidable set of obstacles” even to becoming a candidate in any leadership race, said Stephen Bush in the Financial Times. He may “in theory” have the support of the 81 Labour MPs he needs to make it onto a leadership ballot but “it is not clear they will be willing to back” his “long-shot” bid if it would “blot their copybook with Andy Burnham, the likely winner in a contest”.

Streeting’s poll ratings “have worsened since he resigned a month ago” and many in Westminster “have already written off” his leadership hopes, said The i Paper’s policy editor Jane Merrick. His allies argue that he will “make up ground” once a contest is underway: with “TV debates and hustings giving equal airtime to all candidates”, his “pitch to succeed Starmer” will be more widely heard. He talks about wanting the contest to be a “battle of ideas” about policy; “he is still regarded by many in the Labour Party as generational talent” but this will be “an uphill struggle” for him.

What next?

Right now, Streeting is “performing poorly with the Labour membership”, pollster and political strategist Scarlett Maguire told The i Paper. It is difficult to see him overcoming “the deficit he’s built up relative to” his potential leadership rivals. He would be trounced in a head-to-head battle with either Burnham or Starmer, according to a Survation/LabourList poll of Labour Party members.

But it may be that Streeting already has his Plan B up and running. It was telling that his speech this week was all about economics. “It was very much a pitch for the job of chancellor in a Burnham government,” said John Rentoul in The Independent. If Streeting can’t have “the top job”, then that’s the ministerial responsibility he would like most.

Three senior UK defence figures have accused Keir Starmer of not giving UK troops the funding they need to carry out their duties.

With “scathing remarks” in Parliament, former defence secretary John Healey, former Armed Forces minister Al Carns and the country’s senior military officer, Rich Knighton, all accused Starmer of “underfunding the military”, said The Guardian.

What did the commentators say?

Knighton, chief of the defence staff, told a committee of MPs that the UK’s Armed Forces will have to “dial back” military deployments, training and exercises if Starmer doesn’t increase funding to the Ministry of Defence. Moscow is “definitely raising the stakes and risks crossing a line”, so “we need to spend more on defence and do it faster”, Knighton told BBC Radio 4’s “Today”.

The risks ⁠and threats to Britain are greater than at any time since the Cold War, and the government needs to spend on defence to match that, he argued. “The challenge for ministers is to make those difficult trade-off decisions,” Knighton said, and “we do need to step up and enhance our capability as the threats from potential adversaries grow”.

Successive governments have “struggled to get a grip” on defence spending, said James Landale, the BBC’s diplomatic correspondent. “They spent less after the Cold War ended and failed to spend more as the world became more dangerous”, so the Army, Navy and Air Force all “contracted”.

Yes, the “fight between the Ministry of Defence and the Treasury” over defence spending has “raged longer than the hundred years war”, said Libby Brooks in The Guardian, but the “case for increased defence spending is harder to make with a population who experience no direct threat while bombs continue to drop elsewhere”. But the “general acceptance in military circles” is that Britain is “already under threat on home soil” from electoral interference, the targeting of synagogues, and arson attacks.

Following the 2024 general election, Starmer commissioned a strategic defence review to “set out a vision for UK defence over the next 10 years”. But “what it didn’t do” was “provide insight into how it was to be funded”, said Thomas Caygill, a politics lecturer at Nottingham Trent University, on The Conversation.

According to reports, the Treasury was refusing to offer more than £13.5 billion in investment (a 0.08% budget increase) when the MoD had asked for £18 billion.

But “to give the Treasury some credit”, the MoD is “known for poor spending decisions” and has “long been criticised for wasting taxpayers’ money”. So the hesitancy “may be justified” when “public finances are very tight” and the cost of government borrowing has risen.

What next?

Starmer has signalled that there’s unlikely to be more money for defence. He said he’d already “taken the decision” to cut capital spending by 1% from other departments to pay for further increases, and that it was up to Dan Jarvis, the new defence secretary, “where he wants that money to be spent”.

Jarvis will have to make “very significant cuts” inside the MoD if he cannot secure any more money for the department in the next two weeks, said Larisa Brown in The Times.

Emmanuel Macron has home-field advantage during the ongoing G7 summit in the resort town of Évian-les-Bains, and the French president wants the involved countries to help him deal with Chinese trade, which he feels is unbalanced. Though China isn’t a G7 member, it has an advantage of its own given its power in the global trade market. So Macron may have to perform a delicate balancing act.

What did the commentators say?

The French president largely expects the G7 nations to “converge on the need to tackle a flood of subsidized Chinese exports that is disrupting global markets,” said Politico. But it is becoming increasingly clear that “credible action is one deliverable he won’t be able to land.” Macron is pushing for Europe and the U.S. to come together for a solution, but meetings are “unlikely to deliver answers to the problem.”

The problem is two-pronged: Beijing is “curling its lip” at Macron, while Europe and the U.S. are “diverging on how to contain China’s $1.2 trillion trade surplus,” said Politico. Macron wants the EU to present a unified front on China, and Europe has “made strides on its China policy since the Covid-19 pandemic” but “still struggles to align internally,” said The Chicago Council on Global Affairs. And the “squeeze is tightening from both directions.”

France and Macron’s ultimate goal during the summit is to “make the reduction of global imbalances and inequalities the priority and position the G7 as a space for dialogue among the major advanced industrialized democracies,” said the Chicago Council. Macron also believes that talks between China and France “signal a ‘new willingness’ by China, the U.S. and Europe to coordinate economic approaches,” said Bloomberg.

The American factor also looms large, as President Donald Trump appears to be “ready to use the G7 stage to berate allies for what he views as inadequate support,” said the Council on Foreign Relations. With this in mind, Macron’s “challenge may be less about advancing his personal initiatives than managing the summit itself.” He may find himself “confronting two sets of competing summit agendas: the one it planned and the one that geopolitical events — and Trump — have created.”

What next?

The Évian-les-Bains summit will be Macron’s last; his term as French president expires in 2027, and he is ineligible to run again. The United States is hosting the next G7 summit, meaning Macron “will seek to keep the flame alive as he passes the torch to the United States,” said the Council on Foreign Relations. China, meanwhile, maintains that it is ready and willing to engage in economic cooperation with the EU, even as these discussions come “against the backdrop of talks in Europe over possible new restrictions to counter China’s export surge,” said Bloomberg.

“All countries should uphold openness and cooperation, take an objective view of the comparative advantages of different countries, foster a free and facilitative trading environment and practice true multilateralism,” Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing said during a conference call with France, according to Chinese state news agency Xinhua. He also “called for prioritizing development, improving global governance and promoting inclusive growth of the world economy.”

Host Emmanuel Macron is expected to pull out all the stops for this week’s G7 summit to prove that this gathering of the world’s richest democracies still matters in an age of strongman politics.

In one of his last big diplomatic set pieces before his presidential term winds down next year, Macron “will seek to paper over divisions” between Donald Trump and the other six leaders, said Euronews. Top of the agenda will be trying to “forge common positions on how to end the war in Ukraine”, on the resumption of traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, and on “the development of safer technologies”.

What did the commentators say?

The summit is being held in the alpine spa town of Évian-les-Bains. The last time the G7 met here was in June 2003, when the US had invaded Iraq despite “the strident objections of France and Germany”, said Mark Landler, France editor of The New York Times. Then-US president George W. Bush “got chilly handshakes” but he worked hard with the other leaders “to maintain the veneer of like-minded countries uniting to confront the perils of an unruly world”. Two decades later, it’s the same town but another American war in the Middle East, and any “veneer” of unity has been “stripped away”.

The G7 is “a forum created to solve geopolitical crises but it was excluded from the US-Israeli planning for war” with Iran, said Flavia Krause-Jackson, Bloomberg’s Europe editor. And it was ignored by the US in both the diplomacy for and the timing of the peace deal, which Trump announced the day before the summit, with the signing taking place after it ends.

The truth is that while, collectively, the G7 nations – France, Italy, Germany, the US, the UK, Canada and Japan – might account for 45% of global GDP, individually, few would count as one of the world’s “biggest or indeed most powerful economies”, said Jonathan Moules in the Financial Times. And Trump would clearly rather play geopolitics with Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping than waste time building consensus with leaders he views as weak.

For their part, Canada and Europe “no longer view the US as a partner on key issues such as climate change and security”, said Landler in The New York Times. And some even see America as a “threat”, given Trump’s “deepening disdain for Nato” and his repeated pursuit of Greenland. Across the group, there are “diverging opinions” on “how far to pull away from the US” but that’s certainly the direction of movement.

What next?

Expectations of what this three-day summit can achieve are “already low”, said Clea Caulcutt on Politico. “Despite all the efforts of the French presidency, the G7 format has lost much of its relevance,” an EU official told the website.

“They will talk, but I’m not sure anything will come out of it,” said a former French official. And even if it did, “any gains secured could be fleeting” with such a mercurial US president. In the end, it’s really all about keeping up appearances. As one European diplomat put it bluntly: “It will be a success if there is a family photo.”

Rifts within the Labour party look set to fracture along new lines, as a Labour MP says she’ll reintroduce the highly controversial assisted dying bill.

Lauren Edwards, MP for Rochester and Strood, has said she will use her second place in the Private Members’ Bill ballot to bring forward the same Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) bill Kim Leadbeater introduced last year. The original bill was narrowly voted through by the House of Commons but fell in April after running out of time to clear the House of Lords because of the huge number of safeguarding amendments tabled.

“By bringing exactly the same legislation, Edwards is threatening to trigger rarely used powers to override peers’ objections should they refuse to pass it again”, said the BBC. Under the Parliament Acts – only used seven times in the past century – a bill that has been voted through by the Commons in two consecutive parliamentary sessions can pass into law without the Lords’ approval.

What did the commentators say?

The original bill, on which MPs were give a “free vote” according to conscience, caused deep divisions in Parliament. And as Edwards makes her new move, her fellow Labour MPs are also “at each other’s throats” over their party’s future direction, said The Independent. Last time round, Keir Starmer voted in favour of the bill and one of his potential leadership contenders, former health secretary Wes Streeting, voted against. “Andy Burnham’s position is not clear”.

Labour MP Ashley Dalton, who has cancer, is “deeply concerned” that the bill is returning. “Voters put us in power to reduce the cost of living and fix the NHS,” she told The Independent. We debated this “deeply divisive and flawed” bill for over a year but its supporters did not “listen or to make the necessary changes”.

Supporters of assisted dying “insist” the bill only failed because “a handful of peers blocked it”, said Hannah Barnes in The New Statesman. “They are ideologically opposed to the principle,” Sarah Wootton of campaign group Dignity in Dying told the magazine. In response to fears that vulnerable people could be coerced into taking their own lives, she said current criminal law requires “no systemic exploration” of whether a terminally ill person who takes their own life has been coerced to do so. “I don’t see how you can argue that having greater scrutiny, transparency and regulation” won’t protect people “more than the status quo”.

Yet “blaming a handful of peers for the bill’s demise ignores the concerns that were raised by others before debate even began”, said Barnes. There were numerous worries from across the political spectrum “about the bill’s lack of pre-legislative scrutiny and the absence of detail about how assisted dying would work in practice”. There was no support from “the medical royal colleges”, nor from “any major disability charity or organisation”.

I support the right to die but not this legislation – because it only “covers a vanishingly small number of people”, whose needs could really “be met via decent palliative care”, said Stephen Bush in the Financial Times. It is designed for a person who has six or less months to live, is of sound mind and wishes to die without pain or uncertainty. But “when I talk to people about” assisted dying, most of those who “want the right” are those who do not want “to spend years in expensive, suspended animation while their dementia costs eat away at everything they’ve worked for”. But this legislation “is precisely designed not to provide for people who do not wish to have a slow death via dementia”. I fear politicians are “much more squeamish about that aspect of wanting the right to die than the average British person”.

What next?

Some doubt that the legislation would even pass the House of Commons this time. If it doesn’t, it would hardly be “a surprise, given that Leadbeater’s legislation passed its Commons Third Reading by just 23 votes”, said The Spectator. “That means only 12 MPs would need to switch from support to opposition for it to fall.”

Edwards has claimed she does not want the bill to be forced through and is open to making changes. “There undoubtedly are lots of peers who have tabled sensible amendments, and they should be considered in the usual way,” she told BBC Radio 4. “It’s all about following the proper democratic processes that we have.”

As the UK reels from anti-immigration protests, its neighbours on the continent are driving through a massive overhaul of their migration and asylum rules.

From today, all 27 EU states must follow a single set of rules on border screening and asylum procedures that include expanded detention and fast-track removal powers. The new Pact on Migration and Asylum will be backed by a shared digital database, and the establishment of “return hubs” outside EU borders for failed asylum-seekers. The aim “is to end a patchwork system where someone arriving in Greece faces an entirely different legal reality than someone arriving in Germany”, said Euronews.

It’s unclear what knock-on effect these stricter, uniform EU rules will have on UK asylum claims and irregular arrivals. But some are already warning that it could make Britain more attractive to migrants – just as tensions around immigration rachet up.

What did the commentators say?

There is “growing recognition” that, to curtail “the rise of hard-right parties” across the continent, “centrists must be able to show that they are responding to their citizens’ concerns about ­increasingly uncontrolled immigration”, said The Times’ editorial board.

The EU’s new goal is to “reduce irregular arrivals, speed up procedures” and “limit the number of people who fall off the radar” within the bloc, said Politico. Member countries that “receive the most migrants” will also get more support, either in the form or cash “or the relocation of migrants from one country to another”.

But the new deportation rules “will enable what more than 80 human rights organisations call ‘ICE-style’ detection, raids, detention and offshore return practices across Europe”, said geopolitical analyst Shada Islam in The Guardian. One MEP “quite rightly calls the pact a ‘legal arsenal serving a xenophobic ideology’”. All the talk of control and deterrence hides “what the European Network Against Racism calls an ‘imagined whiteness’, a political construct that defines who naturally belongs to Europe and who remains a permanently suspect outsider”.

The impact on the UK “is likely to be uneven”, said the UK in a Changing Europe think tank. It’s possible that, if Europe is rejecting asylum claims more quickly, “some rejected applicants may attempt onward movement toward the UK”. But “stronger” border enforcement in the EU may reduce overall “movement towards the north”.

No, more illegal migrants may now “look to Britain, which has no returns deals and weaker defences”, said James Crisp, Europe editor of The Telegraph. “One such weakness is the soft border with Ireland.” We can’t harden that border without threatening the Good Friday Agreement and Brexit treaties. Keir Starmer could use his much-vaunted EU reset negotiations “to pitch for an EU-wide migrant return deal” but that would mean “agreeing to European Commission migrant quotas”, which “could be politically suicidal”.

What next?

The ambition of the EU pact “is already running into reality”, said EuroNews. Member states are not signing up to anything like their share of asylum-seeker relocations, “with Hungary and Slovakia committing to none.”

For the UK, the “more realistic” approach is to push for greater intelligence sharing and more cooperation on migration, said The Telegraph’s Crisp. Both “Northern Ireland and Ireland are struggling to adapt to the challenges of modern migration”, so if everyone wants to “preserve and protect a common travel area that has lasted more than a century, they need to find a way to ensure its safeguards are still fit for purpose”.

Police have deployed water cannons to quell another night of violent protests in Belfast, and “civil war predictions seem to be increasing by the hour,” said John Harris in The Guardian.

Despite the family of stabbed Belfast man Stephen Ogilvie insisting that “unrest is not welcome”, online figures including Elon Musk and Tommy Robinson have fuelled anger, promoted protest, and are pushing the idea of a civil unrest – not only in Northern Ireland but also in the rest of the UK. Online fury is starting to have tangible consequences in the real world.

What did the commentators say?

This is not the first time “far-right figures” have used “incendiary language” to target ethnic minorities and migrants, said Shane Raymond in The Journal. Violent disorder in Southampton after Henry Nowak’s murder, “weeks of riots” last year in Northern Ireland, and the Stockport riots in 2024 were all triggered online. Misinformation, snowballing quickly on social media, played a large part in this week’s Belfast protests: there were even claims that the victim was a child, and had died from their wounds – that “was shared by an Irish county councillor”.

This is a “new type of civil disobedience”, said Finn McRedmond in The New Statesman. Northern Ireland’s “sectarian angst” has been replaced by a simmering resentment shared throughout England and the rest of the British Isles. It is “all connected now”: the “new atavistic rage of our time” is binding “north and south, east and west” in a “more straightforward form of ethnic conflict”.

Social media is being used to recast Britain as a “violent dystopia”, said Harris in The Guardian, and “smooth the path to power of some of the most terrifying politicians Britain has ever seen” – including “king of the civil war genre”, Nigel Farage. A vision of Britain in perpetual crisis is fed into “algorithmically curated video feeds” of fighting and riots. Politicians need to understand what people are seeing on phones “so overused that their screens are full of cracks” – “much like their owners’ understanding” of what is still a “largely stable country”.

Claiming we are on the verge of a civil war is “not only unconvincing, but potentially harmful”, said Jonathan Portes of the UK in a Changing Europe academic think tank. Throwing the term around “distracts from underlying issues”, contributing instead to a “more polarised and less constructive political environment”. Yes, “trust in institutions has declined”, but “this is neither new nor unique to the UK”. What is new is the rhetoric of crisis emerging from “fringe spaces” to “mainstream commentary”. This “exaggeration” is not “harmless” but “protest is not insurgency, and polarisation is not civil war”.

What next?

“It’s past time to moan about values and tolerance,” said The Times’ editorial board. Keir Starmer has condemned the Belfast protests but his “bemused and drifting government has done nothing to tackle the root cause”: a perception, however erroneous, that legal and illegal immigration “is out of control”.

Some suggest the solution is an end to the open border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland but that’s a “keystone” underpinning the Good Friday Agreement. What’s needed is “more intensive cooperation” with Ireland, and above all, Starmer needs to recognise the “explosive dimensions of immigration” and its “exploitation” by bad actors. Failure to do so would be a “national security risk”.

Kemi Badenoch’s call to scrap equalities guidelines for police and other public bodies has opened up a new front in the culture wars amid tensions over the death of Henry Nowak and riots in Belfast sparked by a knife attack by a Sudanese asylum seeker.

The Tory leader said the landmark Equality Act 2010 does offer a valuable “shield” against discrimination. But the Public Sector Equality Duty, which places an active requirement on public bodies to demonstrate the promotion of equality, had become a legal “minefield”, she said. It should be repealed “in its entirety”.

What did the commentators say?

Comparisons have been made between Henry Nowak and George Floyd, “but a more accurate precedent” for the murder of 18-year-old student Nowak would be the case of Stephen Lawrence”, said Andrew Doyle, the author of “Free Speech and Why It Matters”, in The Washington Post. That “horrific crime led to a much-needed overhaul of police practice” characterised by institutional racism.

Today, UK policing suffers from a “different form of institutional bias, which prioritises group identity and the tenets of diversity, equity and inclusion over impartial and rigorous law enforcement”. Nowak’s death “should lead to a similarly urgent reappraisal”.

By “incubating” diversity, equality and inclusion guidelines in the public sector, Labour and the Conservatives have “presented Reform UK with an open goal”, said The Times. With the Makerfield by-election coming up on 18 June, Nigel Farage has “weaponised the Nowak case”, alleging institutional “anti-white prejudice” and a “two-tier” justice system, giving fresh impetus to Reform’s calls to scrap the Equality Act entirely.

Keir Starmer is “right” to claim that Farage is “playing politics with a tragedy” but the PM “downplays genuine concerns about politicised policing”. In this febrile political atmosphere, it is Badenoch’s “common sense” approach that “emerges from this debate with most credit”, said The Times.

Badenoch’s response “should be commended for its sensible and responsible tone”, said The Independent. While suggesting improvements to the Equality Act, her speech “was in effect a strong defence of the principles behind it” and has Farage’s “simplistic slogans on the run”.

Given the recent “attacks on transgender rights” in the UK, “it is perhaps not surprising that the equalities consensus is all but dead now even with race”, said David Maddox in The Independent. Farage’s colourful rhetoric wins headlines but he remains a “policy vacuum”, so Badenoch has “spied her opportunity” to take the lead in “a policy arms race on the right of politics to own the culture wars agenda”.

What next?

Badenoch’s intervention has turned the “once uncontroversial” public sector equality duty into the “new battleground in Britain’s culture wars”, said Aamna Mohdin in The Guardian. She linked equality guidelines to the Bank of England’s decision to replace historical figures on banknotes with images of British wildlife.

But experts in equality law say many of the examples cited by critics “misunderstand its purpose and how it operates in practice”. They stress that the duty “does not require public organisations to provide a particular service or introduce a particular policy”.

Human rights barrister Karon Monaghan said the attack on equality guidelines in the public sector fuelled the right-wing attack on anti-discrimination provisions more broadly, including the Equality Act. “Do we want a society where women can be paid unequally, where black people can be told they can’t have a job, where disabled people can’t get into work?” she said.

With Farage and now the Tories expected to make scrapping “woke” equality rules a major part of their campaign at the next general election, “we may get our answer” then, said Mohdin.

Henry Nowak would “still be alive today” if Britain and Europe had “stood their ground against the politics of self-hatred and the mass invasion of migrants”, said J.D. Vance on X. The “proper response – the only response – is righteous anger”.

The “most outspoken member” of an “evangelistic” administration, Vance’s ire does seem to have a “particular focus on the UK”, said The Times. He has commented on protests around abortion clinics, and told Keir Starmer that there have been “infringements on free speech” in Britain.

Vance is now using the Nowak murder to “bolster” his narrative of Britain as a “once powerful nation” “pandering to liberalism”. This could just be a reminder for American voters that the Republican Party retains an “uncompromising approach to wokeism, borders and policing” in the upcoming mid-terms. But if Vance is anointed successor to the Maga movement, comments such as these could be a sign of things to come.

What did the commentators say?

“J.D. Vance is wrong to intervene in the controversy around the murder of Henry Nowak,” said The Telegraph in an editorial. That said, “there is a good deal of hypocrisy on show”: Labour Remainers had no issue with Barack Obama “intervening” in the Brexit debate, and have had “no compunction about condemning Donald Trump over domestic US policy. “Inevitably, politicians welcome foreign interference only if it suits their arguments”, when “it would be far better if each stayed out of the other’s business”.

Vance was “surely right” to call out the “politics of self-hatred” in the British justice system, said Ameer Kotecha in The Spectator. It is “perfectly legitimate” for the US to comment publicly on what is happening in the UK. The government’s reaction, arguing he has “crossed a red line of diplomatic protocol”, has been hypocritical and “frankly pathetic”.

Britain is just as guilty. For instance, the Labour Party sent 100 activists to campaign for Kamala Harris in 2024. “Rather than engage in shameless pearl-clutching, Starmer’s government should listen to what our closest ally is telling us.”

Interventions like Vance’s are “deepening the split between the Trump administration and Britain’s Labour government”, said Dominic Green in The Wall Street Journal. The division is inherent. Where Vance sees a mission to “stabilise values and societies after decades of self-inflicted confusion”, Britain sees “Bible-bashing and race-baiting”, and hears “only atavistic calls to the wrong kind of identity politics”.

This “political opportunism” against Britain goes far deeper than the vice president, said James Schneider in The New Statesman. “The exploitation of Nowak’s death is of a piece with a clear US state strategy, one which turns Europe into a source for American rhetoric.” Vance talks about Britain “not as an equal, but as a provincial outpost of the imperial system, nominally independent and permanently available for correction”.

What next?

Vance’s stance could have implications for the next election on this side of the Atlantic, said Gaby Hinsliff in The Guardian. If Vance remains in the White House as vice president, “or even as Trump’s successor” after the US elections in 2028, it’s hard to imagine him “standing idly by” when the UK goes to the polls, likely in 2029.

At best, the reaction to the Nowak intervention shows us that “plenty of Britons still reflexively dislike being lectured by Americans”. Yet, it has also warned us “not to take our political sovereignty for granted. Sooner or later, we may need to defend it.”

Israel and Iran have traded tit-for-tat strikes, in defiance of Donald Trump, for the first time since a fragile ceasefire was agreed in April.

The Israeli Air Force confirmed hitting military targets in western and central Iran, in response to Iranian missile attacks on its own air bases. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said it had attacked the air bases after an Israeli strike on an alleged Hezbollah site in southern Beirut.

This escalation is a “major test for negotiations”, said CNN. Donald Trump said both sides must “stop shooting”, and told the media he had urged Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu not to retaliate to the Iranian attack. “We are very close to a final deal with Iran,” he told Israel’s Channel 12 News. “It is going to be a good deal. I don’t want it to blow up because of what is happening now.”

What did the commentators say?

Tensions between Iran and Israel have been heightening over Lebanon, said Maziar Motamedi at Al Jazeera. The Lebanese government was alarmed by Israeli troops crossing its Litani River last month. And, despite reports that Trump had convinced Netanyahu not to target Beirut, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps warned last week that “there will be no calm in the region” if Israel continued its occupation of southern Lebanon. The Israeli strike on the alleged Hezbollah site crossed “an unofficial red line for Tehran”.

Israel’s decision to strike back at Iran was “deliberate”, said Alex Winston in The Jerusalem Post. “It could not afford to leave unanswered” Tehran’s retaliation for the strikes in Lebanon. Had it not responded, “the message to Tehran would have been pretty clear”: “any Israeli response to Hezbollah could be framed by Tehran as a provocation, allowing Iran to fire directly at Israel while assuming that American diplomatic pressure would keep Jerusalem’s hands tied”.

Netanyahu’s decision to defy Trump’s instructions underscores a relationship that is increasingly at odds on how to prosecute the war on Iran, said The Wall Street Journal. “Under pressure from his political allies and the opposition to respond to the Iranian missile barrage”, the Israeli PM’s order to resume direct attacks on Iran “threatened to escalate a conflict that has been largely contained”.

What next?

Iran has now announced “a halt to the operations of the armed forces”. Mediation efforts “are naturally continuing”, said Esmail Baghaei, spokesperson for the Iranian foreign ministry, earlier today, but he warned that Iran believes the US “bears responsibility for the Israeli regime’s aggression”. No one would believe that the Israeli regime would take action “without coordination with the US,” he said. America will “be responsible for the consequences of any escalation in tensions”.

Tehran has also used its Houthi proxies in Yemen to threaten a blockade of the Bab al-Mandab Strait if Israel continues to escalate its use of force. The route is “another vital artery connecting major trade routes between Europe, Asia and the Arab world”, said CNN; closing it “would compound the worldwide economic pressure” generated by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

“Right now, it’s like the AI industry has a gas pedal but it doesn't have a brake pedal,” Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark told the BBC.

Anthropic recently overtook OpenAI, the makers of ChatGPT, as the world’s most valuable AI start-up. But Clark has called for a global freeze in AI development, warning that humans risk losing control of the technology. He revealed that 80% of the code that Claude, the company’s chatbot, is operating on was written by Claude itself. And reaching 100% is only a couple of years away.

Clark and his research colleague, Marina Favaro, have suggested that work at Anthropic could undergo “a meaningful slowdown or pause” if other AI tech firms were prepared to do the same. “If it were possible to effectively slow the development of this technology to give ourselves more time to deal with its immense implications, we think that would likely be a good thing,” they wrote in a blog post.

What did the commentators say?

Better regulation “would keep AI systems in their lane”, said David Krueger, a specialist in responsible AI, in The Guardian. We should insist companies have “clear and well-scoped purposes” for their AI tools, and “demand evidence that they are fit for purpose”. And they should report statistics and data so that we can see if their product is being used in ways that “deviate from its intended purpose”.

But the “safest, sanest” option is to “stop racing” to make AI smarter. The creation of Moltbook (a forum for AI agents that humans can only observe) is one of the “increasingly alarming warning signs” that “rogue AI agents” could be on their way. “We need to make sure” that rogue AI isn’t “capable of threatening humanity, by agreeing to enforceable, international limits on AI capabilities and AI development”.

There are some hopeful signs in the US. On Tuesday, Donald Trump signed a “much-awaited” executive order to establish a measure of vetting for AI companies, said Politico. It was “messy, muted and far less ambitious than Silicon Valley’s critics had hoped for” but it does mark a “sea change in Washington’s willingness to tighten” AI oversight. The new voluntary process of sharing new models with the US government, so that security risks can be identified and addressed before the technology is released, could “soon pave the way for mandatory vetting, federal pre-approval of advanced AI systems and other regulations”.

Some may think it “meaningful” that Trump is “doing something – anything – about AI”, said The Atlantic, but this executive order is “relatively toothless”. He wants to look like he’s being robust, to “score points” with the public, but, in fact “he is not saying or doing anything substantive at all”. The window for serious government regulation, anywhere in the world, is “rapidly closing”; “hopefully, it is not already gone”.

We’re missing the point, said John Burn-Murdoch in the Financial Times. “AI’s capacity to deliver genuine value has been vastly exaggerated.” In one US study, researchers tracking software developers before and after they adopted AI tools found an initial “explosive” increase in productivity (300% more files created or edited) but, after verification and review, just a 30% “uplift” in the number of releases. These are “powerful new tools” but it’s going to take some time before they can interact with current workflow “processes and structures” without friction or bottlenecks.

What next?

Trump’s executive order is a “good first move in creating a safer tech ecosystem”, said Jen Easterly, former director of the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, in The New York Times. But a voluntary framework, predicated on mutual cooperation between private companies and the US government, “cannot guarantee” effectiveness. And, let’s not forget, a “principle enshrined in an executive order is only as durable as the administration that issued it”.

For this step to be a positive one, in an American context at least, the legislative branch needs to follow suit. The responsibility of building an AI environment that is “innovative, trusted and resilient” ultimately lies with the US Congress.

China’s manufacturing might is overwhelming Europe, and Europe is gearing up to push back. A trade war could be in the offing as Brussels seeks to protect the continent’s workers and factories from a flood of inexpensive imports from state-backed Chinese manufacturers.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is aiming for a “major crackdown on subsidized Chinese imports,” said Politico. Europe cannot “be the victim of a predatory strategy that is destroying our industry,” EU industrial strategy chief Stéphane Séjourné said to the outlet.

China is warning it will retaliate against any EU action. Europe is “going further and further down a radical path,” said state-run social media account Yuyuantantian, per The Wall Street Journal. The tit for tat could further unsettle a global economy already rattled by President Donald Trump’s trade policies and fallout from the Iran war.

What did the commentators say?

The Chinese economy is “taking everyone down,” Michael Schuman said at The Atlantic. The country has become a “government-subsidized, export-driven manufacturing juggernaut” that is “alienating trading partners.” That includes Europe, where Chinese imports are “costing Germany 10,000 manufacturing jobs a month.” The success of China’s export strategy may make its businesses seem “unstoppable,” but its continuation relies on the “assumption that other countries will continue to absorb China’s exports.” Beijing may instead be pushing its rivals to embrace a “protectionism that depresses prosperity for everyone.”

“What, precisely, is the problem with Chinese surpluses?” Martin Sandbu said at the Financial Times. Chinese car imports have indeed increased in recent years, but that merely “displaced imports from elsewhere.” The overall number of vehicles shipped into the EU has “remained steady” during that time. Europe could benefit from manufacturing competition “as a spur to faster productivity improvements at home.” That would be good both for European businesses and “for consumers.”

The EU may be “finally waking up to China,” Peggy Corlin and Luca Bertuzzi said at Euronews. The reassessment “has been long in the making” after “decades of deepening economic dependence.” But Europe is not entirely united on the issue. Germany, for example, is still focused on “securing market access for German companies in China,” while Spain is welcoming a “growing share” of Chinese investments. “Political will” is the “key determining factor” in what happens next.

What next?

Europe’s search for solutions is “increasingly urgent,” said The New York Times. EU officials are worried about the “imminent collapse of industry,” Jeromin Zettelmeyer, the director of the Bruegel think tank, said to the outlet. “The tone is basically panic.”

Curbing imports could ultimately be “profoundly tricky” in a European marketplace where consumers have become “hooked on what China is selling,” said the Times. The issue may soon come to a head. “Global economic imbalances” will be on the agenda for the G7 Summit of European and North American leaders later this month.

Parties contesting the Makerfield by-election are “locked in a war of words” over how much support there is for insurgent “far-right” party Restore Britain, said Kitty Donaldson in The i Paper.

An early poll by Survation puts support for Rupert Lowe’s Restore at 7%, with Labour at 43% and Reform UK at 40%. Labour supporters hope that Restore could split the right-wing vote and usher in Andy Burnham, who is expected to mount a leadership challenge to Keir Starmer should he win the by-election.

For Nigel Farage, Reform’s leader and long the champion of the right, this situation is “ironic”, said Melanie Phillips in The Times. “The axiom that the revolution eats its own” is “generally associated with the left. Now it has arrived on the right.”

What did the commentators say?

A Farage pivot has already begun, said The Economist. To date, his “vision of ‘colour blind’ politics” has been a “success”. But following the recent reaction to the murder of Henry Nowak – Farage called for the public to respond “with pure, cold rage” and declared that “white lives matter too” – it is clear that the Reform leader has “embraced a new, uglier way of thinking”.

This “dark turn” seems to have been prompted by the “threat” posed by Lowe. The Restore leader said “the killer should be executed and his family deported” following his life sentence. “Targeting the angry, and making them angrier, could be a winning formula” for Reform in the new fragmented political landscape.

It is clear that Farage and his allies are “visibly rattled” by Restore, said Robert Shrimsley in the Financial Times. Though Farage may not fear being “superseded” by Lowe, a split on the right could “cost him seats”. A “confident” Farage would “have to hold his nerve” and tackle Lowe at the next general election.

Restore could even be a blessing in disguise for Farage. Lowe and Co. could serve as a “decontamination chamber” to rid his own party of more extreme voices, in turn making Reform more palatable and within the “admittedly shifting” boundaries of “political decency”. All of this, of course, hinges on “how frightened Farage feels. But the last thing an already polarised nation needs is a new bidding war on the anti-immigrant right.”

Restore’s “march into culture warzones” like climate change and social integration is “profoundly depressing”, said Rosa Prince in Bloomberg. The party is “heavily backed” by “racially fixated billionaire” Elon Musk, who “regularly shares” its posts on his platform, X. Indeed, it may have been Musk’s endorsement of Lowe to lead Reform that led to the birth of Restore. Clips from a YouTube interview with Maga figure Tucker Carlson have also been “viewed millions of times”, adding to Lowe’s more than 1.3 million Facebook followers. Digital “ubiquity” and a “splintering” political system have fuelled the rise of both Reform and Restore. “We’re all poorer as a result.”

“Then there is Lowe himself,” said James Heale in The Spectator. Though undoubtedly on the charge, he is not infallible. At 68, Lowe must now “do in a decade what Farage managed in three”. Farage has “withstood 30 years of muckraking and press sleuthing. Is Lowe ready for the same?”

Lowe is already under investigation by the parliamentary watchdog after a complaint was made against him, and there is a perceived discord between his “clubbable” character in person and his online persona. As his party’s prominence grows, Lowe will also face pressure to “disavow comments his activists have made”. With the belief that Reform’s immigration policies are “insufficiently robust” as one of the party’s founding principles, Restore will also “inevitably struggle to keep its base onside”.

What next?

“Restore hopes to provide more than just a distraction” in the Makerfield by-election, said Nick Gutteridge in The Telegraph. Though the official, albeit small-sample, poll put Restore at around 7%, data collected by 300 Restore activists and released by Lowe claimed that “almost a quarter of households” said they would vote for Restore. “The claims were met with incredulity online and dismissed by political opponents.”

“You don’t need to be John Curtice to see what this means,” said Brendan O’Neill on Spiked. “The 7% being hoovered up by Restore’s oddball door-knockers is thwarting a potential Reform win.” It may be a “two-horse” race between those who believe Andy Burnham can “resuscitate the corpse of Labour” and those who are “taking a punt on the populists of Reform”. Restore is, in fact, “shaving support from Reform, is giving the listless, dull-eyed horse of technocracy its best shot of winning”.

Support for Restore could make a “critical difference” to the result in Makerfield, said Phillips in The Times. Regardless, “whoever occupies No. 10 after this by-election”, and perhaps the general election, “will be presiding over a country that has become an explosive tinderbox”.

The war in Ukraine is unwinnable and could bring down the Russian economy. That’s the emerging assessment among Russia’s power brokers, as Vladimir Putin faces mounting challenges on the battlefield and at home.

Kremlin propagandists may still be “projecting confidence about the outcome of the war”, said Igor Gretskiy, of the Estonian-based International Centre for Defence and Security, but there’s been “a marked shift in mood” among Russia’s political and business elites. It’s no longer their “default assumption” that Russia will achieve its objectives.

What did the commentators say?

Setbacks have been mounting on several fronts, said Gretskiy. “First, the cracks in the Russian economy became impossible to ignore”, with the federal budget “deeply out of balance” and the deficit at the end of April nearly double what was planned for the whole of 2026.

“In the most serious sign of internal division” since Russia invaded Ukraine four years ago, senior Russian government officials have warned Putin that spending on the war “is on an unaffordable path”, said Bloomberg.

Then there is the military situation itself. Ukrainian drone attacks are causing severe disruption to Russia’s logistical networks and supply lines to the front, and long-range strikes have hit Russian oil-production infrastructure and even threatened Moscow. The Russian army is no longer able to grind out incremental capture of Ukrainian territory, and one million of its soldiers are thought to have been killed or wounded since hostilities began.

We’re in a situation where “the capabilities of both sides are comparable”, said Russian political scientist Vasily Kashin on Russia in Global Affairs. “Historically, such wars have only extremely rarely resulted in the complete destruction of one side.” Russia can have no hope “of annexing new large Ukrainian territories” when “it lacks the capacity to sustainably control and manage” them, and its goal of eliminating the Kyiv regime is “fundamentally unattainable at this stage”. The publication of such a damning analysis is “a further sign of growing dissent at the top of Russia’s political establishment”, said Catherine Belton, Russia reporter for The Washington Post.

“Sustaining the war machine” is also “eroding” the president’s “social base”, said anti-Putin activist Alexey Sakhnin in Jacobin. A recent poll by Moscow’s independent Levada Center suggests that 62% of Russians favour peace talks with Ukraine, with only 27% expressing support for continuing the war.

What next?

There are parliamentary elections in September, so the Kremlin will want to ensure that “increasingly evident war fatigue” doesn’t “affect the cohesion” of Putin’s system”, said exiled Russian politician Vladimir Kara-Murza in The Washington Post last week.

But if events continue to turn against him, Putin may feel he has not choice but to roll the dice and go for broke, Tatiana Stanovaya of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Foundation told The Post’s Belton: “To a great degree, escalation is the only way to respond to a situation which you can’t control.”

Donald Trump “lashed out” at Benjamin Netanyahu last night in an “expletive-laden call” with the Israeli PM about the country’s actions in Lebanon, according to US officials speaking to news site Axios. The official paraphrased Trump’s remarks as: “You’re fucking crazy. You’d be in prison if it weren’t for me. I’m saving your ass. Everybody hates you now. Everybody hates Israel because of this.”

Trump himself described the call as “very productive”, saying he had demanded Israel abandon plans for a “major raid” and that Netanyahu had “turned his troops around” as a result.

The Israeli prime minister is caught between Donald Trump’s demands to end the bombardment of Lebanon, which threatens peace talks with Iran, and domestic pressure to escalate the campaign against Hezbollah, which has seen the Israeli army moving deeper into Lebanon and escalating air strikes.

What did the commentators say?

Since the 7 October attacks, Netanyahu has “struggled to assure Israelis he will keep them safe” against Iran and its proxies, said The Times. There was already “mounting frustration in Israel at the failure to defang Hezbollah”, said the Financial Times’ Jerusalem correspondent, James Shotter. Most polls suggest Israelis “favour more aggressive action” against the group, and Netanyahu’s “climbdown” to Trump provoked criticism from “across the political spectrum”.

National security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, of his own coalition, urged him to ignore Trump’s demands and ratchet up the campaign against Hezbollah. “This is the time to tell our friend, President Trump – ‘no’,” Ben-Gvir wrote on X. Naftali Bennett, the right-wing former prime minister “widely regarded as one of Netanyahu’s main rivals” in the crucial upcoming election, accused him of “losing control over Israeli sovereignty”.

Netanyahu is also worried that any US-Iran deal will “leave Israel’s core concerns – Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium, its ballistic missile program and regional proxy network – largely unaddressed”, said Tal Shalev of CNN’s Jerusalem bureau.

For more than three decades, Netanyahu has “defined himself as the leader who would confront Iran’s nuclear ambitions”. But a recent poll from Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies found that 45% of Israelis believe the situation with Iran has worsened compared to before 7 October; only 31% believe it has improved. Nearly half believe Israel will probably not win, or has already lost, the war against Iran.

“It’s hard to overstate how deeply Netanyahu views this moment as a possible personal and political defeat,” Danny Citrinowicz, senior researcher at the institute, wrote on X. “Mr. Iran” may be forced to accept an agreement that “not only legitimises the very regime he sought to weaken but also exposes the collapse of his long-standing Iran doctrine”.

Ultimately, Netanyahu has to defend his own citizens, said The Jerusalem Post in an editorial. Northern Israel is “under constant rocket and drone fire”. Hezbollah had used the ceasefire as a “tactical opportunity” to regroup and rearm. It has “no intention of genuinely ending hostilities”; its purpose remains the destruction of Israel. The ceasefire “prioritised a quick diplomatic achievement for Washington” over the security needs of Israel; extending it further would mean “trading Israeli lives for a few more days of quiet”. The US negotiations with Iran over Lebanon “are certainly not worth the lives of Israeli citizens”.

What next?

Just hours after Trump announced the ceasefire agreement, Israeli attacks on southern Lebanon resumed. At least eight people have been killed today, according to Lebanese state media.

In a statement, Netanyahu said that he had told Trump that Israel would continue its operations. “Our position remains the same,” Netanyahu wrote. The Lebanese government, which wants Hezbollah to disarm, has begun direct negotiations with Israel today.

Iran continues to insist that any ceasefire between the US and Iran hinges on peace in Lebanon, with a senior military officer saying today that resumption of war with the US is “inevitable”.

Getting you the right medical treatment more quickly – particularly if your life is at risk: that’s the aim of an NHS reform to unify patient records, so that doctors, nurses and paramedics can see a patient’s complete medical history, no matter where they are treated.

Single Patient Records could mean 20,000 fewer A&E visits and 6,000 fewer hospital admissions annually, said Health Secretary James Murray. This would save doctors about 500,000 hours, and the NHS £20 million, every year.

But plans for SPR, which come before Parliament today, face strong opposition from those who are concerned about the security of patient data and who will have access to it. We need to make sure that this pooled data cannot “be used inappropriately”, said the British Medical Association’s GP committee. “Ambitions to address fragmentation, improve productivity and reduce bureaucracy are laudable but they cannot come at the price of undermining confidentiality and public trust.”

What did the commentators say?

“The ambition is good,” said Alex Lawrence, a data specialist at The Health Foundation think tank. With its “Lego bricks” approach of stacking information together, SPR is the “most legislatively ambitious attempt” to “make care faster and safer” by getting patient data to “flow more freely” through the NHS system.

But “federating” the data and rolling out the system “is easier said than done”. It is still “unclear” what SPR will look like in practice, and “questions about how access, oversight and public choice will be managed remain unanswered”. Current data-sharing and confidentiality arrangements will be changed but key details – such as an individual’s right to restrict access to their records – have “been deferred to secondary legislation”. Its “absence on the face of the bill is a significant omission”.

“NHS digitisation projects have a chequered history,” said Laura Donnelly, health editor of The Telegraph. “A £12 billion programme for an NHS IT system in 2002 was abandoned” after 10 years, “due to spiralling costs and delays”. And Care.data, which was supposed to “extract GP records into a central database”, had to be scrapped in 2016 “following a public backlash over privacy concerns”.

Previous attempts to bring patient records together have been “beset by technical complexity, a mind-bending web of rules and roles, and some cultural intransigence”, said The Register. This time, the idea seems to be to use the current record systems in conjunction with the “controversial” Federated Data Platform run by US firm Palantir. “Either there’s going to be a new data store, which will be in Palantir, or there will be an infrastructure for bringing various independent APIs together” that uses Palantir’s FDP, Sam Smith, from data-safety campaign group medConfidential, told the news site.

There’s a reason why campaigners like medConfidential are calling SPR the “Single Palantir Record”, said investigative journalist Andrew Orlowski on Spiked. The company’s current contract with the NHS – which centres on using its FDP to improve efficiency – will be “worth over £1 billion if it runs its full course”. Palantir has had success in “winnowing” NHS waiting lists, but applying the singular goal of efficiency to patient data is “inimical to both interpersonal relationships – between patient and doctor – and trust”.

What next?

The plan is for SPR to be rolled out and made available on the NHS app as early as 2027. The Health Secretary has said that the Palantir contract was being reviewed ahead of its break point next year.

The NHS Modernisation Bill, which includes plans for SPR, as well as the abolition of NHS England, will have its second reading in the House of Commons today. Former Health Secretary Wes Streeting will speak from the backbenches to “back the bill he drafted”, said Donnelly in The Telegraph. He will no doubt “hail the changes” he made as health secretary and take “credit for the introduction of new AI tools and a funding uplift for GPs”. It’s a clear opportunity to boost his Labour leadership campaign.

The Trump administration’s moves to cut foreign aid and end ties with the World Health Organization could be making it more difficult to halt the latest Ebola outbreak in Africa.

Public health experts believe White House policies are “weakening critical networks” that respond to outbreaks in a “densely populated, politically unstable part of the world,” said Axios. The dismantling of U.S. support has “left the region dangerously exposed,” leading to the likelihood that Ebola was spreading “for some time” before it was detected, International Rescue Committee’s Heather Reoch Kerr said in a statement, per the outlet.

The Trump administration is pushing back against the criticism. The U.S. is “working with international partners” and “supporting response efforts” in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Health and Human Services spokesperson Andrew Nixon said in a statement to Axios.

What did the commentators say?

“This is what happens when you defund Ebola prevention,” Sara Herschander said at Vox. There are “no vaccines or treatments” for the strain of virus at the heart of the current outbreak and the disease is spreading quickly “under the heavy shadow of U.S. foreign aid cuts” that “gutted” Ebola detection and response programs. Many of the experts and researchers who once would have guided the response are “simply not there anymore.” The U.S. has now pledged $23 million in emergency funding to Congo and Uganda, but “you can’t expect a bandaid to make up for the damage.”

The Ebola outbreak is a story of “institutional erosion,” Columbia University’s Thoai D. Ngo said at Newsweek. U.S. aid “helped build laboratory networks, train field epidemiologists, establish emergency operations centers” and other public health infrastructure that made it possible for epidemics to be “detected early and contained quietly.” That system is being “hollowed out,” which is short-sighted. “Global health security is domestic health security.”

The world “doesn’t have to fail” the test posed by Ebola, Michael T. Osterholm, the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said at The Washington Post. It is “not fair” to place blame for the outbreak at the “feet of the Trump administration.” This virus emerged in an “unstable area of Congo” and is able to avoid detection by Ebola tests designed to find more common strains. But the U.S. can choose to once again deploy its resources to help contain dangerous diseases, even when they emerge in foreign lands. That choice would protect Americans “at home and abroad from a highly lethal illness.”

What next?

American infectious disease experts “have been barred from speaking directly with the World Health Organization,” said CNN. The Trump administration-issued ban — which applies to officials at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases — was in place for the recent hantavirus outbreak aboard a cruise ship but was “relaxed slightly” for the Ebola outbreak.

These restrictions “hobble quick cooperation” in disease response, health officials said, per CNN. The United States has “written off most of the institutions with global health,” Jeremy Konyndyk, the president of Refugees International, told the outlet.

The Russian drone that struck a Romanian apartment building, causing a fire and injuring two people, is not the first time a Nato member has been hit during the war with Ukraine but it comes at a perilous moment for the alliance.

General Secretary Mark Rutte condemned “Russia’s reckless behaviour” as “a danger to us all”. He said he had assured Romania’s President Nicușor Dan that Nato "stands ready to defend every inch of allied territory".

But the “growing fear in European capitals is that President Vladimir Putin will try next to reshuffle the cards by expanding the conflict” to other parts of the continent, said Yaroslav Trofimov in The Wall Street Journal.

What did the commentators say?

“There have been numerous incidents of drones crashing in countries across the region throughout the Russia-Ukraine war,” said Vitaly Shevchenko on BBC Monitoring. “Generally, these have been described as accidents, although it is difficult to verify the intention behind each of these events.”

In recent weeks, Russia “has made increasingly bellicose statements against the Baltic states”, said the WSJ. It has threatened to bomb “decision-making centres” in Latvia, after accusing the country of hosting Ukrainian drone operators, while air-raid alarms were sounded in Lithuania last week when suspected Russian drones approached its airspace from Belarus.

As Russia “fails to gain ground in Ukraine and suffers staggering troop casualties”, said Adam Goldman in The New York Times, Putin “appears to be pursuing a wider conflict in Europe, increasingly targeting critical infrastructure and supply chains”.

Moscow is “scaling up its daily hybrid activity against the UK and Europe”, said Anne Keast-Butler, director of GCHQ. The UK’s intelligence, security and cyber agency has been countering what Keast-Butler called the Kremlin’s “reckless sabotage and assassination attempts”.

“Russia can’t afford to continue the war on its current trajectory because it will face the trap of diminishing resources,” Oleksandr V. Danylyuk, chair of the Center for Defense Reforms think tank in Kyiv, told the WSJ. “This means that Putin will have to escalate.” It’s quite plausible that he does this “by expanding the geography of the conflict as he seeks to freeze the war on better terms”.

De-escalation on both sides seems quite a way off, said Yauheni Preiherman, founder and director of the Minsk Dialogue Council on International Relations think tank, on Al Jazeera.

“The rhetoric on both sides says it all.” Lithuanian foreign minister Kestutis Budrys replied to Moscow’s bomb threats by saying that, if necessary, Nato “has all the means to level the Russian air defence and missile bases”. But “simply doubling down” on the “political posturing” that has “essentially brought about the current situation will only continue making things worse for everyone”.

What next?

President Trump’s recent threats to withdraw from Nato, and his decision to reduce US forces deployed in Europe, have undermined the alliance’s deterrence. Senior European officials told the WSJ they fear Russia may see an opening in the next 12 months but it would be a risky endeavour.

“This would be such a huge and additional big risk for Putin to, after having been not sufficiently successful against Ukraine, to simply add another very strong adversary in a military conflict,” said Norbert Röttgen, a German politician. Putin, however, is known for taking big gambles, he added. “Despite my doubts, we also have to calculate that Putin behaves irrationally and in an escalatory way.”

The rise of artificial intelligence depends on the construction of giant new data centers to supply the necessary computing power. But Americans do not want the facilities in their neighborhoods.

Backlash to data centers is “bipartisan and growing across the country,” said 404 Media. States and cities are outlawing the “noisy, power and water hungry buildings” in a fight that could “shape American politics for years to come.” Seven in 10 Americans oppose building a data center in their area, said Gallup, higher than the 53% who would oppose a nuclear plant nearby. Industry leaders are now fretting over their inability to win public opinion that is “increasingly aware and skeptical,” said Business Insider. The tech sector “hasn't done a good job of explaining itself,” said Flexential CEO Ryan Mallory, whose company develops and operates the data centers.

What did the commentators say?

The backlash to AI “could get very ugly,” Lila Shroff said at The Atlantic. A “record number of proposed projects” were canceled during the first quarter of this year after “local pushback.” In April, an Indianapolis councilman found a “NO DATA CENTERS” note under his doormat after somebody shot at his house 13 times.

The fights over data centers will likely only “intensify,” as the facilities “stimulate local economies” but also take “physical and environmental tolls” on the places they are built, said Shroff. And though AI opponents may not be able to stop Anthropic from distributing its Claude model, “they can raise concerns about new construction at a local city-council meeting.”

“Nobody wants this in their backyard,” Sara Pequeño said at USA Today. In Utah, officials overrode local opposition to approve a giant new center that will consume “more than two times the energy used in the entire state.” Rural areas across the country face similar proposals. Data centers are “almost certainly here to stay” because of the computing power needed to keep up with “our ever-growing reliance on AI.” But Americans “clearly don’t feel great” about having them nearby.

The “brewing populist resistance” to data centers is a “critical new front in the fight against tech-enabled authoritarianism,” Astra Taylor and Saul Levin said at The Guardian. A local fight over land use can double as opposition to “job-eating algorithms, distorting deep fakes and autonomous drone strikes.” It also portends the next big electoral fight. AI is “shaping up to be a key fault line” in both this year’s midterms and in 2028.

What next?

The canceled data center projects are “sapping confidence” among AI investors, the investment bank Jefferies said in note to clients, per Axios. The pushback could become a “financial liability for AI labs if it continues to curb access” to the computing power artificial intelligence requires, the outlet said.

The backlash movement has one notable new ally. Erin Brockovich, the activist portrayed in an Oscar-winning performance by Julia Roberts, has launched a new website tracking proposed and under-construction data centers. The map “captures the real-world footprint” of the AI race, she said on the site.

Iran has signalled that any peace deal must include an end to Israel’s offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon. But it’s unclear if the US could get Israel to agree to that, even if it wanted to.

Despite last month’s ceasefire, Israel has continued to pound Lebanon with airstrikes, killing at least 608 people, according to the World Health Organization. Yesterday, in response to a Hezbollah attack on its military posts, Israel launched one of its most intense waves of bombings, saying it had hit more than 100 Hezbollah targets. “I have ordered an even greater acceleration of our operations,” Benjamin Netanyahu said. “We will intensify our blows, increase our firepower, and we will crush them.”

What did the commentators say?

“Lebanon is in danger of becoming an overlooked but increasingly deadly sideshow”, as both Israel and Hezbollah violate the ceasefire, said Tom Kington in The Times. Israeli troops are occupying swathes of southern Lebanon, and won’t withdraw unless Hezbollah disarms. But the Iran-backed group says it won’t stop attacking Israeli positions until Israel withdraws. “The result has been a stand-off.”

Hezbollah is “waiting for a cue from Iran, which in turn depends on how Iran’s talks with the US go”, Michael Young, of the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Centre in Beirut, told The Times. “If Iran emerges stronger from its clash with the US, Hezbollah will feel reinvigorated.” They will “be able to say they resisted and claim victory”. Meanwhile, Israel will be trying “to torpedo any deal”.

Washington is “pressuring” Lebanon’s leaders to disarm Hezbollah or else “face more Gaza-style destruction”, said Rami G. Khouri, a policy analyst at the American University of Beirut, in Al Jazeera. It has also “tied financial support” for the country’s reconstruction to “Beirut’s compliance with US-Israeli terms”. The Lebanese government faces “a disgruntled, deeply impoverished population, exasperated by relentless Israeli attacks”.

April’s ceasefire agreement heralded “weakened US-Israeli positions in the region”, as well as dealing “deep political blows” to Netanyahu and gifting “new diplomatic leverage” to Iran and Hezbollah. Having survived their “existential” battles and now pressing for permanent ceasefires, they could “weaken Israeli postures and help reshape Lebanon’s internal dynamics”.

“But far-right members of Netanyahu’s coalition are pushing him to challenge” Donald Trump on the “ceasefire with Hezbollah”, said The Guardian’s chief Middle East correspondent, Emma Graham-Harrison. “It is time for the prime minister to bang on Trump’s table and inform him that we are returning to war in Lebanon,” said Itamar Ben-Gvir, the national security minister, on social media. “There is an urgent need to put an end to the threat posed by Hezbollah’s explosive drones,” the finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, posted on Telegram. Hezbollah has “ignored repeated requests to stop firing at Israel”, a US official told Reuters. Israel will never “​passively absorb attacks on its forces and civilians”.

But Tehran won’t accept such attacks on its proxy, either, Danny Citrinowicz, a Middle East expert at the Atlantic Council, told The New Yorker. Lebanon is of “real strategic importance” to Iran; Hezbollah is “a vital element” of its “so-called Axis of Resistance”. So Trump “has a mountain to climb”. If he wants an agreement with Iran, he will have to “force Netanyahu’s hand on Lebanon”.

What next?

On Friday, delegations from Israel and Lebanon will meet for direct talks in the US, in preparation for further negotiations on 2 and 3 June.

The shaky US-Iran ceasefire, meanwhile, is under increasing strain: Iran has said US strikes near the Strait of Hormuz on Monday were a “gross violation”, and validated its “deep suspicion”. The US said its attacks were “defensive”.

But “even if Lebanon is part of a US-Iran peace deal, the Lebanese people will be wary”, said Kington in The Times. After all, April’s Pakistan-brokered ceasefire between the US, Israel and Iran, supposedly included Lebanon – but Israel “denied this was the case and launched 100 attacks in a few minutes”.

Donald Trump’s claim that the US and Iran are closing in on a peace deal has already been met with widespread criticism within his own Republican party.

The details haven’t been made public but Iran is said to have agreed to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, without charging tolls, and dispose of its stockpile of highly enriched uranium. In return, the US would cease hostilities, unfreeze billions of dollars of assets, and gradually remove economic sanctions.

But Republican Senator Ted Cruz said it would be a “disastrous mistake” to leave Iran “able to enrich uranium and develop nuclear weapons, and having effective control over the Strait of Hormuz”. And Senator Roger Wicker, chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, warned that the emerging deal “would not be worth the paper it is written on”.

What did the commentators say?

The “grim reality” is that, by closing the Strait of Hormuz, Iran has “leverage” over peace talks, said the Financial Times’ chief foreign affairs columnist Gideon Rachman. And now the US seems poised to agree to a deal that “threatens to leave Iran in a stronger position than before the war began”. Trump likes to “deride” the nuclear non-proliferation agreement that Barack Obama negotiated with Iran in 2015, but this looks in many ways “worse”. Perhaps the US president “should have reread” his book, “The Art of the Deal”.

Eli Groner, a former director-general of Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, said Iran’s knowledge that it can now close the Strait of Hormuz at any point “is a victory far deeper and more strategic than any point-scoring military achievement”. His summary? “Disaster.”

The framework of the deal described by US officials would be “a series of compromises, well short of the capitulation that Trump sought”, said David Ignatius in The Washington Post. Iran hasn’t accepted his demand that its highly enriched uranium be delivered to the West, nor has it agreed to give up its “right to enrich” in the future. But Trump “doesn’t appear to have any better options” to escape what has become “a military morass and a strategic dead end”. Tehran “can claim victory simply by having survived” the US assault.

Some Republicans are arguing that “peace could bring a pay-off for voters” by lowering petrol prices and easing inflation as oil tankers start to move through the Strait of Hormuz again, said CNN’s Stephen Collinson. But recovery from the strait’s closure will take time and won’t “immediately improve global economic prospects or affordability in the US”. Trump “can’t win politically”: given that a majority of Americans oppose the war, he would face a huge “backlash if he ordered new strikes”.

There’s no way to spin this humiliating “catastrophe”, Middle East expert Danny Citrinowicz, a fellow at the Atlantic Council, told The New Yorker. Rather than toppling the Iranian regime, the US and Israel have “ended up strengthening” it. It’s hard to imagine Tehran will just “give up its nuclear material” – to Trump or anyone else – because “they’re so much in the driver’s seat” here. Iran is already rebuilding its missile capacity and still has most of its launchers. Now we have “a more radicalised regime that can rush into a nuclear bomb and still have a conventional missile capacity. It’s a shit show.”

What next?

We have “reached a conclusion on a large portion of the issues under discussion”, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Esmail Baqai told a news conference in Tehran yesterday. “But to say that this means the signing of an agreement is imminent – no one can make such a claim.” The two sides were not discussing Iran’s nuclear programme “at this stage”, he added.

This is “not a final settlement”, said the BBC; this “memorandum of understanding” seems simply to involve a 60-day extension of the ceasefire and a plan for further negotiations on “some of the thorniest issues”, including the nuclear one. That timeline seems “rather compressed, given the complexity of the issues”, said CNN’s Collinson. “History shows Iran would love to drag the United States into a prolonged period of inconclusive diplomacy that lasts months or years.”

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

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

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

What did the commentators say?

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

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

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

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

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

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

What next?

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

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

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

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

What did the commentators say?

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

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

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

What next?

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

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

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

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

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

What did the commentators say?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What next?

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

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

What did the commentators say?

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

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

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

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

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

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

What next?

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

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

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

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

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

What did the commentators say?

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

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

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

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

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

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

What next?

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

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

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

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

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

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

What did the commentators say?

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

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

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

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

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

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

What next?

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

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

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

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

What did the commentators say?

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

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

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

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

What next?

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

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

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

What did the commentators say?

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

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

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

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

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

What next?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What did the commentators say?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What next?

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

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

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

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

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

What did the commentators say?

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

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

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

What next?

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

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

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

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

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

What did the commentators say?

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

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

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

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

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

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

What next?

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

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

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

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

What did the commentators say?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What next?

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

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

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

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

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

What did the commentators say?

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

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

What next?

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

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

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

What did the commentators say?

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

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

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

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

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

What next?

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

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

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

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

What did the commentators say? 

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

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

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

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

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

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

What next?

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

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

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

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

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

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

What did the commentators say?

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

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

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

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

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

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

What next?

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

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

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

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

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

What did the commentators say?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What next?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What did the commentators say?

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

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

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

What next?

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

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

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

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

What did the commentators say?

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

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

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

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

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

What next?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What did the commentators say?

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

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

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

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

What next?

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

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

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

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

What did the commentators say?

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

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

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

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

What next?

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

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

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

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

What did the commentators say?

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

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

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

What next?

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

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

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

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

What did the commentators say?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What next?

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

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

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

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

What did the commentators say?

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

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

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

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

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

What next?

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

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

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

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

What did the commentators say?

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

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

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

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

What next?

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

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

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

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

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

What did the commentators say?

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

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

What next?

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

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