Things are very difficult in Cuba. Since February, the country’s power grid has suffered three nationwide blackouts: there is currently electricity for two hours a day at most in Havana, and less in rural areas. Mains water works roughly every other day. The average monthly wage, in real terms, is under US$20. Food production has fallen drastically; shortages are common. Petrol is prohibitively expensive. Cuba’s once-impressive healthcare and education systems are in tatters.

Tourism – the island’s main economic lifeline – was down 58% in the first five months of 2026 compared with the year before. Long-haul flights there have stopped because they can’t refuel. Mosquito-borne diseases such as dengue fever and chikungunya have staged a comeback, and the UN reported last month that child mortality has risen sharply. An estimated fifth of the population has left since 2021.

Why is this happening?

Cubans have endured decades of mismanagement from their own communist government, along with economic warfare from the US – but the past few years have been particularly harsh. Cuba invested heavily in tourism and underinvested in healthcare during the 2010s, only to see both sectors heavily impacted by the Covid pandemic. Miguel Díaz-Canel, who in 2021 became the nation’s first leader not from the Castro family since 1959, ordered a crackdown that year on the largest wave of protests seen for decades.

But the main cause of the present trouble is a US oil blockade, which began in January – the biggest such action since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. Trump at the same time issued an executive order designating Cuba a national security threat – and called on Cuba’s leaders to “make a deal before it is too late”.

Why does the US think Cuba is a national security threat?

It didn’t offer specific reasons beyond Cuba’s alliances with Russia and China, along with claims that it “destabilises the region through migration and violence”. Cuba’s communist regime has historically been a bugbear for the US, particularly for Republicans. And Trump’s Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, a son of Cuban immigrants, favours regime change.

But the timing suggests that the decision to tighten the screws was inspired by the successful US action against Venezuela on 3 January – and, more broadly, by Trump’s desire to assert US primacy in the western hemisphere. In March, the president told reporters he believed he’d have “the honour of taking Cuba... I think I can do anything I want with it.”

What’s Venezuela’s role in this?

Venezuela became Cuba’s main regional ally in 1999, when Hugo Chávez’s left-wing government began supplying Fidel Castro with cheap oil. The alliance continued under Chávez’s successor, Nicolás Maduro, and until this year, 75% of its oil imports came from Venezuela and Mexico. But after seizing Maduro in January, killing 32 Cuban security personnel in the process, the US made Venezuela cut off Cuban oil supplies; Mexico did the same under the threat of tariffs. The island requires around 100,000 barrels of oil per day for its power stations and infrastructure to function; since January, episodic shipments have only given short-term relief.

It now seems that the Trump administration is looking for a similar outcome to Venezuela: sources told The Wall Street Journal they were aiming for regime change by the end of 2026.

What are the US demands?

They haven’t shared them in public, though the Cuban government confirmed in March that talks were taking place. Trump’s previous actions suggest that his definition of regime change is flexible. In Venezuela, the US left Maduro’s government in place under the control of his deputy, Delcy Rodríguez; the country was forced to open up its oil and mining to US investors, but not to democratise. In the case of Iran, similarly, Trump has shown himself willing to treat a change of personnel at the top as regime change. The Cuban leadership may feel they have some wiggle room; in June it announced a package of 176 free-market reforms in an effort to placate the US. But there are big obstacles to a political settlement on both sides.

Why might a deal be difficult?

A law from 1996 prohibits the US from recognising any Cuban government that includes Raúl Castro, Fidel’s brother, who is still, aged 95, a major figure in Cuban politics. Florida’s Cuban-American community, a key part of Trump’s voter coalition, would also object to any deal that did not mean the end of the regime. The US might settle for custody of Castro, who was indicted this May by a Florida grand jury for his part in shooting down two planes belonging to a Cuban exile group in 1996.

But the Cubans are unlikely to agree to that, and there is no plausible opposition party or Delcy Rodríguez-like figure to deal with – though Raúl Castro’s grandson, Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, a reputed playboy who’s close to the Cuban military’s wealthy holding company, is said to have been auditioning for the role.

What if there’s no deal?

An American invasion looks unlikely: Trump is clearly wary of that level of commitment, and has his hands full trying to extricate himself from his “excursion” in Iran. Cuba’s military isn’t the fighting force it used to be, but the country has been resisting US pressure since 1962, and it’s difficult to see the Cuban elite colluding – as some of Venezuela’s did – with a theatrical special-forces raid on Raúl Castro or Díaz-Canel. Castro’s age may be the best hope for a solution, but Cuba has been a one-party state for generations, and with the Trump administration on the opposite side, any transition is likely to be messy.

From the point of view of ordinary Cubans, however, something has to give. “Living like this is agony,” Meyboll Font, a 51-year-old Havana resident, told Agence France-Presse last week.

Many had written off Marine Le Pen, said Katya Adler on BBC News. They thought the de facto leader of the far-right National Rally (RN) had run out of political road after being convicted in March 2025 of helping to embezzle more than €4 million in EU parliamentary funds, which the RN diverted to pay for its own staff.

And since her punishments include a five-year ban from holding office, it seemed likely that her charismatic 30-year-old protégé, Jordan Bardella, would have to take her place in the 2027 presidential election.

But Le Pen has a habit of defying the odds. And so it proved last week, when the Court of Appeal confirmed her conviction, but reduced her period of ineligibility to 15 months, allowing her to compete next April.

‘Risky gamble’

There was one large caveat, however: she would have to wear an ankle tag for 12 months as part of her three-year jail sentence, two of which are suspended. This made some doubt that she’d run. But just six hours after the ruling, Le Pen “came out swinging”. In a TV interview, she said yes, she would run for president, and no, she wouldn’t have to wear a tag, at least not until the Court of Cassation has ruled on her final appeal. Ever defiant, she has styled herself as “a phoenix rising from the ashes”.

Barring Le Pen from standing would have had “devastating consequences” for French democracy, said Jean-Éric Schoettl in Le Figaro (Paris). True, she has been convicted of wrongdoing, but even so, it should be left to the French people to decide whether they want her as president or not.

The judgment was a tightrope act, said Olivier Beaud in Le Monde (Paris). By reducing Le Pen’s sentence and letting her stand, the court has freed the judiciary from accusations of political meddling. But at the same time – and this is the really important point – it has upheld her conviction for a grave criminal offence.

Le Pen is not out of the woods by any stretch, said Julien Lécuyer in La Voix du Nord (Lille). Her “risky gamble” could backfire. The Court of Cassation has now said that it will rule on her case at some point before the election. If it upholds last week’s verdict, Le Pen could, in theory, be forced to wear an ankle tag on the campaign trail. Such physical proof of her criminality would be a godsend to her rivals.

Wingman Bardella

The RN is currently well ahead in the polls, said The Economist (London), but its path to the Élysée Palace faces pitfalls beyond the legal saga. One is the potential for infighting. Until his mentor’s sudden reprieve, the highly popular Bardella had assumed he was going to be the RN’s presidential candidate. So he has been pushing his own vision of the path the RN should follow, a path which differs from Le Pen’s. Being a more business-friendly politician, he balks at her plan to reduce the pension age for some workers to 60. Such differences will “inevitably strain” their relationship in the coming months, for all that Le Pen insists they are united.

Yet the truth is she cannot win without him, said Clea Caulcutt on Politico (Brussels). In what was “either a stroke of genius or a sign of desperation”, she had him constantly at her side last week. She was “all smiles” at the RN rally in La Flèche; he was “more stone-faced”, as if “adjusting to his new role as wingman”.

Le Pen’s candidacy sheds light on the “true nature” of the RN, said Le Monde. It’s a family concern. A Le Pen has stood in all but one election since 1972, the year her late father Jean-Marie founded what was then called the National Front. And the family retains its tight grip: Le Pen’s niece is her comms director; her brother-in-law is her main adviser.

The only thing different about the party today is Le Pen’s double conviction, which exposes the rot at the heart of it. So much for the RN’s old slogan “Clean hands and head held high”; so much for Le Pen’s 2013 proposal to give lifetime bans to politicians guilty of embezzlement. The RN poses a “serious threat” to France, and its opponents must wake up before it’s too late.

“I’m sorry. but I’m unable to speak.”

Surrounded by concerned medics and supporters in Delhi, 59-year-old Sonam Wangchuk entered the 20th day of his hunger strike, scarcely able to move unaided.

Usually in the headlines for his climate activism, Wangchuk is “adding momentum” to youth-led protests on behalf of Indian students, said The New York Times. Instigated by the “joke” organisation the Cockroach Janta Party, the protest began after India cancelled its national medical college entrance exams following the questions being leaked. They demand “the reform of a soul-destroying education system”, said The Guardian as well as the resignation of the education minister, Dharmendra Pradhan.

‘Severe starvation’

Wangchuk is “one of India’s best-known public figures outside mainstream politics”, said The Independent. A mechanical engineer from Ladakh – a mountainous region in the Himalayas – he has dedicated decades to educational reform and creating sustainable technologies for mountain communities.

The most famous of his innovations is the “ice stupa”, which acts like an “artificial glacier” that stores water from the winter and is then used during the farming season in the spring. In 2018 he received the Ramon Magsaysay Award, “often described as Asia’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize”. His involvement in this movement has “transformed” a student-led protest into a “national issue, attracting politicians, academics, activists and public figures from across India”.

In his 20 days on hunger strike, Wangchuk has lost close to 9kg “from a body that was spare and lean to begin with”, said The Guardian. Doctors have warned that at this stage of “severe starvation” his body is breaking down fat and muscle, leaving him in a state of “extreme weakness, impaired brain function and electrolyte imbalance”. He is unable to walk to the bathroom 30 metres away without support and “speaks little to conserve energy”. But as crowds chant his name, he still appears “alert” and “calm”.

However, the weather is becoming a “defining feature of the protest”. As temperatures reach 37C, sweat “pours down” the faces of those in attendance, leaving clothes “drenched” and supporters “hot and bothered”. “A useless fan by his mattress does nothing to relieve the suffocating humidity.” Concern for his condition is “mounting”.

‘Defiant yet humorous’

More than 1,800 public figures have signed a statement urging Wangchuk to stop his strike, which he has “firmly rebuffed”, said India Today.

As a “first step” to potentially stopping his hunger strike, Wangchuk is demanding “accountability for the failures” of the education department, including reports that some students had taken their lives after the exam cancellation. He and his supporters have also demanded the resignation of education minister Dharmendra Pradhan, who has called the CJP protestors “the B-team of disruptive elements”. Organisers say they have received no formal response from Narendra Modi’s government.

A petition has been filed in the high court that would seek to “take him to a government hospital and force-feed him”, should his condition worsen, said the BBC. The document said the government was treating Wangchuk “like a hardcore criminal, terrorist or traitor to the nation” and was not concerned for his safety. On Thursday, the government responded by informing the Delhi High Court that it would “intervene if his health deteriorated”, said the outlet.

Wangchuk is continuing to strike a “defiant yet humorous note” despite his deteriorating health, said The Times of India. Addressing supporters, he said he would “stay alive by any means until July 20 so that I can march to Parliament with all of you” the date when the next parliamentary session begins. “If our march isn't successful by July 20, I'll come back as a ghost!”

Donald Trump used a prime-time address to the nation to allege Chinese interference in US elections in a move that looks to undermine voter confidence ahead of November’s midterms.

The White House released documents alleging that “over a period of years, starting during the 2020 election cycle” the Chinese government carried out “what is believed to be the largest compromise of election data in history, resulting in China’s illicit acquisition of 220 million US voter files”. Trump did not make clear, though, how the alleged Chinese activity could have helped Joe Biden win the 2020 presidential election.

“Raw intelligence obtained by the FBI in 2020, yet buried by rogue bureaucrats, stated that China's activities even included an attempt to manufacture illegal ballots for Joe Biden,” Trump said.

While China has denied the allegations, “none of the declassified information supports the claim that any previous election results – including the 2020 presidential contest that Trump lost – were manipulated by foreign interference or fraud in a way that would’ve changed the outcome”, said Marshall Cohen and Kevin Liptak on CNN.

What did the commentators say?

The speech “marked a striking effort by Trump to marshal the resources of the intelligence community to support his claims about election meddling and legislative agenda to tighten voter registration rules”, said Lauren Fedor in the Financial Times.

It’s true that “foreign powers do, in fact, try to influence American elections”, said Tom Nichols in The Atlantic. But that “was about all that the president – who seems shocked that other nations have preferences about who wins elected office in the United States – got right”.

The classified revelations, despite what Trump tried to claim, in fact “show that the intelligence community didn’t even agree” that China was fully engaged even in a more limited campaign of influence.

In his address Trump was plainly looking “to soothe his wounded ego over the 2020 election”. But he also might have “a darker motive”. In “attacking the integrity of American elections”, Trump could be seeking to delegitimise the upcoming midterms “and perhaps even create the predicate for interfering in them”.

In his address, Trump has “destroyed any confidence in the integrity of US elections for Americans inclined to believe him”, said Ed Kilgore in New York Magazine. In doing so he has set up “a certain challenge to any midterm results adverse to his party”. When Republicans “desperately needed him to make concrete proposals for improvements in living costs”, Trump instead “dragged the GOP down the election denial rabbit hole farther than ever”.

What next?

Republican politicians who would like the president to focus on the cost of living “have been wary of Trump’s unrelenting claims about flaws in the electoral system”, said the FT.

Senate majority leader John Thune “has resisted pressure from the White House to scrap Senate rules” in an effort by Trump to push through the Save America Act. This would require proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections, among other measures.

The accusations Trump made could also “complicate a fragile trade truce between the US and China”, said CNBC, while also “casting a shadow over Chinese President Xi Jinping upcoming visit to Washington” in late September.

A succession of contenders has tried to depose Benjamin Netanyahu, who has led Israel nearly uninterrupted since 2009, and now, a man who “lost his son in Gaza” is “coming for” the veteran, said The Telegraph.

Gadi Eisenkot has been described as a “stocky newcomer“ and a “teddy bear with a steel spine”. Israeli politics is a complex web but if the pundits and polls are correct, he could also be described as “prime minister“ by the end of October.

Working-class roots

He was “born into the Israeli working class” from which the right-wing Likud has “traditionally garnered so much support”, said the broadsheet. He was one of nine children in a Jewish family of Moroccan descent, part of a “historically marginalised minority” in Israel, said the Times of Israel.

He joined the military as a private soldier in the Golani infantry brigade and became the most senior officer. His “most controversial moment” came in 2016 when a combat medic killed a Palestinian terrorist who had already been wounded and didn’t pose a threat. In a “politically charged tribunal”, the Israeli military, backed by Eisenkot, tried and convicted the medic for manslaughter.

After retiring from the military, he entered politics in 2022, and briefly held a role in Netanyahu’s coalition, before forming his own party Yashar, which means “honest” in Hebrew.

His youngest son, Gal, 25, was killed in Gaza in 2023. He also lost two nephews during the invasion that followed the 7 October attacks.

Dangerous challenger 

He has “emerged as the most dangerous challenger” to the “veteran” prime minister after his party became the largest in the opposition bloc hoping to replace Netanyahu ahead of elections which will take place by 27 October.

A poll in the Maariv newspaper, put Eisenkot ahead of Netanyahu for the first time, another found that 41% of voters thought Eisenkot would make a more suitable prime minister, against 40% for Netanyahu.

A razor-thin lead but commentators “increasingly believe” that he “could be the one” to break Netanyahu’s “voodoo-like grip” on the premiership with an attack from the “security-orientated centre”.

His “lack of showmanship” gives many the impression he would be an “authentic” and “strategic” leader. Dr Maoz Rosenthal, a Jerusalem-based political analyst, told The Telegraph that “many” of those who are “fed up” with Netanyahu “kind-of like this old general” who “hesitates before he speaks” and who “wants to be sure of what comes out of his mouth”.

Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, the spiritual leader of the ultra-Orthodox Shas Party and an influential figure in Israeli politics, suggested that Shas could “be open” to joining a government led by Eisenkot, said the Jerusalem Post.

“We are in a secular country ... There are those whom I don’t believe will repent,” said Yosef in a filmed speech. “There’s no chance [Netanyahu] will repent. Eisenkot might repent”.

Florida has executed the oldest prisoner in its history, the latest in a spate of capital punishments against elderly death-row inmates.

Dennis Sochor was 74 when he was pronounced dead on Tuesday. He was convicted of killing Patricia Gifford in 1982, hours after meeting the 18-year-old at a party. The US Supreme Court rejected his final appeal without comment, said The Guardian.

Sochor is the second of three Florida inmates over the age of 70 to be executed within five weeks. The executions have drawn attention to the ageing death-row population in the US, as well as Florida’s status as the foremost death penalty state.

A spate of executions

Florida, known as the Sunshine State, is considered “a mecca for senior citizens”, said The Hill. But it has shown “no compunction about carrying out executions of elderly death-row inmates”.

In October last year, Florida executed 72-year-old Samuel Lee Smithers for the 1996 killings of two women. He was the oldest person to be executed in the state since the US reinstated the death penalty in 1976. Last month, Dusty Ray Spencer, just a week younger than Sochor, died by lethal injection. The 74-year-old had been convicted of stabbing his wife to death in 1992.

Florida is also preparing to execute its first octogenarian later this month. Dominick Anthony Occhicone, who killed his ex-girlfriend’s parents in 1986, turns 81 next month, after his scheduled execution. If his execution goes ahead, he’ll be the second-oldest known inmate put to death in modern US history, after 83-year-old Walter Leroy Moody Jr. in 2018.

Florida has carried out 10 executions this year, more than all other US states combined. Unlike many states, in Florida the state governor has “practically sole discretion” when it comes to deciding whether, and when, the death penalty is applied, said The Associated Press. About half of its 242 death-row inmates have “exhausted their appeals” and could see their death warrant issued at any time. Three of them, not including Occhione, are over 80.

A rapid acceleration

Donald Trump is one of the death penalty’s “most outspoken champions, making it a cornerstone” of his agenda, said The New York Times. And “nowhere has the president’s vision been pursued more relentlessly than in Florida”, thanks to the “unusual concentration of power” in the office of Republican governor Ron DeSantis. In 2025, a record 19 of the 47 executions that took place in the US were in Florida: more than under any other Florida governor since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976 after a four-year nationwide moratorium.

DeSantis has “offered little public explanation” for this acceleration, after “years of relative inactivity”. The governor “makes execution decisions behind closed doors”, so there is “no way to know what criteria” he uses. “He could be deciding who is next to die by throwing darts at a list of names,” said Maria DeLiberato, attorney with the ACLU’s Capital Punishment Project, “or spinning a roulette wheel.”

But Florida isn’t the only state “killing the old and infirm”, said The Hill. Death rows across the US are “filled with old people”. And more are being executed than in the past. The average age of inmates executed in the US has increased from 36 in 1977 to 52.3 in 2024, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

The ageing population also creates new challenges for the penal system, with inmates who have spent decades on death row “sometimes developing medical conditions that can complicate efforts to execute them”, said the AP. Occhicone, the 80-year-old facing execution later this month, has multiple health problems and “needs help getting in and out of the shower”.

Some question “the humanity of administering capital punishment” to prisoners who might soon die naturally. For others, it shows how “lengthy appeals” and reviews designed to prevent an innocent person being executed “can also delay justice”.

Australia and Fiji have agreed a new defence alliance, the latest in a series of regional pacts that could significantly alter the Pacific’s defence landscape.

In a “surprise move”, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his Fijian counterpart, Sitiveni Rabuka, elevated diplomatic ties between the two countries to a “formal treaty”, said The Guardian. The Ocean of Peace alliance, which will in the future be open to other Pacific nations to join, aims to bolster regional security and “limit China’s influence”.

The Vuvale Union

For 75 years, Australia had just two formal alliances – with the US and New Zealand under the ANZUS Treaty, signed in 1951. But recently, it has been “racing to shore up defence ties with its Pacific neighbours”, said the BBC, to counter China’s “military expansion”.

In October, Canberra signed a defence deal with Papua New Guinea – the most populous South Pacific nation – granting it access to PNG’s military facilities and troops.

At the end of June, after “months of negotiations”, Albanese also signed Australia’s long-awaited treaty with the South Pacific island of Vanuatu. Called the Nakamal Agreement, it “recognises Australia as Vanuatu’s primary policing partner”, and prevents any other nation from establishing a military base there.

The latest Australia-Fiji pact, the Vuvale Union, is more significant than previous deals because it includes a mutual defence agreement, committing each country to come to the other’s aid should there be the threat of an armed attack. It also offers closer military cooperation, including planning, exercises and intelligence sharing.

It is open for other Pacific nations to join, although at first Australia would “likely only look to extend the treaty to Pacific nations which maintain a standing military”, said ABC News: New Zealand, PNG and Tonga.

New Zealand will consider joining, Prime Minister Christopher ‌Luxon said on Thursday. The country has only one formal ally, Australia ​, although it is part of the Five Eyes intelligence sharing group (Australia, UK, US and Canada are the others) and it is “a key partner of Nato”, said Reuters.

Has Fiji picked a side?

China has “sharply criticised” some of Australia’s recent agreements, accusing Canberra of using them as a “geopolitical tool” to keep Beijing out of the Pacific, said ABC News. But Rabuka said he did not believe that either Australia or Fiji would have to deal with “severe pushback” from China, but that they will “welcome the understanding that is between Australia and Fiji", he said.

Those remarks were “telling”, said The Conversation. Rabuka stressed that the alliance threatens neither country’s relationship with Beijing, but a leader “does not repeatedly reassure a country that a treaty is not aimed at it unless everyone understands it is”, and is to some degree a sign to the region to see whether “Fiji has picked a side”.

Hours after the pact was signed, China test-launched a long-range ballistic missile with a dummy warhead into the Pacific Ocean. Beijing described it as “routine”, part of the country’s annual programme, but the launch provoked an angry response in Canberra, which accused China of destabilising the region. Ultimately, the test “underscored the need for Pacific Island countries to collectively think through their defence and security arrangements”.

President Donald Trump may continue his rhetoric against Greenland, but a different Arctic land 1,200 miles away, Svalbard, faces similar pressure from other countries. With increasing influence from China and Russia, the Norwegian territory could end up playing an outsize role in global affairs.

What’s happening in Svalbard?

The island is subject to a 1920 treaty that allows people from 49 nations to live and work there without a visa, largely for scientific research. Svalbard has since become the “planet’s leading hub of Arctic science and a rare site of international cooperation,” but this also collides with “increasingly fractured international relations and countries’ quest for influence in the fast-warming Arctic,” said CNN.

China and Russia have been working in Svalbard and established research stations that “provide a gateway to Arctic influence,” said CNN. Due to its abundant natural resources, Svalbard has become a “pawn on Russia’s chessboard,” said France24. And Russia hopes that controlling more of Svalbard will allow it to dominate the nearby Bear Gap, one of the “key maritime routes through which Russian naval vessels and submarines can move from their Arctic bases into the North Atlantic,” said Al Jazeera.

China’s hold on Svalbard is not as strong as Russia’s, but it still maintains a presence. In the nation’s 2018 strategy outline for the Arctic, China “called itself a ‘near-Arctic state’ and repeatedly referred to Svalbard,” said CNN. The country also has “plans for a ‘polar silk road,’ an infrastructure and shipping corridor across the top of the world.” China also has several research stations in Svalbard, including a major testing station on Spitsbergen, Svalbard’s only permanently populated area.

What’s next for Svalbard?

Some are worried that Svalbard’s use by other countries will embolden authoritarianism, as Russia and China will “likely work toward common ends in the development of future Arctic governance,” said The Arctic Institute. Norway’s response “may determine if Svalbard maintains its status as an international research hub or becomes defined by its importance in global trade and military security.” Norway also has its own plan to “mine a huge stretch of Arctic seabed around Svalbard and beyond for critical minerals.”

When it comes to war, the 1920 treaty “prohibits the construction of military bases and fortifications” on Svalbard. However, the article in the treaty that prohibits this is only one sentence and states Svalbard cannot be “used for ‘warlike purposes,’ leaving much room for interpretation,” said The Arctic Institute. Russia has recently been using Svalbard as a “gray zone” for military testing, and the “utilization of these methods is becoming more concentrated on Svalbard as the Arctic Circle captures evermore geopolitical attention.”

Norway seems to be pushing back against Chinese and Russian provocation. In 2022, the government “changed voting rules to prevent non-Norwegians from voting” in Longyearbyen, the capital of Svalbard, said CNN.

And some of the pushback has also been symbolic. This year, two granite Chinese lions were removed from the research station on Spitsbergen. There’s “no Chinese research station on Svalbard,” said Eivind Vad Petersson, the state secretary in the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to CNN. There’s a “Norwegian research station with Chinese tenants. That’s a distinction with a difference.”

What happened

China on Tuesday reported “one of its lowest quarterly growth rates in decades,” the Financial Times said. From April to June, the world’s second-largest economy grew just 4.3% compared to the same period last year — below economists’ projections of 4.5% and down from 5% growth in the first quarter.

Who said what

This is a “rare admission of economic weakness for China,” CNN said. Despite “surging exports buoyed by the AI boom,” the country still faces a “weak domestic economy and sluggish consumer spending,” The Wall Street Journal said. “Tensions with trade partners, including the U.S. and the European Union,” also remain, CNBC said. Focusing heavily on exports while domestic demand falters is “really quite unsustainable, to be frank,” Alicia Garcia-Herrero, an economist with financial firm Natixis, told CNN.

What next?

Such “disappointing growth” is likely to fuel calls for government stimulus measures, “including a policy rate cut,” CNBC said. The ruling Communist Party’s policymaking body meets later this month and the “extent of the slowdown will likely dominate the agenda,” said Bloomberg.

There have been few global figures in the modern era as consequential as Donald Trump. Powerful as he may be, though, Trump does not exist in isolation.

Instead, he is part of an elite echelon of elected officials with whom he is obliged to interact in the course of global business. After a decade of cutting deals, upending relations and generally maneuvering himself to the center of the world stage, here are some of the ways Trump has talked about — and to — his international peers.

Former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad

“President Putin, Russia and Iran are responsible for backing Animal Assad.” — April 2018

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney

“The future governor of Canada.” — March 2026

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi

“My favorite dictator.” — September 2019

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan

“Don’t be a tough guy. Don’t be a fool!” — October 2019

“He’s a hell of a leader.” — October 2019

“Sometimes you get along with the toughest people, like him.” — July 2026

Chinese President Xi Jinping

“We’ve become friends.” — June 2019

“I don’t want to say friend — I don’t want to act foolish, ‘he was my friend’ — but I got along with him great.” — October 2024

“He’s a brilliant guy, whether you like it or not.” — October 2024

“A friend.” — May 2026

Former Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei

“One of the most evil people in history.” — February 2026

Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni

“A very successful, very successful politician.” — October 2025

“Do people like her? I can’t imagine. I’m shocked by her. I thought she was brave, but I was wrong.” — April 2026

“It’s her who’s unacceptable.” — April 2026

Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel

“Stupid.” — Unknown 2020

“That bitch, Merkel.” — Unknown 2020

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Israel’s “Warrior Prime Minister.” — June 2026

“Crazy.” — June 2026

“He has no f**king judgement.” — June 2026

Former Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador

“Juan Trump.” — July 2019

Russian President Vladimir Putin

A “competitor” who is “not an enemy.” — July 2018

“Great guy” and a “terrific person.” — June 2019

A “genius” who is “pretty savvy.” — February 2022

“Absolutely CRAZY!” — May 2025

“I don’t know what the hell happened to Putin.” — May 2025

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte

A “great leader.” — July 2026

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer

“This is not Winston Churchill that we’re dealing with.” — March 2026

Former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

“He’s two-faced.” — December 2019

“It was a pleasure to have dinner the other night with Governor Justin Trudeau of the Great State of Canada.” — December 2024

North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un

“This maniac sitting here.” — September 2015

“Rocket man is on a suicide mission for himself and for his regime.” — September 2017

“Obviously a madman.” — September 2017

“I think you will have a tremendous future with your country, a great leader.” — February 2019

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy

“His reputation is absolutely sterling.” — September 2019

“Dictator without elections” who “better move fast or he is not going to have a country left.” — February 2025

“I’ve empowered you to be a tough guy, and I don’t think you’d be a tough guy without the United States.” — February 2025

A “difficult character.” — July 2026

“President Putin.” — July 2026

What happened

The price of oil has jumped nearly 10% following renewed violence in the Strait of Hormuz. Brent crude futures climbed to $83 a barrel Monday, marking the “largest daily percentage gain since May 2020,” The Wall Street Journal said. The U.S. military launched its third straight night of attacks against Iran Monday night; Iran responded by striking two United Arab Emirates tankers.

Who said what

The new attacks “signaled a return to open conflict” in the region less than a month after the two nations agreed to a ceasefire, The New York Times said. They follow President Donald Trump’s social media declaration that the U.S. is “reinstating THE IRANIAN BLOCKADE,” and will take over the strait, charging a 20% fee for secure passage. That would “be a major new tax on global energy flows and would drive up the cost of the world’s oil and gas,” The Washington Post said.

What next?

The blockade goes into effect Tuesday at 4 p.m. Eastern time. Oil markets are facing a new reality, the Journal said, as the Strait of Hormuz is “no longer expected to return to a prewar norm.”

When the 2028 Summer Olympics kick off in Los Angeles, a Russian team could be among the competitors for the first time in more than a decade. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has lifted its suspension of Russia’s Olympic organization, which had been in place since 2016. Many are angry at the prospect of Russia rejoining the international competition, especially amid its ongoing war with Ukraine.

What was the IOC’s decision?

The IOC “provisionally lifted the suspension of the Russian Olympic Committee that had been in effect” since October 2023, the group said in a statement, because it wanted to “ensure a fair opportunity for participation” by Russian athletes. The suspension is also being lifted because Russia is “no longer trying to claim regional sports organizations on Ukrainian soil” as part of the Russian Olympic Committee, said The Athletic. Russia must also abide by anti-doping measures since the country “systemically organized a doping program to pump up their athletes” during the 2014 Winter Games.

But there is also a “lack of confidence in the global sporting community relating to the return of Russian athletes to international competition,” the IOC acknowledged. As a result, the “decision in relation to the display of the Russian flag, anthem, colors or any identifications for the Olympic Games at the appropriate time” will be made in the future, said the IOC, as will any decisions on potentially hosting international events in Russia. Russian officials will also still not be invited to Olympic events.

Olympic officials have stated that they no longer want to punish Russian athletes for their country’s decision to invade Ukraine. “We wanted to ensure all athletes have the possibility to compete at the Olympic Games and not be held responsible for their government’s actions,” IOC President Kirsty Coventry said during a press conference. “But we’ve also been very clear that we do not condone any violence and war around the world.”

What does this mean for the 2028 Olympics?

The IOC’s decision represents a “significant step for bringing Russian athletes, who have struggled with their country’s pariah status on the world stage, back into the international fold after several years,” said The New York Times. The choice to potentially reintroduce Russia to the Olympics will be a “highly controversial decision by the IOC and one likely to be condemned by European countries in particular,” said the BBC.

But “many within the IOC were also mindful of the current geopolitical landscape, and accusations of double standards if the sanction against Russia was maintained, while other countries that have launched military action against other nations escape punishment,” said the BBC. Others say that Russia’s ban should only have ended when the country pulls out of Ukraine, and that allowing it in the 2028 Olympics “risks emboldening President Vladimir Putin and handing him a propaganda win.”

So while the IOC’s decision does mean Russia “could compete at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics,” said Politico, Russian participation in the games will not come without backlash, including from Ukraine. The IOC’s choice “sends a deeply concerning signal to the international community,” Ukraine’s foreign ministry said on X. “We also call on international sports federations to maintain the existing restrictions on representatives of the aggressor state, in line with their commitment to protecting the integrity and values of international sport.”

What happened

The U.S. military on Sunday night conducted a fresh wave of airstrikes against Iranian targets as retaliatory attacks between the two nations increase. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps claimed responsibility for attacks on a U.S. refueling facility at the Omani port of Duqm, as well as attacks on American bases in Qatar and Jordan. Tehran also said it had shut the Strait of Hormuz and struck commercial vessels transiting the strategic waterway. The latest exchange follows fresh U.S. airstrikes on 140 Iranian military targets.

Who said what

Iran accused the U.S. of undermining diplomatic efforts, saying American attacks had “rendered futile” recent negotiations. The two nations have “traded fire and recriminations,” said The New York Times. Both have accused the other of violating the terms of the ceasefire and “leaving the region suspended between war and peace.” As the war “heats up” again, CNN said, U.S. weapon stocks “remain significantly depleted,” risking the military’s “ability to fight” any “future war.”

What next?

In a televised statement, Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, who has not been seen since the Feb. 28 death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said that “vengeance” for his father’s killing “is the will of our nation and must certainly be carried out”.

Even though the United States and Iran are embroiled in war, a new lawsuit against the Trump administration is claiming that the two countries’ governments actually began working together last year — and jeopardized Iranian asylum seekers’ lives in the process. The White House has dismissed these claims, but those who filed the lawsuit are not backing down.

‘Confidential information’

The issue first arose in 2025 when the Trump administration “adopted a policy of providing” the Iranian government with “confidential information from the immigration files of Iranians seeking asylum in the United States,” according to the lawsuit filed by the Iranian American Legal Defense Fund (IALDF). Many of the asylum seekers whose information is allegedly being shared are people who “seek refuge in the United States because of the grave dangers they face in Iran,” such as pro-democracy activists and members of the LGBTQ+ community.

Disclosing the confidential information of these asylum seekers “violates federal regulations requiring confidentiality, endangers their family members and acquaintances who may still be residing in Iran, and puts those who are subject to removal to Iran at risk of persecution,” the IALDF said in a statement. The lawsuit is requesting that the court “order the U.S. government to stop sharing asylum-applicant information with the government of Iran.”

The allegations are based on accounts from “detainees who had been called into meetings with Iranian officials who seemed to already possess details from their U.S. immigration files,” Michael Kirkpatrick, a lawyer representing the Iranian fund, told The New York Times. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has denied any wrongdoing. DHS “provides illegal aliens the opportunity to contact their consular post and facilitates consular access to detained individuals, in accordance with applicable laws, regulations and agency policy,“ the department said in a statement.

‘Prohibit the government from sharing information’

The U.S. government is “allowed to work with government officials of foreign countries to coordinate deportation logistics,” said The Associated Press. But federal regulations generally “prohibit the government from sharing information that could reveal that the individual getting deported applied for asylum.” Congress “made these confidentiality protections mandatory precisely because lives depend on them, and no agency and no administration, of either party, may set them aside,” Ali Rahnama, the interim executive director of the IALDF, told the AP.

And while some may think that the conflict raging in the Middle East would have slowed the information sharing, the lawsuit “alleges that the Trump administration has continued to share confidential information during the current war between the U.S. and Iran,” said ABC News. Though the “in-person meetings reportedly stopped before the war began on Feb. 28,” the lawsuit claims the government continued to “mail or hand deliver document packages” to the Iranian Interests Section, which oversees the nation’s diplomatic duties in the U.S.

Some asylum-seeker data sharing may always occur, such as information on travel documents. What is “different here, though, is they are revealing information from the asylum applications, and that is a very specific category of information that is kept confidential,” Kirkpatrick said to NPR. The U.S. government “shouldn’t even reveal information from which one could infer that somebody had sought asylum.”

President Donald Trump and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy have never had what could feasibly be called a “warm” relationship, stretching back well into Trump’s first term. Given their frosty history, Trump’s enthusiasm during this week’s NATO summit for Ukraine’s recent wartime successes came as a shock to many. By announcing plans to loosen restrictions on American arms for Ukraine’s defense and hailing Kyiv’s wartime strides against Russia, has Trump come around to Zelenskyy as a peer among the world’s heads of state? Or will the infamously mercurial MAGA president revert to his previous hostility?

What did the commentators say?

Trump “heaped praise” on Zelenskyy and Ukraine during the NATO summit in Ankara, where he spoke in “unusually positive terms” about Kyiv’s strikes in deep Russian territory, said The Washington Post. By speaking in “admiring terms” and offering “dramatic new assistance” for Ukraine’s wartime efforts, Trump’s stance was a “dramatic departure from his tone during his first year in office.” Zelenskyy, meanwhile, spent his recent time with Trump showing “swagger and a hint of his prepresidential vocation as a popular Ukrainian comedian.” Trump and Zelenskyy “kindled a significant thaw in relations,” with the pair’s “bonhomie” signaling the “latest shift in a historically fraught relationship,” said The Hill.

Given that Trump has “zigged and zagged when it comes to Ukraine,” the president’s offer to grant Kyiv a Patriot missile manufacturing license is being “cheered” in Ukraine with a “heavy dose of caution,” said The New York Times. Similarly, Trump’s endorsement of Ukrainian deep drone strikes as an “escalation that could help end the war” marked his “strongest praise yet” for Zelenskyy’s wartime gains, and dealt a “significant blow to Russia’s efforts to keep Trump on its side in talks to end the war,” said The Wall Street Journal. Trump “always wants to be on the winning side,” said Viktor Shlinchak, the head of the Institute of World Policy, to the Times. “Right now, it does not look like Ukraine is losing.”

Following Trump’s push to grant Kyiv a manufacturing license for Patriot missiles, Zelenskyy at “times looked like he almost couldn’t believe his luck,” said CNN. Not only have the pair shared a “rocky relationship,” but the “flare-up in the war in Iran appeared to have put Trump into a foul mood” ahead of the meeting. But in a “break from earlier encounters” that “ended in acrimony,” Trump praised Zelenskyy’s “willingness to reach a deal” to end the ongoing violence, said NPR. “We’ve developed a good relationship — it’s even hard to believe — from the Oval Office until now,” said Trump at the summit meeting. “This will be the beginning, maybe, just the beginning.”

What next?

European leaders have “embraced the new messaging,” said the Post. “It’s so important” that Trump is “now taking very seriously that Ukraine has a chance” while Russia is “doing weaker,” said Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna, according to the outlet.

The unexpectedly friendly meeting between the two leaders “appeared to demonstrate the best-case scenario for Ukraine and its supporters among NATO members,” said The Hill. Many had worried that Trump’s “animosity toward the alliance” and “routine deference” to Russian President Vladimir Putin would “undermine support” for Kyiv and NATO.

Still, the language Trump used to promise Patriot manufacturing rights for Ukraine was “rather vague,” CNN said. The president “admitted that he had not yet discussed the issue” with arms manufacturers Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, which manufacture the missile batteries domestically. “We have Patriots, but we don’t have that many,” said Trump during his conversation with Zelenskyy. “We need them for ourselves, too.”

Even so, Zelenskyy was “emboldened by the good meeting” enough to joke that he couldn’t visit Moscow anytime soon because there are “too many Ukrainian drones there. It’s not safe,” said The Hill. Trump also appeared open to visiting Ukraine, but said he would rather the “war be over” before committing.

The supply of one of the world’s “hottest commodities” is suffering a “huge disruption”, said Javier Blas in Bloomberg: the “humble anchovy”. The tiny fish may sound “utterly mundane”, but it’s at “the bottom of a crucial supply chain”.

Anchovies are the main ingredient in fishmeal, used to feed farmed seafood like salmon and prawns. But a drop in the catch has caused global fishmeal production to plummet an estimated 40% in a year. Prices are now up 80% since last year to “an all-time high”, threatening a knock-on effect on the global aquaculture industry – and food prices. The culprit? This year’s El Niño.

The ‘Saudi Arabia’ of anchovies

Most of the tinned anchovies we buy in Britain come from Mediterranean fisheries. But fishmeal is primarily made with the South American species, anchoveta. Peru is “the Saudi Arabia of anchovies”, said Blas. Combined with Ecuador and Chile, the catch accounts for nearly a third of the world’s fishmeal production.

Around Peru, the “unusually warm waters” in the Pacific, linked to El Niño, have dramatically reduced the population, said The Times. The naturally occurring weather pattern “reduces the nutrient-rich upwellings on which the fish depend”.

“It’s easy to say, ‘Oh, well, anchovies, who cares? I don’t particularly like them,’” food economist Mike von Massow said on Global News. But they are “a critical part” of the global food supply chain. About two-thirds of the fish and seafood we consume is farmed using fishmeal.

Manufacturers are trying to substitute anchovies with plant-based proteins, like soy or insect protein. “The problem is the profile of that protein isn’t the same,” said Von Massow. It “changes the nutritional makeup of the feed”, and therefore, the fish that consume it. We can do “small degrees of replacement”, but yields are lower, with lower levels of omega-3. It’s not “the same kind of fish product”.

The interconnected supply chains

Peru has imposed increasingly severe restrictions on anchovy fishing this year to protect the remaining population and allow the stocks to recover. That has caused the “unprecedented surge” in the price of fishmeal, said The Times, as buyers “compete for dwindling supplies”. Producers are “trying to absorb” some of the hikes, but “analysts say the pressure is building”. The “real impact” will likely be felt “much higher up the food chain”, on supermarket favourites such as salmon. If shortages continue, companies “may have little choice but to pass on higher costs to retailers”.

Industry executives are “tight-lipped about how much prices could increase”, said Blas, but 20% to 25% seems a “reasonable expectation”. Once, this would have been “a first-world problem”. But since the last powerful El Niño in 1997-1998, the aquaculture industry has “exploded”. The average fish consumption per capita has also “jumped” to nearly double the levels of the 1990s. So fishmeal is “crucial”. And because El Niño typically “peaks” at the end of the year, the problem is “likely to get worse before it gets better”.

The “anchovy crisis” is a reminder of “the surprising ways in which the world is wired today”, in which weather in Peru can increase fish costs in European supermarkets. It’s also “a warning sign that El Niño will have significant impacts on global food prices – far greater than those from the war in Iran”.

Documents have emerged from “clandestine” meetings in 2023 between Russian and Chinese leaders over neutralising the threat of Elon Musk’s Starlink in Ukraine, while also revealing a growing military cooperation between the two allies.

The joint investigation by The Insider, Der Spiegel and Le Monde exposes China’s “professed neutrality” in Ukraine “as a fiction”, and poses questions about the nature and targets of their alliance.

What did the commentators say?

The China-Russia “no limits” alliance is “one of the world’s most consequential relationships”, said Brookings. The “biggest misconception”, said policy expert Patricia Kim, is that Russia and China are either “inseparable partners” or “inevitable rivals that are on the brink of a split”. Neither may be true, but the relationship is “stronger than it ever has been in decades, certainly since the post-Cold War period”.

The personal connection between Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin is at the heart of the relationship, said Ankur Shah, editor of the Global China Unit on the BBC. The “strongmen” have described each other as “best friends”, and have met more than 40 times. Economically, the alliance is highly uneven, with China being “Russia’s largest trading partner, while Russia makes up just 4% of China’s international trade”. But as leaders, Xi and Putin “do not pass judgement on the actions of the other”, and despite their “asymmetries and differences”, they “share vital interests”.

China is by far the dominant party of the pair, and intent on satisfying Xi's desire for a “Sino-centric world”, said The Economist. In the past three months, China has received visits from Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, both seeking economic stability while engaged in wars of their own making. Crucially, Putin left without assurances for the proposed gas pipeline “Power of Siberia 2” that would allow Russia to sell “50 billion cubic metres of gas annually” to China, which it can no longer supply to Europe. In the space of a matter of days, both at home and abroad, China appeared the singular “fulcrum of global geopolitics, dealing with America as an equal” and relegated Russia to a “junior partner”.

Current relations between Russia and China have been strengthened by the influence of Donald Trump, said Leonid Ragozin in Al Jazeera. The war in Iran has given a “powerful impetus to strengthening Russo-Chinese ties”, meaning China has become “reliant” on Russian oil, and in turn funded the Russian war effort in Ukraine.

Let’s also not forget that Trump had pledged to “un-unite” Russia and China before his second presidential term in 2024. However, his recent “ambivalent” stance in effect echoes the “counterproductive policies of his predecessors”. Trump is famous for his “short span of attention”, and “may not even remember” what he promised to achieve in Russia and China. “But of course, the latter two do remember it well.”

It is true policymakers “suffered from a failure of imagination over the past decade” towards the potential of a Russia-China alliance, said Christopher Walker in the Centre for European Policy Analysis. Yet there is also a “risk of overcorrecting”. There are limits, “important imbalances and points of friction in the Sino-Russian relationship”, highlighted by China’s inactivity following American intervention in Venezuela and Iran: they appear unwilling to “close ranks against external threats”.

On a fundamental level, the two nations lack the “dense institutional connective tissue” that could match Nato, acting in “parallel play” rather than with lasting cohesion.

What next?

Nato has already reacted, said Seong Hyeon Choi in the South China Morning Post. Following the summit in Ankara, the organisation unveiled defence initiatives in response to “security challenges posed by Russia and China”. These included a motion on raw materials and a new Drone Edge programme, investing “US$40 billion in the next five years” into expanding modern warfare.

“China continues to modernise its armed forces and expand its nuclear capabilities without transparency”, and “North Korea continues to expand its nuclear programme and supply Russia”, said Mark Rutte, Secretary General of NATO. These countries working together “should concern us all”, because they “do not have our best interests in mind”, he continued: “to meet the challenge, we need a transatlantic defence industrial revolution”.

Sara Duterte, vice president of the Philippines, has appeared in court to face impeachment proceedings in a trial that has brought long-standing political tensions to a head.

The 48-year-old daughter of former president Rodrigo Duterte is accused of corruption, bribery, misappropriating millions in government funds and threatening to have the current president, Ferdinand Marcos Jr, assassinated.

Duterte, who in 2024 became the first Philippine leader to face impeachment proceedings, denies the charges, calling them political harassment. The trial, which began on Monday, is the culmination of the fallout and feud between the Marcos and Duterte families, the country’s most powerful political dynasties.

Who are the Duterte and Marcos families?

Rodrigo Duterte ruled the Philippines with an iron fist from 2016 to 2022. In the 2022 election, Sara was the running mate of presidential candidate Marcos Jr, son of the dictator who ruled for 20 years before being deposed in 1986.

The two younger scions were “unstoppable”, said the BBC. The so-called “Tiger of the North” and “Eagle of the South” – in reference to the families’ geographical origins – were “seen as a dream team” and won a landslide. In the end, however, “there was not enough power to share between them”.

Cracks appeared when Marcos’ allies in the Senate began investigating Duterte for alleged misuse of government funds. The pair also disagreed on their approach to Beijing; Marcos ordered the navy to “stand up to China” in the South China Sea, said Al Jazeera, in “sharp contrast” to pro-China Duterte. This trial shifts the “power struggle” to “a new battleground”, said the BBC, which will now “play out on livestreams for the entire nation”.

What is the case against Duterte?

In October 2024, Duterte said “her relationship with Marcos had become so ‘toxic’ that she sometimes imagined beheading him”, said Al Jazeera. She also “threatened to dig up the remains of Marcos’ father” and “dump them in the sea”. In November, Duterte claimed during a “profanity-laced” livestream that she had told someone: “If I get killed, go kill BBM” (Marcos’ nickname is Bongbong so he’s commonly referred to as BBM) and his wife.

His supporters filed an impeachment complaint based on this livestream, and the alleged misuse of funds. But last year that case was “derailed for procedural reasons”, said Foreign Policy. Marcos’ supporters then refiled the case, leading to a new trial.

What is the significance of the trial?

Prosecutors see the case as “a test of accountability ‌and public trust”; the defence denounces it as “a politically driven bid” to unseat an elected official, said Reuters. The outcome could “shape the 2028 presidential race”, in which Duterte has announced she intends to run. Marcos cannot run as Philippine law permits presidents only a single term, but his family and coalition “expect to remain powerful”, said Al Jazeera.

There are “fears of widespread protests” and political turmoil that would “impact the Philippines’ economic growth” should Duterte – the current frontrunner – be convicted and barred from standing in 2028.

But “conviction will be difficult”, said Foreign Policy. Two-thirds of the chamber, 16 senators, must support impeachment. Of the 24 sitting senators, 14 are “Duterte allies”. However, “those allies are coming under pressure”, with two arrested on corruption charges and one “on the run from an ICC warrant”. More pro-Duterte senators may “come under fire in what looks like political pressure tactics”.

For the first time since consolidating power to rule the Gaza Strip in 2007, Hamas will disband its Government Emergency Committee that has coordinated day-to-day life across the territory, according to the Palestinian militant group. This clears a path for the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), known as a technocratic committee, to assume control as part of President Donald Trump and his Board of Peace’s plan for the beleaguered region. But by playing coy about next steps, Hamas has given observers and critics plenty of reasons to be suspicious about this latest development.

‘Caretaker framework’

The governmental dissolution “marks a significant political shift” by Hamas, said Al Jazeera. But while the militant group has “repeatedly said it is prepared to step aside from day-to-day governance” of Gaza, the “question of its disarmament remains unresolved.”

The decision to dismantle the governing authority was made to “remove any pretexts for the occupation, which continues its aggression and war of extermination,” said Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem to AFP, per Le Monde. Hamas seeks the “swift entry” of the technocratic committee and “affirms its readiness to hand over governmental responsibilities to the committee to ensure its success.” The committee, in turn, is “fully prepared to assume its national responsibilities as soon as the necessary resources and capabilities are available,” said NCAG Chief Commissioner Ali Shaath on X.

For Hamas, the move is designed to transform the group’s “existing governing structure” into a “caretaker framework,” said The Times of Israel. Hamas officials claim that “technical and professional staff” will “remain in place” after the governmental dissolution to “maintain continuity in service to civilians in Gaza,” said The Jerusalem Post.

Unsurprisingly, Israel has rejected that characterization. The dissolution of a Hamas government wherein “all of the Hamas members stay in their positions” is a “spin that has no significance,” said one Israeli official to The Associated Press.

‘Actions, not promises’

Any assessment of Hamas’ plan will be “guided by actions, not promises, to meet the critical needs of the people of Gaza,” said the Trump-led Board of Peace on X. The “core principle” of eventually turning over full control of Gaza to the technocratic committee “remains one authority, one law and one weapon,” which in turn means “consolidation of all weapons under the control of the NCAG as provided for in the Comprehensive Gaza Peace Plan and United Nations Security Council Resolution 2803.”

The change “does not concern its military wing,” about which mediators are “still negotiating,” said Haaretz. Israel, meanwhile, is “not allowing members of the technocratic committee, who are currently in Cairo, to enter the territory.” Israel has “ruled out allowing Hamas to rule” the embattled Gaza Strip following the yearslong war between the two groups, said Al Jazeera. Israel “also rejected a direct takeover” by the Palestinian Authority, which controls the occupied West Bank, “at this stage.”

“The only thing more riling than a referee’s interference in a sports event is a politician’s,” said Sally Jenkins in The Atlantic. The red card issued against US star striker Folarin Balogun for “stepping on an opponent’s ankle” during the World Cup match against Bosnia-Herzegovina, was a “terrible call”. But Fifa’s regulations “couldn’t be clearer”: a red card means “automatic suspension for the next game”.

Instead, the tournament organisers “magically lifted” the 25-year-old’s suspension in time for the host team’s last-16 clash against Belgium on Monday, after a phone call by Donald Trump to “his good friend Gianni Infantino, the president of Fifa”.

The US president later thanked Fifa for “doing what was right, and reversing a great injustice”. The world governing body has given “such a feeble procedural explanation” for the reversal that the “entire sporting globe” is “incensed over the garbage-y scent of an inside job”.

A ‘balanced measure’

“Reviewing the legal consequences of red cards in football is nothing new in the modern game,” Mohammad al-Kamali, chair of Fifa’s disciplinary committee, said in a statement. The red card was “not overturned”; its effects were suspended “based on an explicit provision of the applicable regulations” in what he called a “balanced measure”.

Fifa’s disciplinary code allows the judicial body to decide to “fully or partially suspend the implementation of a disciplinary measure”, opting instead for a probation, said The Independent’s senior sports writer Kieran Jackson. Balogun has essentially received a “suspended sentence”, active for one year.

There is a “high-profile precedent”: Cristiano Ronaldo was banned for three games after his red card against the Republic of Ireland in November’s qualifiers. The Portugal captain had the latter two bans “suspended” too. But Fifa was “widely condemned for that decision”, too, which came a week after Ronaldo, who plays in the Saudi Pro League, visited the White House with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Still, no one can claim Trump “fails to advocate for American interests with a doggedness that borders on obsession”, said Nicole Russell in USA Today. I’m not surprised he made the call, nor should anyone be – this is just “Trump being Trump”: a World Cup red card was “never going to be the exception”. But Infantino “could have said no”.

‘Crossed a red line’

Critics say this latest episode is “symptomatic of deeper problems at Infantino’s Fifa”, said the Financial Times’ sports editor Josh Noble. They argue its decision-making is “increasingly designed to further political and commercial goals”.

European governing body Uefa said the decision to suspend Balogun’s ban “crossed a red line”. Sorry, but “we crossed that line a few moral galaxies ago”, said The Guardian’s Marina Hyde. Maybe when Infantino was “butching it out in the photocall at Trump’s Gaza Peace Summit For Ghoulishly Rapacious Businessmen”, certainly when he “inaugurated the auto-satirical Fifa peace prize and awarded it to Trump” just a few months before the war on Iran.

Even former Fifa president Sepp Blatter (who somehow managed to be cleared of corruption charges on appeal last year) is thundering that “red cards are not overturned by political phone calls”. Blatter suggesting Infantino is corrupt? “If irony could kill, we could be looking at a bloodbath”.

The US’s exit from the tournament “allows this rotten case to be quickly brushed under the rug”, said The i Paper’s chief football writer Daniel Storey. But it has “slipped a viper into the tent of football’s governance and started a civil war between Fifa and Uefa”, and all for the host nation to lose 4-1 to a “barely functional Belgium team”. During this tournament, the US national team had gained fresh admiration from supporters and new levels of interest from a “football-sceptic population”, but now that “reputation has been torched”.

The matriarch of one of Thailand’s richest families has finally dropped a lawsuit against her son just days before it was scheduled to come to court. Chiranuj Bhirombhakdi was suing her son under the 1908 “ungrateful child law”, claiming his actions had caused material and reputational damage to the family.

In May, Siranudh “Psi” Scott, heir to the Singha beer dynasty, caused a “firestorm of controversy” when he made allegations that he had been sexually abused by his older brother and a babysitter, said The Japan Times.

Thailand is not the only country to have a law demanding filial support, with similar legislation in existence and in development across the continent.

Allegations ‘stunned’ the public

Psi’s allegations “sparked a crisis” in the Bhirombhakdi family, owners of the Singha beer company and one of the wealthiest families in Thailand, said the South China Morning Post. He had “stunned” the public two months ago after claiming he was sexually abused by his older brother, Sunit. Despite “strenuously” denying the allegations, Sunit was removed from executive roles at Singha’s parent company, Boon Rawd Brewery, soon after the allegations were made.

“Matriarch” Chiranuj Bhirombhakdi said that her decision to withdraw legal action was an act of “opening the door to dialogue about everything that has happened and to discuss how we should move forward”. “As a mother, it deeply pains me that I have had to rely on the court process. This is never something any mother would wish for,’’ she said in a statement last week.

Psi reportedly first told other family members of the alleged abuse about three years ago, but “accepted financial compensation from them to keep quiet”, said the Taipei Times. However, after his mother sued him this year over a property dispute, he decided to speak out.

Some experts believe that this case “marks an unprecedented shift in Thailand”, providing an opportunity for Thais to discuss sexual abuse cases more openly. Patinya Kuantrakul, scion of one of Thailand’s best-known golf courses, and influencer Taylor Srirat, have since shared their own personal experiences.

‘More on the way’

This “bitter” legal case was centred around a “century-old law reinforcing traditional values of obedience and hierarchy”, said The Telegraph. Known as the “ungrateful child law”, the 1908 legislation is used to “protect parents from neglectful children”, enabling them to withdraw gifts or financial donations if their children are deemed “ungrateful, physically abusive, neglectful in old age, or responsible for serious reputational harm”.

The “closest English translation would be ‘ingratitude’”, said Jiraporn Laocharoenwong, an anthropology professor at Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok. But the Thai term “carries a much stronger moral meaning”.

Cases invoking the law “rarely reach the public eye”, often resolved via court-mediated negotiations. An exception to that rule came in 2021, when an elderly couple in Bangkok sued their son and his wife, after they were told to leave the family home. Ruling in the parents’ favour, the judge also ordered other properties that had previously been transferred to their son to be returned to the older couple .

Some of Asia’s biggest countries have similar laws, and “more are on the way”, said Asia editor Richard Lloyd Parry in The Times. China, Singapore and Taiwan all place “varying legal obligations on children under civil or criminal law”. Officials in the Philippines are considering pushing for a Parents Welfare Act, which would punish neglectful offspring with 10 years in prison”. Malaysia is also considering introducing a law that would “oblige children to care for their ageing parents”.

At their core, such laws “codify an assumption that was common in most pre-modern societies”: whatever joy they bring to their parents’ lives, “children are a form of investment”, delivering “returns” as financial support when they start work, and as “physical care when their parents become feeble in body”. Yet, as the Singha beer dynasty case demonstrates, such statutes and penalties may be “crude tools for dealing with the fraught emotional dynamics of families”.

After more than four years of war between Russia and Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin has made a rare admission that the conflict has caused his country a problem. In this case, it is a significant fuel shortage driven by Ukrainian drone strikes that is exacerbating economic strain across Russia, and the issue may not be abated any time soon.

‘Certain deficit’

Putin has very rarely acknowledged that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has led to challenges. But his country is now facing a “certain deficit” of fuel, the Russian president said in an interview with state television. Russians are “well aware that problems for ⁠drivers and for businesses persist,” Putin also told his senior officials of the petroleum industry, according to Al Jazeera. “Unfortunately, there are still queues at petrol stations too.”

The shortage largely stems from Ukrainian attacks on Russian oil infrastructure. Russia must “reduce to a minimum the impact of terrorist attacks on our civilian targets and infrastructure,” Putin told his senior officials. Ukraine has “stepped up attacks on Russian energy facilities in recent months, hitting Russia’s crude oil,” said Al Jazeera. The attacks have led to significant fuel deficits. The “amount of crude oil Russia processed into fuel in June was down 25% from a year ago, to 3.95 million barrels per day — the lowest level in over two decades,” said Gary Peach, an oil markets analyst at Energy Intelligence, to The Associated Press.

While Ukraine has been utilizing drones for a while, what makes the current onslaught different is that Ukraine has “clearly scaled up the quantity of their drones and the quality of their drones,” Christina Harward, an expert at the Institute for the Study of War, said to Deutsche Welle. Ukraine has “improved the range of their drones and, for the past couple of months, they’ve also been undertaking an effort to identify and destroy Russian air defense systems.”

‘The situation is not very good’

The fuel shortages have led to social and financial unrest in many parts of Russia. The “lines are growing at Russian gas stations — and so is the frustration and uncertainty” as the deficits drag on and oil prices go up, said the AP. “I think the situation is not very good,” one motorist waiting in line told the outlet. Numerous cities have rationed fuel, with “hourslong queues of cars snaking beside roads.”

These struggles have been highlighted across social media, with one post reportedly showing farmers “struggling to afford fuel for harvest, while another describes a farmer having to drive his combine harvester to a regular gas station after he was not allowed to fill a can,” said Reuters. Some Russian drivers have also started to “crowdsource maps and trade tips about which stations have fuel and shorter lines,” and “online searches for ‘how to siphon fuel’ rose to more than ⁠9,300” in June from just 697 a month earlier.

And it doesn’t appear the crisis is going anywhere, as “half of Russia’s 83 regions are now reporting shortages,” said the Center for European Policy Analysis. For now, Russia has “enough fuel for the army, key industries, and agriculture — but everywhere else the choice is between paying more and waiting longer.” A Gallup survey found that “60% of Russians interviewed between March and May said their local economic conditions are getting worse.”

What happened

Two bombs exploded Tuesday morning near the Damascus hotel where French President Emmanuel Macron is staying during his historic stopover in Syria. Macron, who arrived in Damascus last night, is the first major Western leader to visit the country since Bashar al-Assad’s ouster in 2024.

At least 18 people were wounded in the explosions, including four police officers, Syria’s Interior Ministry said. But Macron had already left the Four Seasons, Reuters said, and the “blasts were not audible from the presidential motorcade” as he headed toward his meeting with Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa.

Who said what

The explosions “are a blow for al-Sharaa,” who has “pushed to assert full control and bring stability in war-torn Syria” after his Islamist-led insurgency toppled Assad, The Associated Press said. Macron “played a major role in pushing Europe and the United States to drop most sanctions on Syria” after al-Sharaa took over, and he is “scheduled to sign memorandums of understanding” as the “battered country tries to lure investors to help it rebuild after 14 years of war.”

“I have come to express France’s commitment to the Syrian people,” Macron said on social media. “Together, let us open a new chapter of stability and peace.”

What next?

France said Macron “intended to stick to his planned schedule for the day” before heading to Turkey for a NATO summit, Reuters said.

What happened

Slain Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s funeral procession began advancing through the streets of Tehran this morning after Sunday’s prayers at the capital’s sprawling Imam Khomeini Grand Mosalla complex. Three of Khamenei’s sons appeared publicly Sunday for the first time since their father and other family members were killed in the opening U.S.-Israeli strikes of the Iran war, but Mojtaba Khamenei, the son who succeeded him as supreme leader, has still not made any public appearances.

Who said what

The funeral procession route was “packed to capacity” with black-clad mourners “hoping to gain a glimpse of the passing cortège,” CNN said. Some mourners said they were disappointed at the absence of Mojtaba Khamenei, whose face was reportedly “disfigured” and “one or ​both legs” significantly injured in U.S.-Israeli strikes, Reuters said. He is believed to be in hiding “due to the dangers of Israeli threats to his life,” Al Jazeera said.

The “increasingly” common “threats from mourners to avenge Khamenei’s death” included chants of “Death to America” and “Death to Israel,” and signs calling for the “killing of both U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,” The Associated Press said. As the poet Mohammad Rasouli asked why “the biggest bastard in the world” was “still alive” to cheering mourners at the Mosalla complex, Trump was boasting he “wiped out” Iran’s military during “a speech at the same time across the world” to celebrate America’s 250th birthday.

What next?

After a 12-hour procession through Tehran, Khamenei’s body will be transported to Qom, then to important Shiite shrines in the Iraqi cities of Najaf and Karbala, and finally to Thursday’s burial in his hometown of Mashhad.

A “durian tsunami” has crashed the price of the notoriously smelly tropical fruit, with some sellers in Singapore giving them away completely free, said the BBC.

The glut is the result of a “decade-long boom” during which Malaysian farmers “flocked to durian farming to cash in on growing Chinese demand”.

‘Turpentine and rotten onions’

Beloved by large parts of Asia, the prickly fruit is known for its distinctive smell that has been compared to “sewage, turpentine and rotten onions”, said The Times. The novelist Anthony Burgess famously described his durian experience as like “eating strawberry blancmange in an unspeakably foul public lavatory”.

Due to this pungent smell, the fruit is “commonly banned” on public transport and in hotels in southeast Asia. But the global durian trade has gone from strength to strength; last year it was worth £5.5 billion, with 90% of exports going to China where a “newly affluent middle class is discovering a taste for the exotic”.

Prized varieties like the Musang King – known as the “Hermès of durians” – have proved particularly popular, as Chinese consumers become more “selective and sophisticated”. A single durian can sell for “up to 200 yuan (£21.50), and they are often presented on special occasions as luxurious gifts”.

To help meet this “insatiable appetite”, freight trains have been kitted out with “specially refrigerated cars” which allow durians to travel all the way from Thailand and Vietnam to China “with their flavour unimpaired”.

Tumbling prices

But now a “bumper harvest” has caused durian prices to “tumble”, said The Star. “It feels like a rare chance to enjoy a Musang King without paying a bomb”, said engineer Kelvin Tan, who travelled the 46 miles from Kuala Lumpur to Raub in Malaysia to enjoy the lower prices.

Customers are “swarming fruit stalls” to pick up bargains, said the BBC. A lot of the durian trees planted in the last decade to meet soaring demand from China are “now starting to bear fruit”, Lu Yuee Thing, owner of several durian farms near Raub, told the publication.

Some farmers, however, had been “grappling with poor harvests” due to uneven rainfall across the country when the glut arrived. While “durian lovers feast”, some growers of the tropical fruit in Malaysia are “chagrined”.

Malaysia’s Federal Agricultural Marketing Authority has stepped in to support the industry and help “manage surplus durian supply as the season begins to ramp up”, said Asiafruit. As well as preparing 142 cold rooms for preserving the extra stock, the authority has been buying durians from farmers at a base price to protect their incomes.

For fans of the pungent fruit, however, prices will “remain low until August” before “gradually recovering”, said The Star.

Until then, shops are taking “creative measures” to shift their extra stock, said the BBC. Viral videos have emerged of customers leaving a stall in Malaysia’s Pahang state with all-you-can-fit sacks filled “beyond the brim” with the spiky green fruit.

Spain’s socialist PM is “clinging to a punctured life raft”, said Josep Ramoneda in Ara (Barcelona). Pedro Sánchez’s reputation had already taken a battering from the corruption cases brought against his wife and brother. Now the jailing of his former right-hand man for embezzlement and bribery leaves him more “compromised” than ever.

José Luis Ábalos, who was Spain’s transport minister between 2018 and 2021, was last week handed a 24-year sentence for rigging public contracts for face masks and other medical supplies during the Covid-19 pandemic. His reward for doing so was €10,000 a month, a flat for his mistress and various other kickbacks. The PM has not himself been implicated in the Ábalos case – or in any of the others for that matter – but it all leaves a bad smell and there’s growing pressure on him to resign. Yet Sánchez stubbornly insists he will remain in post until next year’s elections.

The buck stops

Sánchez’s claim he had no idea what Ábalos was up to is downright outrageous, said Neus Tomàs in El Diario (Madrid). Ábalos and his aide Koldo García, who has also been jailed for his role in the scandal, used to sit at the heart of Sánchez’s Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE). So the PM’s excuse that they were just rogue actors won’t wash: he bears responsibility for crimes committed under his watch.

And don’t forget, Sánchez came to power in 2018 by condemning the then-PM, Mariano Rajoy, for the corruption exposed in the ranks of Rajoy’s People’s Party (PP), and winning a vote of no-confidence against him, said La Razón (Madrid). So he clearly has to resign.

The greatest irony is that the man who delivered the most scathing speech ahead of the vote on the conservative People Party’s corrupt ways was Ábalos himself, said Bruno Pardo Porto on ABC (Madrid). That he has now received the longest jail sentence ever given to a modern Spanish minister shows just what a sham the PSOE’s pledge to clean up Spanish democracy actually has been.

Comeback king

There’s still a slim chance Sánchez could survive, said Jason Horowitz in The New York Times. He has an uncanny ability to outrun scandals – hence his nickname: “the greyhound”. And he was offered an unlikely lifeline last month when a judge ordered his wife, Begoña Gómez, to hand in her passport and stand trial for influence-peddling linked to her job at a university in Madrid.

In his 84-page ruling, the judge likened the government to an “absolutist regime”, opining that the last similar case of such magnitude was in the early 19th century during the reign of Ferdinand VII. This has made it easy for Sánchez’s supporters to dismiss the trial as a “deeply flawed hit job by an obsessed judge”. And that it was the right-wing group Manos Limpias (Clean Hands) that filed the cases against his wife and his brother David (who allegedly leveraged his connections to land a job in a city council) adds support to that narrative.

Sánchez is no stranger to epic comebacks, said Irene Lozano in El País (Madrid), so don’t write him off yet. His PSOE rivals removed him as leader in 2016: two years later he had become PM. The fact that he has presided over one of the EU’s faster-growing economies may come to his rescue this time.

Fresh scandal

I’m not so sure, said Guy Hedgecoe on Politico (Brussels). His party is already languishing behind the PP in the polls, and there’s another scandal brewing that could well see him off. It involves his mentor and “ideological soul mate”, the former socialist PM José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, who is accused of influence-peddling in connection with the €53 million bailout of the airline Plus Ultra. Prosecutors say he received up to €2 million for pushing the package through.

Sánchez still maintains Zapatero is innocent, but has yet to explain why the bailout of a firm that only has four planes should have been so generous, said The Economist. This kind of behaviour is the reason anti-democratic sentiment is on the rise, and the situation is worsening. “The sooner the country holds an election, the better.”

By July 1776, Great Britain and its 13 colonies on North America’s eastern seaboard had been at war for more than a year; they would remain so until 1783.

Although long revered as an “American scripture”, the Declaration of Independence actually “began its life as a press release”, with a limited, pragmatic purpose, writes the historian Michael D. Hattem. The Second Continental Congress, a committee of delegates from 13 of the colonies convened in Philadelphia, wanted a formal document to justify their rebellion to the world, and to secure foreign military alliances.

At the time, some thought it less important than Congress’ decision on 2 July to vote for independence. John Adams, later the second US president, wrote to his wife that 2 July, not 4 July, should be celebrated as a great anniversary, “solemnised with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations from one end of this continent to the other from this time forward forever more”.

What does the document say?

That the 13 colonies declare themselves free from British colonial rule, to administer themselves as the “united States of America” (a phrase coined earlier that year). The Declaration’s famous preamble asserts: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

It then outlines Americans’ grievances against Britain and King George III. Complaining that the states have informed “our British brethren” of these grievances, to no avail, it proclaims that the 13 states therefore have no choice but to sever “all political connection” with Britain.

How had the two sides come to be at war?

Relations had deteriorated sharply since Britain’s victory over France in the Seven Years’ War in 1763. Defending the American frontier from France and its Native American allies had brought Britain to near-bankruptcy. The colonies, with a fast-growing population of some two million, paid virtually no taxes to the home country, while heavily taxed Britain paid for their defence. King George III and his ministers looked to raise revenues; Parliament passed a series of taxes, including the Stamp Act (1765) and Townshend Acts (1767). They believed Parliament had full authority to do so.

The colonists thought such laws had no legitimacy because they lacked representation in Parliament, and fiercely resisted, launching boycotts and protests. Tensions built, and exploded during the Boston Massacre (1770) and the Boston Tea Party (1773).

In response, Britain imposed the punitive Coercive Acts (1774), closing Boston Harbour and stripping Massachusetts of self-governance. Violence escalated, and in April 1775 war broke out, with the Battles of Lexington and Concord – dubbed by Ralph Waldo Emerson “the shot heard round the world”.

Was independence inevitable?

At the start of the war, most on the American side envisaged it not as a war of independence, but as a temporary defence of what they saw as their legal rights as British citizens. In July 1775, Congress sent the Olive Branch Petition, a direct plea to King George III, which explicitly denied wanting independence. The king refused to look at it, and issued the Proclamation of Rebellion, declaring the colonists traitors and hiring 30,000 German mercenaries to help crush them.

In January 1776 in Philadelphia, the English radical Thomas Paine published “Common Sense”, a pamphlet arguing that America should demand outright independence. It sold in large numbers, and proved very influential. George Washington, the commander of the Continental Army, declared it “unanswerable”. The colonists also realised that they needed help from foreign powers, notably France, and wouldn’t get it if they remained loyal British subjects.

How was the Declaration of Independence written?

After the independence resolution was proposed, in June 1776, Congress appointed the Committee of Five (John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Robert Livingston and Roger Sherman) to draft the Declaration. It was first written by Jefferson, largely by candlelight, over a period of 17 days. The other four made minor changes; it was then edited by Congress. The revised text was approved on 4 July, and most of the 56 Founding Fathers who signed it did so on 2 August.

What role did the Declaration play at the time?

In Philadelphia, it was printed by John Dunlap (today, 26 of these “Dunlap Broadsides” are believed to exist); and on 6 July, it was reproduced in the Pennsylvania Evening Post. This triggered an extraordinary public response: public readings were accompanied by cheering and cannon fire, as well as the destruction of royal symbols such as the king’s coats of arms; in New York, it was read to troops serving in Washington’s army, who tore down a lead statue of George III on horseback and melted it into musket balls.

The first anniversary celebrations took place in 1777. Massachusetts was the first state to make 4 July an official day of celebration, in 1781.

What is its legacy?

The Declaration of Independence is one of the most important documents in human history. It inspired the French Revolution’s Declaration of the Rights of Man, which Jefferson helped draft. Dozens of independence declarations from Venezuela (1811) to Vietnam (1945) echo or directly copy its language. Abraham Lincoln thought it expressed the true principles of the United States, and referred in his 1863 Gettysburg Address to “a nation conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal”. Martin Luther King Jr, in his “I Have a Dream” speech, called it a “promissory note” – and demanded that Americans “cash this cheque”.

Thomas Jefferson: tainted hero

John Adams said of the Declaration of Independence that there was “not an idea in it but what had been hackneyed in Congress for two years before”. Jefferson himself said it did not aim at “originality of principle or sentiment”; rather, it was “an expression of the American mind”.

Although the exact influences remain a subject for scholarly discussion, the most obvious sources for it included Paine’s “Common Sense”, George Mason’s draft of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, and England’s 1689 Bill of Rights. Jefferson also adapted John Locke’s argument that individuals have inalienable rights to “life, liberty, and property” – substituting “the pursuit of happiness” – and Locke’s notion that government is based on a social contract, which, when broken, authorises rebellion.

Jefferson, America’s third president, has long been both a national hero and a contested figure, because he was a scion of Virginia’s planter class who owned more than 610 slaves and fathered children with one of them, Sally Hemings. (“How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?” asked Dr Johnson in his pamphlet “Taxation no Tyranny”.) The Declaration also complains of British alliances with “the merciless Indian Savages”.

“That American dream of a better, richer, and happier life for all our citizens of every rank.”

In a 1931 book called “The Epic of America”, historian James Truslow Adams distilled the unalloyed faith in a better tomorrow that has been the calling card of the United States' 250 years as a nation.

It’s “strange to realise” that the term American Dream has a history, “since faith in upward mobility seems embedded in the American consciousness”, said Hua Hsu in The New Yorker. But, as the country prepares to celebrate Independence Day and its 250th birthday, the fragility of the American Dream has never been more apparent.

What did the commentators say?

A nation of immigrants, the US “has at its best treated the people flocking to its shores as a source of vitality and a validation of the American dream”, said The Economist.

But for some of its citizens “the new American dream” is now “to no longer live there”, said The Wall Street Journal’s Drew Hinshaw and Joe Parkinson. “Beneath the stormy optics” of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown “lies a less-noticed reversal: America’s own citizens are leaving in record numbers”.

The American Dream “has always been a sell for immigrants”, said Asma Khalid on the BBC. “However, fewer of them are coming these days.”

Some of those who have succeeded in the US say it is getting tougher to do so. “It has brought me immense fulfilment through three successful businesses that provide me with freedom, income and happiness,” Carmen Barreto, a native of Venezuela who has lived in Florida for 15 years, told Agence France-Presse. “Many people hold on to the American dream, but given how tough things are getting, you can’t be the salmon swimming against the current – because you get tired, you burn out, it destroys you.”

An Associated Press-NORC poll last month found that only a third of Americans believe the American Dream still exists. A CNBC poll the same month found that a majority of people consider the American Dream out of reach.

But “most public polling captures what people believe about the accessibility of the American Dream for others”, said Gonzalo Schwarz, chief executive of the Archbridge Institute think tank, in The Washington Post. “In their own life, they are far more optimistic.” The problem comes from the media. “If people are constantly told that the country is irredeemable, that its obstacles are permanent and that hope is naive, they will eventually believe it.”

There has been a resurgence of optimism from a surprising source. In liberal circles, “faith in the American Dream is often dismissed as gauche and conservative”, said Hsu. But after Zohran Mamdani won the New York City mayor’s race, the former Democratic National Committee co-vice-chair David Hogg said that the result was about “making the American Dream possible again”.

There is optimism too from “the country’s unabated dynamism”, said The Economist. And the corollary of that dynamism is “its capacity for reinvention”. As far back as the birth of the US, the American Dream was built on “the wisdom of the people. Time and again, that faith has been richly rewarded.”

What next?

The current generation of Americans might agree with Adams’ 1930s view that the dream was less about “motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of a social order”. Paige Friscioni, a 38-year-old business owner from Detroit, told USA Today: “The American dream shouldn’t be something that’s designed by somebody else. It should be something that’s designed by you.

“The American dream isn’t that perfect thing anymore. The real American dream is to decide what you want to be.”

What happened

Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group “committed crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing” during its 2024-25 campaign to capture the city of el-Fasher in North Darfur, Amnesty International said in a report Wednesday. “The RSF’s crimes included murder, forcible transfer, imprisonment, torture, rape, sexual slavery, other forms of sexual violence, enslavement, extermination and persecution.”

Who said what

Amnesty analyzed video and documentary evidence and interviewed 246 people for its report, including 208 survivors, 39 of whom were children. The report “accused the RSF of deliberately targeting children,” The Guardian said.

The public was “warned of the horrors that civilians in el-Fasher confronted as the RSF laid siege to the city,” said Amnesty International Secretary-General Agnès Callamard. The resulting atrocities are a “stain on the conscience of humanity.” A United Nations fact-finding mission said in February the RSF’s el-Fasher siege bore the “hallmarks of genocide” against non-Arab communities.

What next?

Sudan’s “ongoing civil war” between the army and RSF has “killed hundreds of thousands of people” and displaced more than 14 million, the BBC said. A “nationwide ceasefire” is “immediately needed” in Sudan, said Amnesty. There must also be an “independent and adequately resourced international force” assigned to “protect civilians against crimes by all parties to the conflict.”

Pope Leo XIV has excommunicated members of a breakaway group of traditionalist Catholics after they consecrated bishops without Vatican approval.

The pontiff warned the Society of St Pius X (known as the SSPX) on Tuesday that its plans to consecrate four new bishops would be a “sin of extreme gravity”. After the consecrations went ahead on Wednesday, “the Vatican responded aggressively”, going “above and beyond the minimal sanctions foreseen by the church’s canon law”, said The Associated Press.

Six bishops and hundreds of priests belonging to the society have been excommunicated. The Pope also warned the estimated 600,000 Catholics who attend its services that the order is no longer sanctioned to carry out sacraments like confession and marriage.

What is the Society of St Pius X?

Founded in 1970 by French archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, the SSPX is a traditionalist group that purports to practise a “pure” form of Catholicism, untainted by modernising or secular influences. It rejects much of the so-called Vatican II reforms of the 1960s, “which revolutionised the church’s relations with other Christians, Jews and people of other faiths and allowed Mass to be celebrated in the vernacular”, said AP. The order continues to adhere to the Latin Mass and uses pre-Vatican II liturgy in its services.

According to SSPX figures, it has 751 priests, 264 seminarians, 145 religious brothers, 88 oblates and 250 religious sisters representing 50 nationalities. It has a presence in 77 countries, with the largest being in France and the US.

Throughout its history, the society has had a rocky relationship with the Vatican. In 1988 Archbishop Lefebvre consecrated four bishops without the approval of Pope John Paul II. The Vatican ruled that this was illicit and stated that those directly involved had incurred excommunication.

In 2009, Pope Benedict XVI rescinded the excommunications of the surviving bishops as a gesture towards reconciliation. However, despite years of talks aimed at bringing the society back into full communion with the Church, the society’s official status has remained unresolved.

What has it done now?

On 1 July, the SSPX consecrated four new bishops at its international seminary in Écône, Switzerland, the location of the 1988 consecrations that caused the previous schism. Creating new bishops without papal approval is regarded as a “schismatic act” in canon law.

However, an SSPX priest told the more than 16,000 worshippers who gathered for the illicit consecration Mass that, since Vatican II, “the authorities of the church have been animated by a spirit that is contrary to that of the faith”, said National Catholic Reporter. Therefore, the consecration of bishops “entirely faithful to her holy tradition” was justified as “a sacred duty toward the holy church”.

Can they be reconciled? 

Since becoming Pope in May last year, Leo XIV “has reached out especially to the conservative and traditionalist wing of the church that was in many ways alienated during the Pope Francis pontificate”, said AP.

However, last month he told a reporter that, “while division among Christians is always a painful matter”, the society could not remain in good standing if it rejected “certain fundamental elements of the Church”, said Vatican News. “If that is the choice they make, I am sorry, but we must move forward.”

The group “is ignoring the doctrinal elephant in the room”, said Eric Sammons, editor of traditionalist Catholic magazine Crisis: being in communion with the Pope is “an essential part of what it means to be Catholic”. Complaints about the Church’s “lackadaisical enforcement of Catholic teaching”, however well-founded, cannot be taken seriously from “a group that itself violates a foundational principle of Catholic doctrine”.

Last Friday afternoon, a light aircraft belonging to a local aviation school flew into the side of Beijing’s tallest building, the 109-storey Citic Tower, killing the pilot and injuring at least 13 people.

Five days later, we’re none the wiser about “why, and how, that happened”, said the BBC. The only official statement on the incident is a “60-word report detailing the basic facts in state-owned Beijing Daily”, while eyewitness videos and photos have been “scrubbed off the internet”.

What did the commentators say?

The skyscraper is only a few miles from Zhongnanhai, the tightly controlled complex that acts as the headquarters of the Chinese Communist Party and the centre of government. An unidentified aircraft over this sensitive area would have posed a security dilemma for authorities, said Li Wei, director of the Centre for Counter-Terrorism Studies at the state-run think tank China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations.

Once the plane deviated from its approved flight path, there would have been “little reaction time for air traffic control and air defence identification”, he told the South China Morning Post. “Shooting down a civilian aircraft in a crowded urban area would create potential ground threats and panic.”

Beijing has “some of the world’s strictest airspace controls”, including a “permanent no-fly zone of roughly 100 sq km (39 sq miles) over its political core”, said the BBC. Chong Ja Ian, a non-resident scholar at Carnegie China research centre, told the broadcaster that the incident would be an “embarrassment to the security services”. “A small plane hitting Citic Tower means that a drone or missile might be able to as well,” he said.

Although China “periodically” experiences high-profile “acts of suicidal violence”, the most likely explanation “lies not in protest but in privilege”, said James Palmer in Foreign Policy’s China Brief. Private planes are a rarity in China, reserved for the “well connected”, whose sense of entitlement “extends to the skies”. Corruption is “endemic” within the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), and “it would not be surprising if certain civilians were occasionally allowed into PLA airspace”. If that is what occurred here, “the political consequences will be severe for whoever bent the rules”.

What next?

Whether accidental or deliberate, “the fatal flight will raise awkward – and potentially career-ending – questions for those responsible for security” in the capital, said the Financial Times. At next year’s Communist Party Congress, Xi Jinping is expected to “choose a new line-up of top party cadres”, and regional analysts say responsibility for the Citic Tower incident could fuel “fierce jockeying among leadership candidates”.

On the small Caribbean island of St Lucia, a crisis is brewing. For “more than a decade”, residents have lived with an “intermittent water supply”, said The Guardian. But the most recent emergency has upended day-to-day life for thousands, turning everything from “normal hygiene” practices to “food preparation” into a struggle.

And despite “millions of dollars of investment”, including $80 million (£60 million) from World Bank financing, funds have merely “scratched the surface” when it comes to tackling the water supply issues pushing islanders “to the brink”.

‘Complex mix of challenges’

Water supply is among St Lucia’s “most politically contentious issues”, with the two major political parties, Labour and the United Workers Party, “routinely trading accusations” that resources have been “mismanaged”, said The Guardian. The island has a sole water company – the Water and Sewerage Company (Wasco) – which therefore has the monopoly on supply.

Wasco’s provision of water to homes and businesses is hampered by service issues including leaks, blockages “and damage to key transmission lines”, said the St. Lucia Times. But there is also a “complex mix of challenges” at play, ranging from climate change to the island’s “ageing infrastructure”. Rainfall patterns are now far “less predictable” and the island grapples with “drier years alternating with wetter ones”.

The “severe” water shortage even led the island’s government to consider the “unprecedented” measure of importing water from nearby Dominica at the peak of its tourist season, said Caribbean National Weekly. While the return of rainfall in May ultimately tackled the issue, many fear the implications for future supply issues.

The ‘new norm’?

While the “popular imagination” may lend itself to believing the “paradise” islands of the Caribbean would not struggle with supply, “water scarcity may become the new norm” in the region, said PreventionWeb in 2024. In fact, the Caribbean as a whole is “one of the most water-stressed regions in the world”. Trinidad and Grenada have grappled with drought, St Vincent and St Kitts have both had to ration water, and Barbados has previously implemented “water bans” to curb usage.

In the meantime, “urgent but carefully planned intervention” is required to keep the island’s water system afloat, said the St. Lucia Times. As a temporary solution, citizens have been urged to “engage in rainwater harvesting”. In the longer term, the government has already promised “significant investment” along with a “dedicated committee” to examine Wasco’s future. The supplier’s slogan declares that “water is life”, said the newspaper. If that is the case, it is also true that “clearly the company and its systems are gravely ailing”.

Vladimir Putin took the rare step of acknowledging fuel shortages in Crimea, following Ukrainian bombardments targeting the Russia-annexed peninsula. As Ukraine’s drones and missiles struck roads, railways and bridges, Putin admitted that there was only “a few days’ supply” left in Crimea, though he insisted that he was “confident” more fuel would be brought in soon.

The offensive has “upended life in Crimea and undercut its image as a showcase of Putin’s imperial ambitions” in Ukraine, said The Wall Street Journal. Although he “poured money into the peninsula”, locals say “basic services” like kindergartens, trash collection and ATMs have “stopped functioning”.

What did the commentators say?

Ukraine’s offensive coincides with the approach of September’s Russian parliamentary elections, forcing the Kremlin to “maintain a strict sense of composure”, said The Wall Street Journal. Putin wants to prevent political tensions “from rising” over the situation in Crimea, framing Ukrainian strikes to his electorate as part of an information campaign to break Russia’s morale.

“The unspoken assumption within the Ukrainian government is that it will have to accept Russia’s de facto control of Crimea as part of the price of peace,” said The Times. But the “outcome” may be “rather less predictable” than Volodymyr Zelenskyy “seems to think”.

Some “pragmatists” in Moscow feel that the war has “reached a point of diminishing returns” for the Kremlin, who should now “freeze the conflict” along current lines and “declare victory”. However, the “maximalist camp” calls for “escalation”, with the “mobilisation of hundreds of thousands of reservists”, the “deployment of conscripts” and “more aggressive covert operations” against the factories in Europe that are supplying Kyiv’s weapons.

It “may be a mistake” to conclude that these problems will “force the Kremlin to yield”, said Matthew Chance, CNN’s chief global affairs correspondent. Putin has “built a relatively brittle image as an uncompromising leader”, which makes “capitulation, retreat or even compromise in Ukraine incredibly unlikely and difficult for him to pull off”.

What next?

“Despite his macho public persona”, Putin is “generally quite risk averse”, but when he’s “panicked, he tends to make decisions hastily and badly”, said The Times.

In a worst-case scenario, “egged on” by hard-liners, a pressured Putin “does something particularly stupid, such as escalating attacks on Kyiv or even using tactical nuclear weapons”, said The Telegraph in a leader. The Russian foreign ministry has already alluded to the possibility of unspecified “systematic strikes”. When Nato leaders meet in Ankara next month, they “need to be ready for a potential showdown with Moscow”.

Xenophobia has enveloped South Africa for years, and now a rising tide of anti-migrant views is flooding the country. Amid growing protests, a slew of anti-immigration groups have called for all undocumented migrants to leave South Africa by the end of June. Though there’s no stated plan for what happens after this date, many in the country are concerned.

‘All of them are now under threat’

South Africa is a melting pot of culture, with “Zimbabweans trained as doctors but driving Ubers, Ethiopians running bustling restaurants and Congolese selling colorful wax print fabrics,” said NPR. “All of them are now under threat” as a result of continued pressure from anti-migrant groups. For several months, “anti-immigrant protesters, many brandishing sticks, have been marching through the streets.” Many of them chant “Mabahambe,” a Zulu phrase meaning “they must go.”

The protests have also “sparked attacks against foreigners” throughout South Africa, said The Associated Press. As the violence and attacks continue, several of the most notable anti-immigration groups have “set what they are calling a June 30 deadline for people in the country illegally to leave and the government to take action” against undocumented migrants. The largest of these groups, March for March, is led by a former radio host from the city of Durban.

The June 30 deadline appears to be an arbitrary date, and most of the anti-immigration organizers have “not specified what will happen when it passes,” said NPR. Some of the groups have said they will go on a “national shutdown,” but what this would entail is unclear. As the deadline arrives, some nations have “begun repatriating citizens while criticizing South Africa for what they call a climate of xenophobia,” said the AP.

‘South Africa has long attracted migrants’

The flash point of xenophobia is largely because of the country’s large number of immigrants. As “one of Africa’s richer countries, South Africa has long attracted migrants from elsewhere in Africa seeking a better life,” said the AP. But they still remain a small portion of the total country: South Africa’s most recent census figures from 2022 show there were “2.4 million foreign nationals who had immigrated out of South Africa’s population of 62 million — less than 4% of the population.”

The protestors’ main complaint is that South Africa is “overrun with illegal immigrants who take jobs away from South Africans, ‌use up scarce public services and are responsible for high crime rates,” said Reuters. However, data disputes these claims. For one, every migrant job creates approximately two jobs for native South Africans, according to a 2018 World Bank report. Undocumented migrants are also “highly unlikely to try to use public hospitals or schools, for which they must register, for fear of being found out,” Anthony Kaziboni, a senior researcher at ​the University of Johannesburg’s Center for Social Development in Africa, told Reuters.

Nonetheless, the “current protests are already causing socioeconomic damage,” said Deutsche Welle. And some fear more violence is coming. “They asked me, ‘When are you going to leave the country?’” Kaunga Nyirenda, a Malawian gardener in Johannesburg, said to CNN of the threats he received. “‘If you don’t leave now, you are going to leave in a coffin, because we don’t need anyone after 30th of June.’”

What happened

The U.S. attacked Iranian targets twice over the weekend while Iran struck an oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz and fired drones and missiles at U.S. military sites in Kuwait and Bahrain. The “renewed fighting was sparked by competing interpretations of the memorandum of understanding” to end the war, Axios said, especially regarding the strait.

Who said what

Hours after Saturday’s oil tanker strike, President Donald Trump warned on social media that if Iran kept violating the ceasefire, the U.S. might be “forced to militarily complete the job” in Iran, which would then “no longer exist!” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on Sunday said the MOU gave Tehran sole responsibility for “the management and full restoration of maritime traffic in the Strait of Hormuz.”

Attacking ships transiting the economically “pivotal” waterway “through Omani waters” was a risky but “necessary gambit” for Tehran, The New York Times said. Its “newfound power to disrupt traffic” in the strait is “critical leverage it cannot afford to lose — either at the negotiating table or back at war.”

What next?

After the weekend’s fighting, “both sides will stand down for now and vessels can move freely,” a Trump administration official told news organizations. “Iran has yet to confirm an agreement,” the Times said. U.S. officials said talks with Iran will resume tomorrow in Qatar.

What happened

Europe’s record-shattering heat wave began shifting eastward on Sunday as Public Health France estimated that more than 1,000 people died due to the heat and humidity. The number of excess deaths since the heat dome descended over France on June 20 is expected to rise as more death certificates come in from homes and eldercare facilities, the agency said. More than 80% of the heat-related deaths so far were among people 65 and older.

Who said what

“Right now, 150 million people ​are living under extreme heat, hundreds have died, schools are shut, grids are buckling,” World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on social media. “The ‘once-in-a-generation’ heat wave is now occurring nearly annually.” Scientists with World Weather Attribution said last week that Europe’s record temperatures would have been “virtually impossible” without human-caused climate change. “I’m getting hundreds of calls,” Paris mortician Zouhaeir Hertelli told The Associated Press, but “we’re really full, full, full.”

What next?

Europe’s heat wave has already “disrupted power generation, damaged infrastructure and overwhelmed healthcare systems,” Reuters said. On Sunday it started moving toward Austria, the Czech ​Republic, Germany and Poland. A “dangerous and prolonged heat wave” could also “reach record-breaking levels” in the U.S. Midwest and East Coast this week, The New York Times said. But about 90% of U.S. homes have air conditioning, versus only 20% in Europe.

What happened

Russian President Vladimir Putin acknowledged publicly on Sunday that his country was experiencing a “certain deficit” of gas and other fuels after Ukrainian drone strikes, but he insisted the “problems” aren’t “critical.” Ukraine “kept up its heavy drone assault on Russia,” setting fire to two more oil refineries over the weekend, The Associated Press said. Kyiv’s drone campaign has “choked Russian fuel supplies,” forcing rationing, “long lines at gas stations across the country,” and export halts.

Who said what

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said last week he had approved a “40-day influence operation” to compel Moscow “to end the war.” Ukraine’s “long-range sanctions,” he said Sunday, reduce the “resources that fuel the Russian war machine,” moving the conflict “another step toward peace.” The “strikes against critical infrastructure in general, and energy infrastructure in particular,” do “create problems, that’s obvious,” Putin said in an interview, but the Kremlin would fix them by ramping up the production of air defenses and importing fuel to ease the shortages.

“Behind the scenes,” there’s “growing panic” in Moscow, The Washington Post said. Over the past week, “swarms of Ukrainian drones hit” semiconductor plants, munitions factories, a satellite communications center and “oil facilities across Russia,” including a “dramatic onslaught on Moscow” that “spread plumes of black smoke over the capital as its main oil refinery went up in flames, halting production possibly until next year.”

What next?

Putin said Ukraine’s drone strikes were meant to “cause a split in Russian society and force Russia to halt” its invasion and enter negotiations, but “we will not give them that chance.”

Giorgia Meloni is suffering from a “splitting political headache”, said Hannah Roberts on Politico (Brussels). Italy’s first female PM has enjoyed remarkable success since her election in October 2022. She has kept her Brothers of Italy party dominant in the polls; she has held together her coalition formed with two other right-wing parties – Lega (the League) led by Matteo Salvini, and Forza Italia (the party created by Silvio Berlusconi). Come September, she will be Italy’s longest-serving post-war leader. And she’s achieved all this by skilfully “pushing Italy’s post-fascist Right towards the political mainstream”.

This month, though, a figure has emerged who threatens to undo it all and drag the Right back the other way. Roberto Vannacci, a highly decorated retired general, formally launched a new hard-right, fiercely anti-immigrant party, National Future, in Rome last week.

It is rapidly gaining support: it already has 100,000 registered members; boasts eight MPs after a string of defections from the League and Forza Italia; and is polling at over 5%. Meloni’s headache is whether to keep him at arm’s length or bring him into her political orbit. So far she’s picked the first option, but if Vannacci’s popularity keeps rising in the run-up to next year’s general election, she may have to reconsider.

‘Incandescent’ and ‘disturbing’

Since the fall of Mussolini, Italy has produced a long line of populists, said Antonio Preiti on Linkiesta (Milan). But none has been “more incandescent, more aggressive, more disturbing” than Vannacci, nicknamed “Il Generale” by his legion of fans and hailed as a modern-day Julius Caesar by his colleagues.

The Afghanistan and Iraq War veteran’s controversial demand for “remigration” – the forced deportation of immigrants to their countries of origin – should come as no surprise. This is the man, after all, who made a name for himself in 2023 with his outlandish book “The World Upside Down”, in which he hit out at the “dictatorship of minorities”; claimed that black immigrants could never be Italian; and derided gay people as “not normal”.

That made him hugely popular, and prompted Salvini, the deputy PM, to ask him to join his Lega party to help revive its fortunes. But that gamble “backfired in a spectacular fashion”, said Nick Squires in The Daily Telegraph. Elected as an MEP for the League in 2024, he proved not a “pliant acolyte” but a thorn in its side. His new party is now wooing Salvini’s supporters.

‘Extremist passions’

The old soldier may have learnt to “move shrewdly” in politics, said Stefano Folli in La Repubblica (Rome), and he sure knows how to grab people’s attention. But can he keep up the momentum? Doubtful, said Lisa Di Giuseppe in Domani (Rome). He’s been conspicuously short on economic and foreign policy ideas, for a start. At his party’s inaugural congress this month, the 57-year-old gave little indication of strategy “beyond resentment, revenge and remigration”.

Vannacci is a man known for “extremist passions masquerading as common sense”, said David Allegranti in Quotidiano Nazionale (Bologna). Such policies as he has are designed to lure disgruntled right-wingers: plans to build more jails and to pay mothers to stay at home to free up jobs that “men can’t find”. His pitch at the conference was abundantly clear. “We represent the rejects and the scum, and we are proud of it,” he told party delegates.

Meloni must “behave like a statesman”, erect a “cordon sanitaire” around National Future, and ostracise this “latest adventurer” in Italian politics, said Mario Lavia on Linkiesta. It may result in her losing office to the centre-left, but for the good of the nation she needs to do it. Vannacci is no Mussolini, it’s true, but given half a chance he’ll corrode democracy with his pro-Russia and anti-EU rhetoric.

But would that isolation strategy actually work, asked Roberto Gressi in Corriere della Sera (Rome). It certainly hasn’t in the case of the National Rally in France or the AfD in Germany, both now trending in the polls. Sad to say there’s no easy way to slay the populist far-right crocodile.

What happened

The International Maritime Organization on Thursday paused a nascent effort to evacuate ships stranded in the Persian Gulf after Iran struck a cargo vessel, causing damage but no casualties, according to the ship’s owner. The IMO, a United Nations body, earlier this week began shepherding ships through the Strait of Hormuz along a route hugging Oman’s coast. Hundreds of ships and more than 11,000 seafarers have been stranded in the Gulf since the Iran war broke out, and Iran’s drone strike demonstrated its “continued ability to restrict the critical waterway, despite the agreement reached last week with the United States,” CNN said.

Who said what

The attacked vessel did “not transit under IMO’s evacuation framework,” IMO chief Arsenio Dominguez said in a press release, but “the evacuation plan will be paused until further clarity is obtained” on “necessary safety guarantees.” Hours before the strike, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps warned that transiting the strait outside routes “authorized” by Iran was “unacceptable and completely dangerous.” The opening of an alternate passage “would relieve pressure on the world economy,” The Associated Press said, but also “remove Iran’s main source of leverage in ongoing peace talks.”

What next?

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Thursday during a “visit to the Gulf to reassure American allies” that “Washington was committed to the new route” and free passage through the strait, the AP said.

What happened

Acting Venezuelan President Delcy Rodríguez on Friday morning raised the official death toll from Wednesday’s powerful back-to-back earthquakes to 589, with at least 4,300 injured and hundreds more missing or trapped under collapsed buildings. With international aid beginning to arrive, “rescue crews and residents dug through rubble in an increasingly desperate search for survivors,” The New York Times said. The “first 48 to 72 hours after a quake are widely regarded as the ‘golden’ window to reach people buried alive,” CNN said.

Who said what

The magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 earthquakes “hit a country already weakened by years of economic turmoil” that “left much of its infrastructure fragile and complicated rescue efforts as aftershocks rattled the capital and surrounding coastal areas,” Reuters said. “Affected residents have nowhere to go,” CNN said, and many Venezuelans “are enduring a second night out on the streets” near damaged and collapsed apartment buildings. “They’ve pulled out a lot of dead people,” La Guaira resident Yorliana Colmenares told the Times. “Injured people, children, animals.”

What next?

The “number of dead and injured” is “virtually certain to rise,” the Times said. A website created to track the missing “listed more than 46,000 people as unaccounted for” on Thursday night, Reuters said.

What happened

Powerful back-to-back earthquakes in Venezuela on Wednesday evening collapsed buildings in Caracas and other cities, sending people rushing out to the streets. At least 164 people are confirmed dead and nearly 1,000 more are injured, the Venezuelan government said, with hundreds more still missing.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the initial magnitude 7.2 quake was followed less than a minute later by a magnitude 7.5 temblor, the biggest to hit Venezuela since 1900. “High casualties and damage are probable,” USGS said, with the final death toll likely in the thousands.

Who said what

“We urge our population to remain calm,” Acting Venezuelan President Delcy Rodríguez said in a televised address. “We urge unity.” Simón Bolívar International Airport outside Caracas sustained heavy damage and was closed, Rodríguez said, and train, subway and residential gas services were suspended. School was also canceled for the rest of the week. Traveling through Caracas on Thursday morning, there were “neighborhoods with no lights on and streets flooded by burst water pipes,” said The New York Times correspondent María Victoria Fermín.

What next?

The U.S. was among several countries that promised aid, search-and-rescue help and rebuilding assistance. “We will be there for our new and great friends,” President Donald Trump said on social media. “Early reports are not good!!!”

What happened

The Senate on Tuesday voted 50-48 to adopt a resolution instructing President Donald Trump to end the Iran war or obtain congressional authorization. Four Republicans joined all but one Democrat to pass the resolution, and two Republicans were absent. The House approved the measure 215-208 on June 3, and Trump cannot veto it.

Who said what

The resolution’s adoption is a “significant rebuke” to Trump, CNN said. It reflects “growing concerns” among GOP lawmakers “over both the war and the deal Trump struck with Iran to end it,” The Associated Press said. Trump called the vote “poorly timed and meaningless.”

This is the “first time since the enactment of the War Powers Resolution of 1973” that both chambers “approved a concurrent resolution directing a president to end a military conflict,” The New York Times said. Whether it’s legally binding without a president’s signature “has never been definitively tested before the Supreme Court.”

What next?

The White House is expected to request $80 billion this week to pay for the war. Trump will “meet with restless GOP senators” on Wednesday on Capitol Hill, where his preference that lawmakers just “pony up, and don’t ask too many questions” about the war, is “grating on many congressional Republicans,” Politico said.

Another prime minister resigning from office adds to the “unprecedented instability in the modern history” of Britain, said an editorial in Le Monde.

Following his announcement on Monday, Starmer will still “seek to make his final mark on the world stage as a lame-duck prime minister”, said Politico. But a planned EU-UK summit on 22 July has been postponed amid indecision over Britain’s intentions regarding the continent.

With Starmer’s imminent departure, and many of the policies of his likely successor Andy Burnham as yet unknown, Britain’s instability is having tangible consequences on the world stage.

How was Starmer viewed?

“God save the king and this desolate land of the United Kingdom,” said Antonello Guerrera in La Repubblica. Since Starmer was elected in 2024, he has appeared a “robotic and insipid leader” on the domestic front. He has “always been a Hamlet: paralysed by indecision, doubt, and sunk by tragic ineptitude”. And on Monday, “the curtain fell”.

But, aside from being “humiliated” by Donald Trump on social media, many world leaders thanked Starmer for his service, including his “staunch ally” Volodymyr Zelenskyy, his “comrade” Emmanuel Macron, and Giorgia Meloni. Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, paid tribute, saying: “It can take many leaders years to grow into the statesman you became in just two years.”

“Pragmatic, cool and rational”, Starmer embodied a strain of “anti-politics” and could get the job done without a fuss, said Enrico Franceschini in La Republicca. But these qualities were eroded by a “lack of charisma, the inability to communicate, and the limited political vision of a prime minister animated by good intentions but unable to implement them”.

Where did it go wrong?

“Beleaguered” Starmer’s tenure was “troubled” from the outset, said Euronews. From failing to declare gifts in the first few months of his premiership, to appointing Peter Mandelson as US ambassador, to numerous policy U-turns on “welfare reform, introducing digital IDs and scrapping winter fuel payments”: his time in office was “littered with controversy”.

Starmer was also “undone by economic stagnation” and “underspending on defence”, said Quentin Letts in The Washington Post. But perhaps the reason he stayed in power so long was that there was “no obvious answer” as to who could replace him.

Fundamentally, Starmer “broke his promise of stability” and “orchestrated constant changes of strategy”, said Claudi Pérez in El País. In his defence, he inherited a “poisoned chalice” of “stagnant” growth, but overall, like “bad tennis players”, he made “too many unforced errors”.

Is Britain an isolated case?

Since Britain voted to leave the EU in 2016, No. 10 has become a “hot seat”, said Deutsche Welle. Whoever succeeds Starmer will be the seventh leader in that period, and will be “grappling with profound political, economic, and social problems”.

Before Starmer, according to Der Spiegel, the UK had “gambler” David Cameron, someone who tried to “pick up the pieces” in Theresa May, the “scandals”-ridden Boris Johnson, a “zigzag” six-week tenure from Liz Truss, and a leader of “negative momentum” in Rishi Sunak. Downing Street has become a “transit station”.

But the rest of Europe is equally fractured, said Pérez in El País. Since the financial crisis in 2008, there has been a “collapse” of centrist parties in Europe. France has had seven prime ministers in the past eight years, and in Germany, Friedrich Merz’s popularity is “plummeting” and the “grand coalition is falling apart”. Further afield, the US’ “politics are a mess”.

Is the future brighter with Burnham?

The “charismatic” Burnham is a “rising star”, with “decades of experience in national and regional politics”, said DW. And he is perhaps the “last hope to counter the rising right-wing populists of Reform UK”.

The new MP for Makerfield provides a “glimmer of hope” for the UK, said Pérez in El País, not least because he is in favour of “resetting the relationship with the EU”. That is the “greatest reform this country needs”. It has been “plagued by a nauseating post-imperial nostalgia, an epidemic of fear, and a mediocre political class that has been hitting rock bottom for almost 20 years”.

Burnham “may well prove a more skilled rider”, said The Washington Post. But each of the last six prime ministers “arrived promising to be the exception to the merry-go-round of predecessors and unquenchable voter rage”. And he “won’t have much time to figure it out”.

What happened

Former Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham has emerged as the likely successor to British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who announced his resignation Monday amid a revolt inside his Labour Party triggered by falling poll numbers and substantial losses in local elections last month. Burnham, who won a seat in Parliament in a special election last week, announced he would run for Labour leader before being sworn in.

Who said what

Starmer’s resignation “could have triggered a divisive leadership contest, but several Labour lawmakers said they now expected more of a coronation,” Reuters said. Burnham, 56, quickly “won the support of another potential leadership rival,” ​former Health Minister Wes Streeting, and no other potential candidates stepped forward. Following an “extraordinary month of deft political maneuvering,” Burnham “was treated like a celebrity” when he arrived at Parliament, with “television crews filming his arrival from helicopters,” The New York Times said.

What next?

Starmer will stay on as caretaker prime minister until Labour picks a new leader, a process starting with nominations opening July 9. If there’s a contest, the “election would likely drag on into September,” The Associated Press said. If it’s a “coronation,” Reuters said, Burnham could “enter office by mid-July.”

What happened

Abelardo de la Espriella, a right-wing lawyer with no political experience, declared victory in Colombia’s presidential runoff Sunday night. With 99.9% of votes counted from the election, de la Espriella had 49.7% while 48.7% went for leftist Sen. Iván Cepeda, who suggested he would challenge the result.

Who said what

A victory by de la Espriella, a dual Colombian-U.S. citizen who “transformed himself from sharply dressed Miami lawyer to populist in a soccer jersey and a straw hat,” would “return Colombia to conservative rule after four years under Gustavo Petro, the country’s first leftist president,” The New York Times said. It would also “advance Latin America’s broader shift to the right” in recent years. De la Espriella, endorsed by President Donald Trump, has “promised a heavy-handed approach to crime-fighting, including drug trafficking,” The Associated Press said. He vowed to end Petro’s peace negotiations with armed groups and “build mega-prisons.”

What next?

The winner, to be announced after a “final verified count, overseen by notaries and judges,” will begin a four-year term on Aug. 7, Reuters said. De la Espriella would likely have to “water down some of his proposals” due to the “closeness of the race” and the “divided Congress” in which Cepeda’s Historic Pact party has a plurality of seats in both chambers.

What happened

The U.S. and Iran made “encouraging progress” after a rocky start to high-level peace talks in Switzerland, mediators Qatar and Pakistan said in a joint statement early Monday morning. The two sides approved a “roadmap” to reach a final deal during a 60-day truce, a “de-confliction cell” to ensure an end to “military operations in Lebanon” and a “communication line” to “avoid incidents and miscommunication” in the Strait of Hormuz.

The mediators had “delivered major progress to end Lebanon War,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on social media. Vice President JD Vance, the lead U.S. delegate, said in a press conference Sunday that “great progress” was being made.

Who said what

The negotiations “had a tense start,” The Associated Press said. As Vance talked of turning over “a new leaf” with Iran, President Donald Trump threatened on social media to “hit Iran very hard again” if it didn’t “immediately stop” Hezbollah from “causing trouble” in Lebanon. Trump told Fox News he had warned Iranian officials that if they closed the Strait of Hormuz, as they purported to do over the weekend, “you won’t have a country” or “even make it back to your f---ing country.”

Iranian state media reported that Trump’s threats “prompted the Iranian delegation to leave the negotiation venue,” The Wall Street Journal said. They continued negotiating through the mediators.

What next?

Lower-level technical negotiations will continue at Switzerland’s lakeside Bürgenstock resort for the rest of the week, the mediators said.

Summer is “a boom time for ice cream makers”, said Agence France-Presse – but in Japan, some of the country’s biggest firms are feeling the heat.

Officials from the Japan Fair Trade Commission (JFTC) have raided six firms on suspicion of colluding to hike prices in a cartel. Staff are believed to have “sent emails or met up for years to coordinate the timing and size” of the increases, said an anonymous source, violating anti-monopoly laws.

The anti-trust watchdog searched the head offices of Meiji, Morinaga Milk Industry, Lotte, Ezaki Glico, Morinaga & Co and Akagi Nyugyo, company officials have confirmed.

Prices ‘jumped in lockstep’

Since 2022, ice cream prices in Japan have risen every year around the same time, as heat and inflation climb. In the fiscal year ending in March, ice cream sales hit a record high of 663 billion yen (about £3.1 billion), according to the Japan Ice Cream Association, as the country sweated through its hottest summer since records began.

Now, the commission is investigating whether major manufacturers colluded to take advantage of inflation and raise their prices above the increase in the cost of raw ingredients, according to Kyodo News.

Sources say the six companies are “suspected of raising the suggested retail prices of ice cream” in increments of 10 yen, according to The Japan Times. The aim seems to be “securing profits for each company”.

Public broadcaster NHK used a graph to show how “the price of two flagship frozen delights” – Meiji’s ice cream and Morinaga Milk’s choco-ice bites – “jumped in lockstep four times” between 2022 and 2025, said The Guardian. Sources say this is the first JFTC investigation into a “suspected ice-cream-related price cartel”. The case has provoked anger among “frozen snack aficionados as they face a cruel summer ahead”.

Japan’s “sweltering and sweaty summers” are being intensified by the climate crisis. In April, authorities announced a new term for days reaching more than 40C – kokusho, meaning “cruelly hot”.

The ice cream ‘boom’

The case “threatens to undermine the reputations” of some of Japan’s largest food companies, said The New York Times. The ice cream industry has “boomed in recent years”. Last year, it was valued at more than $4 billion, up 3% from 2024.

But rising prices have “stoked public anger” in Japan, which is battling inflation for “the first time in decades”, fuelled by higher energy costs from the war in the Middle East.

The companies have issued statements saying the commission had raided their offices and that they “would cooperate with the investigation”. Natsuyo Suzuki, of Akagi Nyugo, said the firm would work with investigators following an “on-site inspection”.

The JFTC will analyse seized materials and interview individuals to investigate the suspected violation of antimonopoly laws. But if the commission “concludes that there was a cartel”, said AFP, the antitrust watchdog will “order the firms to improve their business practices and pay a fine”.

Under the terms of the US-brokered ceasefire agreed last October, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) withdrew to a demarcation line known as the “yellow line”, and retained control of some 53% of Gaza. Nearly all of Gaza’s two million residents are living in Hamas-controlled areas, where the militant group has tightened its grip: since the turn of the year, it has extended its control over security, tax revenue and government services.

In the meantime, Israeli forces have pushed the yellow line steadily into Hamas-controlled areas. PM Benjamin Netanyahu recently confirmed that Israeli forces now control about 60% of Gaza, and that he hopes to increase that to 70% (though Israel officially denies that it wants to occupy the strip permanently).

In at least one place, Israel has moved the yellow line to intersect with Salah al-Din Road, Gaza’s main north-south artery.

What were the terms of the ceasefire?

In theory, Israel and Hamas stopped fighting on 10 October. Under Phase One of the deal, Hamas agreed to return the last 20 hostages it had taken during its attack on Israel in October 2023, while Israel agreed to release 1,950 Palestinian prisoners, mostly Gazans. Israel also allowed aid delivery to resume.

Under the second phase of the deal, announced by Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff in January, military control was to be handed over to an International Stabilisation Force, and civilian affairs to a Palestinian-led technocratic administration. The IDF was meant to withdraw further; Hamas was meant to disarm; and international funds were to be provided for Gaza’s rebuilding.

Why has progress stalled?

Israel refused to withdraw before Hamas disarmed, arguing that it would leave a security vacuum that a technocratic administration or international force could not fill. It also complains that the remains of dead hostages have not been returned. The Palestinians, and Arab mediators, regard this as a violation of the ceasefire deal. And though the intensity of fighting in Gaza – at least 70,000 Palestinians were killed in the two years to October – has slowed greatly since the ceasefire took effect, it has not stopped. According to the Gaza Health Ministry, more than 900 Palestinians have been killed there since October 2025; a substantial proportion of these deaths occurred near the yellow line. Five Israeli soldiers have also been killed in Gaza.

How are conditions in Gaza?

The vast majority of Gaza’s occupants – about 1.7 million – are still living in tents or makeshift accommodation, according to the UN. Overcrowded campsites are afflicted by raw sewage and pests such as rats and weasels.

The World Health Organisation says there have been reports of some 111,500 cases of disease or infestation due to external parasites this year. About 728,000 school-aged children have been out of formal education for almost three years. Only about half of hospitals are even partially functional. Thousands of patients needing medical treatment have been evacuated to more than 30 countries, including through the Rafah Border Crossing into Egypt, which reopened in February.

Meanwhile, aid agencies continue to have trouble making humanitarian deliveries to Gaza; they were halted last week following Iranian attacks on Israel. Food shortages continue, and one in five families are eating only once a day, the UN says.

Is any rebuilding taking place?

Ahead of the ceasefire, Donald Trump and his aides talked of turning Gaza into a gleaming hub for trade, tourism and tech. The “Board of Peace” unveiled by Trump in September was supposed to oversee the reconstruction, which the UN estimates could cost more than $70 billion. But so far, no contracts to clear the rubble and start rebuilding have been awarded, while the Board of Peace is struggling with funding shortfalls.

Meanwhile, Israel is razing buildings on its side of the yellow line (it says it is taking down uninhabitable buildings, and destroying structures that could pose a threat to Israel and the IDF).

How strong is Hamas now?

During the war, Hamas lost roughly 10,000 fighters, most of its political top echelon, and nearly the entire military command council that planned the massacres of 7 October 2023. Prior to the war, however, it had run Gaza since 2007 – and it has used the truce to rebuild. It immediately launched a crackdown on rival gangs that had taken control in parts of Gaza City and Rafah.

By February, it had largely reasserted control over the population: traders say Hamas fighters routinely extort fees and taxes from them. Israeli intelligence assessments now suggest that Hamas has rebuilt some of its infrastructure, including sections of its underground tunnel network and command-and-control systems.

Are there any signs of diplomatic progress?

Talks designed to push the ceasefire plan forward began in Cairo last week. According to a draft text, Hamas would hand its weapons over to an agreed Palestinian authority, in return for Israel announcing a timetable for its departure from Gaza. However, these proposals have not been accepted by the US or Israel, which has reportedly drawn up plans for a new round of attacks on Gaza, to begin when the war with Iran ends.

What other challenges are there?

The US is distracted by the Iran conflict. Netanyahu is seeking re-election by late October, and is unlikely to view an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza as politically expedient; ministers in his coalition have long talked of overseeing the “voluntary migration” of Gazans from the enclave. Gazans are very concerned that Israel now controls much of their territory, including around 60% of its fertile agricultural land, the majority of its water wells, and some of its wastewater facilities.

What happened

President Donald Trump and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on Wednesday signed a memorandum of understanding to open the Strait of Hormuz, allow Iran to sell oil on the global market and start unfreezing its assets. The deal also kicked off 60 days of negotiations on Tehran’s nuclear program and “at least” $300 billion for Iran’s “reconstruction and economic development.”

The text of the 14-point agreement was read to reporters by a U.S. official, and Iran later released a similar version. Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, a key mediator, said the agreement was in “force with immediate effect.”

Who said what

The truce will mostly “restore the status quo before the war,” The Associated Press said. However, the text suggests Iran might “negotiate some permanent way to exercise sovereignty” over the strait, including new shipping “fees,” after 60 days, said The New York Times. The Iranians have “emerged from a confrontation with the world’s most powerful military” intact and “with much to celebrate.”

“Everything we sought to achieve through military action, we obtained several times over through negotiation,” Iran’s lead negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said on state television. The deal is “very strong,” Trump told reporters at the G7 summit in France. “Most people seem to be very happy.” Critics, including many Republicans, are “stupid and bad people,” he said. But “if I don’t like it, we’ll go back to shooting at them, dropping bombs.”

What next?

Instead of the planned signing ceremony in Geneva on Friday, Vice President JD Vance and other Trump envoys will “attend three days of negotiations with their Iranian counterparts,” The Wall Street Journal said.

The internet is awash with jokes about the reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, which is now riddled with algae.

The Trump administration spent more than $14 million (£10.5 million) draining the pool and painting the bottom “American flag blue” in time for the 250th anniversary of US independence. The president had described the reflecting pool – the scene of Martin Luther King’s 1963 “I have a dream” speech – as “filthy” and “dirty”, and promised to transform it into something “beautiful”. Instead, residual algae has “proliferated” in warm weather, said The Guardian, turning the pond “Wicked” green.

Something positive that can be said about the pool’s algal bloom is that it’s harmless. But toxic algae blooms are a worldwide phenomenon that can harm humans and devastate marine life. And as the climate crisis warms the water, the problem is growing.

‘Underwater phantom’

“Algal blooms are a rapid, explosive growth of algae,” said pharmacology researcher Ian Musgrave on The Conversation. Blue-green algae, known as cyanobacteria, naturally occur in inland waters, estuaries and the sea. They often contain multiple species, some of which produce toxins. The “bewildering variety” can cause many effects in humans, from nausea and skin irritation to increased asthma symptoms and even liver failure. Those that don’t produce toxins can “suffocate fish” by damaging the gills and reducing oxygen.

For a year now, a toxic algal bloom in South Australia has had “devastating effects” on wildlife. “At my local beach, walks were a sad parade of dead sea life,” said Musgrave.

Since last March, algae have “flared at hotspots” along the coastline, causing “stinging eyes, coughing, rashes, headaches and breathing difficulties” among surfers, said ABC. One swimmer was hospitalised with severe gastroenteritis. “It was like razor blades in my gut,” he said. “I was rolling around on the floor in the emergency room, coughing and spewing blood.”

Along the “jagged coastline”, it has become “an underwater phantom”, and researchers are “not entirely sure why”, said The New York Times. Beachgoers are “horrified by the dead animals washing ashore”. Since February last year, a crowdsourced platform has recorded more than 100,000 instances of dead sea life. “It was literally just like an underwater bushfire,” said a recreational fisherman.

Recent citizen science data suggests the bloom affected nearly 8,000 square miles. Last October, state agency scientists estimated the algae had impacted about a third of South Australia’s coasts. The psychological effect is enormous: in a survey of South Australians last July, nearly 70% said “they were repeatedly thinking about the bloom”, said researcher Brianna Le Busque, from Adelaide University. Some compared seeing the washed-up marine life to “the death of a loved one”.

‘Visible from space’

Harmful algal blooms stalk shores far beyond Australia. In Southern California last year an “unprecedented, multi-toxin event” killed hundreds of seabirds, sea lions and dolphins, said the Public Policy Institute of California.

Lough Neagh in Northern Ireland, the UK’s largest freshwater lake, has also been blighted by blue-green algae for years. This “majestic landscape of water and sky”, the inspiration for Seamus Heaney’s prize-winning poetry, is “choking on recurring toxic algal blooms”, said The Guardian.

The algae feed on high levels of nutrients in the water, mainly from agriculture (farm run-off, fertiliser and livestock waste), as well as “inadequate wastewater treatment”. Global warming has also increased the temperature of the lough, encouraging the abundant blooms. Last year, there were 243 detections of cyanobacteria growths, according to Northern Ireland’s Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs: a record.

In some places, the green sludge – “so widespread it is visible from space”, said The Guardian – forms “patterns and swirls redolent of Gustav Klimt”. But far from picturesque, the blooms “coat the surface, kill wildlife, unleash stenches and make the lake all but unusable”. The impact on wildlife and tourism is “incalculable”.

“Lough Neagh is dying in front of our eyes,” said Claire Hanna, leader of the Social Democratic and Labour Party. “Images of fish and eels gasping for life on the surface are not just shocking – they are a stark warning of total ecological collapse.”