LONDON — London is bracing for days of severe disruption on the Underground as members of the RMT union prepare a rolling walkout that is expected to halt most Tube services for four consecutive weekdays, with only limited trains resuming early Friday. The action follows months of talks over pay, fatigue, and shift patterns. Transport […]
JOHANNESBURG — South Africa has asked China to postpone joint naval exercises with Russia until after November’s Group of 20 summit, an unusual step by a government that has long defended its military partnerships with both countries. The request, relayed through diplomatic channels in recent days, underscores Pretoria’s determination to keep the summit free of […]
WASHINGTON — President Donald J. Trump signed an executive order on Friday authorizing the Pentagon to be styled once again as the Department of War, reviving a name that vanished from official use more than three quarters of a century ago. The move, long floated in Mr. Trump’s speeches as a symbol of what he […]
JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s promise of a strategic victory is unraveling. Instead of triumph, Israel faces the contours of strategic defeat: a grinding stalemate in Gaza, an economy losing investor confidence, a fractured society, and the looming prospect of a confrontation with Iran that Israel is ill-prepared to fight. This is not a […]
JERUSALEM — In the Hebrew press, the calls are growing louder, sharper, and more extreme. The country’s most widely read right-wing daily, Israel Hayom, published an opinion piece this week that made plain what many in the ruling coalition already believe: Israel must escalate the war in Gaza without hesitation, regardless of political consequences. Shachar […]
JERUSALEM — More than four in five Jewish Israelis — 82 percent, according to a June Haaretz poll — now say they support expelling Gazans from the Strip. The figure is overwhelming, and it explains why Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s popularity has surged during the war. He is more popular than at any point in […]
BERLIN — The turbulence in Germany’s politics cannot be separated from the choices its leaders have made since 2022. What some analysts describe as a “political tsunami” is also the result of self-inflicted wounds: policies that have left Europe’s largest economy cut off from its energy lifelines, its export markets, and its sense of security. […]
Washington’s Shadow War on Venezuela: Bounties, Battleships, and the Long Siege CARACAS — The gray silhouettes of U.S. warships have reappeared in the Caribbean, a show of force not seen with such intensity since the Cold War. Officially, Washington insists the deployment is part of a counter-narcotics operation. Yet in Caracas, and across the hemisphere, […]
Russia has now turned its back on Europe. It has signed an agreement with China to build a new pipeline that will carry Siberian gas straight into the Chinese heartland — and, in time, potentially southward into India. The Power of Siberia-2 is more than a project on paper: it is the symbol of a […]
LONDON — On the afternoon of 24 July 2025, a bare-bones website suddenly lit up with traffic. Its message was stark: “It’s time to build a new kind of political party — one that belongs to you.” Below the slogan sat nothing more than a simple email sign-up box and the promise of a founding […]
Middle East A cluster of American guided-missile destroyers has shifted into the Eastern Mediterranean, adding a sea-based layer to Israel’s missile defense while Washington weighs the risk of deeper entanglement. By Jaffa Levy WASHINGTON — The United States has expanded its maritime air- and missile-defense umbrella around Israel, moving a group of Arleigh Burke–class destroyers […]
South America / Venezuela / World
By Jaffa Levy CARACAS — President Nicolás Maduro appeared on national television this week flanked by his defense minister and closest lieutenants, warning that Venezuela was facing its most serious external threat in decades. The address came as U.S. destroyers and support ships converged in the Caribbean Sea and American surveillance flights resumed from Curaçao, […]
NEW DELHI/LONDON — As Britain’s asylum system creaks under record numbers and Labour’s government pursues reforms, Indian newspapers are watching closely. Their coverage reflects both practical concerns — warnings to Indian students, exposure of fraud — and cultural unease, with diaspora voices comparing Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s rhetoric to Enoch Powell’s. Warnings to Students This […]
LONDON — Immigration is once again Britain’s most combustible political issue, and this week it spilled into the streets and across X — the platform once known as Twitter — with hashtags like #StopTheBoats trending at the top of the feed. Protest clips outside hotels housing asylum seekers, posts accusing Labour of favouring migrants over […]
LONDON — The arrest of Graham Linehan, co-creator of the sitcom Father Ted, has erupted into a global flashpoint after Elon Musk and J.K. Rowling used their platforms on X to denounce the move. Linehan, 57, was arrested at Heathrow Airport on suspicion of inciting violence, following April posts in which he urged that if […]
LONDON — Graham Linehan, the Irish writer and co-creator of the cult sitcom Father Ted, was arrested at Heathrow Airport this week on suspicion of inciting violence through social media posts. What might once have been a narrow police matter quickly escalated into a political and cultural storm, amplified by prominent voices on X, including […]
LONDON — Britain’s long-term borrowing costs have surged to their highest level since 1998, rattling the Treasury and intensifying the pressure on Chancellor Rachel Reeves ahead of her first full Budget. The yield on 30-year government bonds — gilts — has climbed sharply in recent weeks, outpacing both U.S. Treasuries and German Bunds. For investors, […]
Artificial Intelligence (AI) / United States
Sam Altman speaks less like a computer scientist than a strategist. He has no doctorate in artificial intelligence, no technical pedigree of the kind that fills the ranks at OpenAI. Yet he has come to occupy a singular position in the field. As chief executive of OpenAI, he is both salesman and forecaster, a man […]
When the leaders of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization gathered in Tianjin this week, it was meant to be a grand performance — and across Asia, newspapers described it as such. But while Chinese state media hailed the forum as a “new global order,” regional press from Indonesia to Thailand filtered the summit through their own […]
When Vladimir V. Putin stepped onto the red carpet in Tianjin last weekend, the choreography was as carefully managed as any in the long history of Sino-Russian relations. The Russian leader’s arrival for the 25th Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit was not merely a diplomatic courtesy. It was an act of political theater, crafted to […]
BEIJING, Sept. 3, 2025 — At dawn tomorrow, Beijing’s storied Tiananmen Square will awaken to a spectacle of steel and stride, as the People’s Liberation Army stages its largest military parade in nearly a decade. This grand display—slated to mark the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II in Asia—will bring together tens […]
As Gaza slides into documented famine and the International Court of Justice’s provisional measures remain in force, the United States has blocked visas for a Palestinian delegation to the United Nations—an act that collides with the U.N. Headquarters Agreement (1947) and the host’s international law obligations. No number of airport denials will bury the record […]
South Korean researchers have documented rare but serious cardiac events following mRNA Covid-19 vaccination, though health authorities stress that the benefits of vaccination still far outweigh the risks. One peer-reviewed case study, published in the Journal of Korean Medical Science in 2021, reported the sudden death of a healthy 22-year-old military recruit who developed chest […]
Take the case of a young reservist — let’s call him Daniel R. — who fought in Operation Defensive Shield more than two decades ago. In recent months, he has begun to speak publicly about the psychic pain that has shadowed him ever since. His story is not unique, yet it resonates far beyond his […]
By Jaffa Levy An impulse—to reclaim a sense of belonging—echoed in England this weekend, where flags and protests occurred in the open air. A surge of English and British flags across town centres and transport arteries complemented with anti-immigration protests this weekend, offering a vivid tableau of how national symbols have become proxy battlegrounds for […]
By Jaffa Levy BARCELONA, Aug. 31, 2025 — A fleet of around 20 small vessels slipped from the city’s harbour on Sunday, laden with food, water and medicine, and carrying a mission beyond mere humanitarian aid. The Global Sumud Flotilla, billed by its organisers as the largest civilian maritime effort yet launched to breach Israel’s […]
By Elizabeth Wang Britain’s rental crisis has spawned a chilling new trend: landlords quietly trading rooms for sexual favours, targeting the most vulnerable and flouting criminal law. Britain’s rental crisis has spawned a chilling new trend: landlords quietly trading rooms for sexual favours, targeting the most vulnerable and flouting criminal law. With private rents surging […]
Defence / Israel / Middle East
By Jaffa Levy in London and Abu Rashid in Sana’a Last week — Thursday, August 28, 2025 — an airstrike hit the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, killing Prime Minister Ahmed al-Rahawi and several cabinet colleagues. SANAA, Yemen — By dawn the posters had already gone up: the prime minister’s face reproduced in grainy monochrome, a strip […]
By Jaffa Levy Tianjin, August 31, 2025 — Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged on Sunday to improve relations during their first face-to-face meeting in seven years, held on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Tianjin. The talks come just days after President Donald Trump imposed […]
How sabotage, austerity and Trump’s shadow left the continent exposed By Jaffa Levy Europe has slipped into a brittle bargain. In Berlin, ministers say the welfare state is “too expensive,” even as they prepare to bring back military service—voluntary first, compulsory if too few step forward. In Paris, Emmanuel Macron casts Russia as a predator […]
By Jaffa Levy Man is free. He does not need to be surveilled, categorised, or indexed. That principle has always been central to British life. From Magna Carta to the rejection of continental-style identity papers, the understanding has endured: a citizen is not required to account for himself to the state at every turn. Now, […]
By Jaffa Levy August 30, 2025 Europe finds itself at a crossroads. As the war in Ukraine grinds on into its fourth year, Western capitals are under pressure to sustain the flow of weapons while grappling with rising debt, fragile economies, and restive populations. The United States, long the primary source of military aid, has […]
By Jaffa Levy Prime Minister Narendra Modi has arrived in China for his first visit in seven years, a trip that underscores India’s pivotal role in the changing global order. Modi will attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Tianjin from 31 August to 1 September 2025, where he is expected to meet President […]
By Jaffa Levy — London They came first in small boats. Julius Caesar, peering across the narrow water, lashed together a flotilla of timbered hulls and tested the Channel twice, in 55 and 54 BC. The crossings were tenuous, the landings hard, but the sea itself—the short, churning strait—was the measure of Britain’s peril and […]
By Jaffa Levy Baghdad’s new security memorandum with Tehran is not a tidy border fix. It is the start of a legal denial regime: a pledge that neither country’s territory or airspace will be used by third parties against the other, underpinned by formal intelligence-sharing and joint patrols. Signed in the Iraqi capital by Qasim […]
By Jaffa — 29 August 2025 When the “Russiagate” scandal broke in 2016, America’s most prestigious newspapers treated it as gospel. The New York Times and The Washington Post led the charge, framing Donald Trump’s victory as the product of Kremlin interference. For this coverage, both were awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 2018. Seven years […]
By Jaffa Levy — Reform UK has stopped talking about “turning the boats back.” According to Mark White’s interview for GB News, Nigel Farage now speaks the language of deportations, legal resets, and international withdrawals. It is not a tactical slogan anymore; it is an entire architecture for pulling Britain out of the European Court […]
By Jaffa Levy The silence of Britain’s leaders in the face of mounting warnings has become louder than any denial. There has been no clear rebuttal from the Prime Minister, no assertive statement from the Chancellor, no authoritative reassurance from the Governor of the Bank of England. Instead, there has been evasion, suppression, and an […]
By Jaffa Levy — August 28, 2025 LONDON — For the first time since 2008, American nuclear weapons are again being stationed on British soil. According to Western defense officials and satellite evidence reviewed by arms control analysts, the United States has transferred newly modernized B61-12 thermonuclear bombs to RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk — a […]
By Jaffa Levy — 27 August 2025 Kyiv continues to press Western capitals for “security guarantees.” President Zelensky has raised the issue repeatedly in Washington, insisting that without binding assurances Ukraine will face another war. Yet talk of guarantees is premature: no guarantee can exist until hostilities end, and Moscow has made it plain that […]
By Jaffa Levy The Long Read Europe in Denial: Moral Rhetoric and Strategic Decline The continent clings to the language of virtue as its energy arteries are severed, its industries hollowed out, and its financial credibility questioned. Reading time: ~18 minutes For more than five centuries, Europe commanded the centre of world affairs. Its empires […]
By Jaffa Donald Trump boarded Air Force One bound for Alaska repeating the same line he had clung to for weeks: Russia must accept a ceasefire or face consequences. Two hours before meeting Vladimir Putin, he was still promising “disappointment” and punishment if Moscow refused. By the time he left, the ultimatum was gone. Trump […]
By Jaffa The numbers tell a story of futility. According to leaked Israeli Defense Force records, reported by The Guardian, 8,900 Hamas fighters have been killed since the war began. Alongside them, 42,000 civilians are dead men, women, children, the elderly. This ratio, nearly five to one, should appall any society that claims to uphold […]