From Antony and Cleopatra to Burton and Taylor, history is filled with volatile relationships.

One might expect some circumspection from politicians about their personal ups and downs playing out in the public arena. But in an era of geopolitical instability and terminal online-ness, the rest of us can barely keep up.

Break-ups

Elon Musk and Donald Trump

It was “perhaps the most widely predicted break-up in American political history”, said Fortune. The “bromance” between Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, and Donald Trump, one of the most powerful, ended in very public acrimony.

The Tesla and X boss was initially known as the US president’s “first buddy” for his seemingly unparalleled access. Musk helped bankroll Trump’s return to the White House, and claimed after his election victory that he loved Trump “as much as a straight man can love another man”. But after taking a chainsaw to the federal government with his “cost-cutting” initiative, DOGE, Musk left the administration in May. Just days later, he urged Republicans to reject Trump’s “massive, courageous, pork-filled” tax bill, which he called a “disgusting abomination”.

After that, the “speed of the fallout was breathtaking”, said The New York Times, and “every bit as lowdown, vindictive, personal, petty, operatic, childish, consequential, messy and public as many had always expected it would be”.

Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana

After leaving the Labour Party in high dudgeon in July, Zarah Sultana attempted to set up a new left-wing grassroots party with now-independent MP Jeremy Corbyn. But the duo couldn’t even decide on the name, much less anything else.

Corbyn claimed Sultana had set up a paid membership system that collected money and data without proper approval and authorisation. Sultana claimed she had been frozen out by a “sexist boys’ club” of Corbyn and four pro-Gaza independent MPs. The pair had a bitter falling out that saw Sultana claiming she had consulted libel lawyers. She later rescinded the threat, and told Sky News that they were like Liam and Noel Gallagher, the famously feuding Oasis brothers who patched things up for their reunion tour.

However, she neglected to invite Corbyn to a rally due to take place on the eve of the (what is now known as) Your Party conference. Don’t look back in anger, indeed.

Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner

Angela Rayner was once seen as the future of the Labour Party – and possibly its future leader. But this summer she became embroiled in controversy after admitting that she had mistakenly underpaid stamp duty on a flat in Hove. Keir Starmer initially stood by his deputy, but the noise grew louder and she was nicknamed “three pads” Rayner.

Rayner referred herself to the independent ethics adviser, and after being found to have breached the ministerial code, she handed in her resignation, plunging Labour into a chaotic deputy leadership race and cabinet reshuffle. Starmer’s response to her resignation letter was ostensibly warm: “You have been a trusted colleague and a true friend for many years.”

But now the rumour mill is once again stirring that Rayner might be gunning for his job. She declined to rule out running for the party leadership if Starmer finds himself defenestrated, telling the Daily Mirror in her first big post-resignation interview that she had “not gone away”. (Neither has her bill: she has reportedly not yet paid her £40,000 stamp duty as HMRC has not sent the bill out.)

Make-ups

UK and EU

One of the most acrimonious break-ups in recent history must surely be Brexit. But this year, there’s been something of a warming in relations between the EU and its erstwhile member, the UK. (The UK, after all, still benefits from EU funds.)

In May, the government and the bloc held their first joint summit since the UK left the EU, and the word on everyone’s lips was “reset”. The former foes agreed on a new deal; Starmer hailed it a “new era”. Not everyone was on board with this make-up: Tory leader Kemi Badenoch called the deal a “total sell-out”.

This month, Labour announced that a new agreement with Brussels to allows UK students to participate in the EU-wide university scheme Erasmus from 2027.

Emmanuel Macron and Sébastien Lecornu

Speaking of rapprochement, French President Emmanuel Macron asked Sébastien Lecornu to return as prime minister just four days after he stood down.

The Élysée Palace said the president had tasked Lecornu with “forming a government” – no easy task in France, given its grande debt problem – and Macron’s entourage “indicated he had been given ‘carte blanche’ to act”, said the BBC.

Lecornu is now aiming his ire elsewhere, blaming “partisan cynicism and presidential ambitions” for his struggle to get next year’s budget plans approved, said Politico. “Everyone wants to push their own agenda and fly their ideological flag,” he said, in remarks that “bore a distinct similarity to those after his surprise resignation”.

Narendra Modi and Xi Jinping

When Xi Jinping met Narendra Modi in September, the Chinese leader used “his favourite catchphrase for China-India relations”, said the BBC: “The dragon and the elephant should come together.”

The relationship between the two most populous countries has been strained for decades, but the Asian giants have taken huge steps to normalise relations. This year, that thawing was “turbocharged by decisions taken thousands of miles away in Washington DC”, when the Trump administration imposed 50% tariffs on Indian imports: a “stunning onslaught from a trusted ally”.

After the September meeting – Modi’s first trip to China in seven years – direct flights between the “dragon and the elephant” resumed, and the visa process was simplified. Their thousands of miles of shared borders are still tense, bristling with troops from both countries. But what relationship doesn’t have boundary issues?

Donald Trump ramped up the pressure on President Nicolás Maduro by ordering a “total and complete” blockade of oil tankers subject to US sanctions heading to or from Venezuela. He accused Maduro’s government of using “stolen” oil to “finance themselves, drug terrorism, human trafficking, murder and kidnapping”.

Referring to the US deployment to the region of a dozen warships and more than 14,000 troops, Trump wrote that Venezuela was “completely surrounded by the largest armada ever assembled in the history of South America”.

Oil prices jumped in the wake of Trump’s blockade order, which came days after US forces had seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela. Since September, the US military has killed around 100 people in more than two dozen strikes on alleged drug-trafficking boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific.

Trump has also threatened to strike drug-related targets inside Venezuela. Caracas denounced his “warmongering threats” and called on oil workers to organise a worldwide protest “against the piracy of those who believe they have a licence to plunder the world’s resources”.

Drug blockades

Trump is tightening the screws on Caracas, said The Wall Street Journal – and not before time. While Maduro is accusing the US of piracy, he’s the one who “stole Venezuelan democracy” by refusing to cede power after losing the 2024 presidential election. More than eight million Venezuelans have fled his police state. Trump isn’t concerned about Maduro’s authoritarianism, said The Guardian. Nor is this about tackling drug cartels: Venezuela isn’t a big supplier of drugs to the US. Trump is driven mainly by the desire to stem refugee flows and get rid of the socialist Maduro, a long-term target.

The US blockade carries some risks, said The Washington Post. It could provoke a marine confrontation that drags the US into a land war in South America. And by reducing the regime’s main source of revenue, it could exacerbate a humanitarian crisis. Still, it’s a more “legally defensible” strategy than the US air strikes on alleged drug smugglers. Given that about 80% of Venezuela’s oil is sold on the black market, and that most tankers stopping there are sanctioned, Trump “can argue that he’s merely stepping up enforcement”. His first-term effort to oust Maduro failed because “his attention drifted”. Will he stay the course this time?

Squeezing Venezuela’s oil trade

Maduro is vulnerable, said Andrew Neil in the Daily Mail. Venezuela has the world’s largest-known oil reserves and used to be one of the region’s richest countries. But more than 25 years of hard-left rule, initially under Hugo Chávez and then his protégé Maduro, have driven it to ruin. Its poverty rate is now about 80%. People talk about the danger of civil war if Maduro is ousted, but this isn’t a divided country. Nobel Prize-winner María Corina Machado would have coasted to victory had she not been barred from standing in last year’s election. In a recent poll, nine out of 10 Venezuelans said they believed that the man who won that vote by a landslide – Machado’s chosen candidate, Edmundo Gonzáles – is their rightful president.

Trump is hoping that his “drip-drip pressure campaign” can bring about a coup without the need for direct US military force, said Tom Rogan in the Washington Examiner. US navy jets are wearing down Venezuelan defence units by forcing them to remain at a state of high readiness, and CIA assets inside the country are no doubt encouraging top officials to move against Maduro. It’s the right approach. If Maduro is ousted, there’s a good chance that there will be an insurgency involving narco-traffickers and at least some unreconciled elements of the old regime. Given Venezuela’s “abundance of deep jungles and sprawling favelas”, the US doesn’t want to get entangled in any counter-insurgency campaign.

Trump is squeezing Venezuela’s oil trade, said Keith Johnson in Foreign Policy. Activity in its ports has sharply reduced and multiple inbound tankers have turned around mid-voyage in recent days. Some oil is still flowing, said a report in the Financial Times. US-based Chevron, which accounts for about a quarter of Venezuela’s oil production, still has a licence to sell oil; tankers not included in the US’ expanding list of sanctioned vessels can still ply their trade. If the US keeps tightening the noose, though, it will create enormous difficulties for Maduro’s regime. “But given that the ‘Bolivarian Revolution’ started by Chávez has survived for a quarter of a century, few are willing to bet on the Venezuelan regime collapsing” without direct US military action.

Lack of storage capacity

Trump says the US military build-up will continue until Caracas returns “all of the oil, land and other assets they previously stole from us”. Under Chávez, Venezuela expropriated assets belonging to US oil companies. Trump hasn’t given any further details about how the US blockade on sanctioned tankers will be enforced.

Until recently Venezuela produced about 0.8% of global crude oil output, exporting some 900,000 barrels a day. Most of this ended up in China. Last week, Venezuela’s state oil company, PDVSA, said that crude exports were “continuing as normal”, but experts believe it will soon have to halt production owing to a lack of storage capacity.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy raised both eyebrows and hopes across Eastern Europe this week after offering a surprising concession in the fraught negotiations to end Russia’s ongoing invasion. He told reporters on Tuesday that he would be willing to pull troops from parts of the contested Donbas region that Ukraine shares with Russia to establish an internationally monitored demilitarized zone, so long as Moscow does the same with the territory it controls in the area. Donbas, Zelenskyy said, is the “most difficult point” in negotiations to end the war between both nations.

‘Thorny territorial disputes’

Zelenskyy’s openness to a Donbas demilitarized zone comes as part of a “revised 20-point peace plan” crafted by American and Ukrainian negotiators that “covers a broad range of issues,” The New York Times said. The blueprint outlines everything from “potential territorial arrangements” to “security guarantees” and plans for rebuilding areas damaged in the war. Zelenskyy’s Donbas comments are the “closest” the Ukrainian leader has come to addressing the “thorny territorial disputes” that have “repeatedly derailed peace talks” in the region. Russia, which occupies the majority of the Donbas region, has “insisted that Ukraine relinquish” what remaining territory it controls in the area in an “ultimatum that Ukraine has rejected,” said The Associated Press.

Donbas has emerged as one of the “chief sticking points” in the current peace plan, with Kyiv afraid that “surrendering fortified positions” across the region might help Russia to “stage further attacks,” The Wall Street Journal said. The United States has pushed for a “compromise” over the area by encouraging the development of a “free economic zone” in the demilitarized territory.

In his remarks Tuesday, Zelenskyy “stressed that Ukraine is against the withdrawal,” Politico said. But “there are two options,” said Zelenskyy: “Either the war continues, or something will have to be decided regarding all potential economic zones.” The significance of his concession notwithstanding, it remains “difficult to imagine Russia accepting such terms,” considering how controlling the contested region has been “one of its main war objectives,” said Le Monde.

Referendum and nuclear problem

Beyond tactical fears of renewed Russian aggression in the region, Ukraine must also contend with “humanitarian concerns related to the relocation of residents” and the risk of a “serious blow to national morale” should it give up significant territory, the Times said. Accordingly, any demilitarized zone will need to be “approved by Ukrainians through a referendum.” The proposed peace plan also calls for a “joint U.S.-Ukrainian-Russian management” of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, “Europe’s largest,” currently under Russian control, said CBS News. Zelenskyy has stressed, however, that Ukraine “doesn’t want any Russian oversight of the facility.”

It is “now up to the Russian Federation to respond to this proposed agreement,” said Le Monde. To that end, Zelenskyy predicted, Moscow will be “ready to accept a plan in any case.”

“They can’t say to President Trump: ‘Listen, we’re against a peaceful settlement,’” Zelenskyy explained at his press briefing. “If they try to block everything, President Trump will then have to arm us heavily, while imposing every possible sanction on them.” In response to Ukraine’s apparent territorial flexibility, Russian President Vladimir Putin told a gathering of top Russian businessmen that a “partial exchange of territories from the Russian side is not ruled out,” said Russia's Kommersant newspaper, per Reuters. “In essence,” said the news service, “Putin wants the whole of Donbas” but is open to other territorial swaps “outside that area.”

What happened

Israel’s Cabinet has approved 19 new Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said Sunday. The decision — approved Dec. 11 but classified until now, according to Smotrich’s office — brings the number of Jewish West Bank settlements approved by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s current government to 69, a nearly 50% increase since 2022.

Who said what

The settlements are “widely considered illegal under international law,” The Associated Press said, and Israel’s “construction binge” in the West Bank “further threatens the possibility” of a two-state solution. Smotrich’s stated goal is “blocking the establishment of a Palestinian state,” the BBC said, and surging violence in the West Bank is “heightening fears that settlement expansion could entrench Israel’s occupation.”

The “unrelenting violent campaign” by Israeli settlers includes “brutal harassment, beatings, even killings,” The New York Times said, while the Israeli military “forces Palestinians to evacuate or orders the destruction of their homes once settlers drive them to flee.” Israel’s military said Sunday it is reviewing the shooting death Saturday of a 16-year-old boy “suspected of hurling a block” at soldiers in the West Bank town of Qabatiya. Video of the incident showed an Israeli soldier shooting the youth at “point blank range,” CNN said, and “nothing appears to be thrown from the alley the Palestinian teenager comes from.”

What next?

The “Israeli onslaught has all but vanquished a free Palestinian existence in the West Bank,” the Times said, and the “desperation among Palestinian villagers and farmers as they watch the takeover of their lands at a pace never seen before” is exacerbated by “fear that the changes are already becoming irreversible.”

There is a political storm brewing in the US over the disclosure of the Epstein files and their link to President Donald Trump.

At least 13 files, including a photo containing Trump, were removed by the Department of Justice from the latest release of documents, only to be republished after a review following concerns over victim identification.

The evidence was reinstated without any “alteration or redaction”, said the DoJ, with deputy attorney general Todd Blanche explicitly stating on NBC News that “it has nothing to do with President Trump”.

What did the commentators say?

“The documents produced no major revelations,” said The New York Times. The photos in particular underlined how Jeffrey Epstein, the late convicted sex offender, “attracted a remarkably broad spectrum of famous people into his orbit”, with Michael Jackson, Mick Jagger and Walter Cronkite appearing in the latest batch.

The redactions have caused the most controversy, said The Guardian. Blanche argued that the government “did not have time to review all the files to make redactions needed to protect victims”, with at least one victim claiming that she had been identified in the DoJ dump.

Conversely, in some areas, the redactions were “too aggressive”. For instance, a picture of Clinton, Michael Jackson and Diana Ross was also mistakenly redacted to obscure a child’s face. The child was Jackson’s son, with images “readily available” from commercial photo archives.

There is only one “unequivocal takeaway” from this latest episode, said CNN. The Trump administration’s efforts to “quell the storm have whipped up a new vortex of political energy” that could potentially harm the president.

The most recent release has exposed the “stunning revelation that there are 1,200 people identified as victims or their relatives”, with “materials from dozens of hard drives, old CDs and computers”. Though there is nothing to suggest any direct wrongdoing on Trump’s part, it fuels the “ever-deepening political storm” surrounding him.

There are “several possibilities” explaining the administration’s actions. The “sheer size” of the data could be posing “genuine issues” for officials. The department “may lack the competence” to do such a vast job “comprehensively and quickly”, following “purges of career officials by Trump’s aides”. Lastly, critics of the president “would not be surprised” if the DoJ was trying to brazenly “protect” Trump. Whatever the reason, this will cause a significant “headache” for him.

If Trump has tried to “deflect attention” away from himself, he “may have succeeded”, as the latest tranche of documents “shifted the spotlight” on to former Democrat president Bill Clinton, said the Financial Times. After eventually signing the legislation to release the files, Trump has recognised the “political benefit” of using the files to “tarnish the reputation of a prominent Democrat” and “one of his great ideological foes”.

This speaks to how the files have become a “weapon in America’s escalating ideological war”. On the left, politicians are employing the new information to “discredit” Trump, while the president and his administration are using them to “attack his adversaries”. The conflict continues, as the battles over the files “underscore the claims of Democrats and others that Trump is using the DoJ to pursue his political opponents”: a charge that Trump has “repeatedly levelled at the Biden administration”.

What next?

Representatives Ro Khanna (Democrat) and Thomas Massie (Republican) are seeking to find Attorney General Pam Bondi in contempt of Congress, for not releasing more documents related to Epstein. Both were involved in the original drafting of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, and Khanna now wants to see the “60-count federal indictment of Epstein from 2007 and the accompanying prosecution memo”, said The Washington Post.

In a statement, the justice department said that materials “will continue being reviewed and redacted” in line with legal requirements, exercising an “abundance of caution as we receive additional information”.

A Belgian billionaire has a quiet, ambitious plan to create the “Dubai of the Caribbean” on the island of Nevis, said The Brussels Times. Olivier Janssens, who holds Nevisian citizenship through an investment scheme, has unveiled plans for “Destiny”, a “libertarian community with its own legal system” on the Caribbean island. But for some Nevisians, a crypto state in their midst is a step too far.

A ‘network state’

The “multibillion-dollar project” is likely to involve a “massive reshaping of the south coast of the island” where the development “is already displacing long-term residents by buying their land”, said the Financial Times. Plans for Destiny include “villas and medical clinics” surrounded by “lush green terraces and pools” – and, crucially, a libertarian identity that, in Janssens’ so-far woolly definition, will “let us do our things”.

It forms part of a wider trend known as the “network state” movement, in which tech and cryptocurrency billionaires are attempting to establish “their own, more libertarian, territories”. Many, for the time being, “remain theoretical”.

Destiny is closer to fruition than most because St Kitts and Nevis recently passed new legislation to allow the creation of so-called Special Sustainability Zones, where “innovative approaches to the governance of tech and digital assets” can be trialled, said Cryptopolitan. But for some Nevisians, the prospect of an unregulated “state within a state” and its impact on existing infrastructure, services and “community life” is a cause for concern.

‘Neo-colonialism’

The optics of a “foreign-led takeover” of Nevisian land have sparked a “fiery” debate, said Jam Radio. Former prime minister Timothy Harris described the project as an instrument of “neo-colonialism”, urging citizens to reject what he called a “return to plantation-era subjugation”.

Janssens has promised that Destiny will be “open to Nevisians and remain under government jurisdiction”, said the Daily Mail, and has pledged a “$50 million [£37.3 million] investment in Nevis’ infrastructure”. And not all residents are sceptical. The project could create “a lot of much-needed opportunities for Nevisians and Kittitians”, said The St Kitts and Nevis Observer. If it goes ahead, it may end up as the “envy of the entire Caribbean”.

Ultimately, Nevis stands at a “crossroads”, said St Maarten’s The Daily Herald. Destiny will serve as a “defining test of how far the island is willing to go in reimagining development, law, and partnership with global capital”.

Officials in France have called for a Christmas truce as protests over government efforts to cull entire cow herds showing signs of a skin disease continue nationwide. For more than a week, farmers have blocked roadways and dumped manure outside government buildings. Meanwhile, authorities press on with their controversial plan to stem the outbreak of nodular dermatitis, also known as lumpy skin disease, an insect-borne infection that affects cattle but poses little risk to humans.

Authorities are claiming early success with containment. But French protesters have only sharpened their criticisms against the government as a broader movement of trade-based discontent sweeps the country.

‘Excessive and cruel’ culling policy

The outbreak is an “absolute emergency,” said Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu in an address to the National Assembly on Tuesday. To that end, the government has “put all its hopes in vaccination” into an “ambitious” plan requiring the full inoculation of 1,000 farms in the Ariège department by Dec. 31, and some three-quarters of a million cattle that “must receive an injection as soon as possible,” said Le Monde. Such an expansive plan poses a “logistical and human challenge” amid tensions between veterinarians “tasked with both culling and vaccinating” herds and farmers who reject the “systematic culling of herds where the disease is detected.” This “toxic climate” between the two professions is “weighing on the vaccination campaign.”

Protesters who have blocked roads and assaulted government buildings contend that the policy of culling entire herds over a single infection is “excessive and cruel,” said Reuters. But the “economic consequences” of unchecked lumpy skin disease are “severe,” as it can “devastate herd productivity” and “trigger international trade restrictions,” said Bovine Veterinarian.

While agricultural unions Conféderation Rurale and Conféderation Paysanne have accused the government’s policy of being “brutally applied” and unnecessary given selective culling and vaccinations, “most vets disagree,” said the BBC. Complicating things further is an abiding concern among French authorities that the fight over lumpy skin disease could “snowball into a wider movement” among local farmers who have fallen “under growing threat from the imposition of EU norms” and foreign competition.

'Volatile cocktail of rural discontent'

The civil unrest and disruptive protests that have blocked French motorways for days were “initially sparked” by frustration over the cullings and vaccinations, but they have since “expanded to cover wider discontent” over the EU’s Mercosur trade agreement with a group of South American nations, said The Connexion. Many farmers have accused the deal, whose official ratification has been pushed off until early 2026, of leading to “massive imports of products not meeting French standards,” said Reuters.

The combination of lumpy skin frustrations and broader trade anxieties has created a “volatile cocktail of rural discontent and growing protest,” said France 24. Along with Italy, France now leads EU nations in “opposition to the deal,” said Al Jazeera, and has coordinated with several member nations to “force a postponement” on the final vote.

Russia’s demographic decline, turbocharged by the war in Ukraine, has given birth to “one of the world’s most extreme natalism campaigns”, said The Atlantic.

The country’s fertility rate was 1.4 births per woman in 2023, according to the most recent UN statistics. That’s well below the 2.1 replacement rate and 20% lower than in 2015. And since then, an estimated quarter of a million Russian men have been killed in Ukraine. “Last year, deaths outpaced births by more than half a million.”

The state has been trying everything to encourage Russian women to have more children, from awarding pregnancy payouts and increasing maternal support to restricting access to abortions and stigmatising childlessness. The Ministry of Education is considering ways to create “conditions for romantic relations” in schools, and pink banners around Moscow ask women: “Still haven’t given birth?”

But, said The Atlantic, “if this is supposed to make them want to procreate, it doesn’t seem to be working”.

‘Much-diminished pool’

For more than 25 years, Vladimir Putin has been grappling with “his country’s declining and ageing population”, said The Independent. Russia actually recorded its lowest birth rate in 1999, after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The birth rate was growing, along with the country’s “economic prosperity”, at the start of this century. And then, after the annexation of Crimea in 2014, its federal statistics service started including the peninsula’s population in its data, too. But now “those hard-won gains are crumbling against a backdrop of financial uncertainty, the war in Ukraine, an exodus of young men, and opposition to immigration”.

Russia is trying new restrictions to halt the backslide, from banning the promotion of abortion and “child-free ideology” to outlawing LGBTQ activism. But the post-Soviet cohort is already small, and hundreds of thousands of men have either been killed in Ukraine or have fled abroad to avoid military service. “You’ve got a much-diminished pool of potential fathers in a diminished pool of potential mothers,” Jenny Mathers, a Russian politics lecturer at the University of Aberystwyth told The Independent.

Russia also handled the Covid-19 pandemic disastrously. “Or rather, we didn’t handle it at all,” a demographer told exiled Russian journalists, said Meduza. “Russia ended up among the top 10 countries in the world for excess mortality.”

‘Madcap plan’

“In a sign of how seriously the Kremlin views Russia’s demographic crisis,” Putin recently addressed the inaugural meeting of a demographic council, said Novaya Gazeta. “Families with three or more children should become the norm, the natural way of life in our country,” the president said.

The deputy prime minister announced a new federal register that will allow authorities to track pregnant women and “monitor the demographic situation”.

One Russian politician has even suggested that couples should be barred from social media at night to encourage them to have sex, said The Mirror. Regional MP Mikhail Ivanov’s “madcap plan” for “digital abstinence” would see the Russian state switch off access to social media from 11pm to 2am every night.

Despite all of this, the Kremlin’s own polling suggests that almost 40% of Russian women of childbearing age don’t plan to have children in the next five years, said The Atlantic. And “none of these interventions addresses an underlying reason” why Russian women don’t want children: the war in Ukraine. “Many women are depressed, lonely, and afraid. Every day, the war makes more of them widows.”

Putin’s biggest problem “won’t be solved” by incentivising pregnancy. “He’s created a society that Russians no longer want to bring children into.”

What happened

The Trump administration offered Ukraine “NATO-like Article 5” security guarantees if it agrees to a peace deal with Russia, a senior U.S. official told reporters Monday night, after two days of high-level talks in Berlin. But “those guarantees will not be on the table forever.” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other European leaders who attended the talks welcomed the U.S. guarantees, but all sides acknowledged significant differences over demands that Ukraine give up territory Russia has failed to seize in battle.

Who said what

“I think we’re closer now than we have been, ever,” President Donald Trump, who called into the Berlin meeting, told reporters Monday night. Negotiators solved probably “90% of the issues between Ukraine and Russia,” the U.S. official told reporters, and Trump “believes he can get Russia to accept” the “NATO-like” guarantee and European Union membership for Ukraine. The official did not give specifics on the U.S. guarantees but said they “would have to go before the Senate.”

The Trump team argues that the “bitter pill of massive territorial concessions” in the Donbas would be palatable to Ukraine if served up with “robust security guarantees,” an accelerated path into the EU and “billions on the table for rebuilding,” Axios said. But Ukrainian officials and their European allies “are wary that Ukraine could agree to make painful concessions, only for Russia to balk at the deal and hold out for more.”

“Moscow has yet to agree to any of the changes discussed in Germany and has not indicated any willingness to do so,” Reuters said. Still, Trump’s “unprecedented offer” for security guarantees has “sparked some optimism from European leaders” about a pathway to peace.

What next?

More talks are expected this weekend “somewhere in the United States, could be Miami, with working groups, military people, looking at maps,” a U.S. official told reporters. “It was not clear when or how the Trump administration would bring the new details to Moscow,” Politico said. Trump and his team “have said they hope to achieve a peace deal by the end of the year,” The Washington Post said, but Ukrainian and European officials view that as “ambitious.” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, asked Monday about a proposed Christmas ceasefire, said predicting a time frame for a Ukraine peace deal was a “thankless task.”

The world’s supply of glacial ice is quickly approaching an alarming milestone, as the planet continues heating to disruptive new heights. In a striking study published this week in Nature Climate Change, researchers modeling multiple warming scenarios predict the number of glaciers that disappear annually is set to dramatically increase in the coming decades.

The paper introduces the concept of “peak glacier extinction,” defined by researchers as the “year in which the largest number of glaciers is projected to disappear between now and the end of the century.” Peak glacier extinction is the point when anywhere from 2,000 to 4,000 glaciers will disappear annually. With the Alps leading our planet’s glacial disappearing act, the next few years may be a turning point for much of Earth’s ice.

‘We will lose a lot of glaciers’

Although typical glacier studies focus on “mass and area loss,” the newly published research focuses on disappearances of “individual glaciers” — a trend that “directly threatens culturally, spiritually and touristically significant landscapes,” the study’s authors said. The number of individual glaciers is a “less clearly defined metric” that can be “influenced by observational limitations,” but tracking individual disappearances is “important from touristic, cultural and spiritual perspectives.”

The study’s authors used data on 200,000 glaciers obtained from a “database of outlines derived from satellite images” and applied “three global glacier models” to test the ranges under “different heating scenarios,” The Guardian said. Areas featuring the “smallest and fastest-melting glaciers” are “most vulnerable,” unsurprisingly, with about 3,200 glaciers in central Europe set to shrink by 87% by the coming century “even if global temperature rise is limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius.”

Regions with “larger glaciers,” such as Greenland and around the South Pole, would likely experience peak glacier disappearance “later in the century,” ABC News said. “The biggest findings,” the lead researcher and ETH Zurich glaciologist Lander Van Tricht said to the network, “are that we will lose a lot of glaciers.”

‘Point of no return’ for global glaciers

Whether or not we will be “witnessing the deaths of 2,000 or 4,000 glaciers” annually depends on “how much is done to rein in global heating,” CNN said. A mere 20% of global glaciers are expected to exist in 2100 “under 2.7 degrees Celsius of warming, compared to around 50% at 1.5 degrees.” At 4 degrees the world can expect a “nearly complete loss.”

The study shows we are at a “point of no return,” said Eric Rignot, a professor of Earth system science at the University of California at Irvine, to CNN. “Reforming a glacier would take decades if not centuries.” The researchers behind the study hope their paper, along with an accompanying database showing the “projected survival rate of each of the world’s 211,000 glaciers,” will help “assess climate impacts on local economies and ecosystems,” Politico said. Even for smaller, remote glaciers that may not affect water-levels or resources, a disappearance could “have a huge importance for tourism, for example,” Van Tricht said to Politico. “Every individual glacier can matter.”

What happened

Hong Kong’s High Court today convicted media tycoon Jimmy Lai of violating the Chinese territory’s 2020 national security law and sedition, in the latest blow to the former British colony’s pummeled pro-democracy movement. The verdict was handed down a day after Hong Kong’s last major opposition party, the Democratic Party, voted to disband under intense pressure from the pro-Beijing government.

Who said what

The Lai verdict, carrying up to life in prison, highlights Hong Kong’s “shrinking tolerance for dissent,” The New York Times said. Officials in the city and mainland China had cast Lai, 78, as the “mastermind of antigovernment demonstrations that engulfed” Hong Kong in 2019, “posing a serious challenge to Beijing’s authority.” Lai said he was promoting the freedoms and autonomy promised by Beijing when Britain handed over governance of Hong Kong in 1997.

A rags-to-riches clothing magnate, Lai pivoted to media in the 1990s. His popular Apple Daily newspaper mixed “vivid” and “sometimes racy” journalism with “relentless criticism of China’s ruling Communist Party,” until Hong Kong’s government forced its closure in 2021, The Wall Street Journal said. President Donald Trump “said earlier this year that he would do everything he could to ‘save’ Lai,” but neither he nor Chinese President Xi Jinping “mentioned the case” after they met in South Korea in October.

What next?

The Hong Kong court said it will decide Lai’s sentence in mid-January. Trump said last year that “it would be ‘easy’ to free” Lai, said Mark L. Clifford in a New York Times op-ed, and he “should deliver on that boast by leveraging the global groundswell” of support for Lai and the “reduction of American tensions with China” to convince Xi to release the ailing freedom advocate.

What happened

Two gunmen, identified as a father and son, opened fire Sunday on hundreds of Jewish families gathered to celebrate the first night of Hanukkah at a park in Sydney’s Bondi Beach. The attackers killed at least 15 people, and another 38 remained hospitalized. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese today said that the attack was an “act of pure evil, an act of antisemitism, an act of terrorism on our shores,” and his government would pursue “tougher gun laws.” One alleged gunman was shot dead by police and his 24-year-old son was in a hospital and expected to survive and face charges, police said.

In a separate mass shooting in Rhode Island on Saturday, two students at Brown University were killed and nine others were hospitalized. Police in Providence last night released a “person of interest” who had been arrested, saying a review of the evidence pointed in a different direction.

Who said what

The people killed in the Bondi Beach attack included a “10-year-old girl, a rabbi and a Holocaust survivor,” The Associated Press said. “Jewish leaders in Sydney reacted with grief and rage,” The Washington Post said, “after what they said were months of unheeded warnings about the dangers of rising antisemitism” amid a “surge in antisemitic incidents over the past two years,” following the start of the Hamas-Israel war in Gaza. Police have now increased security at synagogues and other Jewish centers in Australia as well as New York, London and elsewhere.

The “horror at Australia’s most popular beach was the deadliest shooting in almost three decades in a country with strict gun control laws” enacted after a 1996 attack that left 35 people dead, the AP said. The 50-year-old suspect killed by police Sunday “had licenses for six guns” for recreational hunting as a member of a gun club, The New York Times said, “and a total of six were recovered from the scene and two searched properties.”

What next?

Albanese said he would propose new gun laws at a Cabinet meeting today attended by state leaders, as “some laws are implemented by the states.” The proposed reforms include limiting the number of allowed firearms and reviewing licenses periodically. “People’s circumstances can change,” he said. “People can be radicalized over a period of time. Licenses should not be in perpetuity.”

Gen Z protests have been sweeping the world’s countries, and they have just toppled their first European government. Bulgarian Prime Minister Rosen Zhelyazkov announced his resignation on Dec. 11, making him the latest in a slew of Bulgarian heads of government to step down in recent years. The protests were largely held over perceived corruption in the country, and now politicians are looking to form a new government.

Why are Bulgarians protesting?

The demonstrations were largely “mass protests against government corruption in recent weeks,” precipitated by anger toward a proposed tax increase for the private sector, said The New York Times. Thousands of Bulgarians took to the streets, mostly in the nation’s capital city, Sofia, but also “across the country in a rare show of nationwide solidarity.” A large swath of the protesters were young people and Gen Zers, representing a “demographic not typically associated with active political engagement in Bulgaria.”

This adds Bulgaria to the list of countries where Gen Zers have been holding mass protests, including Madagascar, Morocco and Nepal. But while the protests started over corruption, the “real driving force behind the demonstrations has been broader dissatisfaction with the government itself,” said Politico. Bulgaria, a member of the European Union, is set to adopt the euro on Jan. 1, which has also led to “fears of inflation” amid a disinformation campaign by Russia “aimed at undermining public support for the single currency.”

The government’s “desire is to rise to the level of what society expects,” the now-former Prime Minister Zhelyazkov told reporters. They have “heard the voice of the people who have been protesting. We need to meet their demands, and what they are demanding at the moment is the resignation of the government.” His resignation came just prior to a scheduled no-confidence vote against his cabinet.

What happens now?

Following the prime minister’s resignation, “another election is all but guaranteed,” said Bloomberg. But there has been a pattern of problematic elections in recent Bulgarian history, and the government’s collapse comes “following seven votes in four years, none of which has resulted in a stable governing majority.” There are now several ways the next election could go.

Many eyes have turned to Boyko Boríssov, a former Bulgarian prime minister who “has dominated the country’s political scene for nearly two decades,” said Bloomberg. Bulgarian President Rumen Radev has said he will give Borissov, who “leads the largest party, Gerb, the chance to propose a new administration.” Borissov could also end up ceding power to other factions in parliament.

If this happens, it “could create an opening for Radev,” said Bloomberg, who is the “country’s most popular politician” despite often echoing Russian talking points. The Bulgarian presidency is mostly a ceremonial role, but Radev has “recently suggested he may start his own political party and enter the race but didn’t elaborate further.” No matter who forms the next government, issues in Bulgaria are likely to remain, as “corruption in the Balkan nation of some 6.5 million has long been pervasive, even after having joined the EU,” said The Wall Street Journal. Bulgaria has “consistently ranked as one of the bloc’s most corrupt member states.”

What will it take for the ultra-Orthodox community to play its part in Israel’s survival? Despite 7 October 2023; despite the “near-existential” threat Israel faces across a variety of fronts; despite the “attendant acute military manpower crisis” and the enormous sacrifices experienced by so many Israeli families in the Gaza war – despite all this, the Haredi community remains adamant that young ultra-Orthodox men should be exempt from Israel’s compulsory military service.

It’s pure moral cowardice, said David M. Weinberg in The Jerusalem Post. Nothing in the Torah forbids serving in war. Yet now, in a cynical bid to win back the support of his erstwhile Haredi government partners, Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party has introduced a bill that essentially entrenches the community’s “draft evasion”.

Exemptions have become ‘institutionalised’

“The roots of this issue go back to the founding of the state,” said Eric R. Mandel in the same paper, “when David Ben-Gurion exempted approximately 400 Torah scholars from military service.” Back then, Haredim were far fewer in number, and Israel’s first prime minister believed their small and insular world would soon enough fade from existence. “Instead, the opposite occurred.” Driven by one of the highest birth rates in the developed world, Haredim today make up about 13% of Israelis; by 2065 it’s estimated they’ll reach 25%.

And over the decades, their exemption from Israeli life has become “institutionalised”, producing a class of citizens who neither serve in the army nor participate in the workforce, yet still enjoy hefty state subsidies. That imbalance had already created serious tensions within Israeli society; but post-7 October and the ensuing war in Gaza, what was once a cultural issue has now become Israel’s “greatest internal security threat”.

A turning point in all this came in June 2024, said Sam Sokol in The Times of Israel (Jerusalem), when the supreme court called a halt to the all-too-blatant pro-Haredi discrimination and ruled that the government must start conscription immediately. After the ruling, religious “yeshiva” schools harbouring draft dodgers saw their budgets slashed, and draft refusers lost access to state benefits.

But Netanyahu’s coalition has long been dependent on two ultra-Orthodox parties, Shas and United Torah Judaism (UTJ), said Haaretz (Tel Aviv). So even though the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) are short 10,000 soldiers, or between 12 and 15 battalions, in the wake of the Gaza war, Netanyahu’s government, in direct violation of the supreme court’s ruling, has repeatedly called up reservists in their 30s and 40s – men with families – instead of recruiting from the 80,000 or so eligible 18- to 24-year-olds from the ultra-Orthodox community.

New bill ‘chock-full of loopholes’

Likud’s new bill is an attempt to put this inflammatory issue to bed, said Shalom Yerushalmi in The Times of Israel: Netanyahu is parading it as a “historic achievement”, claiming it will force thousands of Haredi men into uniform. In reality, “not a single battalion, never mind a division, will come of it”. And that’s because it’s “chock-full of loopholes”, said Sam Sokol. Criminal sanctions on draft dodgers are only due to come into effect in 2027; not only full-time “yeshiva” students, but anyone who’s studied in a “yeshiva” for two years between ages 14 to 18 will be considered ultra-Orthodox, and granted yearly deferments from enlistment.

The only recruitment likely to rise in number given those incentives is that of applicants to “yeshivas”. The bill has caused turmoil in Israel, said Ravit Hecht in Haaretz, and even within Bibi’s coalition. But the PM won’t mind. Having given the appearance of coming up with a solution, he can now sit on the bill while the nation argues it out. In short, he has resorted to “his time-tested tactic of playing for time” ahead of the 2026 elections. It’s classic Netanyahu, said Sima Kadmon on Ynet (Rishon LeZion): throw “a chunk of meat into the arena”, make us fight among ourselves and, in so doing, crucially, make us forget all about “his own failures”.

Japan stands torn between tradition and the future, as Princess Aiko, the only child of Emperor Naruhito, finds herself at the center of a growing movement to change the country’s patriarchal rules of royal succession. Treated like a pop star by many in Japan, the 24-year-old princess’ rocketing popularity comes at a fraught time for the royal family and Japan’s traditionally patriarchal society. As Japan’s shrinking royal family forces uncomfortable questions about the future of one of the world’s oldest monarchical lines, is Tokyo ready for change?

‘Rising prestige’ and a reopened debate

After having “impressed with her maturity and clear sense of duty” during her first state visit to Laos last month, Aiko’s “huge popularity” domestically will only further raise questions about why she is barred from taking on a “more prominent royal role going forward,” said Tatler. Questions about Aiko’s inability to assume her father’s throne come amid Japan’s “so-called ‘succession crisis,’” where “strict, male-only succession laws” established in 1947 mean that Prince Hisahito of Akishino, Aiko’s first cousin, is often “touted as the future of the Japanese royal family.”

Aiko’s “rising prestige” has “reopened the debate” about male-only royal succession in Japan’s “patriarchal and traditionalist society,” said El País. That debate comes after Japan “broke with gender prejudices” by electing conservative Sanae Takaichi as its first woman prime minister in October. There is also “strong public support” for the notion that Aiko, or “any other woman in the future,” could be made royal successor, which has led to a grassroots effort to readdress the rules.

Cartoonist Yoshinori Kobayashi has authored comic books pushing for a rule change, which “supporters keep sending to parliamentarians” to raise the issue, said The Associated Press. Other advocates have “set up YouTube channels and distributed leaflets.” But while there is public support for updating the succession rules, “conservative lawmakers,” including Takaichi, “oppose the change.”

‘Kicking the can down the road’

Even members of Japan’s royal family acknowledge the monarchy’s dwindling numbers and clout. “Nothing can be done under the current system,” said Crown Prince Akishino, 60, to the AP. “I think all we can do right now is to scale back our official duties.”

Japan’s royal succession debate has gone on “for decades,” particularly after a 2005 government panel recommended the crown be passed to the oldest child “regardless of their sex,” said the Japan Times. But while that recommendation “appeared to pave the way” for Aiko’s “rise to the Chrysanthemum Throne,” the birth of Hisahito the following year “silenced the debate.” Following the arrival of a young, male heir, Japanese politicians are “kicking the can down the road” when it comes to changing the rules, said Kenneth Ruoff, the director of Portland State University’s Center for Japanese Studies, to the Japan Times.

Late last year, the United Nations’ Human Rights Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women criticized Japan’s male-only rules of succession, prompting the Japanese government to withhold its voluntary funds for the commission. “The right to succeed the Imperial Throne is not included among basic human rights,” said Japan Foreign Ministry spokesperson Toshihiro Kitamura in a statement. “Therefore, it does not constitute as discrimination against women.”

Hisahito is “likely to become emperor one day,” said Al Jazeera. “After him, however, there is nobody left” unless the succession rules change.

When the Taliban swept across Afghanistan and retook power in 2021, most countries severed diplomatic ties, but now India is leading a change of heart around the world.

Despite claims that its second iteration – what some termed “Taliban 2.0” – would be more moderate, the group reintroduced its draconian restrictions on women and girls to international condemnation. The UN Security Council imposed strict sanctions and froze large assets, saying the regime was enacting a “gender apartheid”.

This year, Russia became the first country to formally recognise the Taliban government. Over the past few months, said the Financial Times, the regime “has begun to emerge from diplomatic isolation”, as countries see a potential ally in trade, counterterrorism and the deportation of migrants.

What has happened recently?

India used to see the Taliban as a threat, given its extremist ideology and its closeness with arch-enemy Pakistan. But New Delhi has been trying to improve engagement. In October, it hosted foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi: the first diplomatic trip abroad by a senior Taliban official since the group’s return to power. Although he required a visa waiver due to UN sanctions, the “rapturous reception” he received is “one of the most striking signs of how the world is warming up to the Taliban”, said the FT.

After the visit, New Delhi announced that it would be “upgrading its technical mission” in Kabul to “a full-fledged embassy”, said Al Jazeera. “Closer cooperation between us contributes to your national development, as well as regional stability and resilience,” said Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar. Speaking to reporters, Muttaqi said: “We want good relations; we keep our doors open for talks – for all!”

Why is India normalising relations?

For India, the Taliban “represents a ‘lesser evil’” compared with terrorist groups such as al-Qaida and Isis-K, said Chietigj Bajpaee of Chatham House’s South Asia, Asia-Pacific Programme. India wants to stop Afghanistan from “re-emerging as a hub for militancy and terrorism”.

Unlike during the 1990s, when India, Iran and Russia backed forces that opposed the Taliban, now there is almost no armed opposition in Afghanistan. “The Indians are being very pragmatic, having realised that the Taliban is the only game in Kabul and that they are not going anywhere”, a senior Pakistani diplomat told the FT. They see it as: “the enemy of my enemy could be my friend’ and the Taliban is clearly taking advantage of that”.

What about the rest of the world?

When Russia formally recognised the Taliban government in July, its foreign ministry said it saw potential for “commercial and economic” cooperation, said the BBC. Russia also wants to cooperate with Afghanistan on counterterrorism, after the deadly Islamic State attack on a concert hall in Moscow in 2024, and to increase trade.

China was the first country to accredit an ambassador from the Taliban, and has pursued what analysts describe as “durable de facto recognition”, eyeing Afghanistan’s reserves of critical minerals and resources.

In the West, the US has praised the Taliban for its crackdown on Isis-K. Sebastian Gorka, a counterterrorism adviser to Donald Trump, revealed in August that Washington and the Taliban were “working together” to fight Islamist militancy. European countries have lauded the Taliban’s destruction of fields of opium poppies, a key ingredient in heroin production, and are also increasingly keen to engage with Afghanistan on the repatriation of migrants. Germany, Switzerland and Austria have all recently sent delegations or welcomed Taliban officials; Germany says it wants to work with the group directly to resume deportations of convicted Afghans.

What’s in it for the Taliban?

Afghanistan is battling endemic poverty and the fallout from natural disasters like the earthquake in August, exacerbated by devastating US aid cuts. Iran and Pakistan have also forcibly returned more than four million Afghans in two years, said the International Organization for Migration, causing chaos at the border and further strain on resources. The Taliban hopes its increased international engagement will “translate into much-needed economic aid and investments”, said the FT. But there is “little sign of this taking place yet”. The oppression of women and girls is the “primary issue facing Afghanistan’s economic future”, said UN Assistant Secretary-General Kanni Wignaraja.

“The Taliban still presides over a pariah state, shunned by most of the world,” said Modern Diplomacy. Its “partial diplomatic thaw” has brought no “real economic relief”; it “remains locked in a dangerous cross-border dispute with Pakistan and trapped by financial isolation”.

Islamabad historically supported the Taliban and saw Afghanistan as a “source of ‘strategic depth’ in its rivalry with India”, said Bajpaee. Now, it is accusing the Afghan Taliban of hosting and sponsoring the militant Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP or Pakistani Taliban), which aims to “overthrow the Pakistani state” and has “stepped up its attacks inside Pakistan”. Pakistan increasingly sees its neighbour as a “liability”.

European leaders struggling to address the years of bloodshed on the border with Russia reached a milestone agreement last week, starting the clock on plans to fully uncouple the European Union from Russian gas. Under the new agreement, European nations will end liquefied natural gas imports in the coming year, with long-term pipeline contracts closed by the end of 2027. Europe is “turning off the tap on Russian gas, forever,” said EU Energy Commissioner Dan Jorgensen on X. “We stand strong with Ukraine.”

‘Choke off’ funds for ‘Moscow’s war chest’

Today, Russian gas accounts for some 12% of EU gas imports — down from 45% in the years before Russia’s still-ongoing invasion of Ukraine. As part of the new agreement, member nations will not only transition away from existing Russian gas supplies, but must submit “national diversification plans outlining measures for diversifying their gas supplies and potential challenges” with the goal of meeting the 2027 deadline, the EU said in a press release. The governing body “seeks to choke off key funds feeding Moscow’s war chest” during its offensive against Ukraine, said Le Monde.

The agreement comes as part of the EU’s “REPowerEU Roadmap” to energy independence from Russia. This initiative has “shielded us from the worst energy crisis in decades” and “helped us to transition” from Russian gas and oil at “record speed,” said EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in a statement. Currently, the EU “sources the majority of its gas” from other suppliers “including the U.S.,” said The Wall Street Journal, as the bloc “remains committed to phasing out all remaining oil imports” from Russia as well.

Next year’s ban on liquefied natural gas comes a “year earlier than originally proposed” and is “in line with a ban on seaborne deliveries” previously approved by the European Commission, Bloomberg said. “We’re turning that page, and we’re turning it for good,” said von der Leyen.

Looming challenges from within

Predictably, Russia has responded to the EU agreement with criticism, claiming the move would “doom Europe to becoming less competitive” and “lead to higher prices for consumers,” said Reuters. But frustration over the new oil and gas rules hasn’t been limited to Moscow. Several EU member nations with close ties to Russia have also begun to publicly chafe at the agreement, which critics say was “wrongfully disguised” as an issue of trade policy in order to “circumvent the unanimous voting required for sanctions.”

“Accepting and implementing this Brussels order is impossible for Hungary,” said Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto in a broadcast from his Facebook page. Slovakia has also “complained of the impact” on its national economy should it be forced to reject Russian fuel, said Radio Free Europe. Slovakia has “sufficient legal grounds to consider filing a lawsuit” against the agreement, said Prime Minister Robert Fico. Opposition lawmakers have countered that “such a step would disgrace Slovakia” and is “advancing Russian interests in Europe,” said The Slovak Spectator.

What happened

Benin’s government Sunday reasserted control after a coup attempt against President Patrice Talon. Eight soldiers calling themselves the Military Committee for Refoundation appeared on state television early Sunday and claimed that Talon had been overthrown and all state institutions dissolved, to restore “national cohesion.” But after a day of chaos in the West African nation, Talon appeared on state TV and said the situation was “totally under control” and “this treachery will not go unpunished.”

Who said what

Talon, 67, is “regarded as a close ally of the West” and has been “praised by his supporters for overseeing economic development,” the BBC said. Benin has also been “viewed as a relatively strong democracy” in a region rocked by recent coups, The Washington Post said, but Talon, near the end of his second five-term, “has grown increasingly authoritarian in recent years.”

“There are grievances in the country,” as Talon’s government “is repressive and the main opposition party has been barred from contesting in the elections,” Beverly Ochieng, a leading regional security analyst based in Senegal, told The New York Times. But “the soldiers seem to have misjudged the political mood in the country,” believing “people would come out to support them.”

What next?

The West African regional bloc ECOWAS said last night it had ordered a “regional standby force” to help defend Benin’s government “with immediate effect.” It “remained unclear how many soldiers might be deployed and when they would arrive,” the Times said. But Nigeria has already intervened, sending in fighter jets to “help dislodge the coup plotters,” a presidential spokesperson in Lagos said.

As Suriname celebrates 50 years of independence, the spectre of Dutch colonial rule and its role in the slave trade still lingers.

The king and queen of the Netherlands touched down in the small South American country last week: the first visit by the Dutch royal family in 47 years. King Willem-Alexander had vowed before the trip that the topic of slavery, which was formally abolished in Suriname and other Dutch-held territories in 1863, would not be off-limits. “We will not shy away from history, nor from its painful elements, such as slavery,” he said. Building a common future “is only meaningful if we take into account the foundation on which we stand”, he added. “That foundation is our shared past.”

But the shared past remained a source of tension in the present, as the king and queen prepared to meet representatives of slaves’ descendants.

Spoils of slavery

“The Dutch funded their ‘golden age’ of empire and culture in the 16th and 17th centuries by shipping about 600,000 Africans as part of the slave trade,” said The Guardian, “mostly to South America and the Caribbean.”

A study in 2023 found that the Dutch royal family had earned the current equivalent of £475 million between 1675 and 1770 from the colonies, “where slavery was widespread”. The ancestors of the current king were “among the biggest earners” from what the report described as the state’s “deliberate, structural and long-term involvement” in slavery.

Slavery was formally abolished in Suriname and other Dutch-held lands in 1863, and actually ended 10 years later after a “transition” period.

In 2022, then prime minister of the Netherlands Mark Rutte officially apologised for the Netherlands’ role in the transatlantic slave trade. The king followed with a royal apology the following year, echoing a similar address in 2003 when he acknowledged the devastation caused by slavery, and how his own family had benefited from what he called humanity’s greatest genocide.

Repercussions and reparations

During the visit, Willem-Alexander said the Netherlands was keen to deepen ties with its former colony “based on equality and mutual respect”.

Representatives of the descendants of African slaves and Indigenous people formally accepted the king’s apology. But the president of Suriname, Jennifer Geerling-Simons, has warned that the legacy of slavery lingers.

Willem-Alexander had previously offered $200 million (£149 million) to raise awareness about that legacy. Now, the king and his delegation are “being reminded” that the grant should not be considered part of a reparations package, said Caribbean Life.

“The losses they have suffered are significant,” said Geerling-Simons, referring to the descendants of slaves. “We’re not going to argue about that now, but this issue of reparations will have to be discussed someday.”

A reparations commission appointed by Caribbean governments deemed the Dutch “the most brutal and calculating of the European nations”, said the news site. The commission said the country had “invented the blueprint for the slave trade”.

Pakistan has just suffered its first “21st century coup”, said Monjorika Bose on Firstpost (Mumbai). There were none of the “tanks and curfews” typical of a standard military takeover. Instead, a “ridiculously weak” parliament rubber-stamped a constitutional amendment giving army chief Asim Munir control over all three armed-forces branches, along with the same “near total” lifetime immunity from arrest and prosecution that the president enjoys.

This has shot him to “a constitutionally protected super post with sweeping powers” and no accountability. His control is now so absolute, he can “stifle dissent” at will; judges “will be forced to look the other way”. Yet from the West there has barely been a “whimper” of objection, thanks largely to Munir’s successful wooing of President Trump. Munir made two visits to the Oval Office this year, one in June, one in September, courting him with flattery, the promise of access to minerals and a shady crypto deal. A delighted Trump has lauded him as his “favourite field marshal”.

Actually, this isn’t the “revolutionary change” alarmists claim it is, said Waqar Malik in the Daily Times (Lahore). The amendment simply modernises the military’s command structure, replacing the joint chiefs with Munir as a single head of the defence forces. The skirmish with India in May – the conflict in which Munir was promoted to become just the second field marshal in Pakistani history – demonstrated the need for streamlined decision-making in wartime. At a time when India is threatening our border, Munir has “restored public confidence”.

That’s wishful thinking, said Shubhangi Sharma on News18 (New Delhi). Already, Munir has torn a page from the “old playbook” of Pervez Musharraf, the last Pakistani general to take power in a coup – ordering drone strikes on Afghanistan, fuelling proxy terror groups inside India, and making reckless nuclear threats, all pushing Pakistan “closer to a Kim Jong Un model than a functioning democracy”.

But Munir’s power grab essentially “formalises what has long been an open secret”, said The Hindu (Chennai). Pakistan’s military has for some time “pulled the strings behind a facade of democracy”; now the facade has crumbled. The only political leader still resisting is former PM Imran Khan – and he’s in jail for corruption. Yet it’s not all going the army chief’s way. Khan’s party is leading mass protests in the streets, and there’s an insurgency flaring in tribal areas. So Munir’s attempt to wield absolute power “could backfire – sooner rather than later”.

The spectre of Donald Trump looms large over the first state visit by Vladimir Putin to India since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began.

Putin was met on arrival with a warm embrace by Narendra Modi and the two leaders are due to discuss deals over oil, arms, working visas and strengthened diplomatic ties between the two countries.

Following an opening press conference, two things “stood out”, said the BBC: first, a “conspicuous display of mutual respect”; and second, an “absence of any blockbuster announcement”.

The “need” for both countries right now is to boost “bilateral trade”, as Russia is “reeling” from Western sanctions and India is “facing 50% tariffs from Washington”.

What did the commentators say?

Modi continues to walk a diplomatic “tightrope” between Russia and the US, said Foreign Policy. Putin’s two-day visit is a stern “test” of how well India can “balance ties” with the two countries.

The summit comes at a “critical juncture” for both Russia and India, mostly due to the looming presence of the US, said The Guardian. Trump’s re-election has “upended years of closely nurtured US-India relations”, causing disruption with “inflammatory rhetoric” and “punishing” import tariffs. As a result, Delhi has been thrown “into a tailspin”.

Putin, too, is not in Trump’s good books. He has rejected the latest US-proposed peace plan for Ukraine, and is looking to bolster Russia’s recent battlefield advances that have “strengthened his hand” with diplomatic gains.

“The question of oil also looms large.” Modi has “insisted that India would continue to buy Russian oil” – Moscow supplies over 35% of India’s crude oil imports, compared to only around 2% before the war in Ukraine began. However, heavy US-imposed sanctions have led to a “notable slowdown” in this supply to appease Trump, not to mention India having “agreed to import more US oil and gas”.

“India is rolling out the red carpet for the Russian president”, undermining global efforts to cast him as an “international pariah”, said Bloomberg. India, though still wanting to maintain economic ties with the US, is looking to diversify and “gain more access to the Russian market”. Most likely, this week could see an agreement reached over the “shipment of marine products and agricultural goods”, both of which would be in India’s favour.

Russia’s interests are clear too. India, with a population of around 1.5 billion and the “fastest growing major economy” in the world, is a “hugely attractive market” for Russian goods and resources, said Steve Rosenberg, the BBC’s Russia editor.

Putin’s enthusiasm is plentiful. One “priority” is weapons sales, with reported deals on exporting “state-of-the-art Russian fighter jets and air defence systems”. Due to the war in Ukraine, Russia has also been hit with a labour shortage, and India presents itself as a “valuable source of skilled workers”. Most importantly, the main benefit is geopolitical: the Kremlin “enjoys demonstrating that Western efforts to isolate it over the war in Ukraine have failed”.

What next?

Any progression towards a peace deal in Ukraine would “give India more breathing room” with the US than it had six months ago. Then, Trump’s “ire” towards Modi “ran high” and he imposed additional 25% tariffs on the country, said The Wall Street Journal.

Putin is expected to offer “Russia’s latest arms” to “bolster the long-standing relationship” between them. Even if this were to fall through, the mere prospect of a summit shows that the relationship is on an “upswing”, according to one expert.

The latest Ukraine peace talks with Vladimir Putin have failed again to make a breakthrough, and Europe has begun to think the unthinkable. In the face of Russia’s increasing cyberattacks, sabotage and violations of its airspace, it’s making plans to be more aggressive – economically and militarily.

The European Commission is moving ahead with plans to further fund Ukraine, either with a loan based on Russia’s frozen assets or a loan based on common borrowing. And, with Russian “drones and agents unleashing attacks across Nato countries”, Europe is “doing what would have seemed outlandish just a few years ago”, said Politico. It’s “planning how to hit back”.

What did the commentators say?

Russian “hybrid attacks” on European countries – GPS jamming, drone-buzzing, election interference, ship or aircraft incursions – have been going on for years “but the sheer scale and frequency” right now is “unprecedented”, said Victor Jack and Laura Kayali on Politico. Such an aggressive testing of Europe’s limits has prompted calls for a step up in response, with ideas ranging from “joint offensive cyber operations” to “surprise Nato-led military exercises”.

Many diplomats – “particularly those from eastern European countries” – have “urged Nato to stop being merely reactive”, said Richard Milne in the Financial Times. We are thinking of “being more aggressive or more proactive”, Giuseppe Cavo Dragone, chair of Nato’s military committee, told Milne. “A pre-emptive strike” could even be considered a “defensive action”. The Russian foreign ministry swiftly called Dragone’s comments “extremely irresponsible” and a sign that Nato is “moving towards escalation”.

Nato has successfully countered hybrid attacks before. Its Baltic Sentry ship and air patrols stopped the cutting of undersea cables in 2023 and 2024 “by vessels linked to Russia’s shadow fleet”, said the FT’s Milne. But there are “still worries in the alliance” about such measures.

Putin “may see the EU and Nato as rivals or even enemies” but Europe “does not want war with a nuclear-armed Russia”, said Jack and Kayali in Politico. “It has to figure out how to respond in a way that deters Moscow but does not cross any Kremlin red lines that could lead to open warfare”.

“The ratcheting up of the Ukraine conflict into what is perceived as a European war is already well underway,” said Laura Tingle on ABC News. Though Putin has called it “laughable” that Russia could attack Europe, it’s “no laughing matter to a host of European political and military leaders”. The discourse “is all getting very alarming (or alarmist, depending on your perspective)”. It’s clear that “something has now been unleashed in Europe which is going to be hard to put back in the bottle”.

What next?

“Europe’s efforts to rearm” have publicly “moved into overdrive” but “behind the headlines lies a more uneven reality”, said Anna Conkling in the Brussels-based The Parliament magazine. Europe is still “split between countries rapidly expanding their militaries and those still constrained by years of underinvestment and fiscal fragility”.

Some states are powering ahead, while “others drag their feet”, risking a “two-speed defence model“ that could leave Europe “dangerously exposed”. This means “the buy-in of the largest countries” is “all the more important for Europe’s defence to reach a critical mass”.

China’s marriage rate is at record lows and its divorce rate is on the rise – but at least some of the country’s singles are teaming up.

As the cost of living intensifies, single mothers are “searching for a new kind of partner: each other”, said The Guardian. Women are posting online in search of “like-minded parents” to share both a home and childcare responsibilities.

“I’m hoping to find another single mum to share an apartment with, so we can take care of each other,” said a popular post on social media platform Xiaohongshu, known in English as RedNote. “If our children are around the same age, that would be even better – they can be companions. Those raising kids alone know how tough it is; sometimes you’re so busy, you barely have time to eat.”

Acute strain

There are about 30 million single mothers in China, according to its Ministry of Civil Affairs. When parents divorce, “only one in six fathers chooses to raise their children”, said China Daily. That leaves more than 80% of those families led, solo, by a woman.

“Society’s support for single mothers remains insufficient,” said psychologist Li Jiao. Often they must contend with “internalised self-doubt, due to societal bias”, as well as “deep guilt over their children’s well-being”. A 2018 report found that more than two-thirds of single mothers are “hesitant to disclose their single-parent status”, for fear of being “judged or criticised”.

“The strain is acute,” said Sixth Tone. Long working hours “clash with rigid school schedules” – many mothers are left “sprinting between office desks and classroom gates”. Despite legal obligations, some ex-husbands refuse to pay child support, and state welfare is minimal. Government data shows that a significant proportion of single-mother families in developed cities live below the poverty line.

But, in recent years, social media platforms “have become lifelines, where women trade advice, pool expenses and, in some cases, find one another”. Some “roommate mums” simply split the rent but “others share school pickups and grocery runs, piecing together a version of family that is less solitary, less precarious, and a little more possible”.

‘Similar values’

Single mothers Zhu Danyu and Fei Yuan have lived together with their daughters since 2022. They run a joint business from their home in Nanjing. “We both know very clearly why we’re together – it’s about sharing and managing the risks and pressures of life,” Zhu told The Guardian.

They met through their work but, “over time, we realised that we shared similar values and got along really well,” said Fei. “Our personalities also complement each other. I’m more detail-oriented and love keeping things tidy, but I can’t cook. Danyu, on the other hand, is a great cook and loves making meals for the kids.”

There are of course “snide online remarks and rumours” about relationships like theirs, said the paper. Women in informal flat-sharing arrangements also “lack legal protections”, and some have talked online about “arrangements collapsing after children didn’t get along, or financial imbalances taking their toll”.

“This current reliance on ad hoc, digitally organised support highlights a major failure in the state’s welfare provision for safeguarding children and supporting parents,” said Ye Liu, an international development expert at King’s College London.

But many say their children are the “biggest beneficiaries” of the arrangement, said The Guardian. “Through spending time together, all three have become more outgoing and confident,” said Fei. “That’s the first big change I’ve noticed. The second is that they’re now surrounded by double the love.”

Last week’s military takeover in Guinea-Bissau is the latest in a series of coups that has engulfed west Africa in recent years. Almost all have taken place in the Sahel, the semi-arid belt below the Sahara that bisects the continent.

The latest coup in Guinea-Bissau “doesn’t follow the regional script led by Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger”, said Tomi Oladipo on Semafor. And each of the coups in west Africa has had “unique triggers”, said researcher Salah Ben Hammou on The Conversation. But neither are they isolated events: this is a “coup cascade” in the Sahel.

How did it begin?

When Libya’s Gaddafi regime collapsed in 2011, an “abundance of weaponry” was looted and spread across the Sahel, said world news newsletter Proximities. Members of Mali’s Tuareg group who had fought in Libya returned with fighting experience, seeking an autonomous state in northern Mali. The rebels aligned themselves with multiple Islamist jihadist groups and began capturing territory.

The conflict quickly spread from Mali into neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger. Their tri-border region in the western Sahel, known as the Liptako-Gourma, “allows the biggest of the rebel groups to engage in a war with three governments at once”.

When Malian soldiers ousted Mali’s President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta in 2020, it “marked the beginning of a broader wave of military takeovers”, said The Conversation. Soldiers “toppled governments” in Chad and Guinea in 2021, Burkina Faso in 2022 (twice), and Gabon and Niger in 2023. At the eastern end of the Sahel, Sudan “descended into a devastating civil war” after its coup in 2021.

What connects the coups?

Analysts point to weak governance and corruption, growing Islamist terrorist insurgencies and the destabilising effects of the climate crisis, as well as rising anti-Western (particularly French) sentiment, fanned by Russia.

Military governments in the former French colonies Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger have “played up” this populist “resentment of France” and accusations of “neocolonial tendencies”, said Al Jazeera. They pressured Western forces to leave and have turned towards Russia for “strategic support”. Hundreds of mercenaries from the Wagner group (“rebranded as Africa Corps, and operating as a part of the Russian government”) are now “on the front lines”.

“Sahelian countries are in danger of swapping one kind of imperialism for another”, said the Financial Times. In Mali, Russian mercenaries promised protection for the military junta and “defeat of a dogged Islamist insurgency”. Today, with al-Qaida-affiliated fighters encircling the capital with a “crushing fuel blockade”, and with talk of another coup, “it is clear the Russians have brought neither peace nor stability”.

Experts also blame the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas). They say the regional bloc “was not firm enough after the first coup in Mali and did not immediately react with punishment strong enough to deter others”, said Al Jazeera. “The lack of coherent and consistent response by Ecowas emboldened the coup-makers to act with impunity,” Festus Kofi Aubyn, a Ghana-based researcher with the West Africa Network for Peacebuilding, told the news platform.

What happens next?

“Almost without the world noticing, the Sahel has become the epicentre of global terrorism,” said the Financial Times. More than half of all terrorism-related deaths last year occurred there, according to the Global Terrorism Index. “The fear among more prosperous coastal states is that militant Islam will spread south.”

Countries including Benin, Ivory Coast, Senegal and Ghana are “rightly jittery”. Nigeria, also troubled by Islamist militants, is also “fearful of infection” from neighbouring Niger. In Burkina Faso, “the regime itself is not yet teetering”, but the government “controls less than half the country’s territory”, with an al-Qaida affiliated group controlling “much of the rest”.

“The final lesson is clear”, said Hammou on The Conversation. When coups are “treated as isolated rather than interconnected”, and when the international community offers responses that are “weak, delayed or inconsistent”, more will likely follow.

“Experts have long debated the date that humans arrived in Australia,” said LiveScience. Now a study using DNA from both ancient and modern Aboriginal people across Oceania may have finally “settled the debate”.

The study, published last week in Science Advances, looked at an “unprecedentedly large” dataset of nearly 2,500 genomes to determine that humans began to settle northern Australia about 60,000 years ago.

But “even more interestingly”, the study also added to growing evidence that along the way these “early human pioneers likely interbred with archaic humans”, including the species known as “the hobbit”, Homo floresiensis.

Human hobbits

Homo floresiensis “might have been slight in stature”, at just over a metre tall, but its origins have “attracted lengthy debate”, said the Natural History Museum.

At the start of the millennium, most paleoanthropologists believed Homo sapiens was the only human species that had managed to reach Sahul, an ancient landmass that includes modern-day Australia. “It seemed very unlikely that archaic humans had watercraft capable of crossing the ocean.”

But the discovery of Homo floresiensis in 2003 “changed things dramatically”. A team uncovered more than 100 fossils in a cave on “a remote Indonesian island” called Flores, including the partial skeleton of a female: still the most complete Homo floresiensis fossil to date. The adult female was just 1.05 metres tall, earning the species its nickname: the hobbit.

Before the discovery, anthropologists had “assumed that the evolution of the human lineage was defined by bigger and bigger brains”, said anthropology professors Tesla Monson and Andrew Weitz on The Conversation. This, they believed, enabled early modern humans to perform “more complex tasks such as using fire, forging and wielding tools”. The discovery of the hobbits, with their “chimp-sized brain”, forced scientists to throw these theories “out the window”.

So how did they get to Flores?

Stone tools found on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi were recently dated between 1.04 million and 1.48 million years old. That makes them “the earliest evidence ever discovered of ancient humans making a sea crossing”, said New Scientist. These could “provide clues” as to how the tiny hobbits made it to nearby Flores.

At least one of the artefacts was a flake that was struck off a larger flake and then trimmed. “This is a very early kind of human intelligence from a species that no longer exists,” said team member Adam Brumm, from Griffith University in Brisbane. “We don’t know what species it was, but this is a human intelligence behind these stone artefacts at the site of Calio.”

Both Flores and Sulawesi were separated from the mainland by “large expanses of sea”, and it is “almost certain that these early hominins weren’t capable of building ocean-going vessels”. The original population might have been washed out to sea by “some sort of freak geological event” such as a tsunami.

But the late archaeologist Mike Morwood, who led the team that originally identified Homo floresiensis, suggested that Sulawesi was “an important place to search for potential ancestors of the hobbits”.

“Donald Trump may have cleared the high bar of uttering the most appalling remark of his presidency,” said Fred Kaplan on Slate. “Things happen,” he declared last week in response to a question about the murder of the US-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.

This while sitting in the Oval Office next to the man whom the CIA believes ordered that killing, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. MbS, as he’s called, at least sought to “convey the impression that he knew the murder was contemptible”, describing it in the press conference as a “huge mistake”.

Not so Trump. He disparaged the dead Washington Post journalist – “a lot of people didn’t like that gentleman” – and exonerated MbS: “He knew nothing about it, and we can leave it at that.”

‘Major non-Nato ally’

Trump’s “lies” about Khashoggi overshadowed a visit that benefitted Saudi Arabia more than the US, said The Washington Post. Trump agreed to sell it F-35 fighter jets and advanced AI chips, and give it “major non-Nato ally” status. In exchange, the Saudis committed to invest nearly $1 trillion in the US, although “they offered no time horizon for this far-fetched figure, which is roughly the size of their annual economic output”.

Still, it makes “cold-hearted” sense for the US to cultivate MbS, said David Ignatius in the same paper. He could rule for many decades, and his “continued success in modernising the kingdom is crucial for the future security of the Middle East”. Having neutered the religious police and "empowered” women, he’s working to export that liberalising agenda to other places, such as the West Bank and Syria.

‘Unpredictable’ US

Trump isn’t the first president to conclude that the US-Saudi relationship is “too important to let human rights get in the way”, said Joshua Keating on Vox. In 2020, Joe Biden promised to make Saudi Arabia a global “pariah”. Yet the spike in oil prices following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine led to Biden’s “infamous fist bump” with MbS in Riyadh in 2022.

Saudi Arabia, for its part, still regards America as its key defence partner, although it is forging increasingly close economic links with China and recently signed a defence pact with Pakistan. For now, the two nations feel that they need each other. In the future, though, the big question may not be whether “the US can stomach a relationship with Saudi Arabia – but whether Saudi Arabia still needs a relationship with a country as unpredictable as the US”.

After days of frantic diplomacy, Donald Trump claimed this week that his negotiators had made “tremendous progress” towards ending the Ukraine War. The Ukrainian leadership indicated that it had accepted the “core terms” of a US-backed peace plan – and Trump said that his envoy, Steve Witkoff, would be dispatched to the Kremlin for talks with Vladimir Putin next week. However, significant doubts remained, both about the exact terms of the deal, and about Russia’s position. On Wednesday, Russian officials indicated that the deal was not acceptable.

Last week, Trump had piled great pressure on Kyiv to sign up to a 28-point plan that the US had drawn up following Witkoff’s talks with Russian envoys in Miami. That proposal echoed Moscow’s maximalist war aims, by calling for Kyiv to cede the rest of the Donbas region, and to limit its army to 600,000 personnel. It caused alarm among Ukraine’s European allies, whose 19-point counter-proposal is believed to form the basis of the deal Kyiv later accepted.

Pro-Russia bias

Effectively, the US-Russia peace plan amounted to a demand for Ukraine’s “outright surrender”, said The Times. It would have handed over Ukraine’s “fortress belt” in the Donbas, which it has spent years defending, and denied it meaningful security guarantees. If Zelenskyy had bowed to Trump’s ultimatum to agree to its terms by Thanksgiving, 27 November, or lose access to US weapons and intelligence, he’d surely have had to resign.

This peace plan was reportedly leaked by Moscow, said The Economist – and AI analysis suggests it was translated from the original Russian. Either way, it again “betrayed” Trump’s pro-Russia bias, and his indifference to Ukraine; as did his dismissive suggestion that Zelenskyy can “fight his little heart out” if no deal is struck, and his grousing on social media that “UKRAINE ‘LEADERSHIP’ HAS EXPRESSED ZERO GRATITUDE FOR OUR EFFORTS.”

Sobering question

There was a “grim familiarity” to events last week, said The Guardian. As in August, when Trump hosted Putin in Alaska, Kyiv and its European allies had been excluded from talks which would decide their future, and were left scrambling to improve a Moscow-friendly deal.

Europe’s leaders were confronted with a sobering question, said Michael D. Shear in The New York Times: was the US about to force Ukraine to “capitulate”, to the detriment of Nato and the benefit of Putin – “all without even bothering to consult with them”? It looked that way for a while; but by Tuesday, the crisis had been averted by European leaders who have honed their “how-to-handle-Trump playbook” during a year of similar episodes. Rather than lashing out, they “embraced” the plan to keep Trump onside, while insisting that it was only a starting point for negotiations. “The goal was to slow the process and eliminate some of the provisions they saw as crossing Europe’s red lines.”

The Europeans succeeded in shrinking the 28-point plan to 19 points, said Roger Boyes in The Times. But several of Russia’s key demands remained: no Western military presence in Ukraine, no Nato membership. And the fundamental questions – how to divide the land, and security guarantees against future invasions – remained apparently unresolved. As usual with Trump’s “drive-by diplomacy”, nothing adds up.

‘Miserable choice’

With the knotty questions about territory yet to be resolved, Russia is “trying to pour cold water on the prospects of an imminent peace breakthrough”, said Samuel Ramani in The Daily Telegraph. It continues to bombard Ukrainian cities; its officials have dismissed the new proposals as “not constructive”.

For Kyiv, the risk now is that Putin will talk Trump into backing favourable terms for Russia, said Tim Ross et al in Politico. That would leave Zelenskyy with a “miserable choice”: either take an offer “cooked up by Trump and Putin”, or hope that his European allies finally make good on their bold promises of help.

Sooner or later, though, he’ll have to make a deal, said Gideon Rachman in the FT. During four years of war, Ukraine has sustained hundreds of thousands of casualties. Millions of its citizens have fled abroad, and its economy lies in ruins. A bad settlement could imperil its future as a “genuinely independent” nation. But make no mistake: “the continuation of the war is also deeply damaging to Ukraine”.

The Italian parliament has voted unanimously to introduce the crime of femicide – distinct from murder and punished with a life sentence.

Previous attempts to pass a law that specifically criminalised the murder of a woman motivated by her sex had failed to gather enough support. Then the headline-dominating murder of Giulia Cecchettin by her ex-boyfriend in November 2023 “shocked the country into action”, said the BBC.

Over 90% of the 116 women murdered in Italy last year were killed because of their sex, according to the national statistics agency. After this week’s parliamentary debate, during which many MPs wore red ribbons in memory of the female victims of male violence, Italy becomes one of the few countries in the world – and only the fourth in the EU – to categorise femicide as a distinct crime.

How widespread is femicide?

Every 10 minutes, a woman or girl somewhere in the world is killed because she is female, according to a newly published UN Women report on femicide. Last year, an estimated 83,000 women and girls were killed deliberately – with nearly 60% murdered at the hands of an intimate partner or family member. By contrast, only 11% of male homicides that year were carried out by an intimate partner or family member.

There is no real sign of global progress in addressing the issue, said the UN, with few countries even recording and reporting their femicide statistics. We “need better prevention strategies and criminal justice responses to femicide”, said John Brandolino of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.

Why has Italy made the change now?

In Italy recently, there has been a series of killings and other violence targeting women. “High-profile cases”, such as Cecchettin’s murder, “have been key in widespread public outcry and debate about the causes of violence against women in Italy’s patriarchal culture”, said The Associated Press.

Cecchettin’s sister, Elena, attracted widespread media attention with her view on Giulia’s murder. She said the perpetrator was not a monster but merely the “healthy son” of a patriarchal society. “They were words that brought crowds out across Italy demanding change,” said the BBC.

What will the new Italian law change?

“In a symbolic move”, the bill was passed on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, said the BBC. The femicide law will apply to murders which are “an act of hatred, discrimination, domination, control, or subjugation of a woman as a woman” or that occur when she breaks off a relationship or to “limit her individual freedoms”.

The law does have its critics, who think the definitions of femicide are too vague and will be hard to prove. And even its backers agree that Italy still needs broader measures to counter sex-based violence and abuse. A separate measure to define sex without consent as rape, also “expected to get final approval” this week, “has been unexpectedly stalled” by the far-right League, said The Guardian. It would leave “room for women and men to use a vague law for personal vendettas without any abuse taking place”, said League leader and deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini. Prime Minister Georgia Meloni, his coalition ally, criticised the delay, saying it is “women paying the price”.

What happened

Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro on Tuesday began his 27-year prison sentence for plotting a coup to stay in power after his 2022 election loss to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Bolsonaro had been in police custody since Saturday, when he was detained for tampering with his ankle monitor while under house arrest. Brazil’s Supreme Court upheld his conviction and determined that he had exhausted all his appeals.

Who said what

Bolsonaro is the “first former president to be found guilty of attempting to subvert Latin America’s largest democracy,” The Washington Post said. His imprisonment was still a “surprise” to “many in the South American nation who doubted he would ever end up behind bars,” The Associated Press said. Bolsonaro will serve his sentence at the federal police headquarters in Brasília, in a special “12-square-meter room” with “a bed, a private bathroom, air conditioning, a TV set and a desk.”

President Donald Trump had deployed “some of the strongest tools at his disposal” — including tariffs on coffee and beef and sanctions on judges — to force Brazil to drop the charges against Bolsonaro, said The New York Times. “But Brazil’s institutions essentially ignored him,” and “Trump’s seeming capitulation shows that his efforts were basically for naught,” and may have even “backfired” on both him and Bolsonaro.

What next?

Bolsonaro’s lawyers pledged to “pursue an appeal to fight the conviction,” even though his conviction was just “deemed final, quashing any chance of further appeals,” CNN said. Analysts “widely expect” Bolsonaro to “remain in prison for a short time before the Supreme Court ultimately allows him to serve out the rest of his sentence at home,” the Times said.

What happened

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on Sunday closed out the G20 summit in Johannesburg, the first held in Africa, by ceremoniously banging a wooden gavel. But in a break with tradition, he did not hand the gavel to the U.S., which is hosting next year’s summit, because President Donald Trump boycotted the gathering over his baseless claim that South Africa is persecuting its white Afrikaner minority.

Who said what

With Trump spurning the summit, some countries took a “tougher tone” and tried to “show that life can go on” without the world’s largest economy, The New York Times said. Oxfam’s Nabil Ahmed told the Times the “big message coming out of this G20 is that despite the geopolitical bullying that exists, despite the power of the U.S., that countries can come together and still get stuff done.”

The White House “told the South Africans that they should not issue a joint declaration at the summit’s close,” NPR said. But in an “unprecedented” move, Ramaphosa issued a consensus declaration at the summit’s start, containing references to the “kind of DEI language disliked by the Trump administration,” with a focus on “gender inequality,” climate change and easing the debt burden faced by poorer countries.

What next?

South Africa rejected a last-minute U.S. request for an American embassy official to come receive the gavel from Ramaphosa, saying the U.S. could go to the foreign ministry this week to pick it up from an official of similar rank. Trump “has said the U.S. will hold next year’s summit at his golf club in Doral, Florida,” The Associated Press said.

The longest government shutdown in US history ended with a whimper, said Nitish Pahwa on Slate. For 43 days, Congress had been in a stalemate as Senate Democrats withheld support for a government funding bill in a bid to force the Republicans to extend Covid-era healthcare subsidies.

The subsidies are set to expire next month, at which point the average health insurance premiums of millions of Americans will more than double. But last week, enough Democrats – eight senators – “caved”, allowing the budget to pass in return for the mere promise of a future vote on whether to revive the subsidies.

‘Angry activists’

How pathetic, said Jamelle Bouie in The New York Times. The Democrats had been winning the stand-off. Polls showed that many voters blamed the GOP for the shutdown. Even as senators were preparing to capitulate, President Trump was booed by a crowd at an American football game. Talk about stealing defeat from the jaws of victory.

The Democrats were right to back down, said Michael Powell in The Atlantic. The shutdown was hurting too many people. Poor families were going hungry without food stamps. Federal employees were struggling to pay mortgages and bills without paycheques. Unpaid air traffic controllers meant flight cancellations. The Democrats, who take pride in defending the less fortunate, couldn’t sustain their position.

It’s always the way with government shutdowns, said The Washington Post. Parties instigate them to placate “angry activists”, only to have to fold, prompting a backlash from those same activists.

Democrats ‘may have dodged a bullet’

The recriminations among Democrats have indeed been bitter, said Ed Kilgore in New York Magazine. There have been calls for the replacement of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. But “losing” the subsidy-extension battle is no disaster for the party. On the contrary, the Democrats “may have dodged a bullet”. Securing the extension would have neutralised one of the GOP’s key political vulnerabilities: the Republicans have “emerged from the shutdown row having abundantly displayed their lack of interest in soaring healthcare costs”.

That’s not a good look at a time when “affordability” has become such a big election issue, and voters will remember it when their insurance premiums soar. “The short-term stakes of the shutdown fight may soon be overshadowed by more enduring public perceptions” of what the two parties stand for.

It beggars belief, our country’s propensity for corruption, said Zoya Kazanzhy in Vysoky Zamok (Lviv). Even as a terrible enemy “rages, kills and destroys” our people on the battlefield, the government of our supposed protector, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is robbing us blind at home.

‘Drastic change’

I’m talking about the vast corruption scandal revealed last week by Nabu and SAP, Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies, which for 15 months have been investigating the financial dealings of Energoatom, the state nuclear power company. High officials involved in negotiating contracts for the company have been collecting bribes worth 10% to 15% of each contract: Nabu estimates that $100 million in kickbacks were laundered through a secret Kyiv-based office.

So far, seven people have been charged and two government ministers (for energy and justice) have resigned for their role in the scandal. The alleged mastermind of the whole plot, businessman Timur Mindich, is a long-time pal of Zelenskyy: before Zelenskyy became president, the two men were co-owners of a film company. Mindich fled to Tel Aviv on the morning of the arrests: “you don’t have to be a detective” to figure out who warned him. War or no war, “Zelenskyy must go”.

Russia’s latest strikes have targeted the very Ukrainian power plants at the centre of this scandal, said Marina Daniluk Yarmolaeva on Espreso TV (Kyiv). It is disgraceful that, while millions of us have been sitting in the cold and dark, contemplating a brutal winter, our officials have been filling their pockets with international aid donated to protect our infrastructure from attack. To Ukrainians it all feels “like something between suicide and treason”.

Ministerial resignations are not enough, said Serhiy Taran in Vysoky Zamok. Even in our ongoing state of emergency, we need “a drastic change in the culture of Ukrainian politics”, notably a return to open competition for senior roles. Government can no longer be allowed to fill these positions with business mates.

‘Clean slate’

“These are not easy times for Zelenskyy,” said Lorenzo Cremonesi in Corriere della Sera (Milan). Even as “the Russians are pushing hard on the war front, corruption scandals are weakening the domestic front”. All of this, of course, “plays into the hands of the Kremlin’s supporters”, said Gerald Schubert in Der Standard (Vienna): countries such as Hungary are “once again calling for an end to EU accession talks with Ukraine and that all funding be turned off”. We can’t allow that to happen. There is no suggestion Zelenskyy was aware of this plot, and he acted quickly to remove his energy and justice ministers, pledging a “clean slate”. And right now, “Ukraine needs the West’s support more than ever” to strengthen its democratic structures.

We saw that support used effectively this summer, when Zelenskyy’s government, under pressure from Brussels, was forced to backtrack in its attempts to restrict the independence of its anti-corruption agencies. And the success of that effort “speaks for itself”: it was Nabu that led the investigation into Energoatom. However, pressure from Brussels will only work if we encourage Ukraine in its hopes of joining the EU, “instead of snubbing the long-suffering country at every opportunity”.

But that’s the problem, said Luís Delgado in Visão (Lisbon). Much of Europe is still incredibly “uneasy” about the current situation. Although “a river of money has been flowing into Ukraine” since 2022, Kyiv’s allies have always been wary of sending it, knowing the country’s reputation for corruption and the potential for a lot of that money to go missing. Now that some of Zelenskyy’s closest confidants are implicated in the graft, urgent explanations will be needed to avoid a freeze in the flow of funds.

The worst of it is that all this is happening just as the EU is locked in a debate about lending billions in frozen Russian assets to Ukraine. It’s an ugly situation for everyone – everyone, barring Vladimir Putin. He may be the leader “of one of the most corrupt countries in the world”, but he’ll still be gloating.

What happened

A senior U.S. military delegation arrived in Kyiv on Wednesday as President Donald Trump’s administration was finalizing a 28-point proposal to end the war in Ukraine. The plan, “negotiated between the Trump administration and Russia” with no Ukrainian input “would require Kyiv to surrender territory, significantly reduce the size of its army and relinquish some types of weaponry,” The New York Times said, citing officials. It reflects the “maximalist demands the Kremlin has made throughout the war” and Kyiv has “long denounced as amounting to capitulation.”

Who said what

Trump’s revived push for a peace deal “began late last month” with a secret meeting in Miami between his peace envoy Steve Witkoff and Russian emissary Kirill Dmitriev, Politico said. It would “require Ukraine to surrender to Russia the entire eastern Donbas region, even lands that Russian forces have not captured,” the Times said, as well as other terms “unacceptable to Kyiv.”

The administration is “attempting the same approach it used to achieve a U.S.-brokered cease-fire in Gaza last month — draft a multi-point outline and then push the warring parties to accept it,” The Wall Street Journal said. It is “likely to run into strong opposition in Kyiv and from European governments,” but proponents of the plan argue that “Russia’s steady but incremental gains on the battlefield” and a “corruption scandal involving associates” of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will “add pressure on Kyiv to make a deal.”

What next?

As European officials “publicly voiced concern about the plan,” the Journal said, Secretary of State Marco Rubio “cast it as an ‘exchange of serious and realistic ideas’ and not a diktat that the U.S. is seeking to impose on the two sides.”

EU officials are meeting today to discuss what would be a 20th sanctions package against Russia, focusing on the “shadow fleet” helping circumvent existing sanctions on Moscow’s oil and gas imports.

In the 19th package announced in October, the EU listed 557 vessels believed to be acting as a proxy for Russia in international waters.

What is the shadow fleet?

It refers to a group of largely Russian-owned vessels, usually tankers, that sail under various non-Russian flags. On board, they carry sanctioned commodities like oil to customers such as India and China, to bypass sanctions and export caps.

“Flag hopping” allows ships to “switch identities” by “jumping from one registry to another”, said The Parliament Magazine. Ships slip under the radar by “exploiting lenient registries” in countries such as Panama, Liberia and the Marshall Islands.

Over the last year in particular, it has become “so easy now to re-register somewhere else” that the practice has “escalated to an unprecedented peak”, leaving Russian tankers hiding in plain sight.

Analysis by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air found that shadow tankers ship around 62% of Russia’s crude oil exports, which in October alone brought almost £10 billion into Kremlin coffers, said the BBC.

What other problems does it cause?

The issues around the shadow fleet are particularly acute in the Baltic region, which is seeing more such vessels pass through its waters, said The Guardian. Maritime areas around Finland and Sweden were seen as a potential “Nato lake” when the two countries joined the Western military alliance in 2023 and 2024 respectively, but they have since become a “battleground for hybrid warfare”.

In August, Finnish authorities filed charges against crew members of a tanker suspected of damaging undersea cables by dragging its anchor in December 2024. The damage was reported to cost the owners “at least €60 million” in repair costs, said The Guardian.

But unless there is tangible or substantial evidence of a crime – infringing environmental, fishing or sea traffic law – the Swedish and Finnish coastguards’ ability to act is “extremely limited”.

The issues go beyond violation of sanctions. Ships sailing without displaying or registering under a valid national flag are operating “without proper insurance”, said the BBC. If a major spill were to occur, the financial fallout and clean-up operation would be huge.

How can governments counter them?

Establishing jurisdiction is challenging. National law can only apply in a country’s territorial waters, usually defined as within 12 nautical miles of the coast. Further out to sea, “freedom of navigation is a golden rule”. National governments have neither the legal ability, nor political appetite, to risk “escalating” the issue.

One way of tackling the shadow fleet is to boost powers to board suspected vessels for inspection, said Politico. In a draft declaration prepared last month for a meeting of EU foreign ministers, the EU proposed “more robust enforcement actions tackling the shadow fleet”, including pre-authorised boarding of suspected shadow fleet vessels, supported by bilateral agreements.

The draft also offered incentives to flag states to deregister sanctioned vessels. This appears to be having an effect. Earlier this year, Panama, the largest ship registry, committed to rejecting bulk carriers over the age of 15 years, which are often used in shadow fleets as their provenance is harder to ascertain.

Thousands of Americans vacation overseas each year, and many of them are confronted with a key question when arriving in a new country: How do they feel about President Donald Trump? During his second term, when many of his actions, including wide-ranging tariffs, are creating global friction, some American travelers are reportedly being received in a chilly manner. And some think being American now means having, according to at least one news outlet, the “world’s most toxic passport.”

How are Americans being confronted overseas?

Americans going abroad are “hearing a lot of political hot takes from strangers these days,” said CNN. But instead of a direct query, the topic of Trump “often seems to lurk on the fringes as locals in other countries try to more delicately approach politics and discern how U.S. travelers feel about what’s going on at home.” It may only “come across as a pregnant pause after you tell someone where you’re from.”

“We were having a pleasant conversation at the hotel breakfast. They were very nice to talk to,” traveler Angie Roach, a Trump supporter, told CNN of a recent vacation to New Zealand. Then the man “sort of groaned and said, ‘What about Trump?’” You “start building sympathy because you can be a Trump supporter, but still not like, you know, the kind of bad things that come out of politics.”

It appears that many Americans are being subjected to these feelings, regardless of their political affiliation. Some travel agents have had clients “cancel or postpone travel plans” amid “fears that they will receive an icy reception in other countries that are put off by Trump, his policies and commentary,” said TravelPulse. As contempt for the Trump administration continues, a “small anxiety is emerging among Americans with wanderlust: how to travel with the world’s most toxic passport,” said Mother Jones.

What can people do when traveling?

Some argue that Americans shouldn’t change anything they do. Most “foreigners know who our president is, especially when he is as headline-grabbing as Trump,” said The Hill. But the “idea that everyday Americans are routinely shunned, judged or made to feel unwelcome abroad because of Trump is a fantasy born of our own political obsessions.” Americans are “generally welcomed abroad. And when we aren’t, it has less to do with politics than with other things.”

Others say that Americans should just be kind abroad, politics aside. Be “more empathetic to people and their surroundings. Be a little bit more soft-spoken,” travel reporter Amy Tara Koch said to Mother Jones. If “you’re going to try to capture something on your phone, then do it subtly, not with this swagger coming from the United States.”

“Any American traveling abroad right now should prepare to have confrontational conversations,” traveler Nicole Hernandez said to CNN. She could “count the amount of times on two hands that I met someone and they were like, ‘What’s your name? Where are you from? Did you vote for Trump?’” Americans should “just be ready for people to push the question. And if you’re not comfortable talking about it, have a response ready.”

What happened

The United Nations Security Council Monday voted 13-0 to endorse President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan for peace in Gaza. Russia and China abstained, saying the U.S. resolution did not adequately pave the way for Palestinian self-determination, but they did not veto the plan. Hamas objected, saying the disarmament mandate of the newly authorized international stabilization force “strips it of its neutrality, and turns it into a party to the conflict in favor of the occupation.”

Who said what

The U.S. resolution “enshrines” Trump’s “complete plan in international law,” The Washington Post said. Its “vaguely defined Board of Peace, headed by Trump with membership chosen by him,” will “control virtually every aspect from security and governance to reconstruction of Gaza” through at least 2027.

The board will supervise a “technocratic, apolitical committee of competent Palestinians” to run “day-to-day operations” in Gaza, the resolution said. It will also establish an international force to take over security in the half of the enclave not occupied by Israel, and ensure the “process of demilitarizing the Gaza Strip” and the “permanent decommissioning of weapons from non-state armed groups.”

Israel is instructed to withdraw from Gaza in stages, but the plan “is — in short — a hornet’s nest,” Tim Lister and Nic Robertson said at CNN. “The sequencing will be hard to manage” and disarming Hamas will be “complex.” The “Muslim and Arab countries expected to send soldiers to Gaza — Egypt, Indonesia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates” — said they first needed U.N. Security Council authorization to ensure “their troops would not be viewed by their own populations as occupiers in Gaza,” The New York Times said.

What next?

In a social media post, Trump offered his “congratulations to the World on the incredible Vote” and said it “will go down as one of the biggest approvals in the History of the United Nations” and “lead to further Peace all over the World.” It was a “significant diplomatic victory for Trump’s ambitions to bring peace to the Middle East,” The Wall Street Journal said. But the resolution “still leaves questions about the future of Gaza unanswered, including whether there is a credible path to Palestinian statehood.”

What happened

Chilean voters Sunday set the stage for a presidential runoff election between Jeannette Jara, a progressive former labor minister from President Gabriel Boric’s governing coalition, and far-right former congressman José Antonio Kast. Jara came out ahead in Sunday’s first round, with about 27% of the vote to Kast’s 24%. But Kast was one of four right-wing candidates who collectively won about 70%, making him the frontrunner in next month’s runoff vote.

Who said what

Jara, 51, is a member of the Communist Party, “but many see her as center-left in practice,” the BBC said. Chile’s electorate appears to have shifted to the right since Kast lost to Boric four years ago, with most voters now listing violent crime among their biggest concerns. Kast, 59, has faced criticism “over his late father’s Nazi party membership and his affinity for Augusto Pinochet,” Reuters said, and his victory “would put in place an administration that is further to the right than any other since the Pinochet dictatorship.”

Kast has “borrowed liberally” from President Donald Trump’s playbook, The New York Times said, and “recently set aside many of his most divisive proposals to focus on crime and illegal immigration.” Chile is “one of Latin America’s most prosperous and developed countries,” and “still one of the safest,” The Wall Street Journal said. But many Chileans blame “recent shootouts in broad daylight and violent robberies” on Venezuelan migrants.

What next?

The Dec. 14 runoff vote “will be between a Communist candidate and one from the extreme right who four years ago seemed unreasonable, but now seems reasonable,” economist and former Boric adviser Eduardo Engel told the Times.

Sheikh Hasina, the former prime minister of Bangladesh, has been sentenced to death for her role in the deadly crackdown on protesters last year.

The months-long trial found that she had ordered the violence against the student-led uprising in 2024, which resulted in more than 1,400 deaths and thousands of injuries.

Hasina, who is in exile in India, faced five charges in absentia, primarily related to inciting the murder of the protesters and including ordering the use of lethal weapons, drones and helicopters to suppress the unrest. She denied the charges.

Who is Sheikh Hasina?

Hasina is the eldest daughter of the “founding father” of Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who was instrumental in the country gaining independence in 1971. She was forced into exile in India in 1975 following the assassination of her father, mother and three brothers in a military coup.

Hasina’s political journey is a “story of tragedy, exile and power, inextricably linked to the history of her home country itself”, said CNN. Having returned to Bangladesh from exile in 1981 to lead her father’s Awami League, she became prime minister in 1996, presiding over “significant economic development” but with “accusations of corruption, democratic backsliding, authoritarianism and human rights abuses”.

Like in her early years, Hasina has been in self-imposed exile in India since 5 August. She was “last photographed pulling suitcases across a military airbase” with her sister Sheikh Rehana before boarding a “military plane bound for Delhi”, said The Times.

Along with her former home minister and police chief, Hasina was convicted by Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal, a court established by her government to try war criminals in the 1971 fight for independence.

Why was she convicted?

Today’s decision was “widely welcomed in Bangladesh, with the courtroom erupting in cheers as the verdict was read”, said Bloomberg.

A report by the UN estimated that 1,400 people were killed in a three-week period of protests between 15 July and 5 August, with “thousands” injured. The “vast majority” were shot by Bangladesh’s security forces. “As many as 12-13%” of those killed were children.

Many people saw Hasina’s 15 years in power in her second term as a “reign of terror”, said The Guardian. Her tenure, as both the longest-serving prime minister (1996–2001 and 2009–2024) and also the longest-serving female leader in the world, was “marred by allegations of corruption, torture and enforced disappearances”.

Following the student protests over civil service job quotas in 2024, she led a “ruthless, state-led crackdown”. This was the “worst political violence in Bangladesh since its 1971 independence war”.

What happens now?

Today’s sentence is “likely to put pressure on the Indian government to extradite Hasina to Bangladesh”, said Bloomberg. There is an extradition agreement between New Delhi and Dhaka. Bangladesh’s interim government “formally requested her return” last year, though Indian officials didn’t respond.

The verdict could “set off a wave of political chaos” in the lead up to Bangladesh’s national elections, expected to take place in February, said CNN.

Hasina’s son and adviser, Sajeeb Wazed, warned that supporters of his mother might block February’s election and protests risk escalating into violence if the current ban on the Awami League is not lifted.

“In Rio de Janeiro, the term ‘public safety’ has become synonymous with ‘public massacre’,” said Tom Farias in Folha de S. Paulo.

On 29 October, a square in the Penha neighbourhood was turned into an open-air morgue – following the deadliest police raid in our country’s history, in which some 2,500 officers swept their way through one of the city’s dirt-poor favelas, killing more than 132 suspected gang members in a so-called “defence operation”.

‘Death squads’

It was the fourth such massacre carried out under Governor Cláudio Castro – but it was by far the most barbaric. Many of the men had been shot in the back of the head, clearly executed. Their “decapitated, dismembered, stabbed and gunshot-disfigured” bodies were laid out in the streets, said an editorial in the same paper.

The executions were almost indiscriminate: of the identified dead, at least “20 had no prior police record or criminal history”, and in the aftermath, the police reportedly allowed crucial evidence to disappear. With its “death squads” and police corruption, this operation recalls the “worst moments of the military dictatorship”.

Liberal elites are horrified, said Iolanda Fonseca in The Rio Times. But favela residents “overwhelmingly back” the raid. A huge 88% of them approve of the police operation, according to a recent poll.

That’s because they know what life in the favelas is really like, said Adele Cardin in the same paper. Millions of people in these labyrinthine shanty towns now live under the total control of the terrifying Comando Vermelho (CV) crime syndicate, which over the past five decades has transformed from a bunch of “drug peddlers into sophisticated territorial overlords”.

Residents’ movements are tightly controlled between barricades made out of stolen train tracks; night-vision-equipped drones hover overhead, monitoring their every move. Inside, the CV enforces a monopoly on everything, from the sale of cooking gas (at an extortionate R$150 a bottle, compared with the statewide average of R$97), to internet access. “This isn’t just crime; it’s a parallel state trapping the poor in poverty and fear.”

‘We’ve seen this story before’

It’s true that many residents are fed up, said Ruth de Aquino in O Globo (Rio de Janeiro). But if the authorities really want to fix this problem, then what the favelas need is “genuine political will and investment” to establish a state presence that can push out the gangs. That includes providing basic sanitation, better roads and housing, and access to public facilities. A massacre like this, on the other hand, will provoke only “more hatred and revenge”.

“We’ve seen this story before,” agreed Merval Pereira in the same paper. In 2010, the army was drafted in to invade the Complexo do Alemão slum and drive out the gangs once and for all. The drug traffickers fled; the operation was declared a success. But without rigorous legislation and intelligence operations, guess what happened: “Well, they all came back.”

Israeli President Isaac Herzog this week condemned the latest outbreak of settler-instigated violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, decrying a recent arson attack near the city of Tulkarm as “shocking and serious” in some of his most high-profile public statements on the longstanding trend to date. Herzog’s comments come during the seasonal olive harvest that brings Palestinian farmers into their neighboring fields, often setting the stage for attacks from groups of Israeli settlers. According to United Nations monitors, settler violence against Palestinians has reached a record high, with some 1,500 incidents recorded this year.

‘Act decisively to eradicate the phenomenon’

While the olive harvest has always been a time for heightened settler violence against Palestinians, this year’s “situation on the ground is out of control,” said Anton Goodman, Partnership Director of Rabbis for Human Rights, to the Haaretz podcast. The group, which monitors rights abuses in the occupied territories, has never seen “such a peak moment of violence” impacting “so many communities” in the West Bank as they have this season, said Goodman. In the latest of such instances, “dozens” of Israeli settlers attacked the Deir Sharaf Bedouin village and Al-Juneidi dairy factory near Tulkarm on Tuesday, “brandishing clubs and setting fire to parked vehicles,” said CNN.

This attack “crosses a red line,” Herzog said on X, urging Israeli officials to “act decisively to eradicate the phenomenon.” In doing so, he offered a “rare and powerful voice” to the ordinarily “muted criticism by top Israeli officials of the settler violence,” said The Associated Press. Rights groups have long criticized the Israeli government’s alleged tendency to “turn a blind eye to the violence,” including by dispatching Israeli Defense Force soldiers to incidents, only for them to “frequently leave without detaining the assailants or arrest only Palestinians,” said The New York Times.

Bad apples ‘tarnish a law-abiding public’

Within the Israeli Defense Forces, the uptick in West Bank violence against Palestinians has been pinned on “fringe anarchist teenagers” who need “intervention from welfare and education institutions,” said a briefing from IDF Central Command obtained by Haaretz. Those responsible are a “criminal minority tarnishing a law-abiding public” whose actions “violate our values, cross a red line and divert forces’ attention from their mission,” said IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir on Wednesday during a training exercise in the West Bank. That mission is “protecting settlements and carrying out offensive operations.”

Speaking in “closed discussions,” IDF Maj. Gen. Avi Bluth, who leads the country’s central command, has “demanded expanded legal powers” to “tackle the growing wave of settler violence,” said YNet News. The ask comes amid “mounting pressure from field commanders” to reinstate “administrative detention orders for Jewish extremists” that were canceled one year ago. The extremists’ goal, said left-wing Israeli Knesset member Gilad Kariv, is to “ignite a third intifada” that will draw in the IDF in a way “reminiscent of the operation in Gaza.”

Noting that military officials are “already speaking openly about this danger,” Kariv said on X that the violence against West Bank Palestinians is not “isolated pogroms” but are the “initial stages of implementing the nationalist right’s plan.”

What happened

The USS Gerald R. Ford, the largest and most advanced U.S. aircraft carrier, and its three accompanying warships entered the Caribbean region Tuesday, adding to President Donald Trump’s unusual buildup of naval might off the coast of Venezuela. Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said the carrier strike group “will enhance and augment existing capabilities to disrupt narcotics trafficking” in the region. But Venezuela said Tuesday it was mobilizing its entire military, including weaponry and troops, in preparation for a possible U.S. attack.

Who said what

The massive “firepower” of the Ford strike group “goes beyond what is required to strike the small boats that the Trump administration says are being used to smuggle drugs,” The Wall Street Journal said. The “only reason” to move a strategic asset like an aircraft carrier from the Middle East to the Caribbean “is to use it against Venezuela,” Mark Cancian at the Center for Strategic and International Studies told The Washington Post. Now that the Ford has arrived, “the shot clock has started” for President Donald Trump to “use it or move it.”

America’s military “dwarfs Venezuela’s, which is debilitated by a lack of training, low wages and deteriorating equipment,” Reuters said. So the government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has “bet on two potential strategies” — a publicly disclosed “guerrilla-style defense” and a secret “anarchization” plan to “create disorder on the streets” and “make Venezuela ungovernable for foreign forces.”

What next?

The Trump administration has “developed a range of options for military action in Venezuela,” but the president “has yet to make a decision about how or whether to proceed,” The New York Times said, citing officials. Trump was reportedly “reluctant” to put U.S. troops in danger or risk “an embarrassing failure,” but “many of his senior advisers are pressing” for “ousting” Maduro.

Iraq’s election has been closely watched from way beyond its borders, as the young democracy finds itself in a power struggle between the US, Israel and Iran.

The parliamentary vote, the seventh since the US-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003, ended last night. Although marred domestically by voter disillusionment, the vote could have far wider implications. Israel and the US are increasingly pressuring Iraq to dismantle the powerful Iran-backed groups that hold sway there. Meanwhile, as Iran’s influence “wanes” across the Middle East, its network of proxies decimated by Israel, it hopes to “preserve its power in Iraq”, said Al Jazeera. Iraq is its only close ally that has, since the war in Gaza began, “remained out of Israel’s crosshairs”.

What is the backdrop?

After the US-led 2003 invasion, Iraq suffered years of bloody civil war, sectarian conflict and the rise of Islamist extremist groups. The country adopted a power-sharing agreement: the prime minister is always a Shia Muslim, the speaker of Parliament a Sunni Muslim, and the president (a largely ceremonial role) is a Kurd.

Elections were still often mired in political violence and clashes between supporters of different blocs. But under the tenure of Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, Iraq has become relatively stable. He came to power in 2022 with the backing of a group of pro-Iran parties, but sought to “balance Iraq’s relations with Tehran and Washington”, said The Independent.

Now, he is struggling to maintain that balance, as tensions grow between the US and Iran. Israel is also threatening strikes, amid fears of another deadly war with Iran.

What does Iran have to do with Iraq?

Iraq represents a “vital sphere of influence” for Iran, which has been severely weakened by Israeli strikes, Western sanctions and the Trump administration, said the Middle East Council on Global Affairs.

In Iraq, a coalition of Iran-aligned militias known as the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) dominates parliament. The PMF “forms part of a region-wide network of Iran-aligned armed groups” across the Middle East, including Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis. This network is “central to the survival” of Iran.

But since Israel declared war on Gaza in 2023, it has “wiped out” Hezbollah’s leadership in Lebanon and “decimated its rank and file”, as well as “decapitating” the Houthi government in Yemen. In Syria, the regime of key Iran ally Bashar al-Assad has been toppled. Israel’s campaign “could now turn to the PMF” in Iraq, especially if there is a “sequel” to its 12-day war with Iran in June. Against that backdrop, this election “could not be more critical to maintaining Iraq’s status as the lung through which Iran breathes”.

Where does the US come in?

The US still “holds significant sway” in Iraq, said Al Jazeera. Its forces are deployed across the country and are regular targets for pro-Iran groups. The PMF, for example, has a long track record of attacks on US bases in the country.

Washington designates these as “terrorist groups” and is pressuring Baghdad to disarm them. US envoy Mark Savaya recently called for Iraq to be freed “from Iran and its proxies’ ‘malign’ interference”.

How do Iraqis feel?

Voter turnout has been dropping steadily over the past decade, hitting a record low of 41% in the last election in 2021. Citizens have become disillusioned with high unemployment, poor infrastructure and endemic corruption, erupting into mass anti-government protests in 2019.

The popular Sadrist Movement, led by Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, won the largest number of seats in 2021 but withdrew after failed negotiations over forming a government. He boycotted this election. Pollsters and analysts predicted a record-low turnout after widespread allegations of vote buying. But actually, turnout was reportedly over 55% of the country’s 21 million registered voters. Still, few believe these elections will bring meaningful change. The growing young electorate sees the elections as a “vehicle for established parties to divide up Iraq’s oil wealth”, said Reuters.

What’s going to happen?

Sudani’s bloc is forecast to win the most seats but fall short of a majority. That could mean months of negotiations between Shia and Sunni Muslims. Given the “fragmentation” and divisions within those blocs, Kurdish parties could “play kingmakers”, said Al Jazeera.

However, Sudani is “seen as unlikely to remain prime minister”, said Chatham House. The outcome of this “bargaining could test Iraq’s stability” and shake its “fragile equilibrium”.

“Iraq has so far avoided the worst of the regional upheaval caused by the Gaza war”, said Reuters. But if the next government fails to break Tehran’s grip and dismantle the Iran-backed militant groups, it will face both US and Israeli “wrath”.

Decades of mismanagement and environmental exploitation, and an unprecedented drought have left Iran teetering on the edge of a water crisis.

The reservoirs are nearly empty following record-low rainfall, and officials are “pleading with citizens to conserve water”, said the BBC. The 10 million inhabitants of Tehran are “facing the real possibility of their taps running dry”. Authorities warned this week that the five main dams supplying the capital were at “critical levels”.

With no rain on the horizon, the president has warned that citizens might have to start rationing water. “If rationing doesn’t work,” said Masoud Pezeshkian, “we may have to evacuate Tehran.”

A crisis ‘decades in the making’

The crisis has been “decades in the making”, said the BBC. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country’s supreme leader, has “repeatedly acknowledged the looming threat”. “Yet little has changed.”

Water scarcity is “a major issue throughout Iran”, said Al Jazeera. Authorities blame shortages on “mismanagement and overexploitation of underground resources”, exacerbated by the climate crisis. The situation reached its current breaking point after the worst drought in decades. Tehran has had no significant rain since May, a situation one official said was “nearly without precedent for a century”. A heatwave also drove temperatures above 40C in the Iranian capital, and above 50C in some parts of the country, causing widespread power cuts.

Authorities warned citizens over the summer to “cut back on water and energy consumption”, said Agence France-Presse. But by October, 19 major dams – about 10% of Iran’s reservoir supply – had effectively run dry.

The crisis is also fuelling conspiracy theories: some Iranians are claiming on social media that neighboring countries are “stealing” their rain clouds, said Forbes. Authorities have made similar claims, accusing Turkey, the UAE and Saudi Arabia of “diverting clouds away from Iran to their own skies”. Iran’s Meteorological Organisation, and other entities, have had to clarify that “stealing clouds and snow” isn’t possible.

Cloud seeding, cloud stealing

The energy minister, Abbas Ali Abadi, has blamed water leakage caused by Tehran’s century-old water infrastructure, and has also cited the 12-day war with Israel in June as a factor. Strikes on northern Tehran are believed to have led to heavy flooding.

But over-extraction of groundwater in Tehran has left the city sinking, said researcher Sanam Mahoozi on The Conversation. Across the country, more than 90% of Iran’s water is extracted for agricultural use. “Many of Iran’s iconic lakes have turned into a bed of salt.”

Studies also point to “decades of mismanagement, including excessive dam construction, illegal well drilling and unsustainable agriculture”, said The New York Times. The Ministry of Energy recently announced the practice of “cloud seeding”, which involves “dispersing particles like silver iodide into existing clouds to encourage rainfall”. But clouds need to contain at least 50% moisture for it to work. “With no relief in sight, some officials have called on the population to pray for rain.”

Vladimir Putin has said that Russia has successfully tested an (unarmed) underwater nuclear-torpedo powerful enough to “put entire states out of operation”. Speaking at an event for veterans of the Ukraine war last week, the Russian president said “there is nothing like” the Poseidon missile.

What is the weapon?

Russia’s new nuclear submarine, Khabarovsk, is armed with autonomous Poseidon missiles. Said to be 20 metres long and nearly two metres wide, they are capable of travelling up to 6,200 miles at speeds of up to 115 mph, deep below the surface of the water. According to arms control experts, the weapon breaks “most of the traditional nuclear deterrence and classification rules”, said The Guardian. “Launched from a submarine like a torpedo”, it is thought that they are “able to loiter as an underwater drone” before deploying a nuclear warhead “capable of triggering a radioactive tsunami to render coastal cities uninhabitable”.

“Compared to an intercontinental ballistic missile it is very slow”, said Naval News, but still fast enough to be “realistically uncatchable to existing torpedoes”, while its operating depth (said to be up to 1,000 metres) puts it “beyond reach” of defences.

What did Moscow say?

There’s “nothing like this in the world in terms of the speed and the depth of the movement of this unmanned vehicle”, and it’s “unlikely there ever will be”, Putin said, claiming that there are “no ways to intercept” it.

Kremlin defence minister Andrei Belousov said Khabarovsk and its missiles will “enable” Russia to “successfully secure” its maritime borders and “protect its national interests in various parts of the world’s oceans”.

A sensational report on Russian television boasted that one Poseidon missile could cause enough damage to “plunge Britain into the depths of the sea”, said the Daily Mail.

The more excessive Russian boasts of a “100 megaton ‘tsunami bomb’” are not reliable, said Naval News. “More recent estimates are two megatons”, which is still roughly 100 times more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

A new nuclear arms race?

News of the submarine launch has prompted Donald Trump to order the US military to restart nuclear tests for the first time in 33 years. But he said that the US would test on “an equal basis” to other countries, so as neither China nor Russia has carried out an “actual explosive nuclear test”, Trump “probably” means “reciprocal testing of nuclear-capable missiles” rather than the “actual explosive warheads that sit on top of them”, said The Telegraph.

His announcement still “bolstered concerns” that the world is “sliding into a new nuclear arms race”, said the Financial Times, as “much of the cold war-era arms control architecture has collapsed”. A return to US testing “would be a highly retrograde step”, providing a premise for Russia and China and other nuclear states to ramp up their nuclear weapons programmes, in turn encouraging non-nuclear states to “pursue their own”.

Starbucks is selling a majority stake in its business in China after it struggled in the East Asian nation.

But as the US chain has struggled, China’s coffee consumption has been “increasing by double-digits annually”, said South China Morning Post, and it now has a 300-billion-yuan (£32bn) coffee industry. So what gives?

Local players

Starbucks opened its first outlet in China nearly 30 years ago. There was “much fanfare”, said CNN, including a “troupe” performing a traditional “golden lion” dance and “eager customers” sampling cappuccinos.

The arrival of the US brand “helped spur the rise of a thriving coffee culture among the burgeoning middle class” in a country that traditionally drank tea, and by 2017, the giant was opening a new outlet every 15 hours in China.

But “dozens” of domestic chains have “exploded onto the scene” in recent years offering coffee at “steep discounts”.

In 2024, Luckin Coffee opened its 20,000th store in China and “doubled its footprint in a single year”, said Campaign. “The message is clear”, the nation’s "coffee game" is being “rewritten by local players”.

Pork drizzle 

Chinese brands are “constantly dropping seasonal specials with local ingredients, herbs, superfoods, the works”, Roolee Lu, food and drink category director at Mintel China, told the outlet. There are “lattes drizzled with pork sauce” or “spiked” with Chinese alcohol, said NBC News.

Yes, tea “remains foundational to Chinese culture”, but some "young, middle-class consumers” are “finding coffee’s caffeine kick” is “more suited to the pressures of a competitive job market and workplace”, with its “high job stress and long hours”. It can also be “attributed to a shift in lifestyle preferences” because “more people have more disposable income”.

So although tea has “long been the drink of choice” for Chinese people, a “coffee culture has boomed”, said the South China Morning Post. Coffee shops in suburban areas are seen as a means of “rural revitalisation” because they “create jobs and drive up the local economy”, helping “offset urban-rural disparities”.

Meanwhile, in cities like Shanghai, a café culture was “really” given a “boost” after Covid, as locals began to “embrace outdoor living, looking for places to meet their friends and family”, said the BBC.

The world has failed to limit rising temperatures to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels – the goal set in the 2015 Paris climate agreement, the UN secretary general has said.

Speaking ahead of the Cop30 climate conference in Brazil, António Guterres acknowledged it is now “inevitable” that humanity will overshoot the cap, with “devastating consequences” that include “tipping points” in the Amazon, Greenland, western Antarctica and the coral reefs.

What has happened since Paris?

The Paris Agreement, signed by almost 200 countries, is “at the heart of the international commitment to tackle rising global temperatures”, said the BBC.

Signatories committed to “pursue efforts” to limit global temperature rises to 1.5C, and to keep them “well below” 2C above those recorded in pre-industrial times, generally considered to mean the late 19th century. It also aimed to achieve balance between the amount of greenhouse gases added to the atmosphere and those that are removed – known as net zero – by the second half of the century.

Progress has undoubtedly been made over the past decade, said Christiana Figueres, the former executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, in The Economist.

Global carbon dioxide emissions that were rising by almost 2% per year in 2015, have since slowed to 0.3%, while fossil-fuel demand has “plateaued and is falling in several large economies, including China”. The world was on course to warm by as much as 4C by 2100. Today, projections hover near 2.6C “still dangerously high, but a profound course correction that must now deepen, and fast”.

The “unprecedented economic transformation” towards a greener global economy, is “now unmistakably under way, despite a global pandemic, war, Brexit and two Trump presidencies”.

Yet despite this, 2024 marked the first year global average temperatures exceeded the 1.5C threshold.

Can humanity do more?

While one year alone of over-shooting the 1.5C target “doesn’t mean that threshold has been irreversibly breached”, said Time, research published by the Yale School of the Environment suggests that it likely means the world will exceed the target over the next 20 years. A separate study found there was a 90% likelihood emissions will peak in 2045, two decades after they were meant to.

Guterres has, however, refused to give up on the target set in Paris. “It is absolutely indispensable to change course in order to make sure that the overshoot is as short as possible and as low in intensity as possible”, he told The Guardian, saying it may still be possible to bring temperatures down in time to return to 1.5C by the end of the century.

With the planet’s past 10 years among the hottest on record, this requires countries to meet or exceed their individual climate action plans, known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs).

Up to now, “while they helped some nations make progress in emissions reduction, it hasn’t been enough to offset high economic growth,” Adrian Raftery, a University of Washington professor emeritus of statistics and sociology, told Time.

Failure to stick to the 1.5C threshold will “challenge fundamental aspects of nationhood and identity”, said the Chatham House think tank. It will also “reshape systems that underpin modern society, including finance”.

The stakes heading into COP30 could not be higher.

The public groping of its first female president has placed Mexico’s epidemic of violence against women into sharp focus.

Claudia Sheinbaum was speaking to a group of supporters in Mexico City on Tuesday when a man approached her from behind and tried to kiss her on the neck and touch her chest. The president moved his hands away before a member of her staff stepped between them, and the man was later arrested. Video of the incident “quickly ricocheted across the internet”, said Reuters, “underscoring for many in Mexico the insecurity women face” there.

Sheinbaum said that although it was something she had experienced in the past, when she was 12, she had decided to press charges because the suspect had allegedly harassed other women in the crowd. “My view is, if I don’t file a complaint, what will happen to other Mexican women?” Sheinbaum said at a news conference on Wednesday. “If this happens to the president, where does that leave all the young women in our country? No man has the right to abuse women’s personal space.”

The femicide capital

Rights groups say the incident shows the “extent of ingrained machismo in Mexican society, where a man believes he has the right to accost even the president if she is a woman”, said the BBC. Femicide is a “huge problem” – a “staggering 98% of gender-based murders” are estimated to go unpunished.

Sheinbaum, Mexico’s first female president, pledged as a candidate to tackle the problem, but since she was elected last October there has been “no discernible improvement in that area of violent crime”.

Mexico has one of the highest rates of femicide in the world. In the first seven months of this year, more than 500 women have been killed because of their gender. That’s almost 40% fewer compared with the same period in 2024, according to figures from the Federal Security Secretariat cited by Sky News.

And from a policy standpoint, Sheinbaum “has made clear progress” on women’s rights, said The New York Times. But “non-lethal violence against women has hardly budged”.

A personal affront

The incident has “sparked outrage” among Mexican women, who “saw their own fears and experiences reflected in her plight”, said The Guardian. For some, watching the country’s first female president being groped in public was a “personal affront”.

“If the president suffered assault with that level of protection and those guards it means that all of us women can be assaulted at any moment,” said Patricia Reyes, a 20-year-old student.

“It was really humiliating,” said María Antonieta de la Rosa, a feminist activist and artist. “I felt angry, enraged and impotent.”

“The issue of assault is like the base level on the violence thermometer and it culminates in femicide,” she added. “So living in a femicidal country, the issue of assault is always there.”

The situation has also turned a spotlight on the country’s anti-sexual harassment laws. Out of Mexico’s 32 federal entities – Mexico City and 31 states – “only 16 criminalise sexual harassment”, said Al Jazeera.

On Thursday, Sheinbaum unveiled a new national initiative against sexual abuse, including a push to make harassment punishable in every state, education for prosecutors and judges on crimes against women, and a new public campaign to encourage women to report crimes. She called for all states to come together “beyond politics…defending the integrity of Mexican women”.

“Sudan’s descent into hell continues inexorably,” said Le Monde (Paris). For months, UN observers have warned that if the notoriously brutal ethnic-Arab militia known as the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) were to capture the besieged city of El Fasher in Darfur, there would be a massacre. And now the horrors predicted are playing out before our very eyes.

Satellite imagery last week showed pools of blood across El Fasher – appalling evidence of mass killings carried out by the RSF following its expulsion of the Sudanese army from the city. Videos circulated on TikTok show RSF soldiers hunting down non-Arab black Sudanese civilians and executing them, said Declan Walsh in The New York Times. One shows RSF fighters stepping over bodies scattered in a room at the university. “A survivor can be seen raising his arm, apparently calling for help, before a fighter shoots him dead.”

The Darfur region of western Sudan is home to at least six million people. Most are black African pastoralist farmers, the majority belonging to the Fur (Darfur means home of the Fur). For two years now they have been oppressed by the RSF, whose fighters are from Darfur’s Arabic-speaking nomadic clans. And all the while, the world has expressed alarm... and done nothing, said Hassan Gibril in Sudan Tribune (Paris) – “a stark reminder” of our “failure to learn from history”. Two decades ago, the Janjaweed militia – the RSF in its earlier guise – slaughtered up to 300,000 black Sudanese in what is widely recognised as a genocide. The catastrophe in El Fasher echoes those “darkest moments”.

Ever since Sudan gained independence from the British in 1956, Sudanese politics has been dominated by a northern elite intent on creating a state based on an Arab-Islamic identity, said Hamdy A. Hassan on The Conversation. And the civil war that has been raging for two years (which accounts for the deaths of at least 150,000 people) is the outcome of rivalry between two Arabic-speaking generals, former allies who had together brutally suppressed the black African insurgency in Darfur in 2003.

One of those generals is now the head of Sudan’s army; the other is the RSF warlord known as Hemedti. And he has been able to pursue his murderous campaign in Darfur with impunity, said Arne Perras in Tages-Anzeiger (Zürich), knowing that with the world’s focus on Gaza and Ukraine, “no one will intervene militarily in this remote part of the world to punish war crimes”.

Far from intervening, some countries – notably the United Arab Emirates – are actively fuelling the conflict, said Jared Malsin in The Wall Street Journal (New York). The Gulf monarchy sees Sudan as a vital hub of influence in the Horn of Africa, given its Red Sea coast and vast gold resources. With this in mind, it has funnelled to the RSF an increasing supply of sophisticated arms, some procured from the EU and UK.

Crucially, those shipments came after the militia had lost control of the capital, Khartoum, to the Sudanese army in March, a moment that could have marked a turning point in one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world this century. Instead, a rearmed RSF has been able to pursue another round of bloodshed – and another genocide.

And with the US and other great powers keeping their distance, there’s no end in sight, said Hafed Al-Ghwell in Arab News (Riyadh). An intractable conflict for which “the global community possesses no effective response” – this is “the shape of wars to come”.

Keir Starmer has told his fellow world leaders at Cop30 that the “consensus is gone” when it comes to tackling climate change as the lack of any high-level US representatives at the talks has led to accusations that the event will have little effect.

Starmer insisted the UK was “all-in” when it comes to the fight against climate change and described green policies as a “win-win”, despite the fact that he has faced “pressure from US President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly criticised Britain’s net zero agenda”, said ITV News science correspondent Martin Stew.

The Brazilian city of Belém, the gateway to the Amazon, is hosting delegations from more than 190 countries for Cop30. But the absence of the Trump administration is a “watershed moment”, said EU Climate Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra. “We’re talking about the largest, the most dominant, most important geopolitical player from the whole world,” Hoekstra told Bloomberg. “It is the second-largest emitter. So if a player of that magnitude basically says, ‘Well, I’m going to leave and have it all sorted out by the rest of you,’ clearly that does damage.”

What did the commentators say?

“Every year people ask what difference Cop will make, given the thousands of flights that come along with it,” said Sky News. But this year, “those questions have grown louder”, coming at a “particularly precarious time for climate action”. UN Secretary-General António Guterres recently warned that the world has failed to hold the average global temperature at 1.5C above pre-industrial levels – the commitment of the Paris climate agreement a decade ago. Yet “fewer than 60” world leaders have registered to attend Cop30, compared with more than 80 at 2024’s Cop29 in Baku, and more than 150 in Dubai the year before. There is a “serious lack of accommodation” in the impoverished city of Belém; what’s left is prohibitively expensive. Some “furious countries even lobbied Brazil to switch cities”.

The US has sent delegations to climate summits over the past three decades, even when they had “scant desire” to address global warming, said The Guardian’s environment reporter Oliver Milman. But this is a “much more aggressive administration”, said Todd Stern, lead climate negotiator for the US under Barack Obama. In his speech at the UN General Assembly, Trump called climate change the world’s “greatest con job”. One former state department official said Cop30 could actually stand a better chance of a stronger climate agreement if the US does not attend. “If the choice is no US or a US that is there as a spoiler, to wreck and disrupt things, then I think most countries would prefer there to be no US.”

Indeed, the decision is “alleviating some concern” that “Washington would send a team to scupper the talks”, said Reuters. Last month, the administration threatened to “retaliate against nations” if they voted for a proposal put forward by the UN’s shipping agency, the International Maritime Organization, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from ocean shipping. That “led a majority of countries” at the agency to vote to postpone the decision. The US also “pressured countries” negotiating the first global plastics treaty not to back an agreement to cap plastic production.

It’s not just the US that’s undermining the summit, said Politico. Around 100 of the 195 nations that signed the Paris Agreement missed the September deadline to submit their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), or plans for cutting greenhouse gas emissions, to the UN. That includes the EU.

China, the world’s biggest greenhouse gas polluter, set a target to cut economy-wide net greenhouse gas emissions by 7% – an NDC “largely seen as modest”, said Bloomberg. “Most experts were hoping for an NDC north of 30%,” said Hoekstra. Even with “all the diplomatic language I would love to wrap around that, it’s hard to see how that is enough”.

What next?

Cop30 organisers have not laid out a main goal or deal going into the talks. The summit will instead “focus on implementation, or turning policies into tangible outcomes”, said Bloomberg.

Of the countries that did submit their NDCs by the deadline, the new plans are of a “much higher quality than the previous ones”, said Sky News. They mean that a “clear” fall in global greenhouse gas emissions is on the horizon for the first time, according to the UN. They are aided by the “dramatic and rapid roll-out of solar and wind power”. “More plans are expected to be published during Cop30, bringing some hope to the summit.”

China’s “remarkable progress on clean energy”, which has “soared beyond expectations”, leads some to hope that China will “take on a more proactive role in the talks”. It’s not clear whether there will be “major takeaways from this year’s summit”, but “pulling off an international meeting at a time of strained global relations will be a success in and of itself”.

The UN has designated the civil war in Sudan the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, with 13 million people forced to flee their homes and widespread reports of war crimes targeting civilians.

As the bloody power struggle intensifies, the United Arab Emirates has been accused of stalling peace efforts in the region. Abu Dhabi is the “main backer” of the Rapid Support Forces, an unnamed intelligence officer in the militia told Sky News. “In the beginning, it was the Russians – Wagner and the state. Now, they tell me it is the UAE supporting the RSF.”

Weapons from the UAE are reportedly arriving by plane via Darfur and Chad.

What did the commentators say?

“The slaughter in Sudan is the horror the world swore would not happen again,” said The Sunday Times. But as the UAE allegedly “funnels” weapons and funds to the RSF, it “feels as though history’s nightmare is returning”.

Following the “bloody aftermath” of the takeover of El Fasher by the RSF, Abu Dhabi has been dragged into the “spotlight”, accused of having a central role in the “metastasising civil war”, said the Financial Times.

During the Biden and Trump administrations – the UAE has been an “important ally” to both – there has been a noticeable silence. But “the latest atrocities have raised hackles in Washington”. Two Democratic representatives have reintroduced an act to Congress that would “halt US weapons exports to the UAE until it provided evidence it has ceased support for the militia”. The Republican chair of the Senate foreign relations committee has called on Donald Trump to designate the RSF a terrorist organisation.

Disentangling the UAE from the RSF may be difficult, given Abu Dhabi’s vested interest in the region, said Middle East Eye. Sudan presents the UAE with an “arena” in which to “project its power” across the Red Sea and also a potential gateway to east Africa. Its “untapped gold resources” are also appealing to the UAE, which has emerged as a “global trading hub in gold”, as it attempts to diversify its financial portfolio away from oil.

The RSF leader – Muhammad Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti – and his family reportedly own a gold company that “operates on lands seized by the RSF in Darfur in 2017”. One of his brothers, Algoney Dagalo, is a “businessman based in the UAE”.

What next?

Although it continues to deny directly funding and supplying the RSF, the UAE’s “diplomatic machine is for the first time admitting to mistakes in its Sudan policy”, a sign that the “reputational damage” is beginning to bite, said The Guardian.

On Sunday, a UAE representative said that the emirate and others, in hindsight, should have imposed sanctions on Sudan following the 2021 military coup partially led by the RSF. The admission indicates that the Gulf state believes “it must distance itself from the RSF, the force it so nurtured”.

“The fall of El Fasher marks a turning point,” said The Sunday Times. If no resolution can be reached “Sudan risks partition”, a scenario that “does not suggest any imminent end to the killing. On the contrary, in fact.”