World politics

World politics

For months, Donald Trump has presented himself as the very incarnation of a global peacemaker, touting an ever-changing list of international conflicts that he claims to have settled. Sometimes it has been six, sometimes as many as ten. "I ended seven wars," the President told the U.N. General Assembly last month, "and in all cases they were raging, with countless thousands of people being killed," which was not true but has not stopped Trump from repeating it.

This version was drafted by Seth Mandel of Commentary, with whom I've been working, wrote Frum, a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush.

While the world's attention is fixed on Ukraine another flashpoint could ignite an even greater conflict. Just 112 miles from China's coast lies Taiwan, an island of 23 million people facing 1.4 billion people and the world's largest army. "For Beijing, it's not just territory, it's destiny. For Washington, it's a red line." "Taiwan's military posture is built around a core strategic principle known as the porcupine strategy or asymmetric defence. The goal is not to defeat the numerically superior PLA of China in a conventional war, but to make an invasion so difficult, so costly and so bloody that Beijing is deterred from ever attempting it."

"The (Hamas) movement's delegation participating in the current negotiations in Egypt is working to overcome all obstacles to reaching an agreement that meets the aspirations of our people in Gaza," Mr Barhoum said in a televised statement. He said a deal must ensure an end to the war and a full Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip - conditions that Israel has never accepted.

George Mitchell, the great US advocate for the Northern Ireland peace agreement, described diplomacy as 700 days of failure and one of success. In Gaza, tragically, there have been 730 days of failure and none of success. Indeed, the destruction, the death toll and the spillover of the conflict into other countries is a monument to shame diplomacy and what remains of international law. Arguably, it is the profession's lowest point since 1939.

Environment and Energy Minister Ines Manzano said Noboa's car showed signs of bullet damage. In a statement to the press, she explained that she filed a report alleging an assassination attempt had taken place. Shooting at the president's car, throwing stones, damaging state property that's just criminal, Manzano said. We will not allow this.

When Vladimir Putin met with Donald Trump in Alaska in August, one prominent strand of social-media commentary had nothing to do with the possibility of a deal to end Russia's war against Ukraine (the meeting's ostensible purpose). Rather, it turned on the question of whether Putin-who faces an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court, stemming from Russia's wartime actions-could conceivably be arrested when he stepped foot on U.S. soil.

There are people I don't like, and I would like to put them on one of Musk's spaceships and send them all off to the planet he's sure he's going to discover, Goodall tells interviewer Brad Falchuk during the revelatory 55-minute special discussing her life, work and legacy. Would Musk, the SpaceX founder and Trump ally with a penchant for apparent Nazi-style salutes and firing thousands of federal workers, be among them, Falchuk wanted to know.

As Syria turns the page after Bashar al-Assad's fall, the transitional government promises justice, truth, and rule of law.

The plan precluded the future annexation of the West Bank, which so alarmed Netanyahu's allies in Israel that they dispatched Jewish settler leaders to the U.S. to talk him out of signing. Israel's far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, issued three demands: that the Palestinian Authority play no role in the future governance of Gaza; that Hamas completely disarm; and that there be no mention of a future Palestinian state. The proposal overlooked all three.

A New York Times investigation reveals that when Witkoff, a real estate developer and longtime friend of Trump, began his new position as a diplomat in the Middle East, his son Alex took over his company, the Witkoff Group. Since then, not only has the Witkoff Group continued to ink major deals with investors in the Gulf Arab states, but the elder Witkoff has not even fully divested from the company.

A live stream from the Global Sumud Flotilla (GSF) had late on Thursday evening shown the Polish-flagged sailing boat Marinette still sailing strong towards Gaza after the Israeli government claimed to have halted the flotilla carrying about 500 parliamentarians, lawyers and activists including Greta Thunberg.

From Boko Haram to herderfarmer clashes, Nigeria's crises are complex. Simplistic genocide claims fuel propaganda. In recent days, coordinated attacks on Nigeria's nationhood have swept across social media, blogs and television outlets, alleging a so-called Christian genocide. These attacks, driven by foreign actors, mischaracterise Nigeria's domestic conflicts, ignore its complexities and manipulate longstanding ethnic and resource-based tensions to advance sectarian agendas.

For well over three decades, Yasin Malik has held the reputation of a top-ranked pro-freedom leader from Indian-administered Kashmir. A leader who became synonymous with the armed struggle that broke out in Kashmir seeking independence from India in the late 1980s, then turned to the advocacy of peaceful, nonviolent resistance, Malik is currently serving a life sentence in a New Delhi jail.

Taiwan has become the world's biggest importer of Russian naphtha, a petroleum derivative used to make chemicals needed for the semiconductor industry, despite the fact that it has joined other sanctions against Russia and considers itself an ally of Ukraine. In the first half of 2025, Taiwan imported $1.3bn worth of Russian naphtha, and average monthly imports reached a level nearly six times higher than the 2022 average, according to a report published on Wednesday.

The return of the controversial paid bonus, eliminated years ago due to civil society pressure, comes at a time when Rio has its lowest police lethality rates in a decade. The paid bonus was introduced in a bill reforming the career path of civil police officers, who focus mainly on investigations rather than street patrols. Under the law, officers could receive a bonus of 10% to 150% of their salary for seizing high-caliber or restricted-use weapons and neutralizing criminals, according to O Globo.

Research on polarization indicates that when people in one group talk to themselves a lot, their positions on issues become more extreme. 1 On the other hand, when people with opposing views speak in person with each other, their views tend to become less extreme. 2 Studies of individual and mass shooters have found that they are often on social media before committing their murders and that encouraging language is often exchanged among them. 3

While she could hear conversations in Tibetan everywhere, all of the signage was in Mandarin Chinese. Every shop and restaurant she passed appeared to be Chinese owned, not Tibetan. Every lamp-post was decorated with Chinese flags; an endless river of red flowing above them against a cloudy summer sky. It felt to her like Tibetan culture and identity was being erased.

During Trump's Howdy, Modi speech, he said, "You have never had a better friend as President than President Donald Trump, that I can tell you." There are more than five million people of Indian origin in the U.S., and in three Presidential elections Trump has steadily increased his vote share in that group, from under thirty per cent, in 2016, to nearly forty per cent last year, according to some estimates. (Modi is tremendously popular with the Indian diaspora.)

The former president of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Joseph Kabila, was sentenced to death by a military court on Tuesday for treason and war crimes. Kabila, who was sentenced in absentia, was found guilty of charges that included murder, sexual assault, torture and insurrection. The military tribunal sentenced former President Joseph Kabila to death in absentiaImage: Samy Ntumba Shambuyi/AP Photo/picture alliance Military court imposes death penalty "In applying Article 7 of the Military Penal Code, it imposes a single sentence, namely the most severe one, which is the death penalty," said Lieutenant-General Joseph Mutombo Katalayi, who presided over the tribunal in Kinshasa.

China is willing to strengthen coordination and collaboration with North Korea on international and regional affairs, oppose all forms of hegemonism, and protect their shared interests and international fairness and justice, Wang told Choe, according to a readout by the Chinese Foreign Ministry. Choe, in turn, told Wang that North Korea viewed China's concept of a community with a shared future for mankind, and its Global Governance Initiative, as important contributions to the promotion of a multipolar world, according to the ministry.

He has repeatedly claimed he is the only person capable of keeping Israel safe and has tried to market himself as a big strong guy who won't let Israel get pushed around. But Oliver said he has also been in charge of the longest and deadliest war in Israel's history and one that is not currently that popular in Israel with polls showing he would lose an election if held today.

Everybody has come together to get a deal, but we still have to get it done,

The measure is part of a trio of regulations that Kim Ilhyuk, a North Korean defector, calls the three evil laws. They were implemented during the Covid pandemic lockdown and intended to impose even stricter control on the population of the country, which Kim Jong Un, North Korea's supreme leader, rules with an iron fist. The focus, to a large extent, was on young people and their interaction with foreign cultures.

They are joined by Hardy Merriman, an expert on the history and practice of civil resistance, to discuss what kinds of coördinated actions-protests, boycotts, "buycotts," strikes, and other nonviolent approaches-are most effective in a fight against democratic backsliding. "Acts of non-coöperation are very powerful," Merriman, the former president of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, says. "Non-coöperation is very much about numbers. You don't necessarily need people doing things that are high-risk. You just need large numbers of people doing them."