World

Wednesday

Lisa Haseldine Lisa Haseldine

Is Russia trying to flood Finland with migrants?

Against the background of the war in Ukraine, a diplomatic row is brewing between Russia and Finland. Last week, Finland announced that it would imminently be closing four of its eight border crossings into Russia, promptly doing so on 18 November. The reason? An unexpected increase in the number of illegal migrants coming over the border from Russia in recent weeks. Finnish minister of internal affairs Marie Rantanen put the blame for this squarely on Russia. ‘The activities of the Russian authorities have changed in such a way,’ she said, ‘that it has become possible to get from Russia to Finland, despite the lack of necessary documents.’ At midnight on Saturday,

John Connolly John Connolly

Israel and Hamas strike hostage deal: what we know so far

After weeks of negotiations, a hostage deal has been struck between Israel and Hamas. Under the terms of the deal, Hamas will release 50 of the women and children it kidnapped on 7th October in exchange for a four-day ceasefire. In return, Israel will release 150 Palestinians from its prisons. Substantial amounts of humanitarian aid, which will include medical supplies and fuel, will also be sent by Israel into the Gaza strip. The ceasefire has been structured so that it can potentially continue after the first four days are over. Israel has said that for every additional ten hostages Hamas releases, the truce will be extended by 24 hours. It

Angus Colwell

‘I was astounded’: Gary Marcus on the Sam Altman saga

This morning, OpenAI – the firm behind ChatGPT – rehired its chief executive, Sam Altman, after it fired him on Friday. Altman is the most prominent ambassador for the world of artificial intelligence, and was set to join Microsoft after leaving the company. After his sacking, more than 95 per cent of OpenAI’s employees demanded that the board leave and reinstate him. Many staff were threatening to quit the lab, and Microsoft had agreed to match their pay. Today, OpenAI caved and welcomed him back. What’s going on here? Did a firm that was set up to make AI ‘for the benefit of humanity’, whose whole idea was to not

Tuesday

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

The ugly side of the European left

Dutch politics got a blast from the past on Monday when a right-wing politician was assaulted. The country goes to the polls tomorrow and the hospitalisation of Thierry Baudet, attacked with a bottle in a bar in the northern city of Groningen, is a reminder of what happened to Pim Fortuyn in 2002.  After being assaulted in the weeks leading up to the Dutch elections, the flamboyant right-wing Fortuyn was then shot dead nine days before voters went to the polls. His assassin was an animal rights extremist who told a court he didn’t like the way Fortuyn talked about Muslims.  Many people on the left long ago gave up protecting free speech and

Phoebe Hennell

Argentina’s president is unlikely to trouble the Falklands

Javier Milei, Argentina’s anti-establishment, pro-dollarisation and pro-privatisation president, is already making a splash. Milei, who won a surprise victory in the country’s election on Sunday, said in his campaign that the future of the Falklands ‘cannot be ignored’. The islands, he said, must be returned to Argentina. It didn’t take long for Britain to hit back. ‘The Falkland Islands are British. That is non-negotiable and undeniable,’ defence secretary Grant Shapps wrote on Twitter/ X this morning. Brits – and Argentines – should brace themselves for much more of these bust ups now that Milei is in charge. But the future of the Falklands is likely to be far down the

Limor Simhony Philpott

What’s the truth about Gaza’s al-Shifa hospital?

Last week’s military operation in Gaza’s al-Shifa hospital was mired in controversy. According to the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF), the hospital was a significant target in Israel’s war against Hamas because they believed a command centre was located under the hospital complex. International spectators, including some of Israel’s closest allies, were concerned about the raid and told Israel to act with extreme caution to avoid casualties among hospital staff and patients.   International organisations – including the World Health Organisation (WHO), the United Nation Population Fund, UN officials, media outlets and Middle Eastern countries including Jordan and Turkey – condemned Israel’s operations in the hospital. The WHO described the scene as a ‘death zone’, but without

Monday

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Why have Sunak and Hunt suddenly decided they want tax cuts?

The government’s transition on taxes has taken place at lightning speed. We’ve gone from chancellor Jeremy Hunt hinting at tax cuts yesterday morning on the BBC to Rishi Sunak confirming that not only are tax cuts coming this Wednesday, but they are now a major priority for the government, as laid out in five new promises made today. Arguably the UK economy has been defying the doomsday predictions for a while now But it’s not just the policy that’s changing. It’s the rhetoric too. Hunt has gone from insisting that tax cuts are ‘virtually impossible’ in September – not something to consider right now, he said in October – to ushering them in this November and embracing a

Zoe Strimpel

Why climate activists love to hate Israel

Climate activists have been busy since 7 October. The demands for ‘action now’ on global warming continue, but affairs in the Middle East are proving to be a distraction for Just Stop Oil. Cries of ‘free Gaza’, ‘ceasefire now’, and even ‘from the river to the sea’ – a chant, purported to be a cry for peace and ‘solidarity’ with Palestinians, but used by those who want to wipe Israel off the map – have now joined, and at times drowned out, the usual green slogans. Just Stop Oil (JSO) activists took part in a sit-in protest at London’s Waterloo station on Saturday to demand a ceasefire, despite Hamas continuing to

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

What France gets right about assimilation

Among the crimes of Suella Braverman, the now former Home Secretary, was a speech she gave in Washington at the end of September. Multiculturalism had failed, she told her audience, ‘We are living with the consequence of that failure today’. ‘Uncontrolled immigration, inadequate integration, and a misguided dogma of multiculturalism have proven a toxic combination for Europe over the last few decades… if people are not able to settle in our countries, and start to think of themselves as British, American, French, or German, then something is going badly wrong.’    Her speech was predictably panned by the left – Amnesty International accused her of ‘cynicism and xenophobia’ – but also

Jake Wallis Simons Jake Wallis Simons

A potential hostage deal shows the weakness of Hamas

Details are sketchy and the deal is far from done, but all the signs are pointing towards a hostage agreement in which up to 50 Israelis are released by Hamas in return for a ceasefire of several days. Make no mistake: this indicates that both tactically and strategically, the war is moving decisively in Israel’s favour. This much seems obvious when the prospective, Qatar-brokered deal is held against the hostage playbook that has been followed by both sides over the years. By that old equation, one Israeli captive was worth up to a thousand Palestinians. That was seen most vividly during the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange in 2011, when 1,027

Sam Meadows

The new chainsaw wielding leader of Argentina

The location was the same – the circumstances starkly different. Almost 12 months ago, hundreds of thousands of people gathered on Buenos Aires’ immense central avenue to celebrate their team’s win in the World Cup. A year on, and hundreds – honking car horns and waving the blue-and-white Argentine flag – were there to celebrate the electoral victory of Javier Milei. The far-right libertarian, who describes himself as an anarcho-capitalist, began the race as a rank outsider, having only entered politics in 2020 and making his name as a bombastic television economist.  The far-right libertarian, who describes himself as an anarcho-capitalist, began the race as a rank outsider In his

Sean Rayment

Can Israel go on like this?

All generals plan military operations based on the ten principles of war – rules if you like, which, if adhered to, will provide the best chance of success. The most important of these principles is the selection and maintenance of an aim. Even if every Hamas terrorist in Gaza is killed or captured, it is questionable whether that would mean that the group has been truly destroyed The aim should always be a single, unambiguous and easily understood objective – such as destroying the enemy located on Hill X. It then follows that everyone, from the most senior officer to the lowest ranked soldier, knows what needs to be done and can

Sunday

Luka Ivan Jukic

The strange tale of Count Kalergi and the Pan-European Union

If the European Union created its own version of Mount Rushmore, who would it place in its pantheon? Horst Köhler, Helmut Kohl, and Francois Mitterrand – the architects of the Maastricht Treaty – perhaps? Or maybe Alcide De Gasperi, Robert Schuman, Jean Monnet, and Konrad Adenauer, who set in motion the long and winding process of European integration in the 1950s?  Almost certain to be overlooked is the man who founded the modern movement for European unity in the first place. That is, the eccentric, cosmopolitan Austro-Hungarian aristocrat Richard Nikolaus Eijiro, Count of Coundehove-Kalergi.   Kalergi had an unusual background. He was born in Tokyo in 1894 to an Austrian

Sarit Zehavi

What it’s like living next door to Hezbollah

At 6.30 am on October 7, I began receiving hundreds of messages as Hamas began its invasion of Israel. We knew immediately that where we lived, nine kilometres from the Lebanese border, could soon be unsafe if Hezbollah joined in on the attack.  I immediately jumped out of bed and told my husband, ‘There’s a war, I’m going to prepare the shelter.’ I went to the kitchen and started tidying up the leftovers from yesterday’s holiday meal. My husband joined me and we filled bottles of water. I made sure the phone in the shelter worked, that there was a computer, charger, torches and that the iron shelter door could close. We

Saturday

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

Vivian Silver and the collapse of the Israeli left

The well-lived life and foul murder of Vivian Silver encapsulate the hopelessness of Israel-Hamas war and the bad faith that drives the world’s reactions to it. You could see the bad faith on display in the hours after her death. It inspired a gruesome social media pile-on. Maybe it was just a mistake by an underpaid intern. Maybe, as conservatives were to claim, the liberal media was revealing its deep biases. But, intentionally or not, a tweet on X from the Canadian broadcaster CTV News appeared to be yet another example of the wilful refusal by progressives to condemn or even acknowledge the existence of theocratic terror. If something better

Ian O’Doherty

The sinister push to expel the Israeli ambassador to Ireland

There have been diplomatic tensions between Ireland and Israel almost since the latter was founded. Ireland only established diplomatic relations with Israel in 1975, and it took until for 1996 for it to open an embassy in Tel Aviv. In recent years, the frosty relations between the two countries had been improving, largely thanks to mutual investment and cooperation between their tech industries. That uneasy truce was shattered by the Hamas pogrom on October 7 – and the subsequent Israeli invasion of Gaza in an attempt to eradicate Hamas once and for all.  Things escalated in Ireland this week, when there were several fractious debates in the Dail on the subject of

Limor Simhony Philpott

How will Israel deal with the threat of Hezbollah?

From the very beginning, the war between Israel and Hamas has not been confined to just one front. The Iran-backed, Lebanon-based Islamist militant organisation Hezbollah started attacking Israel on 8 October – one day after Hamas’s deadly assault. In the weeks since, Iranian militias in Syria and Houthi rebels in Yemen have attacked Israel with missiles and drones, while Iranian-backed forces in Iraq have targeted American troops. For now, Gaza is at the heart of the war – but this may soon change. Israel has been fighting Hezbollah since the First Lebanon war ended in 1985. During the 15 years the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) controlled the ‘security zone’, extending

Norman Davies

Volhynia and the forgotten massacre of the Second World War

Completely innocent men, women and children have been slaughtered. ‘Terrorism’ hardly suffices to describe the savage rampage beyond the Gaza Wall undertaken by men from Hamas on 7 October. In the aftermath of the Second World War, when knowledge emerged of the crimes perpetrated by Nazi Germans and their collaborators, humanity vowed ‘Never Again’. Yet the world has descended once more into ever lower levels of depravity. What is more, thousands of innocents are now being killed as collateral in the on-going counterattacks. The kibbutz of Kfar Aza and kibbutz Be’eri, where some of the most barbaric crimes were carried out by Hamas, joins the long list of places of infamy where

Friday

Nadim Koteich

Victory over Hamas will be hard to achieve

‘If you want peace, destroy Hamas. If you want security, destroy Hamas. If you want a future for Israel, the Palestinians, the Middle East, destroy Hamas,’ Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said this week. Given its formidable military capabilities and the considerable international support it receives, Israel holds the upper hand in the ongoing war. But if the Middle East has taught us anything, it is that the notion of ‘victory’ is an elusive endeavour.   The total defeat of Hamas will be a difficult, if not impossible, task for Israel. Following the devastating terror attack on 7 October, Israel has found itself ensnared in a brutal war. But as the

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

Should Kyiv really ban the Ukrainian Orthodox Church?

The war in Ukraine, which was until 7 October the only foreign news we could think about, is no longer centre stage but is continuing in an increasingly attritional way. And Ukrainian politics continue, inevitably, to be dominated by the war with the result that fundamental freedoms are now a casualty of the conflict. Specifically, there is a bill before the Ukrainian parliament, which has already passed its first reading, that would ban the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. This historically has been located within the Russian Orthodox Church, whose leader, Patriarch Kirill, is notoriously invested in the war, on the Russian side. He is, moreover, close to Vladimir Putin. The bill would