World

If you’ve walked by the red telephone boxes on Parliament Square, chances are you have seen an Asian couple in full wedding dress posing for a photographer. A strange place to go after a wedding, you might think, but the odds are that they’re not (yet) married — and won’t be for some time. This is, instead, a new Chinese phenomenon: the pre-wedding photo shoot. Pre-weddings are now as essential to young Chinese couples as honeymoons are to the British. With ever more money to splash, and their sights set on farther horizons, a sweet pose under a blue sky is no longer enough, as it was for my parents.

A decision on one of the more controversial of U.S. President Donald Trump’s protectionist policies was yesterday postponed as the U.S. extended the exemption from tariffs on steel and aluminium imports for a handful of allies including the European Union. The news comes in the wake of talks with Europe’s ‘big hitters’, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who left Washington with seemingly little to show for their efforts. But this reprieve might quietly be considered a victory–so long as the Europeans can figure out a way to make it permanent. As tensions with China escalate, the bloc will hope that Trump is realising he needs the economic

Just getting to meet the two British jihadists accused of being part of the so-called “Beatles” cell of Islamic State terrorists is an arduous task. Crossing the Tigris in a battered river barge is the only route available from Iraq into Rojava, the Kurdish controlled part of northern Syria where the two men – Alexanda Kotey and El Shafee Elsheikh – are being held along with hundreds, possibly thousands, of Isis foreign fighters. The Kurdish YPG militia oversee all movement in Rojava and its intelligence wing controls access to their detainees a seven hour drive away in the town of Kobane; a journey that takes visitors through dozens of towns battle

Amina Ahmed counts herself as one of the lucky ones, or just about. When Boko Haram staged a mass kidnapping in her home town of Gwoza, northern Nigeria, three years ago, she and other female captives were sorted into two different categories of chattel. The less favoured ones were conscripted as cannon fodder against the Nigerian army, with suicide bombs strapped to their waists. The others became ‘servants to the Emir’s soldiers’ – which, Amina discovered, was Islamist-speak for sex slave. During her two years in captivity, she was forced to sleep with at least 10 different men. She’d shudder whenever she heard their motorbikes roaring into camp. Eight months

For France and Germany, the contrast could scarcely be starker. For three days Emmanuel Macron was wooed and fêted by Donald Trump, treated to marching bands and banquets. Today, Angela Merkel made a brief two-and-a-half hour stop-off at the White House, then flew away again. So does this mean President Macron is Trump’s New Best Friend and Chancellor Merkel is just his sideman (or should that be sidewoman?)? As always, in international diplomacy, this is a question to which the answer is: well, yes and no. Sure, the dramatic difference between these tête-à-têtes was no coincidence. Yes, Macron’s was a full state visit, Merkel’s was merely a working meeting, but

Diane Abbott is calling for Amber Rudd’s head over the Windrush scandal – but Mr Steerpike was somewhat taken aback by her line of attack against the Home Secretary. On BBC News, Abbott asked: ‘Who can have confidence in Amber Rudd to make far-reaching changes in the Home Office, if she doesn’t seem able to get basic facts right?’ But is she forgetting her own history of blunders? Take the time in the run-up to last year’s snap election when Abbott told LBC’s Nick Ferrari it would cost £300,000 to recruit ten thousand police officers: Or when she recounted listening to Enoch Powell’s speech in primary school; a speech given

People are expressing bemusement that Presidents Trump and Macron should get on well, since they seem such different people. Surely a clue lies in their shared title. They are the only important executive presidents in the western world, so they have that particular combination of real power and ceremonial pomp which is rightly denied to prime ministers. They love it. Besides, they are not so different, though M.Macron is Gallicly suave and Mr Trump is Yankee brash, and the former is small and thin, the latter neither. Both seem to be egomaniacs who believe in and embody führerprinzip (though luckily neither leads a country which gives it anything like full

Twenty-one years ago the sun finally set on the British Empire with the handover of Hong Kong. Now, the sun is setting on what is known as the special relationship between the United Kingdom and the United States. It would be easy to blame Brexit for London’s increasing irrelevance in Washington. After all, the U.S. foreign policy establishment has been rapidly pro-European Union since Henry Kissinger supposedly said that Americans needed to know who to call if they wanted to call Europe. Since then, when a president wanted something from the Old World the British prime minister was their helpmate. There is no question that France has manoeuvred to fill