World

Donald Trump’s Washington is a city of many secrets, but no mysteries. So much about the Trump-Putin story remains unknown, and possibly will never be known. But the fundamentals have never been concealed. In order to help elect Trump as US president, Russian operatives engaged in a huge and risky espionage and dirty tricks operation. Trump and his team publicly welcomed and gratefully accepted help from WikiLeaks, widely regarded as a front for Russian intelligence. Trump surrounded himself with associates and aides, including a campaign chairman and a national security adviser, who had in the past received pay from Russian state TV and pro-Putin oligarchs. In the wake of the

President Trump’s missile strike on Syria seemed as determined to stick it to President Obama as to the Assad regime. The initial statement from the White House on the Sarin gas attack that prompted the strike had more words of condemnation for Obama than for the Syrian ruler. In the matter of airstrikes, as in other things, it is important to Trump to be the un-Obama. But one night of missiles is not a decisive blow. Beyond the ruined aircraft hangars, the Syrian battlefield is little changed. What is the American plan? What’s next? Perhaps President Trump has not thought about this. His decision to bomb seemed emotional, justifiably so

My family were two streets away from Drottninggatan when the hijacked truck was driven into pedestrians this afternoon. It’s the busiest shopping street in Stockholm, all the busier with the Easter holidays approaching. The lorry drove at speed down Drottninggatan then smashed into the entrance of Åhléns, the biggest department store in the city. The city is in lockdown, its MPs told to stay in parliament and the underground system closed – leaving shoppers (my wife included) stranded in town, checking their phones and trying to find out what’s going on. Three have been reported dead so far, with ten seriously injured. After the truck and car attacks in Nice, Berlin and Westminster everyone’s first thought

Cadbury and the National Trust stand accused of taking the Easter out of Easter eggs. The Trust’s ‘Easter Egg Trail’ is now renamed the ‘Cadbury Egg Hunt’. My little theory about the National Trust is that all its current woes result from the tyranny of success: it has become so attached to ever-growing membership (now more than four million) that everything is skewed to this and the original purposes are neglected. No doubt the substitution of the word ‘Easter’ by the word ‘Cadbury’ seemed a small price to pay for big sponsorship. This decision is a symptom of the Trust’s problem. But for the fate of Easter itself, one need not

Perhaps Steve Bannon isn’t quite as all-powerful within the Trump administration as everybody believed. He’s just been removed from the principals committee of the National Security Council. This news has been understood as a sign that Trump’s new National Security Advisor H. R. McMaster is now calling the shots on foreign policy. The spin in Washington is that Bannon’s role on the NSC had been to act as a ‘check’ on the now disgraced former advisor Mike Flynn, who resigned in February, and with the more level-headed McMaster in charge he’s no longer needed. It’s also emerged that Bannon has kept full level national security clearance. So what’s changed? Something, clearly, for