Editorial: In 2025, regret is the general consensus – and given how little we’ve gained and how much we’ve lost, it’s more than understandable
© AP
The American president’s sabre-rattling over Greenland should alert member states to the need for solidarity and a reset
European leaders, Sir Keir Starmer among them, will gather on Monday in Brussels to informally discuss defence and security issues five years after Britain left the EU. When the meeting was set last year, few expected US aggression toward a European nation to be on the agenda. But initial incredulity at Donald Trump’s bellicose claims on Greenland, a Danish territory, has been followed by shocked expressions of solidarity with Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen. A bullying 45-minute phone call between Mr Trump and Ms Frederiksen was described as “horrendous”.
So it begins. As Europe reacquaints itself with Mr Trump’s aggressive “America First” brand of diplomacy, further such provocations can be guaranteed. Fighting talk emanating from the White House will sometimes be a prelude to eventual compromise. But there can be no doubt that the challenges raised by the president’s second coming are substantial and wide-ranging.
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Continue reading...© Photograph: WH.gov
© Photograph: WH.gov
Editorial: There is a balance to be struck between border control and human rights, and there are too many clauses in this bill that are almost performatively draconian
© House of Commons/AFP via Getty
Editorial: There is a balance to be struck between border control and human rights, and there are too many clauses in this bill that are almost performatively draconian
© House of Commons/AFP via Getty
The president is more concerned with attacking the federal government than with putting safety first
Few stretches of airspace on the planet are as busy or as carefully monitored as the skies above Washington DC. Commercial and military aircraft are on the move there at all times. The greatest concentration is around Reagan National airport, the city’s principal domestic hub, which sits on the west bank of the Potomac River within sight of the Capitol dome.
No one yet knows how a Black Hawk military helicopter collided with an American Eagle flight from Wichita above the Potomac on Wednesday evening. But the destruction was total. No survivors have been found from among the 64 people on board the flight from Kansas or among the three-strong crew of the helicopter. By early Thursday, the rescue effort was already a recovery operation. Bodies were being lifted from the river’s icy waters through the day.
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Continue reading...© Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
© Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
Western resource-hunger has fuelled a vast humanitarian crisis. Donors must now press Rwanda to pull back from this war
There are bodies on the streets, hundreds of thousands of civilians fleeing and overwhelmed hospitals draining fuel from ambulances to keep respirators running. The rapidly escalating conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) – which has seen rocketing sexual violence, the execution of children and the displacement of 400,000 people this year alone – has just exploded with the M23 rebel group’s seizure of Goma, in the east.
Their advance comes thanks to backing from Rwanda, despite the coyness of the Rwandan president, Paul Kagame. Mr Kagame suggests that M23 is defending the country’s Tutsis, victims of Rwanda’s 1994 genocide, against an armed group set up by former genocidal killers. But the threat those fighters pose appears greatly exaggerated: analysts believe the real aim is to seize mineral-rich territory. There is a striking parallel with Russia’s tactics in eastern Ukraine in 2014. On Wednesday, Rwandan troops were seen heading towards Bukavu, another key city, with the M23 fighters.
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Continue reading...© Photograph: Moise Niyonzima/EPA
© Photograph: Moise Niyonzima/EPA
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