World

Gaza’s skyline is being erased — and with it a fragile chance for peace Israel’s campaign in Gaza has entered a new, harsher phase: airstrikes and ground operations that have begun to smash the high-rises that once housed families, businesses and entire neighbourhoods. The intensified demolition of towers in Gaza City — as many as 20 high-rise buildings hit this week — is part of an assault that health authorities say left dozens dead and has pushed the territory further toward a humanitarian abyss. At the same time,…

When a Late-Night Monologue Becomes a Constitutional Flashpoint Donald Trump’s public praise for the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night program crystallized into a broader confrontation this week over free speech, corporate pressure and the reach of government regulators. What began as barbed comedy about the shooting of a controversial conservative activist has escalated into a national debate over whether regulators and broadcasters can — or should — be pushed into policing political speech. A comedian pulled off…

Russia’s overnight drone and missile onslaught leaves civilians dead as war intensifies Russia launched a massive overnight assault on Ukraine using hundreds of drones and scores of missiles, Ukrainian authorities said on Saturday, killing at least three people, wounding dozens and damaging homes and infrastructure across the country as both sides step up long-range strikes. What officials say happened President Volodymyr Zelensky described the attack as “massive,” saying roughly 580 drones and about 40 missiles were…

Gaza City assault exposes the limits of force and the widening diplomatic rupture Israeli tanks and bulldozers have pushed deeper into Gaza City in recent days, flattening apartment blocks and killing dozens of civilians in strikes that have left families digging through rubble for shreds of their lives. Gazan health authorities say at least 31 people were killed when residential buildings were blasted; among them, medics reported, were a pregnant woman and two children. One man, his leg later amputated after he was rushed…

A turning point in foreign policy or a symbolic gesture? Western recognition of a Palestinian state shifts the map of diplomacy When Portugal’s foreign minister stood in New York this week and announced Lisbon would recognise a Palestinian state, he framed the decision as the logical conclusion of a long-held policy. “Recognising the State of Palestine is therefore the fulfilment of a fundamental, consistent, and widely agreed policy,” Paulo Rangel told reporters on the eve of the UN General Assembly. But this is not just…

When a president talks about yanking broadcasters' licences, what happens to free speech? When a U.S. president publicly urges regulators to punish television networks for negative coverage, it lands like a geological tremor for newsrooms accustomed to partisan heat but not regulatory menace. This week, President Donald Trump doubled down on his long-running assault on American journalism, calling the nation's TV networks "97% bad" and saying, bluntly, that their behaviour was "illegal" — comments that came as the Federal…

The UN at 80: an institution under pressure in a multipolar age New York’s diplomats will soon reconvene in a familiar ritual of speeches, side meetings and cocktail receptions. But this year the atmosphere at the UN feels different — thinned by budget lines, sharpened by geopolitics and shadowed by hunger. As Secretary‑General António Guterres put it plainly this month: “We are gathering in turbulent, even unchartered waters.” That phrase captures why the United Nations’ 80th General Assembly resembles less of a…

After eight months in Taliban custody, British couple reunited with family in Qatar For nearly eight months, Barbie and Peter Reynolds lived in a limbo few outsiders can imagine: detained in a Taliban facility in Afghanistan, separated, relying on distant diplomatic advocacy and the occasional hand of a mediator to maintain contact with the outside world. On arrival in Doha this week, the 76-year-old Barbie and her 80-year-old husband stepped down an aircraft and into the arms of the family who had spent months pleading for…

Estonia says Russian jets briefly crossed its airspace, raising NATO fears of spillover Estonia accused three Russian MiG‑31 fighters of violating its airspace near the tiny island of Vaindloo on Thursday, an incursion that lasted roughly 12 minutes and deepened Western worries that Moscow’s war in Ukraine could accidentally — or deliberately — spill beyond the battlefield. Moscow denied the claim, saying the aircraft remained over neutral waters. Quick scramble, sharp words Italian F‑35s operating under NATO’s Baltic Air…

Ukraine hit by one of its largest overnight aerial assaults as Zelensky prepares to meet Trump at UN Ukraine scrambled on the ground and in the skies early on the eve of the United Nations General Assembly, after what President Volodymyr Zelensky described as one of the heaviest aerial barrages of the war. Moscow, meanwhile, painted the exchanges as reciprocal and defensive, underscoring how the conflict remains on a hair-trigger across multiple fronts even as diplomacy is scheduled to resume at New York. Massive strikes,…