World

Putin’s nuclear drills, a postponed summit and the widening war of attrition For two leaders who flirted with the idea of a quick, high-stakes meeting, the choreography of power this week looked less like summit diplomacy than a careful mutual stand-off. Moscow staged a large-scale training exercise that it said included intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of striking the United States, and Washington announced a pause in plans for a second Vladimir Putin–Donald Trump summit as diplomacy over Ukraine staggered back…

North Korea fires ballistic missile days before APEC leaders meet in South Korea North Korea launched at least one ballistic missile on Wednesday, South Korea’s military said, in a stark reminder that Pyongyang’s weapons programme remains central to regional security even as world leaders prepare to gather in South Korea for an APEC summit next week. What happened South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff described the projectile as an “unidentified” missile that flew eastward, saying it was North Korea’s first such launch…

Wild spring heat and gale-force winds spark fires and chaos across Australia and New Zealand Immediate impact Wild, hot winds sweeping from Australia's interior into the southeast fanned dozens of bushfires and pushed spring temperatures to record highs in parts of Sydney, authorities said, as New Zealand faced rare "red" wind warnings and fires of its own across the Tasman. Australia's Bureau of Meteorology said a powerful plume of hot air that built over the outback on Monday was moving across the southeast, producing a…

Louvre director admits gaps in perimeter cameras after brazen daylight theft of royal jewels The director of the Louvre told French senators this week that surveillance around the museum’s outer walls was “highly insufficient,” acknowledging what many had feared after a daylight raid that saw priceless imperial jewellery stolen from the Apollo Gallery. “There are some perimeter cameras, but they are ageing,” Laurence des Cars told the Senate culture committee as investigators pursued leads in one of the most audacious…

Climate alarms are sounding — but the world is not answering fast enough When António Guterres warned delegates in Geneva this week that the planet is being pushed “to the brink,” he was not only recounting a litany of scientific milestones — every one of the last ten years the hottest on record, ocean heat breaking records, and ecosystems collapsing — he was issuing a practical plea: invest in the systems that give people time to get out of harm’s way. The United Nations secretary-general framed an urgent, solvable part…

Washington in fast-forward: a presidency remaking institutions while the rest of the country looks on In U.S. politics a week can feel like a season. But the last seven days have resembled a compressed year — decisions and dramas that stretch from Main Street farms to foreign capitals, touching courts, the Pentagon, and the very idea of a free press. For a global audience watching Washington, the pattern is clearer than the chaos: institutions are being reshaped, alliances recalibrated, and ordinary people are beginning to…

Return of a body under the ceasefire exposes the fragility of a hard-won pause The slow handover of a single body from Gaza to Israeli custody this week read like a terse footnote in an unfolding diplomatic script — yet it carries disproportionate moral and political weight. Israeli military spokespeople confirmed to the Red Cross that a coffin containing the remains of a hostage was being transferred back to Israeli forces, part of commitments tied to the U.S.-brokered ceasefire plan. Hamas, meanwhile, said it had…

Prince Andrew’s Fall from Grace: A Royal Reckoning in an Age of Accountability For a monarchy that has long prized continuity and poise, the decision by Prince Andrew to relinquish the dukedom of York marks an unmistakable rupture. It is not merely a change in a title; it is a public acknowledgement that reputational damage — amplified by decades of media scrutiny, legal settlements and the enduring shadow of Jeffrey Epstein — can no longer be contained behind palace walls. From privilege to pariah The move, framed in…

A new blood test for dozens of cancers promises earlier answers — but raises big questions The headlines Last week’s presentation at the European Society for Medical Oncology in Berlin put a new-generation blood test back in the headlines: Galleri, a so‑called multi‑cancer early detection (MCED) assay developed by Grail, correctly identified a cancer signal and the likely tissue of origin in a large real‑world cohort and — crucially — picked up many tumours at an early, more treatable stage. The Pathfinder 2 study followed…

Bodies, borders and a bitter ceasefire: what the recent exchanges reveal about Gaza’s fragile pause The exchange of bodies and a single identified Israeli remains a grim marker of a ceasefire that is at once fragile and consequential. Over recent days, Israeli forces and Hamas have overseen the handover of human remains in a transaction that follows the contours of a wider, uneasy truce — one that has temporarily halted the fiercest fighting but has not ended the humanitarian catastrophe or the political tectonics that…