| Chief International Correspondent |
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Chief International Correspondent |
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For weeks, the lives of countless civilians, the world’s markets, and, frankly, the futures of us all, have hinged on the opaque utterances of US President Donald Trump.
In the last week he has warned “a whole civilisation will die” in Iran, bashed the Pope, gone after Sir Keir Starmer and posted an AI-image of himself as Jesus.
Today, he spoke of wanting a “big fat hug” from Chinese President Xi Jinping for “permanently” reopening the Strait of Hormuz and signalled that Pakistan-brokered talks could restart with Iran to finally end the devastating war.
Everything is resting on this. The International Energy Agency warned this week that the true impact of the Iran and US blockades on the Strait of Hormuz had not yet been felt. The UN said the window to prevent a “full blown” global food crisis is rapidly closing.
With mounting pressure to reach any negotiating table, Israeli and Lebanese diplomats met in DC on Tuesday for their first direct talks in three decades. That aimed to end a war between Israel and Iran’s ally Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, that has upended any hopes of an Iran deal.
But with nothing concrete resolved, so far, time is running out.
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Donald Trump posted an AI picture of him as Jesus on social media, but then deleted it, claiming it was actually depicting him as a doctor (@realDonaldTrump/Truth Social) |
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Deep uncertainty about how long the disruption will continue has added a “risk premium” – an extra cost built into oil prices to account for the risk of disrupted supply, writes Flavio Macau. |
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Viktor Orban’s semi-authoritarian rule was backed by the US and Russian administrations because they see it as a justification of their own modus operandi, says Ben Judah. |
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Police are now involved after a two-year legal battle by a family that spent nearly £40,000 on business-class tickets to Peru but was denied boarding by KLM, reports Shweta Sharma. |
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As the long, dark night of Viktor Orban’s 16-year rule in Hungary came to an end this weekend, it wasn’t just the jubilant crowds crammed onto the bridges across the Danube that had a song in their heart.
For “the dictator”, as he was known in Brussels, has gone. Hungary has certainly won, Europe has won, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin have lost their fifth-columnist ally on this continent, and Nigel Farage has lost a source of ideological inspiration.
But the biggest sigh of relief – at the sheer size of Peter Magyar’s election landslide – must have been in Kyiv. Cliche or not, we shouldn’t hesitate to call the end of Orban as a game-changer for Ukraine. |
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The American constitution is creaking at the seams. The founding fathers got many things right, but ultimately their imagination failed them. They could not, in their worst nightmares, conceive of a president who would be simultaneously all-powerful and mentally unwell.
“Mad” and “senile” may not be precise medical terms, but pick your own symptoms. Even Donald Trump's most fervent supporters can no longer hide their disquiet at his impulsivity, malignant narcissism and erratic volatility. All but the wilfully blind recoil from the deranged stream of consciousness that spews from his social media accounts at all times of day and night. |
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| Senior culture and lifestyle writer |
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| Senior culture and lifestyle writer |
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You’d be forgiven for thinking that holding the rank of head of the Catholic Church, Vicar of Jesus Christ, and the Successor of the Prince of the Apostles would disqualify Robert Prevost, better known as Pope Leo XIV, from being the subject of one of Donald Trump’s online diatribes.
But you’d be wrong. In Trump’s estimation, Leo XIV is “WEAK on Crime and terrible for Foreign Policy”, the Potus wrote on his social platform Truth Social, before inevitably claiming that he was, in some roundabout way, responsible for his appointment. “He wasn’t on any list to be Pope, and was only put there by the church because he was an American, and they thought that would be the best way to deal with President Donald J. Trump,” he added, before sharing a bizarre AI-generated image of himself as Jesus. |
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The Independent has launched a project to investigate the impact of foreign aid cuts on the developing world. The project receives funding from the Gates Foundation. All of the journalism is editorially independent. |
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