UK - Net inward migration has reached staggering levels in Britain. We are absorbing such high numbers that even 250,000 would seem like a modest figure. Many arrivals are imposing huge fiscal costs; our public services and infrastructure are buckling under the strain. Failure to bring it down trashed the contract between government and citizen, destroyed public faith in the political class and may end up putting the Tories on an electoral par with the Monster Raving Loony Party.

UK - Labour MPs who oppose the Government’s cuts want more money for the benefits system, but ignore the obvious solution. For the sake of argument, we’ll take these Left-wing MPs at their word. But only if they’re willing to consider an extremely uncomfortable fact. Liz Kendall, the minister behind the cuts, boasts that they’ll reduce the welfare bill by £5 billion. To put that figure in context: it’s less than the amount we spent last year alone on asylum seekers. In total, the UK’s asylum bill came to £5.38 billion (including £3 billion on hotels). Again: that was for just one year.

USA - President Trump is expected to sign an executive order to close the Department of Education, fulfilling a campaign promise but setting the stage for a series of legal and political challenges. Shuttering the department, which oversees federal funding for students and school programmes, has long been a priority for Trump’s Republican allies, who argue the grants would be better administered at state level.

SWEDEN - Panic in Sweden and Norway as they realise life without cash causes major problems. Both countries have previously sought to phase out cash transactions, as they embraced technology. Authorities in Sweden and Norway are encouraging the public to keep and use cash, as they prepare for possible future confrontation with Russia. Both countries have previously sought to phase out cash transactions, as they embraced technology.

UK - Human intellectual abilities such as reasoning and problem-solving are diminishing, possibly due to increased exposure to visual media, the Financial Times (FT) has reported. Human intelligence appeared to peak in the early 2010s and has been in decline since, the FT added, citing PISA, an international benchmarking test for 15-year-olds that includes reading, mathematics and science, and adult cognitive evaluations. The reported trend comes amid a rise in artificial intelligence (AI) which, by some estimates, may surpass human IQ in a matter of years.

GERMANY - Germany’s next chancellor unlocks €1 trillion in borrowing to defend the country against the aggression of Putin’s Russia. Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor in waiting, won a historic vote in the Bundestag on Tuesday to launch the country’s biggest ever spending programme to ready its army for conflict with Russia and revive its flagging economy.

FRANCE - French president’s move another sign that Europe is getting ready to defend itself against Russia without the help of a Trump-led US. Nuclear-armed fighter jets will be sent to an airbase near France’s German border by 2035, Emmanuel Macron said in a sign of his country’s willingness to extend its deterrent to protect Berlin from Russia. In a speech at the Luxeuil-les-Bains base, Mr Macron said France would buy more Rafale warplanes as Donald Trump was holding controversial ceasefire talks with Vladimir Putin without Ukraine. The French president later travelled to Germany to meet Friedrich Merz, the incoming Chancellor, who secured parliamentary backing for an unprecedented debt package to lavish over a trillion euros on the country’s run-down military and infrastructure. The chancellor-in-waiting has said he will ask France and the UK for shelter under their nuclear umbrellas, if the US pulls out of Nato, and urges Europe to stand on its own two feet on defence. European leaders are horrified that Mr Trump has begun negotiations with Russia without both Ukraine and Europe present.

RUSSIA - Vladimir Putin rejected Donald Trump’s proposal for an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine after a “frank” phone call on Tuesday between the two presidents. Instead, the Russian leader agreed to a 30-day pause in attacks on energy plants and infrastructure and to hold further talks on stopping hostilities in the Black Sea. Putin also demanded that Ukraine not rearm or mobilise during the partial truce and called for a “complete cessation” of Western military and intelligence support to Kyiv. France and Germany vowed on Tuesday night to continue supplying weapons to Kyiv, raising doubts over whether a deal on Putin’s terms can hold. Downing Street has not yet addressed whether Britain will follow suit. Ukraine reported Russian strikes on civilian infrastructure just hours after the Russian leader agreed to a partial ceasefire in the call with Mr Trump.

YEMEN - There will be no easy victory fighting the Houthis. On Saturday, the Trump administration reopened the US campaign against the Iran-backed Houthis in the Red Sea. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Sunday, “Freedom of navigation is basic, it’s a core national interest. The minute the Houthis say, ‘We’ll stop shooting at your ships, we’ll stop shooting at your drones,’ this campaign will end. But until then, it will be unrelenting.” The Houthis, who see their anti-shipping campaign as entirely tied to the Israel-Hamas war, complied with the fragile ceasefire in Gaza between January and March 2025. March saw attacks resuming but at a reduced rate. Then the Houthis fired a wave of 18 missiles at the US warships on station off Yemen, and that is no surprise. While US and other warships so far have a 100 percent kill rate on weapons heading for them, this is a numbers game and the longer you stay inside the missile envelope, the more the chances of getting hit go up. The fact that the US and their Navy are still taking freedom of navigation seriously is good news – global trade depends on it.

ISRAEL - Israel has resumed bombing Gaza after nearly two months of peace, with indications of a renewed ground offensive to follow. Hundreds of people are believed to have died since Monday night – among them the de facto Hamas “prime minister”, at least four other senior figures and many civilians including children. The families of hostages have reacted with horror, as they see the chances of recovering their loved-ones dwindling. On Monday evening, it was reported that intelligence had detected “unusual activity” among the group in recent days – possibly in preparation for an attack, perhaps even another raid into Israeli territory. Israel said they believe that the group has recruited hundreds of new terrorists in recent weeks and has repaired much of their command and control apparatus.

UK - We have to stop pretending there are no trade-offs or costs in reducing emissions. The trouble with the future is that it arrives far quicker than you expect. In 2008 when the Climate Change Act was passed with all-party support, its huge potential costs seemed too far in the future to worry about. The only people who even mentioned the cost were the handful of MPs, of whom I was one, who voted against it. I did so, not because I doubted the science – I studied physics at Cambridge and know the basic science of global warming is solid – but because I read the official cost-benefit study. Remarkably, it showed that the potential costs were twice the maximum benefits.

USA - San Francisco Pride, one of the largest LGBTQ+ celebrations in the world, has lost significant funding as major corporate sponsors – some who supported the festivities for years – have pulled out of the event. Several companies, including Comcast, Diageo, Benefit Cosmetics and Anheuser-Busch, and who provide about $300,000 in funding, told the organization that they did not have the budget to participate this year, Suzanne Ford, the executive director of San Francisco Pride, said in an interview with the Guardian. Some of the companies had been a part of Pride for decades, Ford said. “We have relationships with all those people. It’s not just a number or transaction.”

USA - The US president said Tehran would be held ‘fully accountable’ for the militants’ actions as they target shipping in the Red Sea. Smoke rose from the Yemeni capital of Sanaa on Saturday night after President Trump ordered a series of large-scale airstrikes in what he said was a response to attacks by Iran-backed Houthi rebels on ships in the Red Sea. The air and naval strikes marked the beginning of a new offensive against the militants, one that was also designed as a show of force to Iran as Trump seeks a nuclear deal with the country’s leadership.

YEMEN - After a series of American strikes said to have killed 53, Yemeni rebels vow to ‘confront escalation with escalation’. Israel is on high alert for missile attacks. Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels claimed on Monday to have twice attacked an American aircraft carrier group within 24 hours, calling it retaliation for deadly US strikes.

ISRAEL - Israel has launched renewed military operations in Gaza following the collapse of a temporary ceasefire, which ended after Hamas refused to release additional hostages. The ceasefire, brokered with international mediation, had allowed for an exchange of hostages and prisoners, as well as the entry of humanitarian aid into the besieged enclave. However, as negotiations stalled, Israel resumed its offensive, citing Hamas’s failure to meet the agreed-upon conditions. According to The Times of Israel, the ceasefire, which lasted for seven days, saw Hamas release dozens of Israeli and foreign hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners. However, the truce came to an end after Hamas allegedly failed to provide a new list of hostages for release. Israeli officials stated that this breach of the agreement left them with no choice but to resume military operations.