Top World News

Nov 16, 2025 - World

On Oct. 29, just before meeting China’s President XI Jinping, Donald Trump posted on his social media network Truth Social that “because of other countries [sic] testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis.”The US stopped testing nuclear weapons in 1992 — that is, detonating nuclear warheads. It regularly tests “delivery vehicles,” the missiles that would be used to carry the nuclear weapon to its intended target. The most recent of these tests took place early on Wednesday, Nov. 5, when an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) was launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base, on the coast of California. It’s possible that Trump simply does not understand the difference between these two things.Observers speculated that Trump’s nuclear test announcement was a response to Russia’s recent test of its Burevestnik missile, which is nuclear-capable — meaning it could carry a nuclear warhead, though it did not during the test — and powered by nuclear energy. Some pointed out that it would be the Department of Energy, rather than the Pentagon, that would carry out a test detonation of a nuclear weapon. Trump’s use of the phrase “on an equal basis,” given that China and Russia are not detonating nuclear weapons, was comforting to some.Whatever he meant, it’s worth considering how this latest episode of existential terror imposed from above highlights what depths of apocalyptic misbehavior are now considered normal when it comes to how nuclear weapons countries behave toward one another.The missile Russia tested was designed to deliver a nuclear weapon without being intercepted by missile defense systems, using nuclear power to extend its flight time much longer than non-nuclear powered missiles. The Russian government also claimed to have tested its Poseidon torpedo, also nuclear-capable and nuclear-powered, and designed to be used in coastal waters to create a huge wave of irradiated water that would wash ashore.Neither of these, nor the ICBM test, amount to a “nuclear test.” But, should the US conduct a test explosion of a nuclear warhead, it would be adding to the environmental burden that has led to nearly half a million deaths, by one scholarly estimate, from the over 1,000 test nuclear detonations the US has carried out. (This is about half of the over 2,000 total tests carried out worldwide between 1945 and 2017.) The health and environmental effects of this testing are ongoing, and the United States hasn’t come close to cleaning up after its earlier nuclear tests.To take just one example, waste from tests conducted in the Marshall Islands is still sitting in the Runit Dome, a cracking concrete structure on Runit Island in the Enewetak Atoll that is under constant threat from worsening storms as a result of climate change. US nuclear testing has rendered Marshallese ways of life untenable for the long term, with no real prospects for full remediation on the horizon. (ICBM tests launched from Vandenberg are aimed at the Marshall Islands’ Kwajalein Atoll, a less dramatically destructive but still significant burden on a place that has long paid a high price for the maintenance of US nuclear weapons.)Still, even if Trump is responding to recent nuclear tests that didn’t happen, this is largely in keeping with how nuclear-armed countries tend to justify changes in their nuclear policy as reciprocal responses to unprovoked aggression, no matter what the facts are. What’s more certain, however, is that if the US tests a nuclear weapon, Russia and China are far more likely to begin testing nuclear weapons of their own, as Russia has already threatened. This would lead to more environmental damage, more health consequences across the globe, and more normalization of nuclear explosions as part of the business of doing politics.It seems as if much of the press has lost sight of the actual stakes here. The Washington Post‘s coverage of Trump’s announcement, for one, skipped over all the reasons a nuclear test might actually be undesirable and instead merely named “far-reaching consequences for relations with adversaries” as the real thing its readers should be worried about. If that is indeed the main concern, conducting multiple missile tests a year that signal the US’s willingness to use ICBMs should be viewed for what it is — a gesture that keeps nuclear war on the mind of governments around the world as a real possibility, a norm of global politics rather than a collective fate that must be avoided at all costs.The reality is, Americans share the unfortunate situation of everyone else in the world of being first and foremost potential victims of nuclear weaponry, vulnerable to the whims of the leaders they have theoretically empowered to control the country’s thousands of nuclear weapons, nearly all of which are much, much more powerful than those dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Nuclear arsenals have been maintained using advanced computer modeling for decades. The fact that nuclear test explosions have entered even the far reaches of possibility, even for an administration which embraces brutal violence with such open enthusiasm, is cause for alarm and collective action against the threat that nuclear weapons pose to human life.It’s easy to dismiss a “test” as something less than the full terrifying reality of nuclear weapons use. In some cases, this is true. Underground nuclear tests are less immediately hazardous to human and environmental health than atmospheric tests, which the US stopped conducting in 1962. An ICBM test does not involve the detonation of a nuclear weapon.But the scale and political importance of a nuclear weapon test means any indication of a willingness to use it under any circumstances has political significance. Historians have noted that one of the main reasons the United States ultimately decided to use nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was to test whether they would work as expected.We should not let nuclear testing once again become part of nuclear-armed countries’ business as usual. A nuclear explosion is a nuclear explosion, and the fallout will be all of ours to deal with.Emma Claire Foley is a Program Associate at Global Zero. She runs the Global Zero Military Incidents Project, which collects and analyzes open-source data to track the risk of conflict involving nuclear-armed states. She received her A.M. in Russian and Eurasian Studies from Harvard University's Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies.

Nov 15, 2025 - World

“Russia unleashed a massive combined attack on Kyiv” last night, The Guardian reports. “Five people were hospitalized, including one man in critical condition and a pregnant woman, after a series of powerful explosions sounded in the city and air defenses were activated. …“Pictures posted on social media showed different sites in flames and residents gathering in rubble-strewn streets outside apartment buildings.”The child victims of Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes are apparently not the only ones who‘ve paid the price for Donald Trump’s long relationship with that notorious pedophile.Epstein’s “partying” with Trump has apparently also led to thousands of civilian deaths abroad, the collapse of America’s credibility around the world, and a serious threat to the future of democracy in Europe.Trump’s coverup may well represent a form of treason, the aid and comfort to an enemy attacking an ally during time of war. It should lead, at the very least, to impeachment.Right now, the largest nation in Europe, a democracy and an ally, is under violent attack by a brutal dictator intent on reestablishing the Soviet empire. In a threat to European democracy itself, Ukraine is getting pummeled every day because Donald Trump refuses to respond in a meaningful way.But why?In Epstein’s emails, he boasts of offering to advise Russia’s senior-most officials about how to manipulate Trump:“I think you might suggest to putin that [Russian Foreign Minister Sergey] lavrov can get insight on [Trump by] talking to me…”Consider Trump’s secretive and beta-submissive behavior toward Vladimir Putin, especially in Helsinki when he trashed our intelligence agencies and sucked up to Putin, and more recently with his red carpet in Alaska, and it’s impossible to ignore what this newest Epstein revelation implies.If Trump’s betrayal of Ukraine is a direct or indirect result of things Trump did with Epstein, it’s naked treachery. Consider the pattern: ever since Trump came back into the White House, Russia’s attacks on Ukraine have exploded in their ferocity and brutality.Recently, a missile strike by Russian forces hit the city of Kryvyi Rih in Ukraine and killed at least 20 people including nine children. Apartments collapsed around weeping parents who pulled bodies from the rubble; a baby only a few months old was among the victims.In another attack, a children’s hospital in southern Ukraine was struck, shattering windows, strewing blood-soaked medical stretchers across the grounds, all while about a hundred people were inside.Schools, kindergartens and residential buildings have been leveled in multiple towns, as the Russian military targets civilian infrastructure with vicious abandon. They’re daily destroying Ukraine’s fuel and electric grids with the goal of freezing that country’s people into submission as winter approaches.These are not accidents of war. They’re the deliberate targeting of civilians, children, doctors, classrooms, apartment buildings, homes, and hospitals. Russian drones hunt civilians down the streets of Ukrainian cities, sometimes smashing the windows of their homes as they chase people indoors to kill them.And all of this — the horror of what’s happening in plain sight that’s the clear result of Trump’s repeated and pathetic kowtowing to Putin — appears, from the Epstein emails, that it may be getting so much worse over the past 10 months because Putin took Epstein’s advice and threatened Trump with exposure.We still don’t know what was said in that room in Helsinki because Trump covered it up, making sure we’d never know. He ordered his American interpreter to move away from his private conversation with Putin, and afterward seized and destroyed her notes.Similarly and more recently, in Alaska, Trump dismissed his aides and rode with Putin privately in his car where they engaged in another lengthy, secretive conversation.That’s the behavior of a man with something to hide, who’s terrified by some horrible secret; it’s not the behavior of a leader defending the national interest of the United States or our European allies.On top of that, Trump has been placing private phone calls to Putin repeatedly ever since he was reinstalled in the Oval Office.No previous American president throughout our 249-year history had ever conducted such meetings and repeated communications in secret with the murderous leader of a hostile foreign power. None has ever tried to cover up meetings with such men.When we place Trump’s bizarre, unprecedented secrecy next to Epstein’s emails in which the billionaire pedophile tells European and Russian contacts that he could offer “insight” into Trump, the outlines of a deeply troubling possibility emerge.At this moment, it’s only speculation, but it’s one hell of a big if. Because Trump himself keeps doing things — including trashing NATO and betraying Ukraine in ways that only benefit Putin — and therefore demand a serious, honest investigation.We now know — from the emails released this week — that Epstein wrote that Sergei Lavrov could “get insight” from him and that Russian Ambassador Churkin “understood Trump” after their talks.And the Russians, as the world knows, never, ever let such juicy material go to waste. Former KGB senior intelligence officer Vladimir Putin is a man trained to find the soft spot in any opponent and apply the exact right pressure to make them bend to his will, and it’s looking more every day like that’s exactly what’s happening here.Trump was “best friends” with Epstein for more than a decade. They lived near each other in both New York and Palm Beach, and partied publicly together. They traveled on Epstein’s jet repeatedly. They allegedly shared women.These don’t prove blackmail, but the possibility that Epstein passed along compromising details to Lavrov or even Putin is staggering.Imagine Putin, alone with Trump in Helsinki way back in 2018, quietly signaling that he knew more about Epstein, Trump, and underage girls than Trump could survive being exposed.A soft whisper. Perhaps simply sliding a note card to Trump with the words “Epstein, girls” on it.And then Trump goes out to meet the press after their meeting, shoulders down looking beaten, and lavishes Putin with praise while trash-talking his own intelligence and military officials. What the hell?Even former Harvard President Larry Summers was horrified, writing to his friend Jeffrey Epstein on July 16, 2018, moments after the Helsinki meeting:“Do the Russians have stuff on Trump? Today was appalling even by his standards.”Epstein replied to Summers the next day:“My email is full with similar comments. wow. Im sure his view is that it went super well. he thinks he has charmed his adversary.. Admittedly he has no idea of the symbolism. He has no idea of most things.”The idea that Putin threatened Trump in that first private meeting is only a hypothesis, of course. But the secrecy Trump immediately imposed — and his repeatedly whipped-dog-like servile behavior to this murderous dictator in the years since — makes such a moment impossible to rule out.If something like that did occur, if Putin delivered even the hint of a threat and Trump immediately bent over and bowed down and has ever since, it would explain Trump’s world-changing behavior and why he’s so seriously damaged the interests of America while abandoning our European allies.Is there anything else that could possibly explain why Trump has spent years refusing to confront Putin for anything, no matter how shocking or monstrous the Russian dictator’s behavior?It would also explain his silence in the face of Russian assassinations, Putin’s bounties on American soldiers in Afghanistan, and now the horrific nightly devastation of Ukraine and Putin‘s kidnapping of tens of thousands of Ukrainian children.If Trump was intimidated in that private moment, if Putin used Epstein’s information as a weapon, then the cost of Trump’s fear of exposure has been measured in thousands of Ukrainian civilian deaths, including far more children then even Epstein himself victimized.It’s been measured in the suffering of the millions of Ukrainians now facing the possibility of freezing to death this winter without power, as Putin relentlessly and nightly targets their energy grid while Trump plays golf, bulldozes the White House, and throws elaborate parties.It’s measured in America’s humiliation on the world stage and in the bone-deep terror felt across Europe as Putin tests the resolve of NATO and his officials explicitly threaten the Baltics.The sheer scale of harm that could have flowed from this one corrupt, degenerate, perverted man’s desperation to protect himself is absolutely breathtaking.If it turns out that this is what actually happened, it would make historic betrayals like Benedict Arnold, Vidkun Quisling, Robert Hanssen, and even the petty treacheries that toppled ancient republics look small by comparison, because none of them placed the survival of modern, worldwide democracy itself at risk.This isn’t an accusation: it’s the unavoidable suspicion forced upon us by Trump’s own secrecy.He hid his conversations with Putin from his own government and even from the American people. He created a vacuum where certainty should exist. And now, into that vacuum, flows Epstein’s boast that he was willing to provide Russia with usable, exploitable insights into Trump’s vulnerabilities and psychology.Trump has refused the basic transparency required of every president who interacts with a hostile foreign leader. If he’d behaved like every president before him, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.But he didn’t.Instead, he has bizarrely, inexplicably kissed Putin‘s ass repeatedly and publicly in ways that have astonished and horrified our intelligence and military officials, as well as those of our allies.And now he’s in the process of purging any among our military ranks and intelligence services who he appears to suspect may not go along with his inexplicable behavior.Because Trump’s so frequently surrendered America’s, Ukraine’s, and NATO’s best interests to Putin’ s desires — and now we learn Epstein offered to advise Putin on how to blackmail (or at last control) him — we must now investigate every plausible explanation for his actions, no matter how disturbing.Just releasing Epstein’s emails isn’t even close to enough to answer these questions.Congress, what’s left of our independent media, and the FBI must investigate not only Epstein’s crimes and connections but the terrifying possibility that American foreign policy has been warped by a president desperately trying to shield himself from the exposure of unforgivable behavior.That investigation must be thorough, public, and relentless; it must meet the high standards of the internal and public investigations into Richard Nixon‘s criminality in 1974, at the very least.If true, the possibilities raised by Trump’s betrayal of Ukraine and kowtowing to Putin are far worse than anything Nixon could have conceived in his wildest fantasies.If Republicans have an ounce of integrity left they’ll not only sanction investigations that could lead to criminal prosecutions; they’ll convene impeachment proceedings.The American people deserve to know whether blackmail, intimidation, and Trump’s personal vulnerability have cost thousands of Ukrainian lives and shaken the foundations of Western democracy. As well as ignoring — or participating in — the destruction of the lives of hundreds of young girls.The stakes are too high, the damage too great, and the possible treason too severe to accept anything less.

Nov 15, 2025 - World

The accidental explosion comes days after a deadly car blast in New Delhi which killed at least eight people near the city’s historic Red FortAt least nine people were killed and 32 injured after a cache of confiscated explosives detonated inside a police station in Indian-controlled Kashmir, police have announced.The blast occurred in the Nowgam area of Srinagar, the region’s main city, late on Friday while a team of forensic experts and police were examining the explosive material, said Nalin Prabhat, the region’s police director general. He ruled out any foul play, saying it was an accident. Continue reading...

Nov 14, 2025 - World

Investigators believe an explosion that killed 13 people may be linked to group operating in the disputed regionPolice have carried out raids and made several arrests across the Indian region of Kashmir in the aftermath of a car explosion in Delhi that left 13 people dead.On Wednesday, the Indian government confirmed it was treating the blast as a “terror incident” perpetrated by “anti-national forces”. The explosion took place outside one of India’s most significant monuments during rush hour on Monday evening. Continue reading...

Nov 13, 2025 - World

The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts will be postponing previously booked events so the Donald Trump administration can let FIFA, the cash-rich governing body of international soccer, use the facilities for free in late November into early December.According to a report from the Washington Post, the televised draw for the 2026 World Cup will occur at the nation’s cultural center which has been reeling from poor ticket sales and longtime donors cutting off funds since the president fired the board, took over control and installed his own people.Since the takeover, major acts have cancelled after the president complained the Kennedy Center offerings were “woke,” with ticket sales collapsing, and acts that did fulfill their contractual obligations playing before a sea of empty seats.Despite the cash crunch, Trump’s people have agreed to waive rent for FIFA, which has had the effect of putting off or cancelling previously scheduled shows that would provide much-needed revenue.The Post’s Janay Kingsberry and Rick Maese are reporting the FIFA World Cup draw scheduled for Dec. 5, “... will occupy performance spaces and other sections of the Kennedy Center for almost three weeks, according to the documents and a center employee who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the agreement.”The report notes that the event was originally planned for Las Vegas before Trump swooped in and convinced FIFA President Gianni Infantino, a frequent guest at White House events, to move it to Washington D.C.According to the report, “The Kennedy Center currently quotes a standard rate of $39,000 to rent the Concert Hall and $18,000 for the Eisenhower Theater. Those are rates for single nights, suggesting a multiweek rental of much of the campus, such as FIFA’s, could cost significantly more.”The popular Kennedy Center Honors program is slated to take place just two days after the FIFA takeover, with staffers worried about the limited amount of time to pull together the annual televised event.According to a report in September from the Guardian, artists have been facing halls with up to 80 percent of seats unoccupied creating a major financial shortfall.Less than a week ago it was reported that the Washington National Opera was looking into moving to a new location with Artistic Director Francesca Zambello stating, "It is our desire to perform in our home at the Kennedy Center. But if we cannot raise enough money, or sell enough tickets in there, we have to consider other options."You can read more on the FIFA handover here.