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WASHINGTON: In the volatile intersection of energy economics, electoral politics and international diplomacy, Donald Trump has once again demonstrated his preference for dramatic declarations over painstaking negotiation. His latest initiative—to facilitate Russian diesel supplies, relax sanctions on Russian fuel and announce an immediate energy ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine—may offer a temporary political talking point. It does not yet constitute a credible strategy for ending Europe’s bloodiest war in generations.

NEW YORK: With three weeks to go before America's November 3 midterm elections, President Donald Trump faces a political test that could reshape the final two years of his presidency. Falling approval ratings, persistent economic anxiety, an increasingly unpopular war with Iran and uncertainty over Republican candidates have created a difficult environment for the White House.

Saudi Arabia’s renewed confrontation with Yemen’s Houthis exposes the limits of air power against a resilient movement rooted in local politics, terrain and ideology. Led by Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, the group can threaten airports and shipping at relatively low cost, leaving Riyadh to weigh retaliation against escalation, civilian harm and another open-ended war.

PARIS: The school student protest here in France, whose epicentre is the region’s second-largest and most diverse city, Saint Denis, is every day gathering steam and sometimes forcing the Western corporate media to course correct after their initial slandering of the event.

LONDON: The over 200,000 people who demonstrated in London on Saturday, on the 37th national march for Palestine, show that the issue has not gone away, despite Ed Miliband’s admission that: “You were right.”

WASHINGTON: Three weeks before November 3, American voters are not waiting for Election Day. In the states reporting, they are returning ballots at a pace well ahead of the last midterm, and the partisan lean of those ballots favours Democrats. Whether that lead survives contact with Election Day is the proposition both parties are staking hundreds of millions of dollars on.

NEW YORK: The Trump administration has decided that the surest way to protect American workers is to shut out the people who help employ them. On Thursday, Labour Secretary Keith Sonderling, standing beside Vice-President JD Vance, suspended eight employers from the Permanent Labour Certification (PERM) programme, the compulsory first step towards an employment-based green card. They are Microsoft, Adobe, Cognizant, Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro, HCL Technologies and Capgemini.

LONDON: This weekend tens of thousands will march again for a free Palestine and an end to the genocide in Gaza. The mass movement for Palestine has changed British policy and British politics.

NEW YORK: The latest Donald Trump–Gavin Newsom confrontation began, as many of their earlier clashes have, with California. Trump has done it before and he has done it again and he will do it again.

LONDON: Israelis gathered on October 7 to commemorate the 2023 Hamas-led attack that killed 1,200 people, and saw 251 taken hostage, which subsequently saw the Israeli government conduct its genocidal destruction of Gaza. In southern Israel, families mourned at intersections, bomb shelters and the site of a music festival that the militants over-ran three years ago in the deadliest attack in the country’s history.