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A displaced Sudanese woman looks on as she sits next children at “Abdallah Nagi” shelter camp, which houses people mostly displaced from the capital Khartoum, in Port Sudan, Sudan, on April 15, 2025.
Sudan’s forgotten Civil War reaches grim milestone
While the world is flooded with bad news, nowhere is it worse than Sudan, where the civil war hit the two-year mark on Tuesday.
Due to the fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces, 13 million people have been displaced, over 150,000 are dead, a genocide is reportedly unfolding in Darfur, and reports of famine and rape being used as a weapon are widespread throughout the country.
While SAF regained control of the capital Khartoum last month, the RSF is brutally consolidating the Darfur region in the West. In recent days, they launched a fierce offensive in el-Fasher, aiming to capture the last remaining state capital in Darfur still under SAF’s control by setting ablaze refugee camps that are home to half a million people.
Desperation times. The war pits two leaders of the 2021 Sudanese coup — SAF Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and RSF Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo — against each other. Each has foreign backers keeping them stocked with weapons, but neither appears ready to lay down arms. Nevertheless, the UK hosted ministers from 20 countries in London on Tuesday in an attempt to restart peace talks.
The critical question: With global attention on the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, diplomatic engagement with Sudan has fallen by the wayside. What would it take for the world to respond to the Sahel state with the urgency it demands?UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer meets with US President Donald Trump alongside US Vice President JD Vance and UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy in the Oval Office at the White House on February 27, 2025, in Washington, D.C., USA.
Vance ignites hope of much-coveted US-UK trade deal
The US trade deal that London has been chasing for years is closer to reality now, after US Vice President JD Vance told UnHerd on Monday that there is a “good chance” that an agreement is possible.
UK Business and Trade Minister Sarah Jones alsosaid the negotiations are in a “good position,” but refused to divulge any timeline.
One major reported focus of the talks is the UK cutting its “tech tax” on the revenues of major digital firms in return for lower tariffs, although the sides are reportedly negotiating terms that go beyond this.
Back to being “special.” The United Kingdom escaped Trump’s “liberation day” with only the Administration’s general 10% tariff, albeit only because the UK doesn’t have a trade surplus with the US. A free trade deal would leave few or no tariffs on its US-bound exports.
A win for a Remainer and the Brexiteers. A trade pact would mark a big victory for UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer — his predecessors have failed to land a deal ever since Britain voted to leave the European Union in 2016. The idea was to replace the UK’s continental trade partners with the US, the world’s largest consumer market. Pro-Brexit politicians like Nigel Farage had long promised that Brexit would result in just such a US trade accord.
The irony: it’s finally within sight, thanks, no less, to Starmer, a prominent Remainer.Cabs drive along Westminster Bridge in front of the British Parliament with the Elizabeth Tower and the famous Big Ben bell.
Britain unveils new child deepfake law
The United Kingdom is set to unveil the world’s first national law criminalizing the use of artificial intelligence tools for generating child sex abuse material, or CSAM.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said in a Sunday BBC interview that AI is leading to “online child abuse on steroids.” A series of four laws will, among other things, make it illegal to possess, create, or distribute AI tools designed to make CSAM, which would carry a maximum five-year prison sentence. The government will also criminalize running websites where abusers can share this material or advice about cultivating it.
The Internet Watch Foundation, which focuses on eliminating CSAM on the internet, issued a new report on Sunday showing that AI-generated CSAM found online has quadrupled over the past year.
The United States criminalizes CSAM, but there’s some gray area about whether AI-generated content is treated the same under federal law. In 2024, 18 states passed laws specifically outlawing AI-generated CSAM, but so far there’s no federal law on the books.Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer delivers a speech during a visit to the Manufacturing Futures Lab at UCL in London, on Jan. 13, 2025, as he prepares to launch a plan to harness AI to spur growth and efficiency in the country.
British PM wants sovereign AI
On Monday, the British government announced the AI Opportunities Action Plan, Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s economic and technological development plan for artificial intelligence. Starmer’s goals include building a homegrown challenger to OpenAI, building data centers nationwide, and exploring renewable energy sources — including nuclear energy — to power the data centers.
Last year, Starmer canceled $1.7 billion of spending commitments meant for computing infrastructure as part of a broader set of budget cuts — nixing the promises made under the prior administration of Rishi Sunak. Starmer is now trying to leave his own mark with a play for “sovereign AI” in the country. “Today’s plan mainlines AI into the veins of this enterprising nation – revolutionizing our public services and putting more money in people’s back pockets,” the government wrote in a press release.
As part of the initiative, three companies — Vantage Data Centres, Nscale, and Kyndryl — committed $17 billion to build data centers, a plan the government says will create 13,250 jobs across the UK and increase compute capacity twentyfold by 2030. The ultimate goal: Starmer’s government wants to make the UK “irresistible” to AI firms.
People attend an anti-immigration protest, in London, Britain, October 26, 2024.
UK prime minister promises border crackdown
The UK Labour Party, as the expression goes, hits different now. At least when it comes to immigration.
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, the party’s leader, lambasted what he called the UK’s post-Brexit “open borders” policies and promised a comprehensive crackdown on immigration.
This capped a sea change in the party’s views under Starmer, who took over from his (much) further left and more pro-immigration predecessor Jeremy Corbyn in 2020, and led the party back to power for the first time in 14 years in July.
The context: Since the UK “Brexited” from the EU, immigration numbers have soared under successive Conservative governments. Last year, net migration hit a record high of 906,000 people. Immigration debates have roiled the country with particular fury in recent months. August saw violent clashes between xenophobic mobs and immigrant gangs, stoked in part by online misinformation. The government's response, which included the arrests of several people for stoking anti-immigrant violence online, drew harsh criticism from anti-immigration groups and free speech activists.
The bigger story: Across the continent, just as across the pond, backlashes against mass immigration are a defining feature of politics. No longer solely a right-wing issue, parties from all points on the political spectrum must find a politically tenable position on the issue.Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump reacts at a Faith Leaders Roundtable at Zebulon, Georgia, U.S., October 23, 2024.
Labo(u)r of love or “election interference” from the UK?
Donald Trump’s campaign has accused Britain’s Labour Party of “blatant” interference in the US election after volunteers from the party traveled to the US to campaign for his opponent, Kamala Harris.
Campaigning while foreign isn’t necessarily illegal, but the Trump campaign’s complaint with US election authorities suggests the Labour Party funded the travel, which would be unlawful. A LinkedIn post by a Labour Party organizer had promised to “sort” (read: pay) for the volunteers’ “housing.”
This isn’t new. British volunteers have often campaigned in the US, with Labour supporting Democratic candidates, and Tories traveling for Republicans. Former UK PM Liz Truss has stumped for Trump in the US, as has far-right Reform Party leader Nigel Farage.
The incident raises two issues. First, if Trump wins, it could irritate relations between his White House and the UK’s current Labour government. Prime Minister Keir Starmer doesn’t think so, but Trump could well remember it.
But second, what’s “election interference” anyway? Beyond directly altering vote tallies or hacking the campaigns, are there gray areas between free speech and malicious meddling? Does posting polarizing lies about the candidates constitute “interference”? Is it only a problem if it comes from abroad? And how about the outsized impact of billionaires on our politics or the perception that media bias – on airwaves or algorithms – is its own form of tipping the scales?
This is something we’ll look at closely in the final days of the race – but first we want to hear from you: How would you define “election interference” and what would you do to stop it? Let us know here.
A 'coal is dead' placard is seen during the demonstration. Activists from Friends Of The Earth and other environmental groups gathered outside the Royal Courts of Justice as the legal challenge to the Whitehaven coal mine in Cumbria begins.
Hard Numbers: UK buries coal, Austria’s far right surges, Le Pen faces trial, UN extends but doesn’t expand Haiti mission, Russia spends more on guns (less on butter)
142: After 142 years, the UK government closed the country’s last coal-fired power plant on Monday night. Coal power was a critical factor in the British-born Industrial Revolution of the 18th century, but it wasn’t until 1882 that the British opened the first public coal power plant. The closure is part of the government’s plan to generate 100% of Great Britain’s energy from renewable sources by 2030. Our favorite British coal story? How coal pollution changed the color of the Peppered Moths of Manchester.
29.2: Austria’s Freedom Party became the first far-right party to win an election in the country since World War II, after taking 29.2% of the vote in Sunday’s election by appealing to Austrians worried about immigration, inflation, and the Ukraine war. But it’s a familiar story in Europe these days: A far-right party takes a plurality of the vote, only to find that it lacks an obvious coalition partner to form a government. The incumbent Austrian People’s Party has said it will only work with the Freedom Party if party boss Herbert Kickl renounces any cabinet position. That’s a tough sell – Kickl says he wants to be chancellor.
9: Meanwhile, elsewhere in European right-wing news, Marine Le Pen, the former leader and top candidate of France’s National Rally party, began a nine-week trial in which she and two dozen other party officials are accused of misusing EU funds by using them to pay party staff for political work. Le Pen says the payments were legitimate. If convicted, she faces up to 10 years in prison, fines of several million euros, and possibly being deemed ineligible to run for office. She is considered a top contender in the 2027 presidential election.
1: The UN Security council agreed unanimously on Monday to authorize the UN-backed security force in Haiti for one more year. But a US proposal to make the mission – currently a Kenya-led volunteer force – into a formal UN peacekeeping operation was blocked by Russia and China, which said the current force needs more time to find its footing. Haiti, for its part, has called for a peacekeeping operation as the Kenyan-led force struggles to subdue the powerful gangs that have taken control over vast swathes of the capital.
25: Russia will boost defense spending by 25% next year, as Vladimir Putin doubles down both on his invasion of Ukraine and on the deeper militarization of the economy at home. Social spending, meanwhile, is set to fall by nearly 20%. Heavy spending on defense has helped to insulate Russia’s economy from the effects of Western sanctions, with GDP growing 3.6% last year and forecasters predicting a similar outcome this year. How secure is Putin? Read our recent piece on the endless ends of the Russian president.Britain's opposition Labour Party leader Keir Starmer and his wife Victoria Starmer walk outside a polling station during the general election in London, Britain, on July 4, 2024.
Brits say bye-bye to Tory rule
British voters put a new spin on the Fourth of July today, freeing themselves from 14 years of Conservative rule. Labour won in a historic landslide, making party chief Keir Starmer the United Kingdom’s new prime minister.
In May, following news that inflation had slowed to 2.3%, then-PM Rishi Sunak called for a July election even though he could have waited until the end of the year. He tried to capitalize on the good inflation news and has spent the last six weeks campaigning up and down the country in a bid to win support.
But polls have consistently favored Labour by a wide margin. In the end, Labour secured 412 seats to the Conservatives’ 120. On Friday, King Charles invited Starmer to form a new UK government.
What will change? Domestically, Starmer has pledged to lead a “pro-business and pro-worker” government while facing “hard choices” for public spending. The party plans to work on “wealth creation” and, among other goals, aims to create a new publicly owned clean power company. In terms of foreign policy, Starmer is pro-NATO and pro-Ukraine, like Sunak, but he will take a different approach to the European Union to rebuild trust in the post-Brexit era.
Will the UK rejoin the EU? Not so fast. Starmer says he has no plans for a “Breturn” and does not believe the country will rejoin in his lifetime. That said he’s still looking to reset ties with the EU. According to Ian Bremmer, Starmer has developed a strong rapport with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and intends to expand Britain’s foreign policy cooperation. “He plans to propose a wide-ranging UK-EU security pact as well as bilateral defense agreements with Germany and France,” Bremmer wrote for GZERO.
“Longer term, he wants to return to something akin to a customs union in all but name.”