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Riot police officers fire tear gas canisters to disperse demonstrators during anti-government protests dubbed “Saba Saba People’s March,” in the Rift Valley town of Nakuru, Kenya, on July 7, 2025.

REUTERS/Suleiman Mbatiah

What We’re Watching: Kenya’s president cracks down further, UK and France open an atomic umbrella, Trump meddles in Brazil

Ruto orders police to shoot looters as Kenya protest escalate

Amid ongoing anti-government protests, Kenyan President William Ruto has ordered police to shoot looters in the legs. The order is meant to stop attacks on businesses, but could lead to more casualties after 31 people were killed on Monday alone. The youth-led protesters want Ruto to resign over high taxes, corruption allegations, and police brutality. According to Mercy Kaburu, a professor of international relations at United States International University in Nairobi, Ruto’s government “is not at risk of collapse before the next general election” which is set for 2027. But, she cautions, he “could be threatened if nothing changes.”

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Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves (right) crying as Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer speaks during Prime Minister’s Questions in the House of Commons, London, United Kingdom, on July 2, 2025.

PA Images via Reuters Connect

UK PM’s freefall is a warning to centrists

A week is a long time in politics, so the expression goes. A year? Well that must feel like a lifetime – especially for UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

It was just over one year ago that Starmer took up residence at 10 Downing Street. With a 174-seat majority in parliament, and the opposition Conservatives in shambles after their worst election ever, the new Labour PM seemed ready to hit the ground running with a center-left agenda of better healthcare, lower immigration, and economic growth that benefits everyone.

He’s stumbled out of the starting blocks.

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UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Mayor of London Sadiq Khan leave the St Paul’s Cathedral, where a service of commemoration took place to mark the 20th anniversary of the deadly July 7, 2005, London bombings in which four suicide bombers targeted London's public transport system, in London, United Kingdom, on July 7, 2025.

REUTERS/Chris J. Ratcliffe

Hard Numbers: UK marks London bombing anniversary, Japan suffers a thousand tremors, Paris’ main river reopens, & More

20: The United Kingdom today commemorates the 20th anniversary of the suicide bombings on London’s public transport services that killed 52 people and injured over 700 more. The four perpetrators were all UK citizens. Two had trained with al-Qaeda the previous year.

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Eastern Cape EMS Rescue team searches for missing Jumba Senior secondary school students at Efata bridge next to Mthatha Dam in Mthatha, South Africa on June 10, 2025

Matrix Images / Hoseya Jubase

HARD NUMBERS: Flooding in South Africa, one lucky Canadian & More

49: Flooding in South Africa’s Eastern Cape, the result of snow and heavy rain, has left at least 49 people dead, including several people on a school bus that was swept away by the waters.

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Leading Republican senators during their weekly briefing in the US Capitol in Washington, D.C., USA, on May 20, 2025.

Douglas Christian/ZUMA Press Wire

What We’re Watching: “Big Beautiful” bill heads for the Senate, UK gives up Chagos Islands, Taiwan pivots to drones

House passes Trump’s tax agenda, but senators will now have their say

By a margin of just one vote, the US House early on Thursday passed a budget bill containing President Donald Trump’s tax agenda, which centers on making his 2017 tax cuts permanent. Some last-minute changes to the bill helped to get it over the line: House Republicans increased the SALT-cap to $40,000 and accelerated the introduction of work requirements for Medicaid. But can the GOP get the bill through the US Senate? Lawmakers in the upper chamber are already plotting changes to the legislation...

You can Chagos your own way: UK hands islands back to Mauritius, leases back base

More than two centuries after taking the Chagos Islands from France, the United Kingdom relinquished the Indian Ocean archipelago to Mauritius, but will continue to lease a US-UK military base there, on the island of Diego Garcia, for another 99 years. The UK says the deal, which creates a 24-mile buffer zone around the base, is meant to ensure its long-term security amid growing Chinese aggression in the area. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio welcomed the deal.

Taiwan adds new drone units as part of shifting military strategy

Ever wary of a potential Chinese invasion, Taiwan announced that it will introduce its first-ever drone units this year. The move is part of Taipei’s evolving strategy of effectively deterring Beijing rather than preparing for a direct fight. “Overall, the cross-strait military balance still tilts toward China’s favor, since China spends a lot more on defense,” says Eurasia Group regional expert Ava Shen. “So it’s more pragmatic for Taiwan to be a ‘porcupine,’ so to speak.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini brief the media at the European Council in Brussels, Belgium, on December 11, 2017.

REUTERS/Francois Lenoir

What We’re Watching: Pressure on Israel, Jitters in Bolivia, Podcasts for Democrats

Israel under fresh pressure

The UK and EU threatened Tuesday to revise trade ties with Israel unless PM Benjamin Netanyahu stops the new offensive in the Gaza Strip and allows sufficient humanitarian aid into the besieged enclave. This comes after the UK, Canada, and France threatened Israel on Monday with “concrete measures,” like sanctions. Netanyahu and his far right coalition allies say they are intent on destroying Hamas, though critics warn Israel is becoming a “pariah.”

The Morales of the story: Bolivian heavyweight to defy election exclusion

Bolivia’s socialist powerbroker Evo Morales, who governed from 2006 until he was ousted in protests in 2019, is officially ineligible to run in this August’s presidential election because of term limits. Yet he has pledged to mobilize his supporters to defy this rule, setting up a potentially destabilizing contest as his once-formidable leftwing MAS movement splinters into rival factions.

Democratic donors try a pivot to podcast

Faced with the vast array of conservative or MAGA-friendly online influencers who helped Donald Trump to win the 2024 election, Democrats and their donors are now trying to cultivate a creator economy of their own ahead of the 2026 midterms. There’s lots of money and pitches, but can you really create a viable ecosystem of influencers overnight? Authenticity, the heartbeat of any political campaign, is hard to create in a lab. You’re either a born killer or you’re not.

- YouTube

Trump’s call with Putin fails to deliver Ukraine ceasefire

Ian's takeaways:

On Trump’s Ukraine policy: “Absent a ceasefire, there is no breakthrough deal between Trump and Putin. None of that’s going to happen.”

On Western backlash over Gaza: “At the end of the day, unless Trump is going to squeeze Israel hard and say, 'Suspend intelligence and aid,' the way he did with the Ukrainians, I have a hard time seeing the Israelis in any way backing down from what is at this point an completely unconscionable military intervention and ethnic cleansing across the board in Gaza."

On tech power vs. government: “In the US digital space, it’s the tech CEOs who hold the power and the government isn’t ready for what’s coming.”

President Joe Biden at an event with Kamala Harris on lowering drug costs for America.

HARD NUMBERS: Biden diagnosed with cancer, Russian drones hammer Ukraine, Israeli forces enter Gaza, Pope Leo gets political, UK and EU are friends again, Austria wins Eurovision

9: Former US President Joe Biden, 82, has been diagnosed with prostate cancer that has metastasized to the bone. Biden’s cancer has a “Gleason score” of 9 out of 10, which means it is highly aggressive, but since it requires hormones to grow, may respond to treatment that deprives the tumors of hormones. Both US President Donald Trump and former Vice President Kamala Harris expressed their sorrow on social media and wished the former president a successful recovery as he and his family review treatment options.

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