40 h. ago The Guardian view on Trump’s tariffs: the courts have drawn a line. So must Congress | Editorial

The worst of all outcomes would be for US legislators to agree to strengthen the president’s executive powersIf one thing is more challenging to the rule of law than a genuine emergency, it is the invention of a phoney one. Since returning to the White House in January, President Donald Trump has upended global trade and international relations, wiping billions off the stock market in the process, by imposing tariffs that he claims are a necessary response to an emergency. Yet that emergency does not really exist, except in the manner that Mr Trump himself has created it.The president claimed, on 2 April, that a lack of reciprocity in US overseas trade arrangements was “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and economy of the United States”. He claimed that this justified him in declaring an emergency and governing by executive decree under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). Congress, which normally has the responsibility to decide U...

Politics

64 h. ago The Guardian view on a new Syria: nurturing fragile hope amid the rubble | Editorial

Sanctions relief thanks to Donald Trump’s unexpected embrace of the new president gives a shattered country the chance to rebuildThe startled joy that greeted Bashar al-Assad’s fall less than six months ago was always shadowed by the fear of what might follow. Hundreds of thousands of the six million Syrians who fled abroad during 14 years of war have returned. Yet the mood has inevitably grown more sober, and last week Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, warned that the fractured country could be weeks away from “potential collapse and a full-scale civil war of epic proportions”.Mr Rubio was defending Donald Trump’s abrupt decision to lift sanctions after meeting the country’s new president, Ahmed al-Sharaa – a former al-Qaida fighter who until months ago had a $10m US bounty on his head, but who is also, in Mr Trump’s considered view, a “young, attractive guy. Tough guy”. Whatever the trigger, the suspension of some sanctions by the US, and the lifting of some EU and UK measur...

Politics

3 d. ago US official claims Trump tariffs brought China to table and halted India

Howard Lutnick claims president offered South Asian nations trading access to US to avert full-scale war

Politics

3 d. ago The Guardian view on Farage’s cynical pitch: Labour must be bolder to see off the threat | Editorial

The Reform UK leader spies a route to power through appealing to blue collar voters. His speech is another wake-up call for Sir Keir Starmer’s governmentLast July, concluding his election victory speech after winning in Clacton, Nigel Farage announced that after inflicting grievous damage on the Conservative party that night, Reform UK would now “be coming for Labour”. Since then, on issues such as the nationalisation of Britain’s beleaguered steel industry, Mr Farage has carefully positioned his party as sympathetic to working-class concerns and fears. His heavily-trailed speech on Tuesday, in Westminster, was the most direct attempt yet to present himself as a new spokesperson for Labour’s traditional blue-collar voters.The most talented and cynical political opportunist of his generation, Mr Farage knows where the openings lie. Labour has tied itself in unedifying knots over its deeply unpopular cuts to the winter fuel allowance, and agonised over reversing the Tories’ ...

Events

3 d. ago The Guardian view on young offenders: amid rising violence, they need support to change | Editorial

Unsustainable levels of conflict across the prison estate require a stronger response than pepper sprayThe recent deterioration of conditions for young offenders has been overshadowed by the wider crisis engulfing prisons in England and Wales. But the accounts given to the Guardian by three mothers of sons who are currently in HMP Swinfen Hall, in Staffordshire, offer a disturbing insight into the exceptionally high levels of violence that have become normalised.Their descriptions of “constant fear”, casual knifings and “drugs and knives everywhere” are chilling. Two of the women said that they agreed with the decision to jail their sons. But reading their testimony, which echoes the findings of a recent prison inspectorate survey, it is impossible to believe that any rehabilitative purpose is being served. The suggestion by one of the women that her son is becoming more violent rather than less due to the conditions rings alarmingly true, and is in line with the conclusion of ...

Events

4 d. ago Storms kill 14 in Pakistan and flooding sparks chaos in Mumbai as early monsoon batters South Asia

Rains follow a period of extreme heat when temperatures soared above 45C

Events

5 d. ago The Guardian view on sentencing reform: a landmark chance for change | Editorial

David Gauke’s review gives penal policy in England and Wales a once-in-a-generation opportunity to move in more constructive directionThe independent sentencing review for England and Wales under David Gauke is a landmark response to both an immediate crisis in the prisons and to an endemic criminal justice policy failure going back decades. It creates the platform for penal policy to take a much-needed new direction. As Mr Gauke says, this will take bravery from government. Encouragingly, the lord chancellor, Shabana Mahmood, has accepted most recommendations in principle, though with some exceptions. The need now, though, is for sustained action, investment and results.When the review was established in 2024, prisons for men had been at 99% of capacity for 18 months and a surge of further prison sentences was developing after the summer riots. Managed early-release measures eased some pressures, but demand for places is still projected to exceed supply by 9,500 in 2028. The inesca...

Politics

5 d. ago The Guardian view on rising sea levels: adaptation has never been more urgent | Editorial

Stark warnings about threatened coastal areas should prompt fresh efforts to protect those most at riskIn his classic study of the 17th-century Dutch golden age, The Embarrassment of Riches, the art historian Simon Schama showed how the biblical story of Noah’s ark resonated in a culture where catastrophic floods were an ever-present threat. The history of the Netherlands includes multiple instances of storms breaching dikes, leading to disastrous losses of life and land. These traumatic episodes were reflected in the country’s art and literature, as well as its engineering.In countries where floods are less of a danger, memories tend to be more localised: a mark on a wall showing how high waters rose when a town’s river flooded; a seaside garden such as the one in Felixstowe, Suffolk, to commemorate the night in 1953 when 41 people lost their lives there. Continue reading...

Politics

5 d. ago Indian lawmaker slammed for saying widows of Kashmir terror attack lacked ‘heroism’

Women present during Kashmir attack ‘lacked spirit of warrior women’, lawmaker from Modi’s party says

Events

7 d. ago Why fierce rivals India, Pakistan and China are racing to woo the Taliban

The Taliban were shunned globally after it captured Kabul and cut restricted rights of Afghan girls and women. Four years later, the biggest regional powers are in a race to win their attention, experts tell Arpan Rai

Politics

7 d. ago India and Pakistan extend airspace ban after worst violence in decades

Delhi and Islamabad continue airspace ban for each other’s flights a month after the deadly Kashmir attack

Events

7 d. ago The Guardian view on billionaire Britain: tax wealth fairly or face democratic unravelling | Editorial

Without bold reform which makes the rich pull their weight, rising inequality risks eroding public trust and fracturing social stabilityBritain for the last decade has experienced a bleak paradox: rising child poverty alongside a dramatic increase in billionaire wealth. This inequality has been tolerated partly because greed has been rehabilitated as virtue. The Billionaire Britain report, published this week by the Equality Trust, reveals what many instinctively feel but few in parliament will admit: the UK economy has become a machine for the upward redistribution of wealth.Using Sunday Times Rich List data, the report found that the 50 wealthiest UK families now own more than the poorest half of the population combined. Their opulence is no accident. It’s largely built on the labour and consumption of those 34 million other Britons. The gains of society are being hoarded by those least in need. There’s a lexicon that sells it all as “entrepreneurial spirit” and bus...

Economics

7 d. ago The Guardian view on the BBC World Service: a boon to the UK, as well as audiences elsewhere | Editorial

Britain would benefit from pledging more sustained and committed support in this age of disinformation and global turmoilTwo years ago, BBC Arabic radio left the airwaves after decades. Soon afterwards, Russia’s Sputnik service began broadcasting on the frequency left vacant in Lebanon. That detail illuminates a larger picture. China, Russia and others see global-facing media as central to their global ambitions and are investing accordingly – pumping out propaganda to muddle or drown out objective, independently minded journalism. These outlets are state-controlled as well as state-owned.Meanwhile, conspiracy theories and disinformation proliferate online, attacks on press freedom intensify and the Trump administration is dismantling media organisations including Voice of America and Radio Free Asia (RFA), which have been essential sources of information for audiences under repressive regimes. Official Chinese media were gleeful at what RFA’s president, Bay Fang, cal...

Events

7 d. ago Death toll from Pakistan school bus bombing rises to 8 as Islamabad blames India

The death toll from a school bus bombing in southwestern Pakistan rose to eight as Pakistan's military blames rival India for allegedly supporting rebels behind the attack

Events

8 d. ago The Guardian view on the US and South Africa: Trump looks to his base and partners look elsewhere | Editorial

The president’s cynical ambush of Cyril Ramaphosa was not about American interests but racial grievancesThe most telling moment of Donald Trump’s meeting with Cyril Ramaphosa was not the cynical screening of footage promoting false claims of “white genocide” in South Africa. It was when a reporter asked the US president what he wanted his counterpart to do about it. Mr Trump replied: “I don’t know.”Leaders enter the Oval Office uneasily, especially since the kicking administered to Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The South African president came armed with gratitude, two golf stars, a billionaire and compliments on the decor – and kept a cool head and a straight face as he was ambushed. Mr Ramaphosa later described it as “robust engagement”. But, in truth, it was a clash of two worlds rather than an interaction.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, ...

Politics

9 d. ago 3 girls and 2 soldiers killed in Pakistan school bus bombing are buried

Hundreds of mourners in Pakistan have attended the funerals of three schoolgirls and two soldiers killed in a suicide bombing that targeted a school bus

Events

9 d. ago Kashmir tourism bears the brunt after tourist massacre and India

There are hardly any tourists in scenic Himalayan region of Kashmir

Events

9 d. ago The Guardian view on Russia sanctions: a brittle economy is Putin’s weakness | Editorial

Ukraine’s allies must dial up sanctions to expose the fragility of the Kremlin’s strategy for perpetual warDonald Trump’s pledge to end the war in Ukraine on the first day of his second term as US president was a sign of his unsuitability as a peace broker. A clearer sign was his apparent sympathy with Vladimir Putin. Mr Trump’s tone regarding the Russian president has cooled somewhat on the discovery that the conflict cannot be frozen by White House diktat. There are hints of recognition that the peace process is failing because the Kremlin is cynically playing for time. Sadly, any such insight hasn’t evolved into outrage at the criminal aggression that started the war in the first place.Accounts of a telephone call between the two leaders earlier this week indicate no increase in American pressure on Russia. Mr Trump’s impatience with the whole issue seems likelier to result in him walking away. Mr Putin relishes that prospect.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this ar...

Politics

9 d. ago The Guardian view on social cohesion: too many of us are still ‘bowling alone’ | Editorial

Three decades on from Robert Putnam’s account of fraying social ties in the US, new research in Britain identifies similar dangersThirty years after writing Bowling Alone, the famous essay in which he diagnosed a dangerous crisis of social cohesion in the United States, Robert Putnam has a right to feel vindicated. In a lecture this spring, Prof Putnam, now 84, warned his audience that, amid levels of polarisation and distrust higher than at any time since the civil war, the US was “in danger of going to hell in a handcart”.Britain is still, thankfully, a long way from the poisonous toxicity of Trump-era America, notwithstanding the ominous rise of Reform and Nigel Farage. But research published this week by the More in Common polling group paints a worrying portrait of communities in which there is a widespread sense of social disconnection, high levels of distrust among the young and a felt loss of shared spaces and rituals.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in ...

Politics

9 d. ago Pakistan blames India for suspected suicide attack on school bus

Four children and two adults killed in attack on bus en route to army public school in Balochistan provincePakistan has blamed India for a suspected suicide attack on a school bus in its south-western province of Balochistan on Wednesday morning that killed four children.The bus was en route to the army public school in the city of Khuzdar. According to local officials, an attacker drove a vehicle into the bus at and then detonated explosives. Continue reading...

Events