5 h. ago Tyrants like Trump always fall – and we can already predict how he will be dethroned | Simon Tisdall

The US constitution protects incompetence. But don’t underestimate the self-destructive power of the president’s own hubrisTyrants come to a sticky end, or so history suggests. Richard III and Coriolanus made bloody exits. More recently, Saddam Hussein went to the gallows, Slobodan Milosevic went to jail, Bashar al-Assad went into exile. Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi was run to ground in a sewer. Tyranny, from the Greek túrannos (“absolute ruler”), is typically fuelled by hubris and leads ineluctably to nemesis. Tyrants are for toppling. Their downfall is a saving grace.Tyranny, in its many forms, is back in vogue, and everyone knows who’s to blame. To be fair, to suggest similarities between the aforementioned abominable individuals and Donald Trump would be utterly wrong. In key respects, he’s worse. Measured by willingness and capacity to harm the world’s poorest and most vulnerable, wreak global economic mayhem and threaten nuclear annihilation, Trump is uniquely dangerous – and ever ...

Politics

41 h. ago Cuts to food aid put more than 3 million malnourished people at risk in Ethiopia

The situation facing Ethiopia represents a “perfect storm of overlapping crises”, says the World Food Programme

Events

41 h. ago Trump’s deadline to review US aid cuts has passed – so what happens now?

Programmes say they are facing growing uncertainty as review is extended

Politics

7 d. ago Despair in Gaza as Israeli aid blockade creates crisis ‘unmatched in severity’

Palestinians pushed into new misery as supplies of food, fuel and medicine run out in seven-week siegeGaza has been pushed to new depths of despair, civilians, medics and humanitarian workers say, by the unprecedented seven-week-long Israeli military blockade that has cut off all aid to the strip.The siege has left the Palestinian territory facing conditions unmatched in severity since the beginning of the war as residents grapple with sweeping new evacuation orders, the renewed bombing of civilian infrastructure such as hospitals, and the exhaustion of food, fuel for generators and medical supplies. Continue reading...

Politics

9 d. ago ‘I can’t protect my unborn baby from HIV’: The stark reality of Trump’s aid cuts

From the pregnant woman who fears HIV will now be transmitted to her child, to the father of four lying in agony on a mattress with no access to drugs. In Uganda and Zimbabwe, chief international correspondent Bel Trew finds the US president’s brutal severing of aid – and abrupt halt in medication – is already tearing lives apart

Politics

9 d. ago The Aids crisis was set to end by 2030 – now Trump’s cuts will mean 4 million more deaths

HIV infections and deaths from Aids are set to skyrocket in the next five years if US-funded programs are not reinstated, write Rachel Schraer, Alicja Hagopian, Bel Trew and Rebecca Thomas

Events

1 week ago Afghan children will die because of US funding cuts, aid official says

An aid agency official says Afghan children will die because of US funding cuts

Politics

1 week ago EU will struggle to fill gap left by USAID as European countries cut their budgets

NGOs warn of ‘some difficult years’ ahead as increasing humanitarian needs meet shrinking financesThe dismantling of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) has captured headlines, but “very regrettable” reductions in European aid budgets are also contributing to a void in support for some of the poorest people in the world’s most fragile states, according to MEPs and NGOs.Isabella Lövin, a deputy chair of the European parliament’s development committee, said USAID cuts would have “very dramatic consequences around the world”. But she also criticised recent decisions by EU member states to reduce their aid budgets as “very regrettable” and “wrong”. It would be impossible for the EU to fill the gap, she added. Continue reading...

Politics

1 week ago Trump memo outlines plan to slash US state department budget in half

Cuts would mean dramatic decreases in funding for humanitarian aid, global health and international groupsThe Trump administration is reportedly proposing to slash the state department budget by nearly half in a move that could drastically reduce US international spending and end its funding for Nato and the United Nations, according to an internal memorandum.The memo based on spending cuts devised by the White House office of management and budget envisions the total budget of the state department and USAID, the main foreign assistance body which has been largely dismantled by Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency”, or Doge, being reduced to $28.4bn, a reduction of $27bn or 48% from what Congress approved for 2025. Continue reading...

Politics

1 week ago ‘Savage’ UK cuts will deprive 55m people of aid around the world

Exclusive: The cuts will result in a reduction of key programmes for education, family planning, water and food aid. Alicja Hagopian and Kate Devlin report

Politics

2 w. ago Millions of Afghans will be ‘abandoned’ to famine thanks to Trump’s aid cuts, warns UN

World Food Programme says essential programmes to prevent malnutrition and death will not be possible unless Elon Musk-led USAID cuts are reversed

Events

2 w. ago We'll cut your aid if you don't take your citizens back, Friedrich Merz tells foreign countries whose residents continue immigrating to Germany

The foreign aid budget - which has been a huge source of pride for officials in the European country - could be slashed amid a raft of measures to curb illegal immigration.

Politics

2 w. ago Death of five children during gruelling hospital trek blamed on Trump’s ‘America First’ aid cuts

Charity hits out at ‘decisions made by powerful people in other countries that have led to child deaths’

Politics

2 w. ago A lifesaving midwife in Afghanistan: Noriko Hayashi’s best photograph

‘This woman was nine months pregnant but had never had a checkup. Anisa is listening to the baby’s heartbeat with a stethoscope. After foreign aid cuts, including Trump’s, she is now out of a job’My home country, Japan, is one of the safest places in the world to give birth: it has one of the very lowest mortality rates in Asia. A few years ago I had the opportunity to work on a story about midwives in Japan, and I became very interested in their role. In November 2023 I travelled to Badakhshan province in the northeast of Afghanistan, the country with the highest maternal mortality rate in Asia. I wanted to meet midwives there and see how they support women.The Badakhshan province is far from Kabul, with rugged terrain and poor transportation and medical infrastructure. In winter, heavy snowfall blocks roads for months. Women who are about to give birth are sometimes carried on donkeys escorted by family members or neighbours on multi-day trips to clinics. The literacy rate for wom...

Culture

2 w. ago Country 'struggles to contain' outbreak as 150 dead in 'alarming' fatality rise

Disease hits as health sector reels from US aid cuts ordered by the Trump administration

Events

2 w. ago US restores urgent food aid but not in Afghanistan and Yemen, where millions need it

United Nations officials say the Trump administration has reversed sweeping cuts in emergency food aid to several nations while maintaining them in Afghanistan and Yemen

Politics

2 w. ago Why USAID is such a critical piece of the global climate aid puzzle – and what happens next as it is cut

As development projects battle over which is the most ‘life-saving’ in order to secure the dregs of US aid funding, climate action is likely to be deemed lowest priority, writes Nick Ferris

Politics

2 w. ago US bishops halt partnerships with federal government on aid programs, citing funding cuts

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is ending a half-century of partnerships with the federal government to serve refugees and children

Politics

2 w. ago The deadly truth as family planning slashed in Trump’s global aid cuts

With the wiping out of global aid to maternal health, it feels necessary to point out that fewer unplanned births means fewer mothers dying, writes chief international correspondent Bel Trew from Uganda

Politics

3 w. ago ‘Shame’ on world leaders for neglect of displaced civilians in DRC, says aid chief

US and Europe criticised by head of Norwegian Refugee Council for ‘neglect’ of people living ‘subhuman’ existence World leaders should be ashamed of their neglect of people whose lives were “hanging by a thread” at a time of surging violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the international charity leader Jan Egeland has said.In a stinging attack on aid cuts and the “nationalistic winds” blowing across Europe and the US, the Norwegian Refugee Council’s head told the Guardian how people were living out in the open, in overcrowded, unsanitary displacement encampments around the city of Goma, where 1.2 million people have had to flee from their homes as the M23 rebels advanced through the DRC’s North and South Kivu provinces. Continue reading...

Politics