57 h. ago Xi, Putin and Kim: behind the choreographed image that could symbolise a shift in the global balance of power

In an unprecedented spectacle the leaders of Russia, China and North Korea led a group of more than 20 world leaders at a victory day parade in BeijingFull report: Xi Jinping appears with Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un at China military paradeIt is an image that, had it been published just a few years ago, would have been dismissed as a piece of mischievous photo-shopping: the leaders of Russia and China, accompanied by the head of a pariah regime whose mission to arm his country with nuclear weapons had been opposed at the United Nations by his two companions.But dramatic shifts in the geopolitical landscape – Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and, crucially, the re-election of Donald Trump – have combined to bring Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un together in what many observers are calling a dramatic redrawing of the global balance of power. Continue reading...

Politics

1 week ago Among the Palms the Bomb review – the enviromental scars left behind by the US’s atom

This striking documentary is an oral history of the impact, particularly on Indigenous Americans, of 20th-century military projects in California and UtahThe culmination of a seven-year research project, Lukas Marxt and Vanja Smiljanić’s striking, exhaustive film examines the lasting impact of 20th-century military projects on the US landscape. The film begins at the former Wendover air force base in Utah, where fighter-bomber practice runs were held before the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Moving through the corridors of a museum erected to commemorate the mission, the roving camera takes in various artefacts, including replicas of the two atomic bombs, Little Boy and Fat Man. Circulating through various monitors and speakers, matter-of-fact narration of these events lingers in the air, lending an omnipresent eeriness. Here lies empty nostalgia, unnervingly entombed.The ecological devastation that surrounds the Salton Sea, a testing site for the Manhattan Project, tel...

Events

1 week ago North Korea accuses South Korea of ‘deliberate provocation’ after warning shots fired at soldiers on border

Seoul says military fired warning shots on Tuesday after troops from the North briefly crossed borderSouth Korea fired warning shots at North Korean soldiers who briefly crossed the heavily fortified border earlier this week, Seoul said on Saturday, after Pyongyang accused it of a “deliberate provocation” that risks “uncontrollable” tensions.South Korea’s new leader Lee Jae Myung has sought warmer ties with the nuclear-armed North and vowed to build “military trust”, but Pyongyang has said it has no interest in improving relations with Seoul. Continue reading...

Events

2 w. ago In the Kremlin's school of diplomacy, negotiations are there to divide and weaken the enemy, writes military expert BOB SEELY

Trump wore a broad smile as if he was hosting an old friend, not a tyrant whose supporters regularly threaten nuclear armageddon against the West.

Events

3 w. ago The West must not be frightened by dictator Putin, warns Britain's head of Armed Forces

In a rare and hard-hitting intervention, Admiral Sir Tony Radakin - the head of Britain's Armed Forces - urged NATO to be 'assertive in every domain', from nuclear weapons to cyberspace.

Events

3 w. ago India and Pakistan tensions spill over into contest over whose flagpole is bigger

Nationalist rivalries are on show at border crossing where soldiers in elaborate uniforms perform flag ceremonies each nightAt a remote, monsoon-soaked border checkpoint, Indian soldiers will mark Independence Day by raising the country’s tricolour on a mast that towers above a Pakistani flag flying just across the frontier – part of an ongoing vertical duel in South Asia’s fraught politics.Call it flag warfare: a contest not of weapons but of height, waged by two nuclear-armed neighbours that only three months ago fought a four-day battle which threatened to escalate into full-scale war. Continue reading...

Events

3 w. ago As the world hurtles ever closer to nuclear oblivion, where is the opposition? | Simon Tisdall

The puerile standoff between the US and Russia ought to alert a slumbering public to a risk that is in many ways greater than during the cold warNuclear weapons – their lethal menace, dark history and future spread – are back in the headlines again and, as usual, the news is worrying, bordering on desperate. Russia’s decision last week to formally abandon the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty banning medium- and short-range nuclear missiles completes the demolition of a key pillar of global arms control. It will accelerate an already frantic nuclear arms race in Europe and Asia at a moment when US and Russian leaders are taunting each other like schoolboys.Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, has repeatedly threatened the west with nuclear weapons during his war in Ukraine. Last November, Russian forces fired their new Oreshnik hypersonic, nuclear-capable intermediate-range missile at Dnipro. It travels “like a meteorite” at 10 times the speed of sound and can reach...

Events

3 w. ago Nagasaki’s twin bells ring in unison for first time in 80 years to mark atomic bombing

Mayor of Japanese city used the anniversary of US bombing to urge the world to stop armed conflicts, warning nuclear war was ‘looming’ over everyoneTwin cathedral bells rang in unison in Nagasaki for the first time in 80 years on Saturday, commemorating the moment the city was destroyed by an American atomic bomb.The two bells rang out at Immaculate Conception cathedral, also called the Urakami cathedral, at 11.02am, the moment the bomb was dropped on 9 August 1945, three days after a nuclear attack on Hiroshima. Continue reading...

Events

4 w. ago With only one nuclear arms pact left between the US and Russia, a new arms race is possible

For decades, the threat of nuclear conflict between the U.S. and the Soviet Union hung over humanity

Events