Tom Waits has released his first new music in 15 years (am I that old?). It's a protest song in collaboration with Massive Attack youtu.be/L-57FrioeuE?...

⚡️US renews Russian oil sanctions waiver for 1 month, days after signaling it would not do so. The U.S. Treasury Department issued a temporary license on April 17 renewing a sanctions waiver that allows countries to purchase Russian oil stranded at sea.

It is staggeringly frustrating that Starmer's government has ended up spending so much time, energy, credibility & self-destruction on something related to bloody Mandelson of all has-beens, rather tackling Britain's many & varied present day problems that they inherited from the Tories.

This sounds like an excellent initiative by Denmark and Ukraine. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/14/w...

This article pretty much covers the disaster Trump's Iran war has inflicted on America, the Gulf region and the rest of us.

"Russia has been driven mad" by Putin & co. and "more Russians have died in his vanity war in Ukraine than in all wars since 1945". Horrific. (Article & both quotes from [email protected] ). www.economist.com/culture/2026...

So much winning. And so much money for Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps. www.economist.com/finance-and-...

This grand old club of ours, @hullfcofficial.bsky.social, badly needed its pride restored. John Cartwright has led that. The fans would like him to stay longer. But, whatever happens, our appreciation & his welcome in Hull will last well beyond his time as coach. www.theguardian.com/sport/2026/a...

With this (see below) in mind, I'm confident that a comfortable majority of people in all walks of life and of non-extremist political opinions across Europe & North America would actually like keep a strong relationship and save NATO. Anyone else fancy starting a campaign? #CoalitionOfTheSensible

We're going to see lots of this over the next few years. The voters in most countries overwhelmingly loathe Trump. Therefore, domestic politics incentivises leaders to push back against him, especially now that the trust, fear and respect has largely gone. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/15/w...

What Russia deserves is defeat and the prosecution of its leaders for war crimes. www.theguardian.com/world/live/2...

It has been one of the hardest 24h in a while. russia launched 703 air targets, incl 19 ballistic missiles and 25 cruise missiles. At least 9 people were killed in Odesa, 3 in Dnipro and 4 in Kyiv, incl a 12yo boy. More than 80 people were injured. Please, don't look away. #makerussiapay

I understand why people in struggling places want to believe in charismatic leaders who claim to be solving their problems. But military dictators like Burkina Faso's President Traoré rarely turn out to be a good choice for investing hope in.

1/3 Leaders from Germany, the African Union, France, the EU, UK, & US meeting in Berlin on April 15, 2026, the three-year mark of ongoing conflict in Sudan, should commit to concrete, time-bound measures to protect civilians and to hold those responsible for serious international crimes to account.

At the risk of being the fun police, I would think twice about sharing those Iranian propaganda Lego videos mocking Trump and co. This is still a regime that killed thousands of its own people and murders women for not wearing a headscarf properly. Your enemy's enemy is not necessarily your friend.

Sometimes it's better to say nothing, in order to avoid sounding silly. www.theguardian.com/world/2026/a...

Hopefully, he'll be heading over to campaign for Reform soon. And if he finds time to support Hull KR while he's here, that would be very helpful.

John Cartwright has really understood Hull and restored pride in @hullfcofficial.bsky.social. The fans would, I am pretty sure, have wanted their club to treat a very good bloke and coach like him much better than this. www.hulldailymail.co.uk/sport/rugby-...

High stakes international diplomacy is no place for amateurs on the make. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/13/o...

Does the "J" in JD Vance stand for jinx? #Hungary #Orbán. giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/... via @financialtimes.com

I had previously been sceptical about little Hungary being seen as a model for a certain much bigger country. But now that its people have removed their Putin loving, paedophile-protecting crook of a leader from power, maybe there is something in it after all.

People will be closely studying how Hungary's opposition pulled off their win in such a pro-incumbent system. Important to note that the theme was corruption. Democrats need to get much better at calling out Trump's corruption.

Donald Trump. Vladimir Putin. Can you hear me? Your boy took a hell of a beating. #Orban #Hungary youtu.be/PqZTP8-8wIs?...

Former Republican Senator Ben Sasse has some interesting and appealing things to say about politics, its conduct and relative importance in the mid-section of this interview (some of the other parts are quite striking too).

Dignity and experience means European leaders are done with appeasing Trump. So does domestic politics. People are disgusted by this US administration and there are votes to be had in standing up to it. Article via @nytimes.com . www.nytimes.com/2026/04/09/o...

This is what wars do to destroy the lives of ordinary, decent people. It's hard not to feel that those who start them should suffer the consequences of their actions instead. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/10/o...

A Boston view on the FIFA crime syndicate. Via @bostonglobe.com www.bostonglobe.com/2026/04/10/n...

RIP Dr Gluzman. A heroically brave and brilliant man.

Does this miserable, corrupt & brutalised Russian army sound like one that could stand more sustained pressure, if we helped Ukraine to crank it up? Article via the @economist.com . www.economist.com/europe/2026/...

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk: Victor Orbán’s minister offered Sergey Lavrov to send him EU documents through the Hungarian embassy in Moscow. It’s really beyond shocking.

The Iranian dictatorship is still in place. Iran still has enriched uranium. The Strait of Hormuz no longer has free passage. Sanctions and tariffs on Irans despotic regime are going to be lifted. And some are calling this a victory?

Difficult to describe how unusual it is for @icrc.org to speak publicly like this. "Heavy explosive weapons with wide-area effects struck densely populated urban areas, including the capital Beirut, without effective advance warnings." ICRC Outraged by Deadly Strikes in Densely Populated Areas

Regime change in Iran? Failed. Ending its nuclear programme? Failed. Security on the border with Lebanon? Failed. Netanyahu has burned Israel's international support, killed thousands of people and achieved none of his stated aims. www.theguardian.com/world/2026/a...

Trump is a mug. That mattered less when he was just a serial bankrupt blowing his daddy's money in business. As US President, his inadequacies have caused the deaths of thousands of people and brought misery to millions of others. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/07/u...

It doesn't matter what the oil price is - Putin can't buy bombs with the proceeds if Russia can't get the stuff out of the country. Good work, Ukraine. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/07/w...

Hospitals sharing images of children to identify their parents, this is the situation across #Beirut

It did include Lebanon until it didn't.

"The lifting of all sanctions against Iran, reparations, US acceptance of Iran’s right to enrich nuclear materials and control over the Strait of Hormuz". This is an abject defeat for Trump, akin to his unconditional surrender of Afghanistan to the Taliban in 2020. open.substack.com/pub/persuasi...

An excellent piece by @rafaelbehr.bsky.social in @theguardian.com on what has fundamentally changed in the relationship between the US and the UK & Europe, & how to handle it from now on. The latter "....cannot be sure that sanity would endure....Trust is gone." www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

It's rare to believe anything Vance says but I'm sure it's true when he says "I'm here (in Hungary) because I admire what you (Orban) are fighting for" - namely, a cost of living crisis, low wages, a neglected public health system & systemic corruption. www.theguardian.com/world/2026/a...

Wishing everyone a peaceful good night from Fenway Park, Boston.

Glad to be switching off at the baseball tonight. It'd be great if everyone around the world had the chance to rest and relax in peace too.

Regardless of whether it’s all talk, when the leader of our country expresses plainly genocidal intent, everyone has to do something. For citizens of all political stripes, it means rejecting this madness. For Congress, it means taking action to rein him in. Now.

After Trump wrote, in reference to Iran, “A whole civilization will die tonight,” the entirety of the House Democratic leadership issued this joint statement:

It's still staggering to know that the President of the United States is a Russian asset. Whether witting or unwitting barely matters - the grim impact is the same. And the willingness of many in the US to tolerate this is the most sickening thing of all. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/07/o...

Good. The fastest way to end Putin's evil war is to help Ukraine to inflict enough pain and pressure on the Russians to make them stop it. giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

You would think that Trump & Russia backing their corrupt puppet Orban would help Magyar's opposition more at this point. But I do have concerns about whether the polls are truly capturing voting intentions outside of the anti-Orban, bigger towns & cities. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/07/w...

Well said, @stellacreasy.bsky.social . www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Corruption is corrosion and Russia is rotten with it. That also makes it weaker than it looks and this sick society is vulnerable to collapse if we put more pressure on it. www.economist.com/europe/2026/...

The fastest way to end Russia's war on Ukraine is to put Putin & the Kremlin under more pressure. Ukraine is doing it. We should go all-in on helping them. giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...