Top World News

Mar 9, 2026 - World

Jessika Roswall cites Poland and Finland, which have made border areas near Russia or its allies ‘more hostile’ to crossCountries should look to rewild their land borders as a deterrence to invasion and build up other geographical defences to attack, Europe’s environment chief has said.Jessika Roswall, the EU’s commissioner for the environment, water resilience and a competitive circular economy, said nature should be used to improve national security. “Investing in nature and using nature as a natural border control is necessary, and actually increases biodiversity. It’s a win-win,” she said. Continue reading...

Mar 9, 2026 - World

AI feature generated offensive posts about Diogo Jota and the Hillsborough and Munich disastersLiverpool and Manchester United have complained to Elon Musk’s X after the Grok AI feature made offensive posts about Diogo Jota and the Hillsborough and Munich disasters.The posts were generated when users asked the AI tool to make hateful posts about the two football teams. Continue reading...

Mar 9, 2026 - World

Standoff with DoD over Claude chatbot reignites debate over how AI will be used in war – and who will be held accountableUntil recently, Anthropic was one of the quieter names in the artificial intelligence boom. Despite being valued at about $350bn, it rarely generated the flashy headlines or public backlash associated with Sam Altman’s OpenAI or Elon Musk’s xAI. Its CEO and co-founder Dario Amodei was an industry fixture but hardly a household name outside of Silicon Valley, and its chatbot Claude lagged in popularity behind ChatGPT.That perception has shifted as Anthropic has become the central actor in a high-profile fight with the Department of Defense over the company’s refusal to allow Claude to be used for domestic mass surveillance and autonomous weapons systems that can kill people without human input. Amid tense negotiations, the AI firm rejected a Pentagon deadline for a deal last week, in a move that led Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, to accuse Anthropic of “arrogance and betrayal” of its home country while demanding that any companies that work with the US government cease all business with the AI firm. Continue reading...

Mar 9, 2026 - World

A pitch from Donald Trump to present himself as the strongman of the Middle East could destabilize the world, a political analyst has warned. Though the U.S. joined Israel with a series of strikes on Iran, longer-term changes in the Middle East could prove troublesome for other world leaders not involved in the conflict. CNN analysts Stephen Collinson, Kylie Atwood, and Tal Shalev, suggest the strong-arming Trump has used to pull the U.S. into war with the Middle East could affect the wider world, irrespective of success. The trio wrote, "Relentless US and Israeli air attacks — in a military playbook that feels far more planned out than the political one — stand a strong chance of neutering Tehran’s power to threaten its neighbors. "This would benefit the wider Middle East, bill Trump as a regional strongman, deliver Israel from an existential threat, and improve U.S. national security after a near 50-year feud with the Islamic Republic."But without full regime change, Iranians might still pay a heavy price if crackdowns rather than counter-revolution follow. And if Trump’s war shatters the Iranian state and sparks civil war, a refugee crisis or grave economic consequence could destabilize the world."Further trouble for European nations could be brewing too, according to Julien Barnes-Dacey, program director for the Middle East at the European Council on Foreign Relations, who believes most countries do not know what to do about the ongoing situation. "They are, globally now, responding to the daily whims of a U.S. president who is causing immense disruption," Barnes-Dacey said. "They are caught between a rock and a hard place."On the one hand, they want to cling on to some sense of international law, or the rules-based order, and then on the other hand, they are desperately trying to keep themselves in Trump’s good books."Some nations now find themselves on the opposing end of what Trump wants and may incur the wrath of the president. Sophia Gaston, a senior research fellow at the Center for Statecraft and National Security in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, believes Trump wants a demonstration of loyalty from the UK. She said, "The more a country like Britain invests in its sovereign strength, prosperity and capability, the more attractive it also then becomes for the United States as a partner, but also the more it can defend its own interests against the turbulence of such an alliance."

Mar 9, 2026 - World

Steve Reed says situation in Middle East ‘clearly very concerning’ but there is no ‘cause for undue alarm yet’Middle East crisis – live updatesThere is no immediate threat to energy supplies in the UK despite rocketing oil prices, a senior minister has said, as Keir Starmer tried to reassure people about the impact of the crisis in the Middle East.The impact of US-Israeli strikes in Iran, and retaliatory attacks from Tehran elsewhere in the region, was “clearly very concerning”, Steve Reed, the communities secretary said, adding that much depended on how long hostilities continued. Continue reading...