Nicola Jennings on Ukraine peace talks – cartoon
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2025/aug/20/nicola-jennings-on-ukraine-peace-talks-cartoon
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Uranus Was Hiding a Moon Outside Its Rings
Uranus Was Hiding a Moon Outside Its Rings
UK falling behind EU on environmental rules amid post-Brexit rollback | Green politics
The UK is using Brexit to weaken crucial environmental protections and is falling behind the EU despite Labour’s manifesto pledge not to dilute standards, analysis has found. Experts have said ministers are choosing to use Brexit to “actively go backwards” in some cases, though there are also areas where the UK has improved nature laws … Read more
Donald Trump is becoming the greatest unifier of Europe since the end of the cold war | Fabrizio Tassinari
Seven is a biblical number, a number dear to ancient Rome, and the number of Cristiano Ronaldo’s lucky jersey. Perhaps it is also now going to be the answer to Henry Kissinger’s (probably apocryphal) question: what number do I call when I want to talk to Europe? Maybe the answer is seven, like the number … Read more
Newly Discovered Origami Patterns Put the Bloom on the Fold
Newly Discovered Origami Patterns Put the Bloom on the Fold
The Guardian view on Trump and Zelenskyy: Ukraine deserves better than ‘better than we feared’ | Editorial
The verdict on Donald Trump’s meeting with Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other European leaders on Monday depends entirely upon the metric used. The great fear was that this might prove a disaster along the lines of the US president’s dressing down of the Ukrainian leader in February – a scenario so plausible that Sir Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron, Friedrich … Read more
Ben Jennings on the prospective meeting between Trump, Putin and Zelenskyy – cartoon
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2025/aug/19/ben-jennings-trump-putin-zelenskyy-cartoon
There is no ‘Trump doctrine’ in foreign policy. Just chaos | Sidney Blumenthal
All the elaborate efforts of the European allies to prevent Donald Trump from prostrating himself before Vladimir Putin came to naught at their summit meeting in Alaska. Flattering, coddling and petting the big baby appeared to have been in vain. Before the 15 August summit, the Europeans persuaded Trump to impose new sanctions if Putin … Read more
Putin must tread carefully amid hyped up expectations of breakthrough | Vladimir Putin
The mood in the White House on Monday was strikingly upbeat. Nato’s ever-cheerful secretary general, Mark Rutte, set the tone as he addressed Donald Trump, Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the gathered European leaders. “Let’s make the best out of today,” he said with a smile, before repeatedly thanking the US president for his attention to the … Read more
European leaders behave like supplicants to an almighty Trump. Putin just sees him as a protege | Rafael Behr
A hungry pigeon given food at frequent but irregular intervals will develop weird rituals – tics, dances, erratic head jerks – in the hope of summoning another morsel. BF Skinner, the psychologist who first demonstrated this effect in 1947, described the birds adopting “a sort of superstition … as if there were a causal relation … Read more