WORLD - The African Mirror

Feb

14

2026

Ukraine: if elections are held this spring, who might be the next president?

WORLD

UKRAINE’S president, Volodymyr Zelensky, is under intense pressure from the US to take his country to the polls as early as this spring. Donald Trump is demanding elections as a condition for American security guarantees for Ukraine against any future Russian invasion. Zelensky has faced persistent calls from Russian President Vladimir Putin, and at times from Trump as well, to hold an election. His term expired in 2024, but the country’s constitution forbids elections during wartime. So, to schedule a poll will also mean a constitutional change to enable it. But if the US president gets his way and elections…

Feb

14

2026

By MICHAEL PAARLBERG

Exiled Iranians and Venezuelans may well support regime change – but diasporas don’t always reflect the politics back home

WORLD

AS protest and military action raised the prospect of regime change in Iran and Venezuela, the voices of both countries’ diasporas were heard loud and clear through the media of their host nations. Venezuelan exiles in the U.S. were, according to the popular narrative, broadly behind President Donald Trump and his plan to “run Venezuela,” as the nickname “MAGAzuelans” suggests. Meanwhile, the Iranian diaspora rallied behind Prince Reza Pahlavi as he positioned himself as a leader-in-waiting, projecting an image of unified exile support. Diasporas are often treated by media and policymakers as monolithic blocs — politically unified, ideologically coherent and…

Feb

13

2026

By KRISTIN SKARE ORGERET and LEA HELLMUELLER

Democracy dies in broad daylight: the Trump administration’s frontal assault on the free press

WORLD

WHEN the billionaire owner of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, bought the Washington Post from the Graham family in 2013, he promised a “golden era to come”. In February 2017, one month into Donald Trump’s first term as US president, the paper adopted the motto: “Democracy Dies in Darkness”, reflecting the perceived threat posed by Trump’s authoritarian leanings and the suggestion that Moscow had interfered in the 2016 election. That motto was turned against Bezos last week when it was announced that the Post was laying off one-third of its editorial staff, including its sports section and several of its foreign bureaus.…

Feb

13

2026

By STEPHEN BARBER

Mandelson and the financial crash: why the Epstein allegations are so shocking

WORLD

SUGGESTIONS that Peter Mandelson may have shared government information with Jeffrey Epstein amid the fallout of the global financial crisis are being investigated by police. Emails between Mandelson and the disgraced financier, released by the US Department of Justice, are said to include market-sensitive details. This was at a time when Mandelson was in government, and ministers around him were scrambling to keep the UK economy afloat. Now, the 2008 global financial crisis belongs to a different political generation, with almost all of the leading players having left the world stage. But the ripple effect of the credit crunch can…

Feb

13

2026

By BAMO NOURI

US-Iran talks are not a countdown to conflict

WORLD

WHEN Iranian and US officials met for talks in the Omani capital of Muscat on February 6, many journalists and analysts were speculating as to whether diplomacy would fail and whether war would inevitably follow. But that framing misses the deeper reality of this moment. The more important question is why both sides have returned to the negotiating table at all, despite years of hostility, sanctions, proxy conflict and open threats. The anxiety that has surrounded the talks is understandable. Washington warned its citizens to leave Iran hours before the talks took place, fuelling speculation about military strikes. US officials…

Feb

12

2026

By SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

When safety shatters: The Tumbler Ridge school shooting and Canada’s reckoning

WORLD

THE mathematics of the catastrophe in Tumbler Ridge are devastating in their precision: seven dead at the school, two more at a nearby home, a female shooter who took her own life. Ten lives extinguished in a community of 2,700 souls. More than 25 were injured. Two were airlifted with life-threatening wounds. In a town where the mayor knows every victim by name, where a pastor taught many of the dead, where students walked out with hands raised into a scene that belonged to American news footage, not Canadian reality. This is Canada's worst mass shooting since 2020, and its…

Feb

12

2026

By ROBERT DOVER

A whiff of espionage around the Epstein files points to how intelligence and influence interact

WORLD

FOR obvious reasons, the secretive world of intelligence agencies and the people who revolve in its orbit remains opaque. So much so that some of those people may not even be aware of any involvement in the secret world. The Epstein papers have thrown up speculation about whether the late financier and sex offender might have performed services for one or another of the big intelligence agencies. And in the wake of that speculation, it has been noted that the father of Epstein’s one-time girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, was the late Robert Maxwell, well-known as a larger-than-life publisher and newspaper proprietor…

Feb

12

2026

By RIN USHIYAMA

Japan’s ruling party secures historic election victory – but challenges lie ahead

WORLD

PRIME Minister Sanae Takaichi’s conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has secured the biggest election victory seen in Japan since the end of the Second World War. In elections on February 8, it won 316 seats out of a total of 465 in the lower house of Japan’s parliament. The Japan Innovation Party, its junior coalition partner, secured a further 36 seats. Many had predicted an LDP win. Takaichi called the snap election in January to capitalise on her high approval ratings since becoming Japan’s first female prime minister months earlier. But few had anticipated the strength of her support, with…

Feb

11

2026

By MARTIN FARR

How much longer can Keir Starmer survive?

WORLD

WHEN they disintegrate, governments often do so slowly, then quickly. Despite dragooned public statements of support from the cabinet, the government of Keir Starmer gives every appearance of entering that second phase. In the wake of the scandal surrounding former Washington ambassador Peter Mandelson and his ties to deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Starmer lost his chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, who had championed Mandelson for the role. Then the PM lost his press secretary, Tim Allan. Then, in a live press conference, he lost the leader of the Scottish Labour Party, Anas Sarwar. Eighteen months ago, Starmer could not…

Feb

11

2026

By NOUR ELASSY

In Gaza, my homeland is being transformed into an engineering project

WORLD

FOR two years, Gaza has been a place of mass death, starvation, disappearances, attempted erasure, genocide. Now, almost without warning, it is being transformed, rhetorically, into a management problem. Plans have appeared. Phase one has transitioned into phase two. Committees have been established. A future is being presented, fully formed and designed, while the core questions of rights and accountability are swept under the rug as inconvenient complications. I’m writing this from Europe while my family is still in Gaza. From here, I watch the West switch registers, from horror to “stabilisation”, from mourning to “governance”, from humanitarian catastrophe to…