Top World News

Dec 4, 2025 - World

Delhi visit gives Russian leader a chance to reduce Moscow’s isolation but both countries need each other to negotiate Trump’s US and a powerful ChinaWhen Vladimir Putin last set foot in India almost exactly four years ago, the world order looked materially different. At that visit – lasting just five hours due to the Covid pandemic – Putin and the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, discussed economic and military cooperation and reaffirmed their special relationship.Three months later, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine would turn him into a global pariah, isolating the Kremlin from the world and restricting Putin’s international travel. Continue reading...

Dec 4, 2025 - World

WASHINGTON — Democratic veterans on Capitol Hill say there’s a dangerous throughline to Pete Hegseth’s dueling scandals, over the use of an unsecured messaging app and boat bombings in the Caribbean and Pacific: The Pentagon chief is endangering US troops.A new report from the Pentagon inspector general finds Hegseth — a former Army officer who was a Fox News weekend host before he entered government — put troops in danger this spring when he shared Yemen war plans on the commercial messaging app Signal."He shared information he shouldn't have in a way that he shouldn't have, and the consequences are that our military could be compromised and the safety of our men and women in uniform could be compromised,” Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-PA) told Raw Story. “That's what we know.”“Is that the kind of person that we want to be the Secretary of Defense?" Houlahan — an Air Force veteran and member of both the House Intelligence and Armed Services Committees — said. "No one should be using Signal in that way. Nobody should be communicating that information at all. It's just not nobody, it's the Secretary of Defense."Details from the inspector general report on Hegseth’s use of commercial messaging app Signal — including how the then national security adviser, Mike Waltz, came to add Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg to a group chat ahead of strikes in Yemen — are damning to many in Congress.But that issue pales in comparison to allegations Hegseth signed off on unlawful military strikes in the Caribbean. To veterans in Congress, it’s unconscionable that Secretary of Defense Hegseth and President Donald Trump, the commander-in-chief, are seemingly letting their underlings take the blame for the military strikes. “It is incredibly offensive. And it sends a message to the troops that this President, this SecDef, is willing to throw you under the bus,” Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) — an Army veteran who lost her legs in Iraq — told Raw Story. “One of the first things you learn as an Army officer, which, you know, [Hegseth] supposedly was, is that you can always delegate authority, but you never delegate responsibility. The responsibility rests with him.”Hegseth doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo. ‘No leader worth their salt’On Monday, the Defense Secretary took to social media to seemingly shift the blame.“Lets make one thing crystal clear: Admiral Mitch Bradley is an American hero, a true professional, and has my 100 percent support,” Hegseth wrote on X. “I stand by him and the combat decisions he has made — on this September 2 mission and all others since.”That was the mission when, the Washington Post first reported, an order was given to carry out a second strike on a boat in the Caribbean, the first having left survivors clinging to wreckage. The Post said Hegseth ordered the second strike, which most analysts say would constitute a war crime. He denies it. To Duckworth and many other veterans on Capitol Hill, Hegseth passing the buck is scandalous. “I've always known that he's not qualified for the job,” Duckworth said. “I worry about the service members being put into jeopardy by this, right? We’re violating international laws of armed conflict, we are putting service members in legal jeopardy.“My focus right now is what are we doing to our service members? We're putting them in real jeopardy, both legally and also personally. I mean, you know, if we're going to do this in international waters, what's to keep some other country from saying, ‘Hey, we're going to do this to the US’?”Other senior members of the Armed Services Committees agreed. "No leader worth their salt pushes responsibility off on a subordinate,” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) told Raw Story. “And if Hegseth gave a ‘kill everybody’ order — and we have to determine whether, in fact, that's true — that's a clear violation of law, whether or not he gave it before the second strike. A kill everybody order just in and of itself is a violation of the laws of war.”Kaine says Hegseth has a bad habit of passing the buck. "The opening salvo of ‘It's all a lie’ and ‘It's journalists who are spinning a fake narrative’ to now, ‘Well, yeah, it's true but you know, it was Adm. Bradley's call, not mine’ — I mean, you know, no,” Kaine said. ‘Legal risk’Kaine and Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) are renewing their calls for Congress to pass an AUMF — or Authorization for Use of Military Force — before the Pentagon carries out more air strikes off the coast of Venezuela. "We're seeing realized a lot of the fears members had that this unauthorized campaign would result in blowback to the country, to our troops," Schiff told Raw Story. "One of the concerns I've had all along has been that we risk putting service members in physical danger, but we also risk putting them at legal risk and that's exactly what's happened."Hegseth’s Democratic critics say it's the same with “Signalgate.” "Secretary Hegseth has been a liability to the administration from the moment he was confirmed,” Houlahan of Pennsylvania said. “At what point does the President recognize that and ask for his resignation?"

Dec 4, 2025 - World

Inaugural prize expected to be handed to Donald Trump but ‘process’ for choosing future winners to be proposed by controversial tycoon’s committeeIt was the timing that set off the first alarm bells. With Donald Trump brooding over missing out on the Nobel peace prize, and shortly before Gianni Infantino, the president of world football’s governing body, Fifa, was due to meet the US president in Miami, an announcement was made.In a press release and a post on his personal Instagram account last month, Infantino said Fifa would launch its very own peace prize, to be awarded each year to “individuals who help unite people in peace through unwavering commitment and special actions”. Continue reading...

Dec 4, 2025 - World

China and France have pledged deeper cooperation to address global issues like the war in Ukraine and trade

Dec 3, 2025 - World

Last month, some House members publicly acknowledged that Israel has been committing genocide in Gaza. It’s a judgment that Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch unequivocally proclaimed a year ago. Israeli human-rights organizations have reached the same conclusion. But such clarity is sparse in Congress.And no wonder. Genocide denial is needed for continuing to appropriate billions of dollars in weapons to Israel, as most legislators have kept doing. Congress members would find it very difficult to admit that Israeli forces are committing genocide while voting to send them more weaponry.Three weeks ago, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) introduced a resolution titled “Recognizing the genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza.” Twenty-one House colleagues, all of them Democrats, signed on as co-sponsors. They account for 10 percent of the Democrats in Congress.In sharp contrast, a national Quinnipiac Poll found that 77 percent of Democrats “think Israel is committing genocide.” That means there is a 67 percent gap between what the elected Democrats are willing to say and what the people who elected them believe. The huge gap has big implications for the party’s primaries in the midterm elections next year, and then in the race for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination.One of the likely candidates in that race, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), is speaking out in ways that fit with the overwhelming views of Democratic voters. “I agree with the UN commission's heartbreaking finding that there is a genocide in Gaza,” he tweeted as autumn began. “What matters is what we do about it – stop military sales that are being used to kill civilians and recognize a Palestinian state.” Consistent with that position, the California congressman was one of the score of Democrats who signed on as co-sponsors of Tlaib’s resolution the day it was introduced.In the past, signers of such a resolution would have reason to fear the wrath — and the electoral muscle — of AIPAC, the Israel-can-do-no-wrong lobby. But its intimidation power is waning. AIPAC’s support for Israel does not represent the views of the public, a reality that has begun to dawn on more Democratic officeholders.“With American support for the Israeli government’s management of the conflict in Gaza undergoing a seismic reversal, and Democratic voters’ support for the Jewish state dropping off steeply, AIPAC is becoming an increasingly toxic brand for some Democrats on Capitol Hill,” the New York Times reported this fall. Notably, “some Democrats who once counted AIPAC among their top donors have in recent weeks refused to take the group’s donations.”Khanna has become more and more willing to tangle with AIPAC, which is now paying for attack ads against him. On Thanksgiving, he tweeted about Gaza and accused AIPAC of “asking people to disbelieve what they saw with their own eyes.” Khanna elaborated in a campaign email days ago, writing: “Any politician who caves to special interests on Gaza will never stand up to special interests on corruption, healthcare, housing, or the economy. If we can’t speak with moral clarity when thousands of children are dying, we won’t stand for working Americans when corporate power comes knocking.”AIPAC isn’t the only well-heeled organization for Israel now struggling with diminished clout. Democratic Majority for Israel, an offshoot of AIPAC that calls itself “an American advocacy group that supports pro-Israel policies within the United States Democratic Party,” is now clearly misnamed. Every bit of recent polling shows that in the interests of accuracy, the organization should change its name to “Democratic Minority for Israel.”Yet the party’s leadership remains stuck in a bygone era. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), the chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, typifies how disconnected so many party leaders are from the actual views of Democratic voters. Speaking in Brooklyn three months ago, she flatly claimed that “nine out of 10 Democrats are pro-Israel.” She did not attempt to explain how that could be true when more than seven out of 10 Democrats say Israel is guilty of genocide.The political issue of complicity with genocide will not go away.Last week, Amnesty International released a detailed statement documenting that “Israeli authorities are still committing genocide against Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip, by continuing to deliberately inflict conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction.” But in Congress, almost every Republican and a large majority of Democrats remain stuck in public denial about Israel’s genocidal policies.Such denial will be put to the electoral test in Democratic primaries next year, when most incumbents will face an electorate far more morally attuned to Gaza than they are. What easily passes for reasoned judgment and political smarts in Congress will seem more like cluelessness to many Democratic activists and voters who can provide reality checks with their ballots.Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. The paperback edition of his book War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine includes an afterword about the Gaza war.