RUSSIA - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov spoke to his Pakistani counterpart on Sunday and offered Russia's help in resolving tensions between Pakistan and India over Kashmir, the Foreign Ministry said. Terrorists killed at least 26 people in last week's attack on a mountain tourist destination in the Pahalgam area of the Kashmir valley. Muslim-majority Kashmir is claimed by both countries and has been the focus of several wars, an insurgency and diplomatic standoffs. Russia has been India's largest weapons provider for decades and New Delhi and Moscow have had close ties since Soviet times.

IRAN - The explosion at the Shahid Rajaee port has become a major challenge for Iran. While Tehran could use the disaster to gain international sympathy, it also means that the Islamic Republic must investigate its own failings, which could reveal weaknesses. The death toll continued to rise into Monday, reaching at least 65, Iranian officials said. This is a challenge for Tehran. It can’t ignore the explosion, and it is embarrassing for the regime. On the other hand, it can use this to get sympathy. Iran is trying to shore up support from Russia and China as it navigates a potential deal with the US over its nuclear program. Iran needs to show it is stable and can secure sites such as ports. If it can’t secure them, then how can it secure its nuclear program? However, if the truth is that munitions caused this explosion or Iran was targeted for sabotage, then it will be embarrassing for the government, and they won’t be able to reveal the truth. This will create an even larger headache because they will need to blame the explosion on something. If they try to blame it on some kind of natural accident, then it will seem like incompetence caused the blast.

UK - The commemorations to mark the anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Europe will almost certainly be the last of their kind. Very few combatant survivors of the conflict are alive and even those who lived as children through the war are mostly in their nineties. The collapse of the Soviet Union after a long Cold War was seen by some optimists as marking the end of an era that could conceivably be traced to 1871 and the reunification of the German states. But as eastern European states democratised, Russia remained a threat, despite her apparent desire to join western organisations like the G7. In Vladimir Putin it has a revanchist leader intent on taking back some of the territory lost after 1991. Meanwhile, the other great partner in the victory in Europe, the United States – for the past 80 years a stalwart defender of the continent’s security – can no longer be relied upon to continue in that role.

RUSSIA - Xi Jinping will join Vladimir Putin in Moscow for commemorations of the Allied victory against Nazi Germany, the Kremlin said. The visit, due to take place from May 7 to 10, coincides with heightened tensions between China and the US over severe US trade tariffs and Putin’s order for a three-day truce in Ukraine. Moscow and Beijing declared a “no limits partnership” weeks before the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The two countries have since expanded their trade and military ties in an alliance that has worried the West. Putin’s office said the Chinese president would hold bilateral talks with his Russian counterpart on “developing partnerships and strategic ties” and on “issues on the international and regional agenda”. On Sunday, a spokesman for the Chinese foreign ministry emphasised the country’s historic and strategic ties with Russia at a time when “the international order is undergoing profound adjustments”.

ROMANIA - Nationalist Eurosceptic George Simion won the first round of Romania’s presidential election re-run, final results on Monday showed. Ballots from all polling stations showed that Simion got 41 per cent of the vote, well ahead of Bucharest mayor Nicusor Dan in second place, who received 21 per cent. The pair will meet in a run-off on May 18. Simion, the leader of the radical-right Alliance for Uniting Romanians party (AUR), is a Donald Trump loyalist who likes to wear a Make America Great Again cap. The 38-year-old rails against European Union leaders, opposes military aid to Ukraine and has been banned from entering neighbouring Moldova after calling for it to be incorporated into Romania. If elected, Simion could undermine Romania’s staunch support for Ukraine, which has involved training Ukrainian pilots and donating a Patriot missile defence system to Kyiv. He could also steer Romania towards the pro-Trump, anti-EU positions held by governments in Hungary and Slovakia.

GERMANY - US Vice President JD Vance has compared the German government’s treatment of the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party to rebuilding the Berlin Wall. On Friday, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, the BfV, classified the anti-immigration AfD as an “extremist” organization, citing “xenophobic, anti-minority, Islamophobic, and anti-Muslim statements made by leading party officials.” The label enables police to closely monitor the party’s activities. “The AfD is the most popular party in Germany, and by far the most representative of East Germany. Now the bureaucrats try to destroy it,” Vance wrote on X. “The West tore down the Berlin Wall together. And it has been rebuilt – not by the Soviets or the Russians, but by the German establishment,” he added.

USA - Veteran observers say we are entering the most important period ever in American politics and that the drama is going to be ‘incredible’. It’s 7pm midweek on Capitol Hill and a crowd of Washington’s new movers and shakers have gathered at Butterworth’s restaurant, the salon of choice for the MAGA right, to mark Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office. Pamphlets are scattered around the event — hosted by the conservative Heritage Foundation — heralding Trump’s early achievements: eliminating more than $800 million of DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) initiatives, protecting women and girls, removing government waste, dismantling the administrative state and securing the border.

USA - Gone are the animal spirits rampaging to Make America Great Again. In comes that new bugaboo, “uncertainty”, the lethal scourge of those spirits. “Economic prosperity is excessively dependent on a political and social atmosphere which is congenial to the average businessman,” wrote John Maynard Keynes not quite 90 years ago, while explaining the importance of “animal spirits” to economic growth and rapid innovation. No such atmosphere exists in America today. Instead, the uncongenial beast “uncertainty” has been let loose by a president who might be the only person other than his acolytes who basks in the comfort of certainty. The uncertainty afflicting Americans is not the sort with which investors are expected to cope to earn the profits they seek, or consumers accept as a fact of life when they sign a six-year lease on a new car or a 30-year mortgage on a new home. It is the numbing uncertainty that makes a family hesitate to buy a house.

USA - Donald Trump’s administration has hit out at Germany after the US ally designated the far-Right Alternative for Germany party as an extremist group. JD Vance, the US vice-president, was joined by Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, in condemning the move by Germany’s domestic intelligence service, which gives authorities greater leeway to monitor the group. On Friday, Mr Vance wrote on X: “The West tore down the Berlin Wall together. And it has been rebuilt – not by the Soviets or the Russians, but by the German establishment.” He described the Alternative for Germany party (AfD), which has aligned with the current US administration on key issues including immigration, as “the most popular party in Germany”. Mr Rubio, who is Mr Trump’s national security adviser, wrote on X: “Germany just gave its spy agency new powers to surveil the opposition. That’s not democracy – it’s tyranny in disguise. Germany should reverse course.” He added: “What is truly extremist is not the popular AfD, which took second in the recent election, but rather the establishment’s deadly open border immigration policies that the AfD opposes.”

VATICAN - This will be the first clickbait conclave in history and everyone has a stake in it, not just Catholics. Opponents of the Catholic Church arguably have an even greater stake in this antiquated method for choosing the next pope. Even if you find the Catholic Faith absurd, or loathe everything about the Church, if the person leading 1.4 billion people around the world and at the head of perhaps the most powerful non-secular institution in the last 2,000 years, is at least more to your tastes, then that can help offset the more troubling aspects of Catholicism (its ideas on marriage, contraception, homosexuality, the endless guilt, etc).

MIDDLE EAST - Despite concerted American efforts, the Iran-backed Yemeni group continues to launch missile attacks against Israel and merchant shipping in the Red Sea. For the sailors moving the aircraft around on the hangar deck of USS Harry S Truman last week, the ship’s sudden manoeuvres came as a rude surprise. But what happened next served as a salutary reminder of the costs of the western way of war when confronting an elusive enemy.

ISRAEL - A missile fired from Yemen landed near the main terminal of Israel's Ben Gurion airport on Sunday morning, Israeli authorities said. Unverified footage posted online appeared to show drivers on a road nearby pulled over to take cover as a projectile lands, creating a plume of black smoke near the airport, which is on the outskirts of Tel Aviv. Four people were injured due to the blast, with another two injured on their way to a shelter, Israeli media reported, citing emergency services. Israel's defence minister, Israel Katz, said in a statement: "Anyone who hits us, we will hit them seven times stronger". The Houthis, an Iran-backed rebel group based in Yemen, have regularly launched missile attacks at Israel in solidarity with Hamas in Gaza, but it is rare for one to make it through Israel's air defences.

UK - Bananas that don’t go brown, strawberries that last for weeks, tomatoes boosted with vitamin D: gene-edited foods could be on supermarket shelves as soon as next year as parliament prepares to pass new legislation. Scientists say the proposed rules — which have already passed through the House of Commons and will be debated by the Lords in the final reading on Tuesday — will allow British consumers to benefit from tastier, healthier food with a lower environmental impact. The controversial GM method — which involves taking genes out of one species and inserting them into another — still has a public relations problem. But technology has moved on. These days scientists do not need to find genes from another species: they can simply edit a plant’s genetic code to introduce the traits they want.

SPAIN - Spanish power distributor Red Eléctrica announced on X early Tuesday that 99% of the country's power capacity had been restored following a daylong, unprecedented blackout that plunged much of Europe's Iberian Peninsula into chaos and darkness. The outage paralyzed digital payment systems, disrupted communications, and brought various modes of transportation networks to an apocalyptic standstill. While a Spanish judge has launched an investigation into whether a cyberattack was responsible, early indications suggest the culprit is likely net zero.

USA - I went to the White House Correspondents Dinner, and it was literally insane. I am not saying that, like, as in, we have different politics. I mean, like, actually insane. Delusional. Zero self-awareness, or awareness of reality. Not everyone, but, mostly. Experiencing that in person, talking to them in a social setting, realizing who our media is, gave me an epiphany: media bias isn’t about politics — it’s much more banal — it’s actually just narcissism of people who happen to be Democrats. Like many reading this column, I’m sure, I always thought media bias was political activism. The media isn’t biased because it’s liberal, it’s biased because it has no concept of reality. The people who make media content are incapable of separating their own self-worship from objective truth. Their egos dictate that they are so important, they decide “the truth.”