Top World News

Feb 16, 2026 - World

An economic plan from world leaders could reduce the impact of Donald Trump's tariff policy worldwide, insiders say. The president's economic plan, which he implemented during his second term, has caused disruptions domestically and internationally. World leaders are now seeking a way through the economic spiral, and Canadian PM Mark Carney is believed to be at the helm of this plan. Insiders, speaking to Politico, confirmed there are nearly 40 countries interested in the talks. A Canadian government official said, "The work is definitely coming along. We’ve had very fruitful discussions on it with other partners around the world."Both the European Union and members of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, including Canada, Mexico, and Australia, are keen to stand against Trump's economic policies and their effects on the wider world. A Japanese trade official said, "We see a lot of value in increasing trade among the EU and CPTPP parties, which would also contribute to enhancing supply chain resilience."Another diplomat from an unnamed nation spoke positively of the possible alliance between the EU and CPTPP. They said, "If the EU is up for the conversation, then of course it would make things very interesting indeed."Klemens Kober, director of trade policy, EU customs and transatlantic relations at the German Chamber of Commerce and Industry, also confirmed relevant parties were looking into an agreement which, if signed, could hinder Trump and his administration's hold on world economics.All relevant actors are looking at it," Kober said. "If there can be a focus on having these rules as harmonized and simple as possible, as part of these negotiations, that could prove advantageous for German companies."Having the possibility of cumulating origin between different FTAs is very useful. We hope that if that’s a success, if you can see tangible benefits in different areas, that could also entice other countries to join in and team up in a positive sense. So the more the merrier."

Feb 16, 2026 - World

The Guardian’s community affairs correspondent, Chris Osuh, reports on the plot by two IS terrorists to massacre Jews in Manchester, and how it was thwarted by an undercover stingWalid Saadaoui had once worked as a holiday entertainer, organising dance shows and quizzes at a resort in his native Tunisia. After moving to the UK and marrying a British woman, he became a restaurateur and an avid keeper of birds.All the while, however – as the Guardian’s community affairs correspondent, Chris Osuh, explains – he was hiding a secret: he had pledged allegiance to Islamic State. Continue reading...

Feb 15, 2026 - World

At this point, you have probably heard enough about the effect of Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show on the president and his coalition. While there are plenty of details to debate, including the ludicrous allegation that the Grammy-winner’s performance was “pure smut,” I think it’s important to keep your eyes fixed on what’s really at stake.Rightwingers don’t mind “indecent acts,” as their protection of “the Epstein class” should attest. What they mind is a global superstar, who originates from Puerto Rico and whose native language is Spanish, making affirmative claims about who belongs in America.Bad Bunny’s halftime show was an extension of remarks he made two weekends ago after winning six Grammys. “Before I say thanks to God, I’m going to say ICE out,” he said. “We’re not savage. We’re not animals. We’re not aliens. We are humans and we are Americans.”His argument in favor of kindness and common cause, and in defense of diversity and inclusion, was later immortalized on words written on a football — “Together, we are America” — and it lay beneath a spectacle seen by 135 million, according to the Daily News.The strength of Bad Bunny’s argument was enhanced by the impotence of its counterpart. Turning Point USA, the hate group founded by the late Charlie Kirk, organized an alternate musical event. Emceed by Kid Rock, the show’s message was, more or less, America is for “us,” not “them.” According to the Daily News, just 6 million watched it.That’s their beef.Donald Trump and his rightwing allies will not believe their vision of America — essentially, a racially exclusive club — is unpopular. They will never accept that America has fallen in love with a man who was born Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, who was bagging groceries a decade ago before rising to Spotify’s top global artist, who welcomes everyone and whose life embodies the American Dream.So they smear him, accusing him of involvement in a criminal conspiracy to somehow force Americans into loving him against their will. That’s the thinking behind a new complaint by US Congressman Andy Ogles. The Tennessee Republican described the Super Bowl halftime show as "pure smut" featuring "explicit displays of gay sexual acts, women gyrating provocatively, and Bad Bunny shamelessly grabbing his crotch while dry-humping the air."Ogles continued, saying Bad Bunny "openly glorified sodomy and countless other unspeakable depravities." Ogles said "these flagrant, indecent acts" break federal law regulating television airwaves. He called for an investigation in a letter to the chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which oversees broadcast regulations.But such allegations are decoys. Rightwingers do not care about “family values.” If they did, they would not tolerate the incarceration of babies. (The youngest person in the Dilley Detention Center in Texas is 2 months old, according to Univision.) Rightwingers do not care about higher-order things, only whether they can be used to accomplish their goals.In this case, the goal is discrediting a global superstar who is popularizing a new and dangerous idea of belonging in America. You don’t need to pass a test. You don’t have to know the rules. You don’t even need the correct paperwork. If you’re here, you’re American.Because “together, we are America.”“Together, we are America” is new, as it casts immigration in the context of brotherhood, so the burden of government is finding ways of turning a fact of life into a fact of law.It is dangerous, as it upends a decade of rightwing effort to move public understanding of immigration away from a matter of freedom and opportunity to a matter of crime and punishment. The burden is now entirely on individuals. They’re presumed guilty until proven innocent. “Together, we are America” has the potential of turning that around.Bad Bunny’s ethic of belonging is dangerous for another reason. It comes as the logical conclusion to ten years of fear-mongering and hate speech is coming into view: families ripped apart, communities shredded, citizens murdered and concentration camps opening.Even respectable white people, or “independent voters,” are recoiling (mostly because they are shocked to learn that an “immigration crackdown” includes them). Thanks to the horrors the country has witnessed over the last month, they are now open to alternatives, especially alternatives being advanced by the most popular performing artist on the planet.Right now, the focus is on ICE and its crimes. That, however, is like the allegation that Bad Bunny’s show was “pure smut” — it limits politics to terms favorable to Trump. “Abolish ICE” should be part of a bigger picture so the meaning of belonging is radically redefined.Immigrants are Americans. They might not speak the language. They might not know the rules. They might not have the right papers. But they are here. That makes them American.The question is not if they are, but when it becomes official.

Feb 15, 2026 - World

Mohan Karki – one of many people ICE has deported to countries with which they have little connection – leaves behind his wife and seven-month-old baby he has yet to holdTika Basnet sat facing the glow of her iPhone, a red tika pressed into the center of her forehead. Seven-month-old Briana slept on her lap, her breathing soft and uneven. On the other side of the screen was Mohan Karki, Basnet’s husband, who had yet to hold his daughter.For Karki, nearly 9,000 miles (14,500km) away, it was already morning. He was in hiding in south Asia, his exact location withheld for his safety, his face breaking into pixels as he watched his daughter sleep. Continue reading...

Feb 15, 2026 - World

Parts of the winter world are frozen. Europe, the U.S. Midwest, and even southern states are enduring the worst cold in years as the North Pole rapidly melts, pushing frigid Arctic air through a weakened polar vortex into non-Arctic regions. So far, in the U.S., power grids are holding. Although some states experienced significant power outages in late January, they were short-lived. Ukrainians are not so lucky.A monster tries to freeze a nationOn Feb. 13, more than half the residents of Ukraine woke up in one of the coldest winters on record with no heat, no electricity, and no water. Ukrainians are fighting both climate change and a Russian invasion, both driven by evil and greed.When he attacked Ukraine in 2022, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin began strategically targeting its power grid, bombing one facility more than 200 times. By December 2024, more than half of Ukraine's energy-generating capacity had been knocked out. Now, roughly 60 percent of Ukraine’s families are living without heat during an extreme subzero winter, sleeping with pets and barn animals to share body heat and keep children alive.Putin has targeted high-voltage substations and power lines to break electricity connections within and between geographic regions. Ukraine’s Minister of Energy, Denys Shmyhal, acknowledged that there is “not a single power plant in Ukraine” that Putin hasn’t bombed. Putin’s “plan is instability through total blackout.” An American president celebrates a war criminalCutting off heat, electricity and water, deliberately freezing and starving non-combatant civilians to death, is a war crime. Kidnapping young Ukrainian children, stealing them to punish, torture or indoctrinate, is also a war crime. By credible counts, more than 19,000 Ukrainian children have been taken in Putin’s sick push to erase Ukraine’s national identity.Putin is not only committing high-visibility war crimes in Ukraine as he murders critics at home, he is also responsible for the deaths of more than 50,000 Ukrainians whose only offense was choosing democracy over dictatorship.In March 2023, the International Criminal Court issued a warrant for Putin’s arrest. As a result, he is now barred from entering more than 120 nations including nearly all of Europe, where border officials would immediately arrest him for crimes against humanity. Despite the ICC warrant, in August, 2025, Trump mocked the international rule of law and welcomed Putin on Alaskan soil.Putin is a notorious war criminal, an international pariah hated by leaders of the free world. So, on Jan. 28, when Trump installed a framed photo of Putin, standing side by side with Trump, in the White House, the collective response was disbelief.Leaders of the free world are aghast. As one European leader quipped, “The U.S. president considers it appropriate to hang on the White House wall a photo of the greatest war criminal of the 21st century.” Meanwhile, Trump is too compromised — financially, politically, or cognitively — to comprehend that honoring THE enemy of NATO in the White House spits in the face of our allies, not to mention our veterans.Get a roomJournalist Michael Andersen, who has written about Ukraine and the former U.S.S.R. for 15 years, asks whether Americans know, or even care, how this feels to people in Ukraine. He writes: Dear Americans, your president just put up a photo in the White House of himself and the biggest war criminal of the 21st century, the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. It is ‘perfectly’ timed to mark that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is about to enter its fifth year. Do you understand the feeling this provokes in Ukraine? In Europe? 10 million Ukrainians have been forced to run away from their homes, maybe 200,000 have been killed — and your country celebrates the monster responsible?It’s a fair question. Political analysts have long speculated that Trump owes Putin something considerable. The sooner main stream media stop sugarcoating the obvious, the better.A love that was never freeIn the late 1990s, after U.S. banks stopped lending money to the Trump Organization due to its repeated bankruptcies, Trump sought and obtained alternative financing from Russian sources. Since then, his financial ties to former Russian apparatchiks have only grown. Trump-branded condos in New York and Florida are owned by wealthy Russians, often purchased through shell companies. In 2019, Newsweek reported that “Crime Infested” Trump Tower was home to convicted Russian criminals and “mobster tenants.” Trump’s financial ties to Russia are beyond speculation: Eric Trump told a reporter that Trump’s businesses “have all the funding we need out of Russia.” KGB-trained Putin plays Trump like a cheap instrument: through flattery. In October, when Putin complimented Trump’s ability to “solve complex problems” and fix “crises that last for decades,” Trump ran to post a video of Putin’s praise, writing, “Thank you to President Putin!” That Trump has solved anything, complex or otherwise, comes as a surprise to Americans suffering under his asinine tariffs, unsolved inflation, climate denial, and massive civil rights violations. That he is too stupid or narcissistic to understand how honoring Putin hurts our allies, compromising America’s vital security interests in a real and material way, is dangerous.Michael Andersen finished his commentary on Putin’s new photograph in the White House by asking, “Where is your red line, Americans?” If a Putin photo in the White House is fine with Americans, “How about one of Adolf Hitler?” It’s another fair question.Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.