Pakistan army chief makes second US visit in less than three months – Amu TV

Councils in inner London are set to become the biggest losers under a government plan to update council funding rules, a think tank says. The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) found some London boroughs could see their funding levels drop up to 12% once inflation is taken into account. But areas in outer London are…

Israeli army kills at least 36 Palestinians across enclave, as reality of Netanyahu’s Gaza City takeover plan sinks in.

Beitar Jerusalem fans sparked chaos in Riga, hurling pyrotechnics and setting off flares during their loss to Riga FC.

The puerile standoff between the US and Russia ought to alert a slumbering public to a risk that is in many ways greater than during the cold war

Nuclear weapons – their lethal menace, dark history and future spread – are back in the headlines again and, as usual, the news is worrying, bordering on desperate. Russia’s decision last week to formally abandon the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty banning medium- and short-range nuclear missiles completes the demolition of a key pillar of global arms control. It will accelerate an already frantic nuclear arms race in Europe and Asia at a moment when US and Russian leaders are taunting each other like schoolboys.

Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, has repeatedly threatened the west with nuclear weapons during his war in Ukraine. Last November, Russian forces fired their new Oreshnik hypersonic, nuclear-capable intermediate-range missile at Dnipro. It travels “like a meteorite” at 10 times the speed of sound and can reach any city in Europe, Putin boasted – which, if true, is a clear INF violation. Moscow blames its decision to ditch the treaty on hostile Nato actions. Yet it has long bypassed it in practice, notably by basing missiles in Kaliningrad, the Russian exclave on the Baltic sea, and Belarus.

Simon Tisdall is a Guardian foreign affairs commentator

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