Roundtable

A coordinated series of hoax bomb threats have caused disruption and panic across Europe, grounding planes and forcing schools and TV broadcasters to be evacuated. In the latest wave of warnings, hundreds of schools in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Italy were targeted. They are being treated as hoaxes. It follows similar threats to airlines which caused flights to be grounded or diverted and disr...

World leaders are coming together in Antalya, Türkiye for COP31, the United Nations Climate Conference against a backdrop of record-breaking temperatures, deadly disasters and in the midst of a super El Nino. One major power not sending an official delegation is the United States, one of the world’s top polluters, after President Trump withdraw from the Paris Agreement. The UN is warning that carb...

President Trump has acknowledged that the ongoing war with Iran played a significant role in Republican defeats in the US midterms. The Democrats captured control of both the Senate and the House of Representatives in what analysts are calling a 'blue tsunami'. President Donald Trump will now face a Democratic-controlled Congress for the remainder of his term. But what do the midterm elect...

The UK has responded to a request from its long-standing ally Saudi Arabia to help in its defence against strikes launched by Houthis, an Iran-allied militant group. Recent attacks on Saudi airports, energy facilities and military bases have killed dozens and injured hundreds more. The mission is purely defensive, but how significant is Britain's move and what does it mean for the wider confli...

Cities across Europe have seen mass Gen Z demonstrations as disillusioned youths make their voices heard. France, Italy and Spain have been hotbeds of discontent while Greece, Portugal and Albania have also seen widespread protests. The worst rioting has been in France where building were set on fire, shops looted and over 1,000 people arrested. US President Donald Trump has seized upon the unrest...

Ukraine’s relationship with the United States has become increasingly strained, with the latest spat sparked after disruptions to Ukraine’s Starlink satellites, which are used for military operations. Zelenskyy hit out at President Trump, saying he felt betrayed and laying the blame squarely at Washington. Trump says Zelenskyy needs to agree to a peace deal, and is also calling on Ukraine to hold...

The small Russian territory, Kaliningrad, in the Baltics is adding to rising tensions between Russia and Nato, with President Putin threatening to use "all weapons available" to protect it. The exclave is sandwiched between Nato countries Poland and Lithuania and is a heavily militarised outpost. Moscow claims it has intelligence suggesting that Nato is preparing an air and naval blockad...

The Israeli public go to the polls next week, for the first time since the war on Gaza began three years ago. The election is widely being seen as a referendum on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's leadership. US President Donald Trump is endorsing Netanyahu who is seeking a record seventh term in office,. Since Israel's war on Gaza and the increasing illegal settler violence in the occup...

Spain’s housing crisis has pushed Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez to call a sudden snap election, after his government initially failed to get through emergency laws. Thousands have been protesting in solidarity with an 87-year-old pensioner who was evicted from her home in Madrid, where she lived for seventy years. Her rent had more than tripled after an investment firm bought her building. Sanchez...

President Macron is holding crisis talks after violent protests swept the country, after weeks of student demonstrations. In a televised address, he said France was feeling "anger and shame" to see cities "ransacked". Over half a million mainly peaceful protesters demonstrated on Saturday over lack of funding for schools and cost of living, but they turned violent after groups...

British Prime Minister Andy Burnham has called for closer cooperation with the European Union, saying "sticking with the status quo is not good enough for Britain". He says a new deal could boost growth and tackle illegal immigration. Burnham's comments come ahead of a UK-EU summit in November, and after he stated that leaving the EU had done Britain "more harm than good"....

In this special episode of Roundtable, Enda Brady speaks to Husam Zomlot, Palestine’s Ambassador to the UK. Three years after Israel began its war on Gaza, Zomlot says there has been a ‘public and political shift towards Palestine’ globally. He says it is experiencing a 'South Africa moment' when global opposition towards the apartheid gathered pace. Zomlot praises the beginning of a ‘new...

The reconstruction of Gaza is estimated to cost $71 billion and could take up to a decade, but who will pay to rebuild the devastated region? Nearly 75,000 people have been killed in Gaza, in the three years since Israel began its war on Gaza after October the 7th. Most of Gaza's 2.1 million population are displaced and 82% of buildings destroyed or damaged. Despite a fragile ceasefire, the EU...

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and his party the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) are facing an existential crisis following bruising regional election defeats. The Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania election saw the centre-right CDU fail to reach the five percent threshold, for the first time in a state election since 1949. The far-right AfD won with 38 percent of the vote. Merz, who has been chance...

Leading voices in big tech, including Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and OpenAI's Sam Altman, are warning AI development needs to slow down to address serious safety risks. It's an issue that AI insider Connor Leahy has been sounding the alarm about for years, believing it could wipe out humanity and we are very close to a "tipping point". TRT World’s Roundtable's Enda Brady spea...

Canada and the EU look to be drawing closer together after Ursula von der Leyen made an unprecedented offer of associate membership of the European Union to Canada. The two have pledged to work together in the face of what they see as aggression from President Trump’s America. Trump says the membership offer is ‘laughable’. Relations between Ottawa and Washington have deteriorated sharply since Tr...

The nationalist parties of the UK's devolved governments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have warned 'Westminster’s time is coming to an end'. The Scottish National Party, Wales’ Plaid Cymru and all-Ireland Sinn Féin joined forces to sign a declaration on their ‘right to self determination’. Scotland’s First Minister John Swinney and Northern Ireland’s First Minister Michelle O...

The 81st UN General Assembly is underway in New York, with nearly 130 world leaders gathering to discuss wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, humanitarian crises and the rapid development of AI. This year’s theme is ‘Restoring trust, managing transformation: a United Nations that delivers for all.’ But behind the speeches is another pressing question: who can the UN rely on for financial support?...

Mass anti-migrant protests have been erupting in Britain with hundreds of masked men blocking England's busiest port Dover and in Portsmouth where a mega dinghy carrying 140 migrants landed. Riot police clashed with the demonstrators as they tried to stop a bus carrying asylum seekers from leaving. During the most recent protests in Portsmouth two men and a teenage boy were arrested. The governmen...

The Alternative for Deutschland party has won an historic victory in the Saxony-Anhalt state election. The right-wing anti-migrant party took 43.8% of the vote to win its first state premiership and is in seeking support from other parties in order to govern. For months the AfD has also been riding high in national opinion polls as the country’s most popular party. Where does this leave the unpopu...

The UK Metropolitan Police is carrying out a criminal investigation into allegations the Reform party broke electoral law by accepting foreign funding, following a Channel 4 news undercover report. Two of the party's top aides James Orr and Dan Jukes who were filmed in the report resigned over the scandal. Reform UK spokesperson said the party ‘denies any wrongdoing and will fully cooperate with t...

Germany has blamed Russia for an attempted drone attack at Leipzig airport as tensions between the two countries escalate. The EU has vowed to increase pressure on Russia with new sanctions. Russian President Vladimir Putin says there is no evidence and claims the Leipzig incident was linked to Germany's political situation. As relations between the two countries nosedive, Germany is planning a $1...

Ukraine's ousted defence minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, has triggered a major political controversy by calling for presidential elections in a direct challenge to President Zelenskyy's leadership. Accusing Zelenskyy's government of corruption, Fedorov has broken a major wartime political taboo by calling for elections to be held while Ukraine is at war, saying democracy cannot be 'held hostage by Rus...

Russia has issued the UK with another warning after Britain announced it will provide Ukraine with blueprints for the Storm Shadow missile, allowing Kiev to explore domestic production of the long-range weapon. The plan was announced by UK’s new prime minister Andy Burnham during his first international visit. He was in Kiev for the country’s 35th Independence Day to show his support for Ukraine....

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has a new challenger threatening to split the right ahead of next year's election. The charismatic former army general Roberto Vannacci and his new far-right party National Future has been gaining support in Italy with a tough stance on immigration at its core. Vannacci separated from Matteo Salvini’s LEGA, part of the ruling coalition, earlier this year and N...