Starmer Faces Predictable Outcry Over Hiring of Mandelson

February 7, 2026

Starmer's predictable scandal over Mandelson appointment — Keir Starmer (R) said that Peter Mandelson had 'let his country down'

A Man of Many Shadows: How a Tainted Appointment Has Shaken the Heart of British Politics

The first thing you notice walking past Downing Street these days is the quiet — a different kind of hush than the hurried, purposeful hum of government in action. It’s the soft, stunned silence of an institution that has misjudged the cost of one decision.

At the center of that miscalculation is Peter Mandelson: brilliant, contrarian, famously slippery, and now a lightning rod in a scandal that has rolled across the fabric of British public life. His appointment as ambassador to Washington last year read, on the surface, like a calculated masterstroke — an envoy who could charm billionaires, talk the talk of the global elite, and navigate an increasingly transactional world of 21st-century diplomacy. But beneath that calculation lay older stories that never quite go away: a secretive past, awkward friendships, and a reputation for treating truth as negotiable.

From Backroom Powerbroker to Diplomatic Flashpoint

Mandelson’s career is the stuff of political myth. He was a key architect of New Labour, a kingmaker who knew how to gather influence without always being the one to wear it. His fall from grace in 1998 — precipitated by an undeclared loan of £373,000 — and a second resignation in 2001 over passport controversy are woven into his public legend. To many, he has long been “the Prince of Darkness”: a man for whom spin, secrecy and survival blended into the craft of politics.

Those who have watched him up close were not surprised to learn of his links to Jeffrey Epstein — the disgraced financier, convicted in 2008 for solicitation of prostitution, and later arrested in 2019 on sex trafficking charges before his death. That revelation, made public in a new tranche of emails released by the U.S. Department of Justice, included an especially awkward detail: Mandelson had sent a draft of his memoir to Epstein for feedback. Epstein called it “gossipy and defensive.” It is a line that has the power to unmake reputations.

Why the Appointment Felt Risky

In February, when Mandelson took up the ambassadorial role in Washington, the move seemed tailor-made to a modern calculus of power: if you need to talk to people who prize prestige and performance, send someone who speaks their language. Donald Trump — then, as ever, a showman-in-chief — responds to those trappings. Mandelson, with his private-jet acquaintance and velvet handshake, was a plausible messenger.

What the government appears to have underestimated was the weight of his personal history. Appointing a figure who had long been associated with moral ambiguity — and who had been linked to a convicted sex offender — turned a tactical experiment into a reputational crisis.

The Man Behind the Recommendation

No account of this episode can ignore the role of Morgan McSweeney, the Irish-born chief of staff who, according to multiple reports and sources inside Labour circles, personally championed Mandelson’s selection. McSweeney and Mandelson go back decades: a political protégé relationship that, some say, has echoes of the master-apprentice world Mandelson himself inhabited.

“He believed Peter could handle the theatre of Washington,” said a former aide. “He believed the optics of power would win the day.” But when ministers and diplomats raised objections — including the Foreign Office, which had hoped Karen Pierce, the outgoing ambassador dubbed “the Trump Whisperer,” would remain — McSweeney pushed on. When further revelations about Mandelson and Epstein surfaced in September, those same sources say McSweeney urged caution about making a swift dismissal.

“It felt like loyalty, not judgement,” a senior Labour MP told me. “And loyalty is fine until it costs you the one thing you cannot easily buy back: public trust.”

Displaced Diplomacy: The Karen Pierce Dimension

Karen Pierce had been comfortable in Washington. A career diplomat, she had a reputation for steadying a rocky transatlantic relationship. She was the kind of envoy who builds quiet access: back-channel conversations, clarifying notes, the patient diplomacy that seldom registers on front pages but is essential in crisis. Her displacement for Mandelson added to the tensions — a reminder that the choices of a few in Westminster ripple through embassies and alliances.

When Political Theatre Meets Real-World Stakes

There are two strands to this saga. One is the personal: a quarrel with judgement, a string of bad intuitions about who to trust. The other is systemic: how modern governments make decisions in an era that values showmanship and elite fluency, sometimes at the expense of probity.

Across the world, electorates are growing intolerant of opacity. Corruption, cronyism and the whisper networks of power rank high on public lists of grievances. When leaders choose insiders whose reputations are already compromised, they risk not only the immediate fallout but the slow erosion of legitimacy.

Peter Mandelson — longtime Labour insider; past cabinet minister; published memoir “The Third Man” in 2010.
Jeffrey Epstein — convicted in 2008; arrested again in 2019; died in custody that year. Emails linking him to public figures continue to surface.
Morgan McSweeney — chief of staff and longtime Mandelson ally, reported to have recommended the ambassadorial appointment.
Karen Pierce — the experienced diplomat sidelined amid the controversy.

What This Means for Leadership and Trust

Ask yourself: would you rather be led by the person who can tell the most convincing story or by the one who makes the fewest compromises? For many voters, that question isn’t academic. It shapes whether they see a government as competent or captured.

Keir Starmer’s office insists he was misled about the depth of Mandelson’s ties. The defence has a ring of familiarity — leaders often plead ignorance when a scandal bubbles up — but in this case, the figure being defended was hardly unknown. Mandelson’s history is public. His patterns were plain to those who chose to look for them.

“You don’t appoint someone like this by accident,” said a former Downing Street adviser. “This is a choice. Leadership is the sum of your choices, and now those choices are being judged in the harsh light of public disgust.”

Where Do We Go From Here?

The Mandelson affair is not merely a tale about a single man and a single ambassadorial post. It’s a mirror held up to wider questions: How do modern governments balance pragmatic access to power with ethical red lines? How much does old-style patronage still shape 21st-century democracies? And when the machinery of state wields influence through courtiers rather than institutions, who is really running the show?

Whatever happens next — resignations, inquiries, the release of more files — the deeper consequence may be a long, public reckoning about proximity to power and the kind of politics voters want. For now, Downing Street has to manage optics, allies, and the steady drumbeat of mistrust. Outside, citizens watch, coffee cooling in their hands, and ask the question that has always haunted democracies: who can be trusted to tell the truth?

In the end, this is not only a story about one man who lives in the shadows. It is about a political culture that still rewards those who move comfortably between power and privilege, and about a public that appears increasingly unwilling to forgive the price of that comfort.

What would you do if you had to choose between performance and principle? The answer may determine more than one ambassador’s fate—it may chart the course of a government trying to find its moral compass.

Authorities warn over planned protests during Israeli president’s Sydney visit

hanad

February 7, 2026

Protesters warned over Israeli president's Sydney visit — Isaac Herzog, Israel's president is visiting Australia to honour victims of the Bondi Beach massacre

In the Shadow of Bondi: Sydney Braces as Israel’s President Visits

Sydney in early summer is supposed to hum with surfers, café chatter and the warm creak of tram wires. Instead, the city is taut with something else—grief braided to anger, memory braided to caution—because visitors in dark suits will walk past memorial candles and fresh flowers to meet a community still counting wounds.

On Monday, Israeli President Isaac Herzog arrives for a four-day visit that his aides say is meant to “express solidarity and offer strength” to Jewish Australians after the Bondi Beach massacre that stunned the nation on December 14, 2023. Fifteen people were killed in that attack, and the memory of that night still lingers in the salt air and on the plaques pinned to lamp posts across eastern Sydney.

“It’s really important that there’s no clashes or violence on the streets in Sydney,” New South Wales Premier Chris Minns told reporters this week, urging calm as officials prepare for what they call a “major event.” For residents of Bondi and visitors to the city, that sentence carries more than procedural weight—it is a plea to hold back the flashpoint emotions that have been building for months.

Police, Protests and the Tightrope of Public Order

Authorities have signalled that the capital will be heavily policed. “We will have a massive policing presence,” Minns promised, and NSW police have invoked special powers that allow them to separate groups and thwart confrontations. The language is procedural, but on the street it means barricades, strategic road closures and a visible force designed to prevent what everyone fears: the moment two grieving crowds lock eyes and tempers spill into violence.

Pro-Palestinian activists across Australia have called for demonstrations to coincide with Herzog’s visit. Some marches will go ahead in cities and towns, while in parts of central Sydney police have refused authorisation for protests under the newer powers introduced after Bondi—measures designed to protect public safety but which some civil liberties groups say risk chilling dissent.

“We are not here to provoke—people are here to mourn, to demand accountability, to call for an end to violence,” said a pro-Palestinian organiser, who asked not to be named because of the sensitive policing environment. “But when official plans mean our voices are pushed to the margins, tensions build.”

Two Narratives in Collision

To many Jewish Australians, Herzog’s visit is galvanising. “His visit will lift the spirits of a pained community,” Alex Ryvchin, co-chief executive of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, said, reflecting a widespread desire among Jewish community leaders for recognition and reassurance. For families who lost loved ones that night, and for people who feel the ground has shifted beneath them, the president’s presence is a signal that they are not alone.

For others, however, the visit is a provocation. Amnesty International Australia has urged supporters to rally for an end to what it calls “genocide” against Palestinians and has pushed for investigations into alleged war crimes; Chris Sidoti, a prominent human rights lawyer who sat on a UN-established inquiry, called for Herzog’s invitation to be withdrawn or for his arrest upon arrival. In 2025, the UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry reported that Mr Herzog had “incited the commission of genocide” by suggesting collective responsibility of Palestinians for the 7 October 2023 Hamas attacks—a finding that remains deeply contentious and resonates loudly with activists here.

That cacophony of accusation and defense is mirrored in living rooms and cafés across Sydney. “We can’t allow the streets to be another battlefield,” said Marisol, a Bondi café owner who has been serving free coffee to mourners at an informal memorial. “People come in with tears. They want comfort, not a news cycle spectacle.”

Law, Immunity and the Limits of Accountability

Central to the debate is a knot of international law and national politics: visiting heads of state generally enjoy broad immunity under the Vienna Convention. Australia’s federal police told legislators that they received legal advice suggesting President Herzog has “full immunity” from civil and criminal proceedings during his visit, a position that effectively rules out arrest despite calls from human rights advocates.

“Heads of state are afforded protections in almost every jurisdiction to prevent diplomatic incidents,” a legal scholar at an Australian university explained. “That does not mean claims of wrongdoing vanish. It means the route to accountability is often political and diplomatic rather than judicial in the moment.”

The question many Australians are asking is uncomfortable and consequential: how do you balance a nation’s obligations to host foreign dignitaries—and the legal immunities that accompany them—with a community’s urgent calls for justice? It’s a debate that reaches beyond Sydney, touching on global norms about immunity, impunity and the architecture of international accountability.

Local Voices: Grief, Fear and the Desire for Normalcy

For people on the ground, these are not abstract arguments. They are daily realities. “Since 2023 there’s been a noticeable uptick in antisemitic incidents in our neighbourhood,” said Rabbi Jonah Levin, who runs a community outreach program in the suburbs east of the city. “People whisper that they don’t feel safe walking to synagogue on certain days. That’s a terrible thing to say about our city.”

Across the divide, young activists describe a different fear. “We don’t want our protests to be written off as violence,” said Layla, a 22-year-old student who plans to join a peaceful march. “We want our message heard: stop the killing. We want humanity for Palestinians and for Israelis who oppose the government’s policies.”

Both sides, it seems, live with a sense of vulnerability: vulnerability to renewed bloodshed, to the overreach of state power, to the slow erosion of public discourse into moral absolutes. What holds them together, precariously, is a city’s commitment to public order and to the rule of law.

What This Visit Says About Our Times

This visit is more than a diplomatic courtesy. It is a mirror of global fractures: the migration of political conflicts into diasporic spaces, the role of international law when moral outrage circulates faster than courtrooms can convene, and the way local communities become canvases for distant wars.

What will Monday look like? For now, Sydney plans for heavy policing and for separated protest zones—an operational answer to a moral problem. But operational answers have limits. Will this visit soothe a grieving community? Will it widen rifts? Will it help carve out a path toward accountability, or will it harden positions?

These are questions that do not have neat answers, and they are questions that invite citizens everywhere to reflect on how democracies manage grief, dissent and the rule of law in a world where local streets are rarely insulated from global conflicts.

After the Visit

When the motorcade leaves and the barricades lift, Sydney will return to its coastal rhythms. But the echoes of this visit—and the longer debates it has stoked—will linger. The hope, fragile but real, is that the conversations that unfold in living rooms and council chambers will be guided by the same care people have shown at memorials: a desire for truth, a yearning for safety, and a willingness to listen.

What would you want your city to do when an international flashpoint lands on your doorstep? How do we keep streets safe without silencing protest? These are the questions Sydney is trying to answer now, and their implications will ripple far beyond its beaches.

US pushes for new trilateral nuclear pact with Russia and China

hanad

February 7, 2026

US urges new three-way nuclear deal with Russia and China — A Chinese land-based intercontinental ballistic missile on display in Tiananmen Square in Beijing in September 2025

After the Treaty: A Quiet Moment Before a Dangerous Tomorrow

There was an almost ceremonial silence in Geneva the day the last pillar of the post‑Cold War nuclear order fell away. Diplomats shuffled papers. Cameras flashed. Outside, the city’s baristas poured espresso and the lake glinted like a promise that cannot be kept. Inside the Conference on Disarmament, a familiar refrain about stability being “at risk” echoed down marble corridors. But what does the end of an agreement on paper feel like to people on the ground — and what kind of world are we walking into now?

For nearly two decades, a single treaty — the one that capped deployed nuclear warheads for the United States and Russia at 1,550 each — provided a thin, steadying scaffold to global strategic calculations. It was never perfect. It never restrained modern delivery systems, or sat across from emerging nuclear states. Still, when it expired, the sense among many in the room was less of closure than of falling asleep at the shallow end of a very deep pool.

Voices from the Hall and the Street

“We’ve outgrown the architecture that kept us honest,” said a senior U.S. arms‑control official I spoke with in Geneva, his voice low enough to be private but certain in tone. “This isn’t nostalgia for treaties past. It’s a call to design rules that fit the weapons of today.”

Across the hall, a Chinese diplomat politely but firmly declined such a shot at multilateral reinvention. “China’s arsenal is not at the same scale as that of the United States or Russia,” a diplomatic source told me, reflecting a line repeated in official statements. “We will not join in negotiations that presuppose equivalence.”

And in a small café down the alley from the UN complex, an ambassador from a non‑nuclear NATO country shrugged. “We need restraint on all sides,” she said, stirring her coffee slowly. “It’s not only about numbers. It’s about signalling: will states refrain from threats that lower the threshold for use?”

Local Color: Geneva’s Quiet Contrast

The city itself seemed to offer a metaphor. Lined with chestnut trees and manicured lawns, Geneva has hosted peace talks and treaties for a century. Yet even here the news felt oddly discordant — the placid promenades beneath Mont Blanc presiding over talk of weapons designed to erase cities. A street vendor unloading fresh croissants muttered, “Everything is politics now,” as if nuclear strategy were a weather report.

What the Numbers Tell Us — and What They Don’t

Here are the basic facts that anchor the anxiety: the treaty that has lapsed capped deployed strategic warheads at 1,550 for the two superpowers. Beyond those caps, global inventories — held by nine nuclear‑armed countries — are estimated in the low tens of thousands. Independent trackers place the world’s total arsenal at roughly 12,000–13,000 warheads, a small fraction of Cold War peaks but still a force that could wreck whole regions.

Numbers, however, can be misleading. They do not count the speed of deliveries, the advent of hypersonics, the muddiness introduced by dual‑use platforms, or the digital vulnerabilities that could trigger false alarms. They don’t measure the erosion of mutual trust — the slow, corrosive effect of words like “violation” and “modernization.”

Why This Matters Beyond Capitals

Imagine living in a town that was once a quiet industrial hub. One day, two big firms collide and sign a safety pact that keeps both factories from working on explosive new dyes. For thirty years the pact holds and life continues. Then the pact lapses. Workers are not just nervous about numbers on paper; they worry about rainwater contamination, about school closures, about jobs redirected to weapon labs. That’s the human dimension often missing from diplomatic statements.

The end of this treaty matters because it makes planning harder for ordinary citizens and for small states that have long relied on the predictability of superpower calculations. Neighborhoods near missile bases, communities dependent on defense spending — their futures are tethered to decisions made in faraway capitals. And on the global scale, the treaty’s lapse injects uncertainty into markets, alliances, and humanitarian planning.

Arguments and Counterarguments

Proponents of a new, wider agreement argue that the old deal was built for a bipolar world. “We can’t freeze a system that never addressed emerging actors or technologies,” said an arms‑control scholar at a Geneva think tank. “Any new architecture must include transparency measures for more countries and rules for novel delivery modes.”

Opponents push back hard. “You can’t bind unequal arsenals with the same yardstick,” a European defense analyst told me. “And you can’t ask a rapidly modernizing power to accept limits that preserve a rival’s unilateral advantage.” This argument feeds the very logic that accelerates an arms race: if one side refuses constraints, others feel they must catch up.

Paths Forward — Fragile and Contested

So what can be done? Here are some proposals circulating in diplomatic backrooms and academic journals:

Interim restraint measures: A voluntary, time‑limited pledge by the largest arsenals to maintain ceilings while negotiations continue.
Broadened transparency: Confidence‑building steps that include more states through declarations, inspections, and data exchanges.
Technology‑specific rules: Agreements that limit certain delivery systems or tactics — for example, restrictions on the early use of tactical nuclear weapons or on destabilizing missile defenses.

Each path is fraught. Each requires trust that is currently in short supply. And each would demand political courage at home — leaders willing to face domestic critics who portray disarmament as naive or dangerous.

What Should Worry Us Most?

Not every lapse in diplomacy turns into catastrophe. But the danger now is not a single headline. It’s the cumulative erosion of norms: the steady, almost invisible normalization of rhetoric that contemplates the actual use of nuclear weapons, the patchwork of modernizations that make arms cheaper and faster, and the sidelining of multilateral forums where crises can be cooled.

Ask yourself: do we want a future where the only way to gain confidence is through parity of arsenals? Or could we imagine a layered system where verification, regional groupings, and technological guardrails make living under deterrence less precarious?

Closing Thought

There is a strange intimacy to the threats we face. The same technologies that let us speak instantly across continents also make the misstep that much more devastating. Diplomacy in this era will need to be as nimble as the technologies it seeks to contain and as humane as the people it aims to protect.

“We’re at a crossroads, not a dead end,” a former negotiator told me as we watched dusk settle over Lake Geneva. “But crossroads require a map. Right now, we’re arguing over who gets to draw it.”

Will the major powers sit down and draft a modern compass — or will they drift, each following its own course, toward an uncertain horizon? The answer will shape the century in ways our grandchildren will either curse or bless.

Islamabad mosque explosion kills at least 31, injures 130

hanad

February 7, 2026

At least 31 dead, 130 injured in Islamabad mosque blast — Security forces are seen at the site of a suicide attack at the mosque

A Quiet Morning Shattered: Inside the Islamabad Mosque Blast

There are mornings in Islamabad when the light falls soft across manicured lawns and glass-fronted ministries, and then there are mornings that undo the fabric of a city. Tuesday’s attack at the Imam Bargah Qasr-e-Khadijatul Kubra, a Shia mosque tucked into the Tarlai outskirts, was of the latter kind: a rupture that left bodies, questions and raw grief in its wake.

Local officials say at least 31 people were killed and more than 130 wounded after a suicide bomber detonated at the mosque’s gate after morning prayers. Authorities warned the toll could yet climb as hospitals scramble to treat the injured and families search for missing loved ones.

The Moment It Happened

The blast came when the mosque was brimming — a common scene across Pakistan after dawn prayers, when community life briefly gathers inside carpeted halls. “He was stopped at the gate and detonated himself,” a senior security source told journalists on condition of anonymity, reflecting the chaos of the moment and the razor-thin margin between prevention and catastrophe.

Witnesses and hospital staff described a scene that shifted from ordinary worship to emergency. Medics and volunteers unloaded the wounded from ambulances and private cars; at least one casualty was carried in the boot of a vehicle. Videos shared on social media showed shoes and clothing scattered across the red-carpeted prayer hall and bodies lying near the entryway — images that authorities said were being verified.

Outside the mosque, yellow crime-scene tape fluttered in the breeze. Broken glass, a child’s shoe, a prayer mat stained with dust and blood: small, human artifacts of a violent interruption. Armored security forces sealed off the area, and investigators combed the site for clues.

On the Ground: Voices and Scenes

“There was a sound like a thunderclap,” said one worshipper who survived the blast, his voice low and rough. “People fell like trees. I pulled my neighbor out by his feet.”

At the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences, relatives paced, their faces a map of shock and disbelief. A nurse wiped her hands and said, “We’ve treated adults, children — so many of them. Our corridors are full. We don’t have enough beds.” The urgency at the hospital pulsed like a second heartbeat for the city that morning.

“This was a place where my children learned to read the Quran,” whispered a woman who had come with white cloths to collect a relative. “I cannot believe it happened here.”

Leadership Speaks — And the Wider Context

Pakistan’s leadership was swift in condemnation. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif vowed that those responsible would be found and brought to justice, while Deputy Prime Minister Ishaq Dar labeled the attack “a heinous crime against humanity and a blatant violation of Islamic principles,” posting his condemnation on social media.

No group immediately claimed responsibility. The attack lands at a fraught moment for Pakistan, which is battling intensifying insurgencies on multiple fronts — Islamist militants in the north, separatist violence in the southwest, and a long-standing problem of sectarian attacks directed at the Shia community. Shias make up roughly 10–15% of Pakistan’s population of around 240 million, and they have been targeted in repeated incidents over past decades.

The capital itself has not been untouched: the last major strike in Islamabad was a suicide blast outside a court in November that killed 12 people — the first such high-profile attack on the capital in nearly three years. In neighboring Balochistan, violence has surged recently; separatist attacks in the province last week reportedly killed dozens of civilians and security personnel, prompting major counter-operations in which authorities said nearly 200 militants were killed.

Safe Havens, Blurred Borders

Islamabad has accused armed groups operating in southern Balochistan and the northwestern borderlands of using neighboring Afghan territory as a sanctuary to plan and stage attacks — a charge repeatedly denied by Afghanistan’s Taliban government. Cross-border clashes and diplomatic frost have made the region ever more combustible, and this latest strike underscores how porous and politically charged those lines remain.

The Human Toll

Count the bodies. Count the funerals. Count the empty rooms and the schoolbags left where children once slept. The numbers — 31 dead, 130-plus wounded — carry weight, but they do not begin to capture the texture of the losses: a father’s palm missing at the dinner table, a teenage voice never heard again, the small rituals of a neighborhood wiped clean.

“My cousin was a teacher at the madrassa next door,” said an elderly man with tears in his eyes. “He would sit with the children after prayers and tell them about numbers and poems. Now there is a hole where he used to be.”

What Does This Mean for Pakistan — and for Us?

This is not just another item on a news ticker. It’s a mirror reflecting several broader, interlinked challenges: the persistence of sectarian violence, the difficulty of securing open places of worship, and the geopolitics of a region where militants exploit borders and fragile governance.

How does a nation keep the public square — places of worship, markets, schools — both open and safe? How do communities stitch themselves back together when fear has been sown inside sacred spaces? These questions are not unique to Pakistan. Globally, democracies and fragile states alike wrestle with balancing openness and security, and with addressing the root causes of violent extremism: marginalization, ideology, porous borders and sometimes, geopolitical indifference.

Possible Paths Forward

Immediate humanitarian response: more hospital capacity, emergency funds, and psychological support for survivors and families.
Security review: reassessing mosque security at entrances and public awareness programs for early detection of threats without militarizing spiritual spaces.
Diplomatic engagement: renewing cross-border dialogue to reduce safe havens and improve intelligence cooperation.
Community resilience: fostering local peacebuilding efforts that bridge sectarian divides and nurture interfaith solidarity.

What I Saw, and What I’m Still Thinking

Walking away from the scene, I carried an image I cannot unsee: a line of shoes — children’s sandals beside men’s formal shoes — where worshippers once stood shoulder to shoulder. The intimacy of those small, scattered objects reminded me how public violence always lands most cruelly in private lives.

There will be investigations, arrests, official statements and perhaps retribution. There will also be funerals and months of quiet grieving that won’t make headlines. In the long arc, the real test is whether Pakistan can address not only the perpetrators but the conditions that allow such brutality to recur.

To readers halfway across the world: ask yourself what you feel when a place of worship is turned into a crime scene. How do we, as a global community, balance vigilance with the preservation of open civic life? And beyond policy, how do we make room for the small acts of compassion that stitch communities back together — the neighbors who show up at hospitals, the strangers who bring meals for grieving families, the teachers who keep going to work?

For now, the mosque in Tarlai is surrounded by tape and investigators. Inside, the prayers will be quieter for a time. Outside, a city holds its breath, counting, grieving — and hoping that this rupture will not become yet another tragic normal.

Irish students unite to plan Kharkiv’s post-war recovery

hanad

February 6, 2026

Irish students collaborate on plans for post-war Kharkiv — Architecture students from the University of Limerick participated at the workshop in Warsaw

A Room of Drafts, a Link to Lviv, and a City Waiting to Be Reimagined

On a gray Warsaw morning, the workshop room at the Warsaw University of Technology hummed like a beehive. Tables were strewn with tracing paper, 3D-printed models, and coffee cups. A loudspeaker crackled every hour to connect two cities: Warsaw and Lviv. On one side of the screen, students in striped scarves and paint-stained jackets laid out layered plans of housing blocks. On the other, Ukrainian colleagues—many from Kharkiv but now living in Lviv—tapped their screens and pointed to satellite images, their voices steady, their hands betraying the urgency of people designing for a city that still feels under siege.

“You don’t just draw buildings,” said Peter Carroll, head of architecture at the University of Limerick, as he moved between groups. “You listen. You listen to memories, anxieties, and the rhythms of daily life. The design becomes a promise—fragile, but necessary.”

Why Kharkiv?

Kharkiv, before the war, was a bustle of industry and learning—Ukraine’s second-largest city, home to universities, theatres, and bold interwar modernist architecture like the Derzhprom building. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, the city and its surrounding oblast have been regularly shelled. The frontline sits shockingly close: roughly 30 kilometres away. Recent strikes have continued to exact a civic toll—residents injured, streets scarred, and, in a heartbreaking reminder of the stakes, a passenger train struck by drones that killed six people in a recent attack.

So the workshop is not an abstract studio exercise. It’s a two-week, transnational effort called “Building Back Better,” convened by Warsaw University of Technology with the Kharkiv School of Architecture and supported by universities from Ireland and the Czech Republic. More than 100 students, academics, and practicing architects have gathered in Warsaw and Lviv to imagine Kharkiv’s future: apartment-by-apartment, neighbourhood-by-neighbourhood, city-wide, and regionally.

The International Classroom

Fifteen students from the University of Limerick and two from University College Dublin have made the trip to Warsaw, their travel and accommodation underwritten by the European Union’s Erasmus programme. They work in mixed teams alongside peers from Warsaw and Brno, and with Kharkiv students who are teaching and learning from Lviv. Zoom lines thread through the project like lifelines—sometimes delayed, sometimes pixelated, but always bringing together voices with a fierce, shared purpose.

“For many of us it’s a crash course in a place we only ever read about in headlines,” said Alexander Gniazdowski, a fourth-year student from Limerick, as he spread out maps of Kharkiv’s grid. “But once you learn the streets, the names of parks, the monuments—your responsibility changes.”

Scales of Thinking: From Windowsills to Region

The teams were given different lenses: some focused on the micro—material choices and apartment retrofits—while others looked to the macro—transport corridors, ecological buffers, and the fragile interface with a contested border region. That scale-shifting trained them to think like both emergency responders and long-horizon planners.

Apartment-level: adaptive reuse and blast-resilient modifications.
District-level: community hubs, shelter distribution, and local economies.
City-wide: mobility, heritage conservation, and resilient energy networks.
Regional: floodplain management, supply corridors, and refugee return strategies.

Voices Inside the Project

Not all participants are newcomers to Ukraine. Three of the Irish-based students were born in Ukraine and moved to Ireland since the invasion. “This project lets people from outside get to know Ukraine better,” said Oleksandra Deineha, a third-year UCD student originally from Khmelnytskyi. “It’s about understanding, and possibly helping rebuild in ways that respect people’s lives.”

From Lviv, architect Andrii Hirniak joined the conversations with the pensive calm of someone who still has family in the city the teams are designing for. “We need new ideas and hope,” he said. “We need projects that are not only technical, but that bring dignity back into everyday life.”

Another Lviv-based collaborator, Nataliia Liuklian, emphasized how safety has reshaped architectural priorities. “Before the war, we designed for light and openness,” she said. “Now we design for refuge—fast, adaptable, human. Bunkers, yes, but also kitchens that can cook for twenty people and windows that turn into reinforced shelters.”

What Are They Learning?

For non-Ukrainian students, the workshop has been a fast, sometimes humbling immersion into the region’s history, the politics of identity, and the gritty details of reconstruction—from sourcing local materials to understanding the cultural significance of public squares and Orthodox church plazas.

“Kharkiv sits at a crossroads of identity,” observed one Warsaw-based professor. “It’s a Ukrainian city with Russian-language communities, Soviet architecture, and centuries of exchange. Rebuilding here is not just about walls; it’s about memory.”

From Sketch to Legacy

By the workshop’s close, teams in Warsaw and Lviv will present their research and design concepts—documents, models, and narratives the organisers intend to publish. The hope is tangible: that these ideas will outlive the two-week sprint and feed into longer-term, implementable plans.

“The intention is to produce something durable,” Carroll said, “to create input that can affect policy and practice long after the last coffee cup is cleared away.”

Why This Matters Globally

This workshop is one node in a wider global conversation: how cities rebound after conflict; how young professionals shoulder the complex moral tasks of reconstruction; how international cooperation can be operational, not just symbolic. It raises durable questions: What must a rebuilt city protect—the past, the future, or both? How do you design public space for communities fractured by trauma?

These are not questions for architects alone. They affect planners, humanitarians, policymakers, and residents who will return to their streets only if those streets feel safe, familiar, and able to sustain livelihoods. In an era of climate emergencies and geopolitical shocks, resilience is as much social as it is structural.

So What Can You Do?

Ask yourself: where do I see architecture as a moral act? If design can shape recovery, how should international education programs be organised to ensure they truly serve affected communities, not only the CVs of visiting students?

For now, the students fold their plans and tag the models, the Lviv link goes quiet for the evening, and the city they’ve been imagining—Kharkiv—remains full of contradictions: wounded, stubborn, and waiting. If these two weeks produce only one permanent outcome, perhaps it is this renewed sense that rebuilding is possible when we listen more than we talk, when we co-design rather than impose, and when young hands sketch futures for those who remain at the sharp edge of history.

EU regulators say TikTok designed its app to be addictive

hanad

February 6, 2026

EU accuses TikTok of creating 'addictive design'

Night Scrolls and Midnight Feeds: Europe Takes Aim at TikTok’s “Addictive Design”

It is 2 a.m. in a quiet Cork suburb when a mother hears the soft, rhythmic whisper of a phone sliding across a bedside table. She tiptoes into her teenager’s room and finds the glow of a screen reflected in a restless face—an endless stream of videos, laughter in bursts, an algorithm feeding itself on attention.

That small, private scene lies at the heart of a public storm. In a move that feels part parental plea and part regulatory reckoning, the European Commission has issued a blistering preliminary finding: TikTok’s interface is built to be addictive, and that design could be harming minors and vulnerable adults. The charge is not simply moral; officials say it breaches the Digital Services Act (DSA), the bloc’s new rulebook for platform responsibility.

What the Commission Found

The Commission’s investigators argue TikTok’s architecture—its infinite scroll, autoplay videos, persistent push notifications and an ever-refining recommender engine—works in concert to keep people glued to the app. “It’s designed to keep users on the platform,” a senior EU official told reporters, “not to account for when a young person is having a harmful experience.”

Officials described the recommender system as a kind of digital bait-and-switch: rewards of fresh content flicker into view, nudging a brain into “autopilot mode.” The danger, they say, is predictable: compulsive use, diminished self-control and sleep-depriving sessions that can exacerbate mental and physical health problems.

The Commission’s appraisal draws on internal TikTok data, the company’s own risk assessments, interviews with experts in behavioral addiction and a compilation of European studies. Among the numbers that raised alarms were findings cited from several national reports: a French parliamentary review noting that 8% of 12–15 year-olds spent more than five hours a day on TikTok; a Danish study that found children as young as eight averaging over two hours daily; and a Polish study positioning TikTok as the most-used platform after midnight among 13–18 year-olds. These patterns, regulators argue, indicate obvious indicators of compulsive use that TikTok did not sufficiently factor into its safety calculus.

What Regulators Want

At the core of the Commission’s demands is a simple principle: platforms must design with human limits in mind. Investigators urged TikTok to disable or alter the features that most contribute to endless scrolling and to build effective screen-time breaks—automatic pauses, nighttime lockouts and friction that actually stops late-night binges rather than easy-to-dismiss nudges.

If the preliminary finding is maintained, consequences could be significant: under the DSA, a company can face fines of up to 6% of global annual turnover if it fails to comply. For a platform with well over a billion users worldwide, the financial and reputational stakes are high.

Voices from the Ground

Across Europe, the complaint sounds familiar. “My daughter used to fall asleep with the phone in her hand,” said Aoife, a primary-school teacher in Cork, who asked to be identified by her first name. “We introduced locked pouches at school last year and the change was like night and day. She reads more now.”

In a Milan café, a 15-year-old named Luca shrugged when asked if he noticed TikTok’s mechanics. “It’s like training,” he said with a rueful smile. “You swipe once and suddenly it’s an hour later. You don’t even feel the time.”

For parents, the problem is intimate and immediate. “We tried time limits,” a parent in Warsaw said. “He just made a new account. The tools are there, but they’re easy to bypass.”

Experts Weigh In

Dr. Miriam Alvarez, a clinical psychologist who studies technology use among adolescents, offered a clinical frame: “Platforms use reinforcement schedules—intermittent rewards that are potent in creating habitual behaviors. You don’t need to be a neuroscientist to see the pattern: unpredictability, novelty, and immediate feedback create loops.”

Alvarez added: “This is not about moral panic. It’s behavioral science. If design amplifies those cues, the environment itself becomes the problem.”

TikTok’s Response

TikTok pushed back hard. A spokesperson told an EU audience that the preliminary picture misrepresents the platform and vowed to contest the findings. The company points to a raft of well-being features—automatic screen time limits for younger teens, sleep reminders that prompt “wind-down” experiences after a threshold hour, a Family Pairing feature to let parents set controls, and in-app dashboards showing usage patterns.

“We give families tools to manage time spent on the app,” the spokesperson said. “We are committed to safety and will engage with the Commission.”

But regulators counter that those measures are often easy to dismiss or circumvent. The Commission’s assessment argues that such features fall short of “reasonable, proportionate and effective” mitigations required under the DSA.

Beyond TikTok: The Attention Economy Question

This confrontation raises bigger questions. How much responsibility should platforms bear for the psychological effects of their products? Is the choice to use social media a purely personal matter, or does the design of these global architectures create structural harms that require public intervention?

History offers parallels. Airplanes made travel easier; cigarettes were marketed as glamorous before the health consequences were widely accepted. The attention economy—where time is the commodity—may be entering a similar inflection point: when convenience becomes compulsion, regulators take note.

“The DSA isn’t a censorship tool,” an EU official emphasized. “It’s a due-diligence framework to manage systemic risks.” In other words, policymakers see this as legal housekeeping for a digital age where algorithms can influence millions at scale.

What Happens Next

TikTok now has the right to review the Commission’s documents and mount a formal rebuttal. The process will be watched closely—not just by the company and its European regulators, but by parents, teachers, and governments elsewhere trying to balance innovation and protection.

Whatever the outcome, the debate is no longer abstract. It is about bedrooms and classrooms, about that hush at 2 a.m., about whether technology should be designed to nudge us or to serve us. It is about what kind of public space we want the internet to be.

So I ask you: the next time you or someone you love finds themselves hypnotized by a glowing rectangle, do you think the problem is the person or the product? And if it’s the product, who should be the one to change it?

Keep watching—because this is just the opening act in a global conversation about attention, agency and the rules that will shape our digital lives for years to come.

White House pulls racist Trump post, attributes it to staff error

hanad

February 6, 2026

Trump says he plans to speak to Iran amid rising tensions — Donald Trump did not elaborate on the nature or timing of any dialogue

A Clip, a Catcall, and an Old Wound: When a Presidential Post Becomes a Mirror

On a humid morning, as the global scroll woke to a thousand headlines, one short clip did what so many things do in our brittle media age: it turned into a test. For about a second, on a platform many treat as the president’s direct line to the world, two faces—Barack and Michelle Obama—were superimposed onto the bodies of monkeys while “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” played in the background.

It was gone within hours. The White House said the post had been made in error by a staffer and removed. But by then the image had done its work.

The post and the pushback

On its surface the video was a mashup: a minute-long montage pushing recycled conspiracies about the 2020 election with a final, crude joke meant to summon laughter in one part of the internet and fury everywhere else.

“Someone must understand what the optics are here,” said a Democratic strategist I spoke with, who asked not to be named. “Whether mistake or not, the message lands. And it lands in a place that keeps opening old wounds.”

Voices swept in from across the political spectrum. Governors, former aides to presidents, and sitting senators called the imagery racist and unacceptable. A spokesman from the governor of California labeled the post “disgusting behavior” and urged more Republican leaders to condemn it. A prominent Republican senator, one of the few Black members of his party, told reporters he could only describe what he saw as “the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House.” Tim Scott’s reaction—public, stunned, and urgent—was matched by calls for removal and apologies.

Inside the White House briefing room, sources said the post was explained away as an “internet meme” mistake. “A staffer erroneously made the post,” an official told news outlets, emphasizing swift removal. The explanation did not satisfy everyone.

Why a meme matters

Images have always been political. But when an image traffics in demeaning racial caricature—and when it’s amplified by an account with millions of followers—it passes from tasteless to consequential. The Obamas are not only a former first family but, for many Americans, a symbol of progress and of the fraught, ongoing story of race in the United States.

“When you see historical racist tropes repurposed like that, it’s not accidental,” said Dr. Nia Reynolds, a historian who studies visual culture and race. “It taps into a long visual archive that was designed to dehumanize. Even compressed into a second of video, it revives a lineage of insult.”

And this time, the insult came overlaid on another, more modern pathology: the weaponization of manipulated media. The clip recycled false claims about Dominion Voting Systems—the same spurious narrative that underpinned lawsuits and a wider disinformation campaign after the 2020 election.

Dominion’s legal fights are now part of the public record; the company pursued defamation claims against several outlets and personalities that pushed falsehoods about its role in the 2020 vote count. Those suits illustrated how quickly rumor can become a financial and political liability—but they did less to shrink the appetite for conspiracy.

From birtherism to deepfakes: a pattern

For many observers, the post was not a one-off. It fell into a pattern that critics say has defined two decades of public exchanges centered on one man: the birther conspiracy that questioned Barack Obama’s birthplace, the stream of deepfake videos that have shown presidents and rival politicians in fabricated scenarios, the steady campaign against diversity efforts inside federal institutions.

“There’s a through-line here,” said Maria Alvarez, a civic-tech researcher. “The same techniques—weaponized rumor, visual mockery, and amplification—have evolved with technology. Deepfakes and hyper-realistic edits are simply the next iteration.”

President Trump has, in recent years, embraced AI-enhanced imagery to lampoon critics and celebrate himself. Last year he circulated a video that showed a former president in handcuffs; on other occasions, minority leaders have been turned into cartoons. When the memes are deployed from the highest office, their effect is amplified not simply by reach, but by the legitimacy that adjacency to power confers.

Local reactions, global ripples

In a barbershop near the National Mall, a mother-of-two named Keisha rolled her eyes when I showed her the images. “It’s low,” she said, hands steady under a head of relaxed hair. “It’s a cheap shot at people who mean a lot to folks like me. You can’t pretend it’s harmless when it conjures slurs from the past.”

Across the ocean, in Lagos and London and Manila, screens carried the clip with the same rapidity and newscasters framed it as another American controversy. “People watch this and they don’t see nuance,” an expatriate teacher in Berlin told me. “They see a country that still hasn’t decided how to reckon with race.” Global audiences rarely only absorb the content; they fold it into broader narratives about U.S. leadership, stability, and values.

What this moment asks of us

So what now? The White House removed the clip and called it a mistake. But the larger reckoning—about what the threshold for accountability should be, who gets to decide what crosses it, and what consequences follow—remains unsettled.

We live at a moment when technological capability outstrips our collective norms for decency. Platforms can host millions of followers and a single post can travel the globe before editors or lawmakers can convene. How should societies respond when a leader’s feed becomes a broadcast channel for racial imagery and disinformation?

“We need clearer guardrails,” Dr. Reynolds said. “And not just technical fixes—civic literacy, corporate responsibility, and political courage to condemn dehumanization wherever it appears.” Her prescription sounds like a tall order because it is: addressing this requires policymakers, platform designers, and daily users to pull in the same direction.

Small gestures, big signals

Sometimes the most telling reaction is not a grand policy but a small human one. At a neighborhood vigil in Chicago last night, people spoke not only about outrage but about education—teaching kids how to read a video the way you read a book, to recognize editing and intent as separate from truth. “It’s a civic muscle,” a teacher said quietly. “We’ve got to build it.”

So where do you stand? When a leader’s post flirts with racist imagery, is fast removal enough? Or does the answer lie in a sustained conversation about power, memory, and the images we let define our public life? These are questions that will outlast the headlines—and they tug at the deeper question of what kind of public we want to be.

For now, the clip is gone. The echoes remain. The debate will move on, as it always does—until another post, another image, forces us to examine our reflections in the same cracked glass.

Japan plans restart of the world’s largest nuclear power plant

hanad

February 6, 2026

Japan to restart world's biggest nuclear plant — The operation to restart the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant were suspended last month

Kashiwazaki-Kariwa’s Second Act: Japan’s Giant Reactor Prepares to Wake

The wind off the Sea of Japan carries salt and a stubborn cold that bites through even the thickest coats. In Niigata prefecture, rice paddies crouch under a powder of late snow and the roofs of small shops steam with the comfort of hot sake. On the horizon, seven cooling towers and a cluster of domes and scaffolding sit like a modern citadel—quiet, enormous, and waiting.

That citadel is the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant, the largest of its kind on Earth by capacity, and after a hiccup that briefly stalled its revival, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) says it will try again. “We plan to start up the reactor on February 9,” Takeyuki Inagaki, the plant’s manager, told reporters, a terse sentence that carries years of anxiety, engineering work and political negotiation.

A stealthy, noisy restart

The attempt last month was stopped within hours—not because of a mechanical breakdown but because an alarm had been set incorrectly. Technicians detected the configuration mismatch and halted the procedure. Officials insist the error had no impact on the plant’s safety systems; still, the incident laid bare a fragile truth: in nuclear power, the smallest human slip can crater public trust.

Kashiwazaki-Kariwa’s story is inseparable from the memory of 2011. After the magnitude-9.0 earthquake and devastating tsunami that led to meltdown at Fukushima, Japan shut down every reactor in the country—54 in total—facing off not only with technical questions but with grief, displacement and a decades-long debate over whether to restart any at all.

Why this matters, now

To understand why TEPCO is pressing forward, look beyond the plant grounds to the electricity market and the climate charts. Before 2011, nuclear generation provided a substantial share of Japan’s electricity—roughly a third in some years—helping to keep fossil fuel imports and carbon emissions lower. After the shutdowns, the country leaned heavily on liquefied natural gas, coal and oil imports, fueling domestic energy bills and complicating emissions goals.

In recent years, only a fraction of Japan’s reactors have returned to service—about a dozen have been restarted after meeting stricter safety requirements. Regulators under the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) implemented sweeping new standards after Fukushima, and utilities have spent billions on seismic upgrades, seawalls and hardened safety equipment. Yet even with upgrades, restarting a megasite like Kashiwazaki-Kariwa is as much a political operation as a technical one:

Local approvals and consultations with fisheries and municipalities
Reassurances to residents and compensation arrangements to affected industries
Implementation of new safety protocols, monitoring and emergency drills

Voices of the coast

Walk into the Haru fish market near Kashiwazaki and you’ll hear a chorus of views. “We’ve had good catches these past seasons,” says Masako, a vendor who has sold Echigo sardines for three decades. “Energy isn’t something I study daily, but jobs matter here. If the plant can be safe, it helps everybody.”

Not far away, a fisherman, arms knotted from a lifetime at sea, scratches his jaw and sighs. “People remember Fukushima. I remember it. My brother moved to the city after that,” he says. “If they say it’s safe, I want proof. We need water clean enough for our children to swim in.”

Across town, young parents gather at a community center for a public forum. “My child was born after the disaster,” says a mother who asked for anonymity. “I don’t want radioactivity in our future. But I also don’t want my neighbors forced to leave again because there’s no work.”

Experts weigh in

“An alarm setting issue is technically minor,” explains a nuclear safety researcher at a Tokyo university who asked not to be named. “But when you’re operating a plant with the scale of Kashiwazaki-Kariwa—seven reactors, around eight gigawatts of capacity—you’re also operating under a microscope. The public reads such errors as symbolic: if routine checks are sloppy, what of the catastrophic scenarios?”

Global context nudges the debate forward. Countries around the world are reassessing nuclear’s role in decarbonization—France still leans on reactors, the U.K. is building new plants, and Germany is phasing out its last units even as it invests in renewables. Japan’s decision balances energy security, economic realities and climate commitments: the government has pledged carbon neutrality by mid-century, a target that complicates a rapid pivot away from low-carbon nuclear toward intermittent renewables alone.

How locals live with the weighing scales

Niigata’s streets reflect both resilience and ritual. Farmers whose families have tended the land for generations bring trays of fresh koshihikari rice to market—their pride on display, their hands stained with soil that has fed Tokyo for centuries. In the evenings, izakayas fill with ordinary conversations about weather, politics and whether the plant will create steady local work again.

Beyond the human narratives, the municipality and TEPCO have threaded a series of safeguards into the relaunch plan: improved emergency shelters, cross-prefectural evacuation routes, real-time radiation monitoring with publicly accessible data portals, and annual disaster drills designed to make coordination smoother than in 2011.

What comes next

On paper, a restart on February 9 is a date. In people’s memories, it is a hinge. For some, the sight of steam rising from cooling towers will be a signal of returning normalcy and economic opportunity. For others, it will be another reminder that the pain of 2011 never really left.

So ask yourself: when technology promises power and the planet signals urgency, how do societies weigh risk against reward? Is trust restored by regulations and checklists—or by the slow steady accumulation of safety demonstrated in the daily lives of a community?

Kashiwazaki-Kariwa’s restart will not answer those questions outright. But as engines begin to hum and workers chalk up yet another checklist, it will offer a real-time lesson in how a nation stitches together faith in institutions, the need for energy and the enduring demand for accountability.

When the lights come on, who will be in the room with you—citizens who feel reassured, skeptics watching closely, technicians proud of their craft? This is not only about a reactor once more generating electricity; it is about a community and a country trying to reconcile memory, safety and the future.

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