A look ahead to the world this week
Good afternoon,
At 2.15pm tomorrow, Donald Trump is due to make history when he appears in a Manhattan court to hear criminal charges filed against him.
The indictment, while still under wraps, is expected to centre on his alleged hush money payments to adult film actor Stormy Daniels before the 2016 presidential election.
Trump's appearance in court will be an "unprecedented spectacle", said The Guardian, as he becomes the first former US president to face criminal charges of any kind.
For his part, Trump is not intending to go quietly. Immediately after his court appearance tomorrow, the billionaire is planning a prime-time speech from his Florida resort of Mar-a-Lago, which is "expected to reflect his social media posts" over recent days, some of which have been "inflammatory", said the Independent.
Yet his legal jeopardy has already proven to be unexpectedly good business for the former president. Since his indictment his 2024 presidential campaign has raked in more than $4m (£3.2m) in donations and new polling shows the gap widening between Trump and his nearest rival for the Republican nomination, Ron DeSantis.
Very few people would make hay from being indicted, said The New Yorker, but "we have entered a new act" in the Donald Trump saga, one in which Trump contemplates "turning a potential perp walk [a person in police custody being led into a court through a public place] into a campaign opportunity".
"Who else," the magazine asked, "could envision fingerprints, a mugshot, and cuffs as tools in an effort to 'consolidate the base'?"
For CNN's Stephen Collinson, Trump's prosecution represents a "uniquely perilous moment" for a "polarized republic" that has already been "repeatedly driven to the brink by the endless norm-busting of Donald Trump".
The former president's "attempts to inflame a partisan firestorm to protect himself" are likely to "consume America's already poisoned politics".
Charges that relate to a payment by a former president to an ex-porn star "might be merely crass if not for the shadow of violence hanging over it", agreed Quinta Jurecic in The Atlantic. But Trump's promise of "death and destruction" on social media and his raging over "AN ATTACK ON OUR COUNTRY THE LIKES OF WHICH HAS NEVER BEEN SEEN BEFORE" offer an echo of the bombast he engaged in after the 2020 election.
The mere fact that there is an ongoing investigation into Trump's potential responsibility for the insurrection is "a reminder of just how serious this rhetoric can get", Jurecic added.
Even more dangerous than the brewing political firestorm, however, is the precedent the arrest sets for all future presidents, said former US federal prosecutor Ankush Khardori in The New York Times.
The Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, "may have been the first local prosecutor to [bring criminal charges against a former president], but he will probably not be the last", Khardori said. "Every local prosecutor in the country will now feel that he or she has free rein to criminally investigate and prosecute presidents after they leave office."
And the broad range of criminal offences that exist on statute books around the country offers "plenty of opportunity for mischief", he added.
Consequently, Khardori wrote, as appealing as Trump's opponents may find the optics of their arch-nemesis being led away and fingerprinted, they "may feel differently if – or when – a Democrat, perhaps even President Biden, ends up on the receiving end of a similar effort".
Read on for Opec's unexpected oil production cuts and other global news, including the move to ban e-scooters in Paris.
Arion McNicoll
The Week
@arionmcnicoll |
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| | Finland turns right: Finland's opposition right-wing National Coalition Party (NCP) will have the first opportunity to form a government this week after narrowly winning yesterday's parliamentary election in a tight three-way race. The NCP won 48 of the 200 seats in parliament, ahead of the nationalist Finns Party with 46 seats and the incumbent prime minister Sanna Marin's Social Democrats on 43 seats. Marin (pictured) became the world's youngest prime minister when she took office at the age of 34 in 2019. But while she "was praised internationally for her progressive policies, including on trans rights, she faced criticism at home for her coalition's hefty public spending", said CNN.
Paris bans e-scooters: Parisians have voted overwhelmingly to ban rental electric scooters across the city. Results from the Paris mayor's office showed that nearly 90% of votes in a city-wide referendum had been cast against the scooters. Self-hire e-scooters were introduced to the French capital in 2018, but growing numbers of accidents led the city's mayor, Anne Hidalgo, to call a referendum on whether they should stay. Three people died and 459 were injured in accidents involving e-scooters in Paris in 2022. Although the outcome of yesterday's vote is not legally binding, Hidalgo promised to honour the result. Despite the outcome, any ban "is unlikely to end discussions over the proper place for e-scooters on the streets of the capital", said France 24, as "sales of personal e-scooters are rising by hundreds of thousands in France each year".
Republican presidential field grows: The former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson will begin his campaign to be the next US president today after officially launching his White House bid over the weekend. Hutchinson said the US needed "leaders that appeal to the best of America, and not simply appeal to our worst instincts" and called for frontrunner Donald Trump to drop out of the race. He will join the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley as "the only members of the Republican mainstream" to challenge Trump for the party's 2024 White House nomination, said The Guardian. So far, however, Florida's governor, Ron DeSantis, has been Trump's "only serious rival in polling", the paper added.
Oil production cuts: The Saudi-led group of oil producing nations, Opec+, announced a cut of more than 1 million barrels a day last night in a surprise move that is expected to push up prices. The announcement came just a day ahead of a meeting of the cartel's Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee (JMMC), the body that makes recommendations to Opec+. The cuts are "significant", said the BBC, given there had previously been indications from members that "there would be no fresh cuts". Russia, another major oil exporter, has also said it is extending its cut of half a million barrels a day until the end of 2023. The move by Opec+ is likely to "further strain ties between the US and Saudi Arabia-led Opec+" and also "underlines the close cooperation between oil-producing countries and Russia", the BBC added. |
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STAT OF THE WEEK | £24m | The amount of money deposited in Swiss banks between 2014 and 2016 by Sergei Roldugin, the Russian cellist and friend of Vladimir Putin. Four bankers at the Zurich branch of Russia's Gazprombank were last week found guilty of failing to follow due diligence for having helped Roldugin, nicknamed "Putin's wallet", to deposit the vast sums of money during the three-year period, while offering no credible explanation as to where the money had come from. According to Swiss law, banks must reject payments or close accounts if they become suspicious of an account holder or the source of their money. Roldugin, a professional cellist, is also "godfather to one of the president's daughters", The Scotsman noted. The convicted bankers, who cannot be identified under Swiss reporting restrictions, were given fines totalling 741,000 Swiss francs (£655,600), suspended for two years. They have said they will appeal the Swiss court's decision.
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| | The prime minister was 'forced to pause' his 'ambitious plan' to weaken country's supreme court |
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Global round-up | What you need to know about the biggest stories in world news
Imran Khan takes on the army in Pakistan
The former Pakistani PM has decried 'a corrupt system' that ties the military to political parties
Read more
Teflon Don: could Trump benefit from indictment?
Some pundits claim prosecution of the former president 'could add rocket fuel' to his White House bid
Read more
Experts call for AI pause over risk to humanity
Open letter says powerful new systems should only be developed once it is known they are safe
Read more
Trans athletes ruling: does it unleash 'forces of hate'?
The president of World Athletics, Lord Coe, puts emphasis on 'the integrity of the female category'
Read more
The Dalai Lama and China's mounting Tibet problem
Mongolian-American boy unveiled as the third most important spiritual leader in Tibetan Buddhism
Read more | |
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Person OF THE WEEK | Vladlen Tatarsky | Popular Russian military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky was killed in an explosion at a cafe in St Petersburg yesterday. The blast appeared to be "an audacious attack on a high-profile pro-Kremlin figure", said CNN. Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova suggested that Ukraine was to blame, without citing evidence. "Russian journalists are constantly experiencing threats of reprisal from the Kyiv regime and its inspirers, which are increasingly being implemented," Zakharova said. Tatarsky, whose real name was Maxim Fomin, was a former fighter with the separatist Donbas militia who, since joining Telegram in 2019, amassed more than 500,000 followers. He was aggressively pro-war, but also used his platform sporadically to criticise the Kremlin's tactics. The explosion that killed him "is not the first mysterious attack inside Russian territory", said The Washington Post, pointing to the nationalist Daria Dugina, who was killed by a car bomb in August 2022. Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB), the main KGB successor agency, blamed Ukrainian spy services for that attack too.
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unexpected turn | Cutting Colombia's cocaine hippos | Colombia has unveiled a $3.5m (£2.8m) plan to remove a herd of hippopotamuses brought into the country by cocaine baron Pablo Escobar. The notorious drug lord had illegally imported four hippos from Africa in the 1980s. After Escobar was killed during a police raid in 1993, the animals were left to roam free and their population eventually swelled to 130. According to Fortune, recent projections suggested that, left to their own devices, the local hippo population could have grown to 1,400 in around a decade as "there are no natural predators nearby" to control them. Colombian authorities have said they now intend to send 60 of the hippos to sanctuaries in India and another ten to Mexico. | |
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