World roundup: April 29 2025
Stories from India, Russia, Canada, and elsewhere
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Folks I am very under the weather today, owing mostly to a very sleepless night. Consequently I am going to forego our usual voiceover tonight. As always you can make use of the Substack app’s text-to-voice feature if needed. Thanks!
TODAY IN HISTORY
April 29, 1770: The HMS Endeavour, commanded by Royal Navy Captain James Cook, makes landfall at what is now eastern Australia’s Botany Bay. Cook’s expedition had set out on August 26, 1768, in part tasked with searching for the hitherto only rumored Terra Australis Incognita (‘unknown southern land’). The Endeavour reached the already discovered New Zealand on October 6, 1769, then sailed around the islands to demonstrate that they were not that southern landmass. Cook then continued west until he and his men encountered modern Australia, which had also been known to Europeans ever since a Dutch voyage located it in 1606. Cook claimed the eastern portion of “New Holland” for Britain, giving it the name “New South Wales.” Royal Society geographers insisted that there must be a larger southern landmass that Cook had missed, so he made a second voyage (1772-1775) that included the first European crossing of the Antarctic Circle and proved that no such landmass existed in temperate waters. A Russian vessel is believed to have been the first to sight the ice sheet around that southern landmass, Antarctica, in 1820.
April 29, 1916: A British army besieged at Kut, in Iraq, surrenders to the Ottomans in what was the worst military disaster in British history to that point.
INTERNATIONAL
The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute released its 2024 report on global military spending on Monday, and I think you’ll probably be unsurprised to learn that it increased substantially over 2023. Indeed, according to SIPRI total military spending rose by 9.4 percent in real terms to some $2.718 trillion last year, “the steepest year-on-year rise since at least the end of the Cold War.” Most of the increase was driven by, and this will probably also not come as much of a surprise, by higher levels of spending in Europe and the Middle East. The top five military spenders remained the United States, China, Russia, Germany, and India, who spent some $1.635 trillion combined.
MIDDLE EAST
SYRIA
Syrian security forces and Druze militia fighters clashed overnight in the Damascus suburb of Jaramana, leaving at least seven of the former and seven of the latter dead according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The security forces and “affiliated gunmen” appear to have been the aggressors, enraged by the release of some sort of audio recording in which a member of the Druze community may have somehow “insulted” the Prophet Muhammad. The Syrian Interior Ministry, which has attributed the incident to unspecified “gunmen,” says it is investigating both the violence and the alleged religious insult. Druze community leaders denounced the audio recording but also blamed the security forces for escalating the situation.
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
Reuters reported on Monday that Gaza ceasefire talks were on the verge of a “significant breakthrough,” citing “two Egyptian security sources.” I don’t know how much weight to give this because the Israeli government subsequently denied it and even Reuters’ sources acknowledged that the Israeli demand for Hamas’s disarmament remains a sticking point, as it’s been for months at this point. If they’re still hung up on that point I’m not sure how close they could possibly be to an agreement.
IRAN
The Trump administration blacklisted six Chinese and Iranian firms on Tuesday over claims that they’re part of a “network” that provides Iran with fuel components for its ballistic missiles. One of those components is sodium perchlorate, which as it happens is the compound that may have been responsible for the massive explosion at Iran’s Shahid Rajaee seaport over the weekend that at latest count killed more than 70 people. Sodium perchlorate is a precursor for manufacturing solid rocket fuel, which is often used in ballistic missiles.
ASIA
INDIA
AFP reported on Tuesday that “Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has given the military ‘operational freedom’ to respond” to last week’s terrorist attack in Kashmir, which New Delhi is blaming squarely on Pakistan via the Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group. That includes the authority to “decide on the mode, targets and timing of [India’s] response.” This came after Indian and Pakistani forces exchanged gunfire across Kashmir’s Line of Control for a fifth straight night and Pakistani media reported the downing of an Indian drone that had entered Pakistani airspace. Needless to say the possibilities for further escalation here are high. Pakistani Information Minister Attaullah Tarar even took to social media early Wednesday morning (local time) to claim that “Pakistan has credible intelligence that India intends to launch a military strike within the next 24 to 36 hours using the Pahalgam incident as a false pretext.”
In Kashmir, meanwhile, Indian authorities have imposed a security crackdown that has forced the closure of most of the region’s tourist sites and, according to The Washington Post, has featured the demolition of homes and other forms of collective punishment:
“What happened in Pahalgam is gruesome, and no sane person would endorse such an act,” said a young boy in Guree, referring to the deadly militant attack on April 22. “But why punish civilians?”
That question encapsulates a familiar dread in Kashmir, where people have long felt trapped between India and Pakistan — which each administer different parts of the Muslim-majority territory but claim full ownership — and between militancy and militarization.
Kashmiris say they are cornered by a cruel paradox: forced to publicly condemn the violence even as they are made to bear the cost. In the face of an intensifying Indian security crackdown, grief for the dead is hardening into fear.
NORTH KOREA
38 North’s Rachel Minyoung Lee offers some potential answers to a question I had yesterday, namely why North Korean leader Kim Jong-un decided now to acknowledge that he sent soldiers to support the Russian military. In addition to boosting North Korea’s international stature (as Kim sees it) and publicly highlighting Pyongyang’s burgeoning relationship with Russia, she argues that Kim may have felt the need to “better control the narrative” domestically—particularly given that many of the soldiers he sent to Russia are not coming home. Notably, Kim’s statement made a point of stressing the sacrifices of the soldiers and their families.
AFRICA
SUDAN
The United Nations panel that monitors Sudanese sanctions is reportedly investigating how a consignment of mortar shells allegedly shipped from Bulgaria to the UAE back in 2019 managed to find its way into the possession of Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces militant group. I can think of one or two ways right off the top of my head but I digress. Emirati officials have consistently denied that they’re supporting the RSF despite considerable evidence (like this) to the contrary, and they’re apparently blocking UN efforts to track cargo shipments from the UAE to Sudan. This particular arms shipment could be especially problematic if the Emiratis reexported these shells to Sudan without getting Bulgarian permission.
NIGERIA
Islamic State West Africa Province militants attacked a funeral ceremony and killed at least 15 people in northeastern Nigeria’s Borno state on Monday. There are a number of people missing and authorities are still searching the area, so that death toll may rise. Reuters is describing a recent “surge” in jihadist violence in Borno and surrounding areas that suggests that both ISWAP and Boko Haram are gaining strength. Nigerian authorities attribute this to an apparent reduction in fighting between those two groups and the increasing use of drones by both of them. The former seems particularly relevant as the less time and resources they put into battling one another the more they can devote to attacks on Nigerian security forces and/or civilians.
KENYA
Authorities believe that al-Shabab fighters were responsible for an attack that killed five quarry workers in northeastern Kenya’s Mandera county on Tuesday. Ten gunmen apparently attacked a minibus carrying the workers and began executing them. Another 13 people reportedly fled the attack.
EUROPE
RUSSIA
Russian government spokesperson Dmitry Peskov affirmed on Tuesday that Moscow is not interested in Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s proposal for a 30 day ceasefire. It’s sticking by Vladimir Putin’s plan to adopt a three day ceasefire in, uh, ten days (well, actually I guess nine at this point). Peskov insisted that there are too many “questions” that would need to be answered to make an extended ceasefire feasible, though strangely I don’t think he articulated any of them. He then criticized Zelensky for ignoring Putin’s three day ceasefire offer, which I guess is one way to spin what’s happening here. It was the Trump administration that originally proposed a 30 day ceasefire only for the Russians to turn it down, which may be contributing to new signs of frustration on Donald Trump’s part.
UKRAINE
The governor of Ukraine’s Sumy oblast, Oleh Hryhorov, reported on Tuesday that the Russian military is attacking four villages on the Ukrainian side of the border but said that it hasn’t been able to take any of them yet. Two of them are villages that the Russian military already claims to control. It looks at least for the moment as though the Russians are attempting to create a buffer zone on the Ukrainian side of the border to prevent any new Ukrainian incursion into Kursk oblast.
AMERICAS
TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO
The opposition United National Congress, led by former (and now future) Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar, appears to have won Monday’s snap election in Trinidad and Tobago. Preliminary results give the UNC control of 26 seats in the 41 seat House of Representatives. Current PM Stuart Young, who’s only been on the job for a bit over a month, conceded defeat as his People’s National Movement is well behind with just 13 seats.
HAITI
The AP reported on Tuesday that the Trump administration has notified the US Congress that it intends to designate two Haitian gangs—Viv Ansanm and Gran Grif—as foreign terrorist organizations. Gran Grif is part of the Viv Ansanm coalition so I’m a little unclear what the separate designation is supposed to achieve. The administration previously blurred the line between “terrorist” and “criminal” back in February, when it made similar designations for eight gangs across Latin America. What this is supposed to achieve is anybody’s guess—the administration has shown absolutely no interest in supporting Haiti’s fight against the gangs that increasingly control the country and has even canceled the Temporary Protected Status designation that was preventing the deportation of some 500,000 Haitians.
CANADA
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberal Party completed a major political comeback, winning Monday’s election. His mission now, as The Wall Street Journal outlines, is to somehow decouple the Canadian economy from that of its much larger but suddenly pretty hostile southern neighbor:
Speaking to supporters after his victory early on Tuesday morning, Carney said Canada was entering into a new, uncertain era. “Our old relationship with the United States, a relationship based on steadily increasing integration, is over,” he said.
Carney said he plans to negotiate a new trade and security deal with Trump—who has threatened to make Canada the 51st state and hobble its export-reliant economy with tariffs—while at the same time supercharging Canada’s trade with Europe and Asia.
“The system of open global trade anchored by the United States, a system that Canada has relied on since the Second World War, a system that while not perfect, has helped deliver prosperity for our country for decades, is over,” he said. “These are tragedies, but it’s also our new reality.”
Carney, 60, has vowed to make Canadian manufacturing and energy production less reliant on the U.S. and lower trade barriers between provinces. Canada depends on U.S. trade for a fifth of its gross domestic product, and more than three-quarters of its exports go to the U.S.
Carney also plans to pursue closer integration with the European Union, a Canadian official said, perhaps with a deal similar to those Norway and Iceland have as members of the European Economic Area.
There is one potential problem for Carney in that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is projecting that the Liberals will control 169 seats in the next legislative session, enough to form a minority government but not enough to pass legislation without some help. Nevertheless, considering that the party was regularly polling double digits behind the opposition Conservatives as recently as January, this is a pretty remarkable turnaround and proof that, if he sets his mind to it, there’s really no race anywhere that Donald Trump can’t wreck for his ideological compatriots. Indeed, not only did his party lose the election, but Trump-emulating Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre lost his own seat. He’d held it for 20 years, but I guess incumbency is no match for the Trump Effect. He can apparently stay on as party leader but will probably need to ask one of his colleagues to resign so that he can run for the open seat. It’s unclear whether the party wants him to stay on.
UNITED STATES
Finally, Jacobin’s Steve Ellner says that Donald Trump is not doing much to burnish the United States’ reputation in Latin America:
Three issues have galvanized the pushback against Trump in Latin America: tariffs, deportations, and Washington’s policy of exclusion. The latter includes ostracizing Cuba and Venezuela from the Latin American community of nations as well as rhetoric and actions designed to drive China from the continent.
Trump’s policies have also intensified the polarization in Latin America that pits left and center-left governments against the far right, which is closely aligned with Washington and Trump in particular. The indignation produced by Trump’s inflammatory remarks on the Panama Canal and Gulf of Mexico and his policy of mass deportation and tariffs likely to strengthen the Latin American left at the expense of the Right.
They also stimulate anti-Americanism, which according to Bloomberg columnist Juan Pablo Spinetto is “gaining new life in Latin America.” Spinetto writes that “the harshness of his take-it-or-leave-it approach will . . . give new force to the anti-Americanism . . . undermining . . . interest in cooperating and establishing common goals.”
Feel better soon Derek!