Politics

America and Iran agreed to hold talks in Oman on February 6th. Donald Trump said Iran had to do several things to avoid military action: do a deal on its nuclear programme, stop killing protesters and stop arming proxy militias. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said there would be a regional war if America attacked his country. America’s military build-up in the Middle East continued. It shot down a drone it said was “aggressively approaching” the USS Abraham Lincoln, an aircraft-carrier now in the Arabian Sea.

Israel struck at Palestinian militants, after its troops were shot at near the armistice line in Gaza. Health officials in the strip said over 20 people were killed. This came soon after Israel reopened the Rafah border checkpoint with Egypt, though only a handful of people crossed over.

Seif al-Islam Qaddafi, the son of Libya’s former dictator Muammar Qaddafi, was reportedly killed. The circumstances are unclear, but his lawyer said he was assassinated at home by “unknown assailants”. Mr Qaddafi was once seen as the most influential person in Libya after his father, and his heir apparent, before the regime collapsed in 2011. He ran for president in 2021 but the elections were derailed.

The leader of South Africa’s second-largest party is to step down. The decision by John Steenhuisen of the liberal Democratic Alliance could destabilise the coalition between his party and the African National Congress, just as the economic reforms the government has pursued since 2024 are starting to pay off.

At least 200 people, including children, died after a mine collapsed in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The Rubaya mines hold 15% of the world’s coltan, a mineral used in phones, much of which is mined illegally. M23, a rebel group backed by Rwanda, has controlled them since 2024.

America said it sent several military officers to Nigeria to augment security co-operation, the latest sign that relations between the two countries appear to be improving. In December America carried out air strikes in northern Nigeria against what it said were targets associated with Islamic State, a jihadist group. Meanwhile gunmen, suspected to be Islamists, attacked two villages in the western state of Kwara. Reports vary on the death toll, but some say at least 170 people were killed.

After months of refusing requests to do so, Bill and Hillary Clinton agreed to testify to Congress about their connection to Jeffrey Epstein and will appear before a committee on February 26th and February 27th. Congress had threatened to hold them in contempt. The Clintons’ change of heart came after the Justice Department released more files on the sex offender.

In Britain the Epstein files revealed that Peter Mandelson, a prominent Labour politician, had passed sensitive information to Epstein during the financial crash of 2007-09. The police began an investigation and Lord Mandelson resigned from the House of Lords. Sir Keir Starmer, the prime minister, backed down amid a revolt from his own Labour MPs and said he would now release all the documents that informed his decision to appoint Lord Mandelson as ambassador to America, before sacking him last year.

A jury in Britain cleared six members of Palestine Action, a direct-action group, of aggravated burglary charges related to a break-in at an Israeli defence firm’s warehouse. The group raided Elbit Systems’ site near Bristol in 2024 and allegedly caused £1m ($1.3m) in damage. During the trial some of the defendants conducted Britain’s longest hunger strike since the hunger strikes of Irish republican prisoners in the early 1980s.

Tom Homan, Mr Trump’s border czar, said that 700 federal immigration agents would be immediately withdrawn from Minneapolis. Mr Homan said the agents could be pulled back because local authorities were co-operating with the federal operation. Some 2,000 agents will remain. Mr Homan said 158 protesters have been arrested and that security personnel would remain to protect the immigration officers as they conduct their duties.

The Supreme Court denied a Republican request to block a new congressional map in California that has been designed to give the Democrats a handful of new seats. The map was approved by voters in a ballot measure last year.

A man who plotted to kill Mr Trump at his golf course in West Beach in September 2024, when he was running for president, was given a life sentence. Ryan Routh was found guilty by a jury in September 2025. He represented himself at the trial.

America and India reached agreement on a trade deal that will lower America’s reciprocal tariffs on Indian goods from 50% to 18%. Mr Trump raised the duties last year because of India’s purchases of Russian oil, but the president said India had agreed to halt them and would buy more American oil, and possibly Venezuelan oil too. India did not comment. Details of the pact are sketchy, but Narendra Modi, the Indian prime minister, described it as a “wonderful announcement”.

In Pakistan the Balochistan Liberation Army carried out a number of gun-and-grenade attacks, including on schools and banks, that officials said killed 36 civilians and 22 security personnel (the BLA claimed it had killed dozens of soldiers). Pakistani security forces killed 216 militants during a week-long targeted operation. The rebels have stepped up their activities in recent years.

China executed 11 people for running telecom-fraud and gambling operations worth $1.4bn in Myanmar and for killing 14 Chinese citizens involved in these schemes. It has been stepping up co-operation with countries in South-East Asia to end such crime.

Russian and Ukrainian negotiators held a second round of talks backed by America in Abu Dhabi. Russia resumed its attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure, after America persuaded the Kremlin to briefly suspend such attacks during a spell of extremely cold weather. Twelve miners were killed when a Russian drone struck their bus in the Dnipropetrovsk region.

After months of squabbling and several attempts by far-left and far-right parties to bring the government down with votes of no confidence, the French parliament at last passed a budget for 2026. It is a big relief for the centre-right government and Sébastien Lecornu, the prime minister. The budget includes a big boost to defence spending, which Emmanuel Macron, the president, had called for to tackle the threat from Russia.

China described the decision by Panama’s Supreme Court to annul the contract that allows CK Hutchison, a conglomerate in Hong Kong, to operate in the Panama Canal as “absurd” and warned of “heavy prices” to pay. The ruling was seen as a victory for the Trump administration, which wants to limit Chinese operations in the vital waterway. CK Hutchison had agreed to sell its ports anyway. It has started an arbitration process against the judgment.

Laura Fernández won Costa Rica’s presidential election for the governing conservative party. Ms Fernández promised to continue the crackdown on crime started by Rodrigo Chaves, her predecessor and ally, whose term in office was limited. She wants to open a maximum-security prison to house gang members and says she will declare a state of emergency in high-crime areas.

Colombia’s leftist president, Gustavo Petro, visited Donald Trump at the White House in an effort to heal their acrimonious relationship (Mr Trump has called Mr Petro a “drug-trafficking leader” and Mr Petro has likened America’s immigration policies to those of the Nazis). The pair discussed the fight against drug gangs and Venezuela’s oil exports. Mr Trump described their meeting as “terrific” and Mr Petro said it was “constructive”. He left holding a MAGA hat.