Author: admin

  • The Sussex sommelier! Meghan Markle announces an exciting update following the launch of her sell-out rosé

    The Sussex sommelier! Meghan Markle announces an exciting update following the launch of her sell-out rosé

    Meghan went as far as to suggest that ‘a scarcity mentality at the beginning might be a hook for people,’ comparing sell-out products to ‘a sneaker drop’. However, she emphasised that in terms of long-term customer experience, it’s not ideal. ‘I don’t want you to eat that jam once every six months. I want that to be on your shelf all the time,’ she said. In an interview with business magazine Fast Company in May, Meghan hinted that while she might restock the As Ever website soon, any new launches would be months away – in the first quarter of 2026, at least.

    The Duchess has certainly kept fans on their toes, however: just days weeks later, she made a swift U-turn, announcing on Instagram that the brand’s products would be replenished, alongside new launches. ‘To all who’ve been wondering and waiting, thank you!’ she wrote. ‘Your favourites are returning, plus a few NEW things we can’t wait to show you. Coming this month… get excited!’ The rosé is the latest in that line of new products, and it seems that Meghan’s fans just can’t get enough.


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  • Heineken launch mobile plan that rewards logging off

    Heineken launch mobile plan that rewards logging off

    In a digital culture addicted to scrolling, Heineken is flipping the script with a move that feels both genius and slightly ironic: a mobile phone plan that helps people disconnect – by sending them reminder texts.

    Launching in Finland in partnership with telco Moi Mobiili, ‘HeiMobile’ is being billed as the world’s first “social mobile plan.”

    Rather than endless data and dopamine hits, the plan pings users with real-world perks—tickets to events, leisure experiences, and nudges to get out and meet people.

    It’s screen time with an off switch.

    It’s also smart timing. According to DNA’s annual Digital Life survey, 40% of Finns admit they struggle to disconnect from the internet, rising to 57% among 25–34-year-olds.

    The idea that a mobile plan could counteract this feels counterintuitive – until you consider how much of the anxiety starts with the phone itself.

    “We want to bring genuine presence and joyful moments back,” says Pekko Koski, Product Manager for Heineken who sees the initiative as a kind of digital detox that doesn’t require deleting apps or going off-grid.

    The brand is kicking things off by enlisting hyper-online influencers to trial the plan this summer. It’s a self-aware twist: using people who live online to promote logging off.

    “They too realise it’s about balance,” says Nabil Nasser, Heineken’s Global Head.

    This isn’t Heineken’s first IRL-first idea – its part of a masterbrand campaign. This year Heineken took aim at digital burnout with its global campaign “Social off socials”, created by LePub, and fronted by Joe Jonas.

    The beer brand launched an invention designed to nudge you off your phone the next time you’re at the pub and a campaign to tackle mobile phone use at concerts.

    Heineken’s move into mobile networks signals a culture shift. Not a rejection of tech, but a reimagining of how we use it.

    Because as Koski puts it, “People long for a time when being together didn’t require a phone.”

    The campaign was delivered by United Imaginations.

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  • Thailand’s new Cabinet members take oaths, including suspended prime minister

    Thailand’s new Cabinet members take oaths, including suspended prime minister

    BANGKOK — Thailand swore in new Cabinet members Thursday with its government in flux after the Constitutional Court suspended the prime minister less than a year after the same court removed her predecessor.

    Paetongtarn Shinawatra, who was suspended as prime minister while under an ethics investigation for a conversation with a senior Cambodian leader, returned to the cabinet as culture minister.

    The top job was filled by Phumtham Wechayachai, a longtime ally of Paetongtarn’s father, former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Phumtham served under Paetongtarn as deputy prime minister and defense minister. He was sworn in Thursday as deputy prime minister and interior minister.

    Phumtham told reporters that he would keep things running and denied that recent events showed instability within the government.

    Paetongtarn has faced growing dissatisfaction over her handling of a border dispute with Cambodia, including an armed confrontation in May in which a Cambodian soldier was killed.

    In a leaked phone call with Cambodian Senate President Hun Sen, she attempted to defuse tensions — but instead set off a string of complaints and public protests. Critics said she went too far in appeasing Hun Sen and damaged Thailand’s image and interests.

    The Constitutional Court voted unanimously Tuesday to review a petition accusing Paetongtarn of a breach of the ethics and voted 7-2 to immediately suspend her until it issues its ruling. The court gave Paetongtarn 15 days to give evidence to support her case. It’s unclear when it will rule.

    The same day, Thailand’s king endorsed a Cabinet lineup in which Paetongtarn would be the culture minister.

    Phumtham was assigned on Thursday to be first of several deputies in line to act as prime minister, said government spokesperson Jirayu Houngsub.

    Deputy Prime Minister Suriya Jungrungreangkit, who was acting prime minister in the interim, led the new Cabinet members at the ceremony to receive the endorsement from King Maha Vajiralongkorn at the Dusit Palace.

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  • Dan Evans returns to Wimbledon’s Centre Court, a year on from sacrificing his career

    Dan Evans returns to Wimbledon’s Centre Court, a year on from sacrificing his career

    The Athletic has live coverage from Day 4 at Wimbledon 2025. 

    THE ALL ENGLAND CLUB, LONDON — This time a year ago, British tennis player Dan Evans had a decision to make. He could play the 2024 Paris Olympic Games and partner two-time Wimbledon champion Andy Murray in his final event, or he could defend his Citi Open title in Washington D.C.. The former was the romantic option, but missing the latter would mean 500 points coming off his ranking.

    That would send Evans tumbling more than 100 spots toward the bottom end of the world’s top 200, taking away his automatic entry to top-tier tennis events. He would have to drop down to the second-tier ATP Challenger Tour, which is not where any former world No. 21 wants to be, especially in their mid-30s.

    This was no quandary for Evans. He chose the Olympics without hesitation and in so doing helped — and at times carried — Murray to two valedictory victories, both from multiple match points down. They didn’t win a medal, but the matches were unforgettable. It’s impossible to quantify a sporting experience like that.

    It is much easier to quantify what they meant for Evans’ career — and it wasn’t pretty. After winning the longest match in U.S. Open history by defeating Karen Khachanov in the first round, he settled into his new reality. His first event after New York was the Nonthaburi Challenger in Thailand. In February, he bounced from Bahrain one week to Glasgow, Scotland the next. By the end of March, he was ranked outside the world’s top 200.

    Evans knew what he was sacrificing to play with Murray, but the resultant destruction of his late career still hurt. At Wimbledon 12 months ago, he said that he’d consider retirement if he needed a wild card to enter.


    Murray and Evans formed an entertaining double act at the Paris Olympics. (Clive Brunskill / Getty Images)

    After a year of struggle — and taking the wild card that he never wanted to need — Evans will face the 24-time Grand Slam champion Novak Djokovic on Centre Court at Wimbledon, in a moment that feels as close to tennis karma as can exist. Not that Evans sees it that way. “I think if I believed in karma, I’d be in a bit of trouble,” he said in a news conference Tuesday, after beating Jay Clarke to set up the opportunity to face Djokovic.

    It was a throwaway line, but one that is in keeping with Evans’ character through every stage of his career.

    In his early days, Evans, who stands at 5 feet 9 inches (175cm) but is blessed with excellent hands and a devastating slice, looked as though he wasn’t going to make the most of his talent. The Lawn Tennis Association (LTA) took away his funding for four months in 2008, when he was in a nightclub until 3 a.m. with his doubles partner before a junior match at Wimbledon. It cut his funding again in 2010 and 2012, because of question marks over his attitude and commitment. Evans then failed to turn up for a third-tier ITF event in 2015, and was fined £350.

    When he finally started to put it together, reaching the Wimbledon and U.S. Open third rounds in 2016 and then the last 16 at the following year’s Australian Open, Evans imploded. He tested positive for cocaine in April 2017, a month after reaching a career-high ranking of No. 41, and was banned for a year. It could have been a precipice for his career, but Evans instead returned with a renewed focus.

    After beating Denis Istomin from two sets down in a thrilling Davis Cup tie that September, Evans fought back tears and later said that he had feared he would never play again. The following April, Roger Federer invited “Danny” — as he called the Brit — to Switzerland to train with him. After beating Evans in four sets at the Australian Open a few months earlier, Federer had been so impressed with his opponent’s game, full of slice and forays to the net, that he described him as a ‘mirror’ of himself.

    Evans climbed to that career-high rank of No. 21 in 2023, and even beat Thursday’s opponent Djokovic at the Monte Carlo Masters in 2021 in their only meeting to date. “I think when they do the stats, it has to be over, like, three matches to have a 100 percent record, so we’ll say I have a decent record,” Evans joked ahead of their meeting.


    Evans celebrates after beating Novak Djokovic at the 2021 Monte Carlo Masters. (Valery Hache / AFP via Getty Images)

    Born and raised in Birmingham, the son of a nurse and an electrician, Evans did not come from the British tennis heartlands of south-west London and Surrey.

    “It’d be cool to see a guy coming up and his parents are painters and decorators,” he told the Daily Mail in 2023. “That would interest me where his career went. It doesn’t interest me seeing how a career goes of a guy with wealthy parents.”

    Evans’ directness appears to come from wanting to raise standards — his own and those of his compatriots. Whenever he’s asked whether some good results for British players at Wimbledon signal a meaningful change, his answer is always the same. It’s not about doing it at Wimbledon for a match or two; it’s the other 50 weeks of the year that define a tennis player.

    Those 50 weeks in the past year have been some of the roughest of Evans’ career, and he has been emotional during his recent grass-court matches. He cried during his quarterfinal run in Eastbourne, off the back of beating Frances Tiafoe at the HSBC Championships a week earlier, and did so again during his pre-Wimbledon press conference.

    “It’s been awful basically,” Evans said Saturday of his year in the tennis wilderness.

    “It’s not … It’s not the matches, it’s, uh … It’s when you feel like you let people down, that’s the tougher thing about it,” he said as the tears started to flow.

    “I have no idea why I’m getting upset. But you go home to your wife and she travels. You see the kids — not my kids obviously — and (they ask), ‘Did you win?’ Just stupid things … you just feel a bit, you’re not used to losing. That’s probably more of the thing.

    “I don’t worry about retirement, but it’s just different, isn’t it? So to start losing and stuff like that, it’s scary at the end of the day to know sometimes you’re not good enough and that’s not an easy thing in sport to not be good enough.”

    Evans said Tuesday that the last year has been “equally as difficult” as when he was serving his drugs ban and feared his career was over, but that he would never go back on his decision to play the Olympic Games.

    “The 500 points and winning Washington, that was a great experience. But, and I probably shouldn’t say this as I’m asking for a wild card, but the feeling of going out to play in the quarterfinals with Andy was a lot different to playing in Washington.

    “That’s just a fact, and everybody’s behind you at the Olympics, so I never think about it like that. I’ve never woken and I thought, ‘Jeez, what have you done there?’ It’s always been a really proud moment. If I got a chance to do it again, I’d do it again.”

    After getting into a rare ATP Tour-level event in Dubai in February, where Khachanov dispatched him in straight sets, Evans despaired at his form, saying that “it was a massive eye-opener” after being away from the elite. Ranked No. 154, Evans is a long way from where he was. But even if he doesn’t believe in karma, maybe the tennis gods, who have delivered him a shot at the greatest male player of all time at his home major, do.

    “It’s what you play tennis for, isn’t it? To play the top players in the biggest tournaments,” Evans said.

    “I’m really looking forward to it.”

    (Top photo: Ben Stansall/AFP via Getty Images)

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  • Crew Dragon spaceship carrying Roscosmos cosmonaut to fly to ISS in late July

    Crew Dragon spaceship carrying Roscosmos cosmonaut to fly to ISS in late July

    3 Jul 2025 12:17

    Crew Dragon spaceship carrying Roscosmos cosmonaut to fly to ISS in late July – early Aug

    WASHINGTON. July 3 (Interfax) – A U.S. SpaceX Crew Dragon reentry spaceship carrying Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platonov, a member of the International Space Station (ISS) crew, is due to be launched in late July or early August, NASA said.

    Besides Platonov, Crew 11 mission involves U.S. astronauts Michael Fincke and Zena Cardman and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Kimiya Yui.

    The flight will be part of the Roscosmos-NASA cross-flights agreement.

    The ISS currently has a seven-member crew, including Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergei Ryzhikov, Alexei Zubritsky and Kirill Peskov, NASA astronauts Anne McClain, Nichole Ayers and Jonathan Kim, and JAXA astronaut Takuya Onishi.

    In addition, four tourists arrived at the station aboard the Crew Dragon spacecraft on June 26 on a two-week mission as part of the Axiom Space program. The crew of the spacecraft includes Axiom astronaut and former NASA astronaut, commander Peggy Whitson, spacecraft pilot Shubhanshu Shukla of India, and mission specialists from Hungary and Poland Tibor Kapu and Slawosz Uznanski.


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  • Europe’s top CEOs ask EU to pause AI Act – POLITICO

    Europe’s top CEOs ask EU to pause AI Act – POLITICO

    The landmark tech regulation has come under scrutiny in Brussels as part of an effort by European Union officials to cut red tape to boost its economy. The AI Act in particular has faced intense lobbying pressure from American tech giants in past months.

    European Commission tech chief Henna Virkkunen told POLITICO this week she would make a call on whether to pause the implementation by end August if standards and guidelines to implement the law are not ready in time.

    The chief officials lamented that “unclear, overlapping and increasingly complex EU regulations” is disrupting their abilities to do business in Europe. A pause would signal that the EU is serious about simplification and competitiveness to innovators and investors, they added.

    The pause should apply both to provisions on general-purpose AI that take affect on August 2, as well as systems classified as high-risk, that have to apply the rules in August 2026, the letter said.


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  • Aunty M Markets Fiery Sambal Belacan Business in Google’s YouTube Creator Series

    Aunty M Markets Fiery Sambal Belacan Business in Google’s YouTube Creator Series

    Google is bringing its Ad Solutions to life in a fresh new way for marketers and entrepreneurs in Southeast Asia, launching its first ever YouTube creator series featuring Singaporean YouTube personality Annette Lee, as alter ego Aunty M.

    For the first time, Google has collaborated with handpicked YouTube creators to strengthen perceptions about the effectiveness and efficiency of Google and YouTube Ads Solutions, with the series created by The Carrot Collective and VIRTUE Asia supporting on creator strategy and selection.

    The first episode features Annette, known for her short video series such as #ChatsWithChantelle, #AsianParentTings, and YouTube shows like Glowing Up and News Plannette, as Aunty M – the fast-talking, straight-shooting host with a flair for turning marketing jargon into plain speak, as she learns how to market her fiery sambal belacan business.

    Designed to demystify the platforms advertising products through fun, entertaining and relatable content, the episodic series shows Aunty M travelling across the region chatting to marketing professionals on how to make the most of Google and YouTube Ads Solutions.

    While marketers are increasingly turning to digital ad solutions, content about ad products has remained largely static, often technical, occasionally dry, and rarely delivered in a format optimised for how audiences consume content.

    Find more of the series here.

    Samit Malkani, group marketing creative manager at Google Southeast Asia and South Asia frontier, said, “The world doesn’t need more boring b2b content about how to launch a new ad campaign. Our products are constantly evolving, so it was time our storytelling did too. This series lets us speak to marketers and entrepreneurs on their terms, in ways that feel accessible, local, and culturally relevant.”

    The content format and distribution strategy for the ‘Marketing Unfiltered’ series is similar to that used by US talk shows, with full episodes to drive engagement, mid-form segments to build audience relevance and short-form highlights to drive frequency.

    The Carrot Collective’s CEO and co-founder, David Webster, said, “Our aim with Aunty M was to reframe how b2b marketing shows up – less as a product explainer, and more as a narrative universe designed to resonate with the real frustrations and ambitions of entrepreneurs across the region. By anchoring the series in character, humour and cultural insight, we’ve created a platform that doesn’t just inform, it builds affinity, earns attention, and drives deeper engagement at scale.”

    ​Zoe Chen, strategy director at VIRTUE Asia, added, “Many YouTube creators are already creating content about Google Ads Solutions so this was an opportunity to claim that narrative by collaborating with them to produce engaging content. Our strategy was rooted in authenticity, humour and regional relevance. The brilliant Annette Lee, who brings Aunty M to life, was a natural choice. She’s already beloved across Southeast Asia for her relatable comedic characters that capture the essence and cultural diversity of Southeast Asia, and an entrepreneur herself, Annette was the perfect bridge between complex ad solutions and entertainment. Creating the character of Aunty M with her meant that this isn’t just creator-led content, it’s creator-shaped strategy.”

    The content series will roll out across Google’s regional YouTube channels in Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines, supported by a paid media campaign across social platforms. Episode one is live now, with more to follow throughout the year.


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  • First Asim Munir, now Pakistan’s Air Force chief lands in US to ‘strengthen’ defence partnership

    First Asim Munir, now Pakistan’s Air Force chief lands in US to ‘strengthen’ defence partnership

    Pakistan’s Chief of the Air Staff Zaheer Ahmed Baber Sidhu paid an official visit to the US to further enhance bilateral defence cooperation after Army Chief Field Marshal Asim Munir recently undertook a similar tour.

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    This is the first visit by a serving Pakistan Air Force (PAF) chief in over a decade, an indication of stepping up military engagements between Pakistan and the US.

    “The Chief of the Air Staff of Pakistan Air Force, Air Chief Marshal Zaheer Ahmed Babar Sidhu, paid an official visit to the US, the first visit by any serving Air Chief of the Pakistan Air Force in over a decade, which will further enhance bilateral defence cooperation and mutual interests,” a PAF statement read on Wednesday.

    “This high-level visit is a strategic milestone in the Pak-US defence partnership. The visit will play a significant role in addressing key regional and global security issues as well as building institutional ties,” it said.

    It further said Sidhu held several important meetings with the top military and political leadership of the country during the visit to the US.

    Pakistan’s Chief of the Air Staff Zaheer Ahmed Baber Sidhu holds high-level meetings with US military and political leadership. Photo: X/@DGPR_PAF

    At the Pentagon, he met US Secretary of the Air Force for International Affairs Kelly L. Seybolt and Air Force Chief of Staff General David W. Elon, where the two sides agreed to forge new avenues for bilateral military cooperation, mutual affairs, joint training and technology exchange.

    The PAF chief highlighted the historical and multi-faceted relations between Pakistan and the US, particularly in the defence sector.

    Sidhu reiterated Pakistan’s commitment to further strengthening the existing relations between the air forces of the two countries in the areas of military cooperation and training.

    During the detailed discussions, the two sides also agreed to establish high-level military relations in the future.

    They reiterated their commitment to forge new avenues for cooperation between the two countries in various fields, including joint training, operational exercises and exchange programmes, and to intensify efforts for this purpose, the statement read.

    During his visit to the US State Department, Sidhu met Brown L Stanley of the Bureau of Political and Military Affairs and Eric Meyer of the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs.

    The meetings highlighted Pakistan’s constructive role in promoting regional stability, the country’s commitment to its ongoing counter-terrorism efforts, and its perspective on the evolving geopolitical landscape of South and Central Asia, the statement said.

    During his visit to Capitol Hill, Sidhu held important meetings with prominent members of the US Congress, including Mike Turner, Rich McCormick, and Bill Heizenga.

    These meetings not only reinforced the importance of bilateral relations and cooperation but also provided a valuable opportunity to articulate Pakistan’s perspective on strategic challenges, regional security framework, and the impact of emerging technologies on defence cooperation at the international level, the statement said.

    “This historic visit not only reaffirmed the PAF’s commitment to promoting regional and global peace, but also laid the foundation for institutional cooperation, strategic dialogue, and joint operations between the PAF and the US Air Force,” the PAF said.

    The visit comes weeks after President Donald Trump hosted Munir for lunch, followed by a detailed meeting between the two.


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  • If You Like Zohran Mamdani, You’re Going to Love His Dad

    If You Like Zohran Mamdani, You’re Going to Love His Dad

    After years of becoming accustomed to the taste of defeat, perhaps even starting to enjoy it, the Anglosphere left is on the verge of seizing power in the epicentre of global capitalism. When Zohran Mamdani clinched victory in the Democratic primary for mayor of New York, it marked more than just a stunning upset of the establishment candidate Andrew Cuomo and the most well-financed super PAC in the city’s political history. It was offered a model of politics that could capture the imagination of the disenfranchised, disillusioned and destitute masses of Europe and North America who have found their cost of living squeezed beyond all limits ever since the 2008 financial crisis. Mamdani’s politics and persona synthesised a tech-savvy, cosmopolitan western millennial and a tradition long marginalised in the Anglosphere: one rooted in the postcolonial interrogation of power, citizenship and material justice.

    In his victory, here was a representative of this much maligned generation of the millennial left turning away from the safe confines of liberal identity representation toward a politics of economic redistribution, equality of citizenry and international solidarity with victims of colonial violence like the people of Gaza. Here is his father’s son.

    Mamdani is not just a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). He is also the son of the influential Ugandan scholar Mahmood Mamdani. And whilst we shouldn’t reduce anyone to their parents, there is a line that connects Mahmood’s writings on the limits of liberal platitudes of representation in the postcolonial state to his son’s successful pushing of the millennial left beyond a politics of representation into material concerns like rent freezes, universal childcare, free public transport and publicly owned grocery stores. Viewing Zohran through the lens offered by Mahmood’s work, we can glimpse what the 20th-century postcolonial tradition still has to offer a 21st century in which life, even in the imperial metropolis, has become virtually unliveable for the majority.

    Mahmood Mamdani is best understood as part of an older postcolonial tradition somewhat forgotten in recent years as “decolonisation” became the buzzword, mainly used to describe diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, representation in popular culture and endless arguments about individual experiences of identity. Mamdani Sr instead follows other postcolonial writers like Walter Rodney, Michael Manley or Kwame Nkrumah, who saw political freedom for the global majority as hollow without economic justice.

    In his landmark book Neither Settler Nor Native, Mahmood argues that the foundational violence of the modern state is the binary of citizen and subject. Mahmood argued that this binary was crystallised by colonialism, which relegated vast swathes of the global population to subjects with no rights or sovereignty. The postcolonial state, Mahmood argues, continued to be structured along the lines of this systemic exclusion unless it dismantled the architecture it inherited from its colonial predecessors. This created permanent minorities, and the inability to constitute a new political imaginary that Mamdani Sr saw as crippling the postcolonial state. Particularly incisive was Mamdani’s critique of South Africa’s move beyond apartheid. Whilst the rest of the world was dancing with Nelson Mandela and falling in love with the romanticism of the rainbow nation, Mamdani warned that in its rush to move on from a period of intense racial violence, post-apartheid South Africa was minimising the importance of addressing material harm to celebrate symbolic reconciliation. When it came to South Africa’s much-lauded Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), Mamdani saw its focus on a Christian ethics of forgiveness, compassion and absolution as a material failure that allowed those who got rich off apartheid to keep their wealth as long as they apologised: “It [the TRC] identified the victims of South Africa’s conflict but didn’t focus its energies on tracking down the beneficiaries of the violence.”

    The TRC, for all its moral symbolism and global acclaim, delivered what Mahmood Mamdani called “a diminished truth”. In its eagerness to inaugurate a new era of peace, the Commission narrowed the parameters of truth-seeking. It focused almost exclusively on investigating acts that were illegal under apartheid – torture, extrajudicial killings, and other direct forms of state violence – but left untouched the legal but equally devastating apparatus of forced removals, land dispossession and economic exploitation. South Africa changed the laws of racial segregation but left intact the economic structures that had produced and sustained it.

    This is the crucial insight that Mamdani Sr brought to the analysis, not just of post-apartheid South Africa but of the postcolonial state in general: that justice cannot end with liberal representation or recognition of harms. It must continue into the realm of redistribution. It must look at how society divides those who belong from those who don’t – not just through overt political violence, but through economic structures that appear neutral, legal, even benevolent.

    It is this lineage that Zohran Mamdani taps into, consciously or not. His campaign was not about adding one more brown face to the managerial class. It was not about securing a “seat at the table” or breaking a “glass ceiling.” It was about transforming the table itself. His policies are not just bold. They are, in a deeply Mamdanian sense, attempts to reconstitute the very terms of citizenship. Who gets to live in the city? Who gets to belong? Who gets to flourish?

    By echoing the postcolonial tradition of his father for the new millennium, Zohran Mamdani is not just the anti-Trump. He is also the anti-Obama. Obama was always keen to fold his story into the triumphalist promise of the American dream, distancing himself from any suggestion that he sought to challenge the given structures of the land of the free. Obama’s narrative was America’s apotheosis: finally, even the Black man could be included in the American dream. Mamdani Jr is telling his audience to wake up – the dream isn’t real. Obama often stressed that he wasn’t anything as scary as a Muslim or a socialist he was accused of being. Mamdani Jr is both, and embraces it. Obama used the story of his African father to craft a narrative of individual uplift, a personal ascent from the “dreams of my father” to the country’s highest office through personal excellence. Mamdani Jr uses the story of his African father to situate himself in a tradition of collective struggle and political critique. In doing so, Zohran Mamdani reactivates a decolonial grammar of justice that, in the west, has been buried under the rubble of liberal multiculturalism and corporate diversity schemes.

    What Zohran Mamdani shows is that the tradition his father represents – a postcolonial critique that is sceptical of moralism, wary of elite consensus, attentive to material structures – is not necessarily an anachronism, but can be a blueprint for the future. Zohran understands how to use social media to spread Mahmood’s critique beyond the classroom or conference: that the project of decolonisation was not about dividing society into the righteous and the wrong, but about imagining a different kind of society altogether.

    As we teeter on the edge of ecological collapse, fascism and economic despair, the Anglosphere left must ask itself whether it wants to shore up a dying system or build something new. In Zohran Mamdani’s victory, we see the first serious effort in a long time to do the latter.

    Kojo Koram is a reader in law at Birkbeck College, University of London and the author of Uncommon Wealth: Britain and the Aftermath of Empire.

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  • Israeli air strike on shelter for displaced kills at least 25 – France 24

    1. Israeli air strike on shelter for displaced kills at least 25  France 24
    2. LIVE: Israel kills dozens of Gaza aid seekers in ‘unprovoked gunfire’  Al Jazeera
    3. 12 killed in Israeli strike on shelter for displaced: Gaza rescuers  Dawn
    4. 95 Palestinians martyred amidst continued Israeli aggression  Ptv.com.pk
    5. Israeli strike on Gaza seafront cafe kills at least 20 Palestinians, witnesses and rescuers say  BBC

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