Anthony Zurcher

Mixed messages from Trump leave more questions than answers over war's end The US president has tried to soothe nerves over oil and markets, but his comments still lack clarity, writes Anthony Zurcher.

President Donald Trump and his administration have so far offered mixed messages and contradictory explanations on the joint US-Israeli military campaign against Iran. Monday was more of the same.
www.bbc.com/news/article...

There is a very real difference between asking people to make a sacrifice for what you say is a good cause and telling people that the sacrifice they are currently making without their choice is for a good cause.

Sexy, no. But definitely foxy.

The U.S. is not in the business of nation-building, but it will pick Iran’s new leaders, bring it back from the brink of destruction and make it bigger, better and stronger than ever…

A bombing campaign has never achieved unconditional surrender*, but maybe this time it will work.

*Hiroshima, I hope, is not relevant here.

Alabama election pits Trump against his base Why is Donald Trump backing an establishment favourite against an anti-establishment judge?

Here's my piece looking into that race. Is history going to repeat itself in Texas? www.bbc.com/news/world-u...

I'm reminded of 2017, when Trump endorsed - and campaigned for - Senator Luther Strange in Alabama despite much of his base prefering the controversial Judge Roy Moore. Moore won the nomination anyway, then became the first Republican to lose a Senate race to a Democrat since 1990.

“Mistakenly withheld”

If old, ill-considered tweets always came back to haunt politicians, we’d have a different president.

And there are Paxton supporters who will be absolutely furious if Trump throws his support to Cornyn.

So who would Trump ask to drop out? Cornyn, the incumbent senator who won more votes in the first round? Or Paxton, the loyal soldier who backed Trump’s challenges to the 2020 election and showed up in New York to support him during his criminal trial?

Trump is older than the guy who was vice-president in 1989!

Key takeaways from Texas primaries, as Talarico beats Crockett in Democratic race Contests in the southern state are signalling which way the Republicans and Democrats are heading.

Stop me if you're heard this before, but Democrats are hoping they might be able to win a statewide seat in Texas. Here's what I saw on the ground in the recently concluded Texas Senate primaries. www.bbc.com/news/article...

I spoke with a woman who tried to vote with her mom at one polling location and was told it was the wrong one. Told to go somewhere else, also wrong. She then dropped her mother off and successfully cast her ballot at a third location. Then was going back to take her mother out one more time.

A water rights dispute between Egypt and Ethiopia = war
Joint US-Israeli bombing campaign of Iran that kills Iranian leadership and destroys military = not war

How many eyebrows do you have?

I wonder how "that's the way it is" would have landed if Biden had said that after the Abbey Gate bombing.

an elderly man with a mustache is smiling and looking at the camera ALT: an elderly man with a mustache is smiling and looking at the camera

Anthropic is the one AI company making money hand over fist. Claude is far and away the best LLM for coding. Anthropic has raised $67bn in funding. In other words …

Get a big monitor and do “page width.” Then you don’t have to acknowledge the cold reality of those zoom percentages.

a group of men are standing in a room with the words give him the shot , you give him that shot . ALT: a group of men are standing in a room with the words give him the shot , you give him that shot .

Yes. The character and the actor, of course.

I thought that when it was your time, that you would be the one to hold the string. Senator Corleone; Governor Corleone; defensive lineman Corleone.

Analysis: Trump issues patriotic rallying cry with eye on crucial elections The BBC's Anthony Zurcher says the US president appealed to his base and taunted his opponents in a marathon speech.

Donald Trump is betting that what he’s done so far – along with a renewed sense of American patriotism – will be enough to shift public mood in his favour before the midterms. For the moment, that appears like a risky wager. www.bbc.com/news/article...

Four years into its full-scale war in Ukraine, Russia is feeling the effects Steve Rosenberg reports on the economic consequences of Russia's war, and how people are coping.

350km from Moscow a giant mural of soldiers killed in Ukraine looms over a town, like the war itself hangs over Russia. In Lipetsk region I witness the consequences for Russia of four years of war on Ukraine. www.bbc.com/news/article...

I used “tastes like burning” in a conversation just yesterday.

Trump to address a changed America at vital moment for his presidency Few of Donald Trump’s speeches to Congress have had as much riding on them as the one on Tuesday night.

Delivered just eight months before the midterms, this is the last Trump State of the Union address that could have a direct impact on the political landscape during his presidential term. www.bbc.com/news/article...

I saw Raul Julia onstage as Dn Quixote in Man of La Mancha. He was fabulous. My favorite film of his is probably Moon Over Parador. He steals it.

No biggie. J Edgar Hoover did the same thing at Squaw Valley in 1960.