Widespread alarm at Keir Starmer’s decision to slash funds, amid warnings of dire consequences for world’s poorest

Keir Starmer promised at the UN last September that the UK would “be a leading contributor to development”. Just five months later few expected an announcement that could result in UK aid spending falling to its lowest level this century.

Overseas development aid will fall from 0.5% of the UK’s gross national income to 0.3% – a cut of about £6bn – in order to pay for increased defence spending.

Widespread shooting and looting preceded arrival of M23 rebels, overwhelming city’s poorly resourced facilities

Patients at hospitals in the second-largest city in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo have described how they sustained serious injuries during the chaotic withdrawal of the Congolese army and its allies in the days before Rwanda-backed M23 rebels marched in.

Widespread shooting and looting preceded the arrival of the rebels in Bukavu, the capital of South Kivu province, on 14 February, overwhelming the city’s poorly resourced hospitals.

Royal Opera House, London
The Royal Ballet’s dazzling interpretation of Crystal Pite’s triptych sends our emotions soaring and swooping

An accidental Crystal Pite festival sprang up last week, following Figures in Extinction, the results of an exceptional four-year collaboration with Simon McBurney and Nederlands Dans Theater with a revival of Light of Passage, made for the Royal Ballet in 2022.

It’s a sweeping, powerful piece, combining three separate points of departure into its 90-minute running time, all set to Henryk Górecki’s Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, conducted by Zoi Tsokanou and sung with passion and poise by Francesca Chiejina.

Light of Passage is at the Royal Opera House, London, until 12 March

Exclusive: Zhou Bo says harm done to US image may make Taiwanese reconsider their attitude towards Beijing but says he sees Trump as overall being ‘rather friendly’

The damage caused by Donald Trump to the United States’ reputation is creating opportunities for China, particularly with regards to Taiwan, according to a retired senior colonel from China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

Speaking to the Guardian in Beijing, Zhou Bo said that Trump was damaging the US’s reputation “more than all of his predecessors combined”.

Maintaining pace with the US president’s wild outbursts and the mind-boggling media reports about him is no laughing matter

The smelly thoughts of Donald Trump bubble up like brown burps in the sort of bombsite pond Chopper bike-riding children were advised to avoid in 1970s public information films. Do they indicate concrete plans, are they designed to provoke, or do they have no meaning, like the gurgles and gasps that can inadvertently escape from a decomposing corpse? My job here is to try to anticipate if anything Trump says or does is likely to be of any lasting significance and to satirise it accordingly, in the small window of time allowed, for money. And it isn’t getting any easier. Yes, Ukraine is suffering, but I am the real victim here.

For example, last Saturday Trump opined: “We were the richest… think of this, from 1870 to 1913… because we collected tariffs… We had so much wealth. Wouldn’t it be nice today? Of course, now, we give it away to transgender this, to transgender that. Everybody gets a transgender operation. It’s wonderful. We give it away to crazy things. But in those days, it was different. It was a different world. It was a different country.”

Stewart Lee tours Stewart Lee vs the Man-Wulf this year, with a Royal Festival Hall run in July