Dear all, 

Here are some of the top stories in the news this week. Thanks for your support.

Britain

• Scottish CND’s column in The National: The real reason politicians back nuclear power instead of renewables.
• New polling from You Guv found that the majority of Western Europeans are opposed to developing nuclear arsenals, with nuclear powers France and Britain the only outliers. However, within Britain, opposition to a US nuclear weapons deployment is growing, up from 59% to 61% since a similar poll was conducted in 2023.
• The Spectator airs calls from Paul Mason and others for Britain to actually spend more on nuclear weapons, with suggestions including, increasing its nuclear arsenal, building a fifith Dreadnought sub, or equiping the air-launched Storm Shadow missile with a nuclear warhead.

Global Nukes

• The Bulletin has published its overview of Russia’s nuclear weapons in 2025. 

Nuclear Disarmament

• Historian Max Hastings defends nuclear weapons in his review for The Times of Mark Lynas’ Six Minutes to Winter: Nuclear War and How to Avoid It.
• That’s as Lynas and Ted Nordhaus, director of the Breakthrough Institute, write on the impacts of nuclear war on the climate for the Wall Street Journal.

India-Pakistan

• India and Pakistan trade accusations of nuclear weapons mismanagement.

Iran

• Iran has ‘sort of’ agreed deal on nuclear programme, says Donald Trump. US president rules out military action against Tehran after talks in Oman.

AUKUS / Asia-Pacific

• HII and Babcock joint venture H&B Defence has been awarded its first major contract under the AUKUS pact, a A$9.6 million contract to enhance suplly chain capabilities.

NATO / Europe

• Following meetings with leaders, including Germany and Poland, Emmanuel Macron has announced that he is “ready to open a discussion” with European countries interested on hosting French nuclear weapons. Read CND’s comment here.

Nuclear Power

• BBC: The UK needs more nuclear energy to power the data centres needed for artificial intelligence (AI), the boss of the world’s largest cloud computing company has said. Amazon Web Services (AWS), which is part of the retail giant Amazon, plans to spend £8bn on new data centres in the UK over the next four years.

Best,

Pádraig McCarrick

Press and Communications Officer

Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament