THE festive wrapping paper is on sale, the family-size box of Quality Street is stacked in shops – Christmas is officially on its way.
If you’re a true fan of the season, you’ll obviously want to head to the UK’s biggest Christmas market.
And the largest is actually in Manchester which opens at the beginning of next month.
Returning on November 6, it will run for over six weeks – so there’s plenty of time to visit whether you’re a local or not.
It’s so enormous that there are 210 stalls across 10 locations spread about the city centre.
The stalls will sell everything from festive food and drink – think hot chocolate and mulled wine – to international street food, if you’re over the yorkshire pudding wraps.
Handmade gifts and stocking fillers can be found there too, if you’re ready to start Christmas shopping.
Albert Square will be where most of the city’s festivities will be, including its 50-metre high Ferris wheel.
There will also be a pop-up ‘pub’ for the festive season as well as a giant Santa, a vintage Helter Skelter and a huge tree installation and life-sized selfie sleigh.
If you’re on the hunt for ice skating, you’ll find it at Cathedral Gardens along with some market stalls too.
Across the city will be live entertainment, and plenty of Christmas lights.
The Manchester Christmas Parade will be held again this year on December 6.
Kids will be able to spot Snow Queens, reindeers, Nutcrackers, toy soldiers and even Santa who will be travelling onboard the Elf Express.
Visitors will find the market spread across locations including; Albert Square, Lincoln Square, King Street, St Ann’s Square, Exchange Street, New Cathedral Street, Exchange Square, Corn Exchange, Cathedral Gardens, and Market Street.
A recent study by Christmas Tree World also recently crowned Manchester Christmas Market as the UK’s best.
Factors were based on the number of Google searches, social media posts and videos, hotel prices, history, number of stalls, entry cost and closeness to public transport.
With much cheaper hotel prices than the like of New York city, the Manchester Christmas Market was also voted second best in the world.
The market will come to a close on December 22.
However, the Albert Square and Cathedral Gardens will remain open throughout the Christmas period until January 3, 2027.
Without a quick deal to move fertiliser through the strait, agricultural productivity would ‘significantly drop’.
Published On 14 Oct 202614 Oct 2026
A senior United Nations official has warned that parts of Asia and Africa could face a food security crisis unless Iran and the United States quickly agree on a UN-backed plan to move fertiliser through the embattled Strait of Hormuz.
UN Under-Secretary-General Jorge Moreira da Silva said on Wednesday that it was “absolutely critical” that the two countries agree to the proposal within weeks as planting season approaches. It calls for a UN-staffed coordination centre in Oman to help register vessels and oversee their safe passage in the waterway, through which a large portion of key global fertiliser inputs traditionally flow.
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“If we miss that planting season, the productivity of agriculture would significantly drop and the impact on prices will significantly increase,” Moreira da Silva told Reuters on the sidelines of International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings in Bangkok, Thailand.
Farmers operate strict crop calendars, and even slight delays could severely affect yield.
Traffic in the Strait of Hormuz has been severely disrupted since the start of the US-Israel war on Iran, with Iran targeting vessels in the strait and the US and Iran exchanging fire in and around the waterway.
The disruption has hit global supplies of urea, the world’s most widely used nitrogen fertiliser, as well as seaborne sulphur, a key input. Before the war, roughly a third of global urea shipments and nearly half of seaborne sulphur passed through the strait.
Although some ships have been able to sail through amid the crisis, fertiliser products have made up a “very negligible” share of moving cargo, according to the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute.
Moreira da Silva said the UN-backed fertiliser mechanism, drawn up in March, could be activated within seven to 10 days if both Iran and the US agree.
Under the plan, UN monitors would work alongside local authorities at Gulf ports to verify cargo loading. Ships would be tracked during transit, and additional inspections could be carried out if countries raised concerns about a vessel or its cargo, said Moreira da Silva. He did not say why the US and Iran have not yet agreed.
The passage of only five vessels per day through the Strait of Hormuz could keep fertiliser supplies flowing to countries in critical need, he added.
The UN mechanism could work alongside negotiations for a “comprehensive deal” to restore freedom of navigation in the strait, Moreira da Silva said.
Iran and the US have exchanged proposals through intermediaries since a June interim ceasefire collapsed. Efforts to reopen the Strait of Hormuz have stalled over Tehran’s conditions and Washington’s insistence on addressing Iran’s nuclear programme from the outset.
“What we are telling them is, while you continue your discussions towards a comprehensive deal, let us work, let us do our job,” said Moreira da Silva.
His plea comes amid growing concern that fertiliser shortages could hit global food supplies.
In May, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization warned that fertiliser scarcity could tighten food supplies from late 2026 into 2027, and would likely hit countries facing climate or other crises much harder.
In South Asia, where most rely on imported fertiliser, farmers are already struggling because of soaring costs and fertiliser scarcity. On Wednesday, farmers in Spain took to the streets to protest rising production costs amid high oil and fertiliser prices.
Pointe aux Sables, Mauritius – “At one funeral, we scattered sand from Chagos into an elder’s tomb to honour his unfulfilled wish to breathe his last in his homeland,” says Olivier Bancoult of the Chagos Refugees Group.
For elderly Chagossians displaced from their Indian Ocean homeland decades ago, delays to a treaty allowing their return are raising fears that they may never see the islands again.
The agreement, signed by Britain and Mauritius in May 2025, would allow resettlement on islands other than Diego Garcia, which would remain a military base. But it has yet to enter into force amid opposition from US President Donald Trump.
“We remain unshaken by Trump’s interference in the Chagos deal,” Bancoult says.
“The 2019 ICJ advisory opinion in favour of the archipelago’s return to Mauritius has restored our dignity and faith in our rights as native Chagossians.”
The Chagos archipelago, a group of islands in the Indian Ocean, was separated from Mauritius by Britain in 1965, three years before Mauritius gained independence. Britain later established a military base with the US on Diego Garcia, the largest island in the group.
Between 1968 and 1973, Britain removed an estimated 1,400 to 1,700 Chagossians from the islands. Many were resettled in Mauritius and the Seychelles, with others later moving to the United Kingdom. British authorities also made it illegal to remain on or return to the islands without permission.
“If Trump wants to meddle in this matter, well, let him,” Bancoult says. “We’ve had the 2019 ICJ [International Court of Justice] advisory opinion, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea’s 2021 judgement, and the 2025 UK-Mauritius treaty providing for Mauritius to exercise sovereignty over the archipelago. International law is squarely on our side.”
Signed on May 22, 2025, the treaty provides for Mauritius to exercise sovereignty over the Chagos archipelago, while allowing the UK to exercise rights over the Diego Garcia military base for an initial 99-year period. It also allows Mauritius to arrange for the resettlement of Chagossians on islands other than Diego Garcia. The treaty has not yet entered into force.
In April, the UK government told Parliament that the legislation needed to implement the agreement could not complete its passage during the 2024–26 parliamentary session. The session ended on April 29, meaning the bill made no further progress.
In January, Trump criticised the agreement, calling it an “act of great stupidity ” and questioning whether it adequately protected the Diego Garcia military base.
The issue returned to the diplomatic agenda in September. On September 21, British Prime Minister Andy Burnham said the UK would work with Mauritius and the US on a way forward that secures the operation of Diego Garcia and protects UK national security.
On September 26, Mauritian Prime Minister Navin Ramgoolam travelled to the UK for talks with British National Security Adviser Jonathan Powell and other officials on the Chagos issue. He remains in London, with the Mauritian government saying the discussions would cover recent developments concerning the archipelago.
For Bancoult, the central question is whether elderly Chagossians will live long enough to see the treaty’s promises fulfilled.
“Chagossians born on the archipelago are now aged between 58 and 100. We are growing old, and we have lost several Chagossian elders this year alone,” he says.
For younger Chagossians, the consequences are also cultural.
Chrisyl Wong-Hang-Sun, a PhD researcher in anthropology at the University of Edinburgh, says years of displacement and migration are making it harder to preserve Chagossian culture.
“During my fieldwork, many diaspora members expressed concerns over cultural loss, such as words in Chagossian Creole and recipes that are difficult to recreate abroad,” she says. “Descendants of Chagossians, myself included, long to know the islands of their relatives and ancestors.”
The dispute has also exposed political differences among Chagossians.
“The actions of both the British and Mauritian governments have resulted in very nuanced and differing political opinions among Chagossians across the UK, Mauritius and the Seychelles,” Wong-Hang-Sun says.
The Chagos Refugees Group is at odds with UK-based second-generation Chagossian Misley Mandarin and his supporters, who favour resettlement under British rather than Mauritian sovereignty and have received backing from Reform UK.
Wong-Hang-Sun says those differences should be recognised as negotiations continue.
Both governments, she says, need to “find ways to prioritise and engage with the Chagossian diaspora as a whole”.
Mauritius has disclosed little publicly about the substance of the latest talks on Chagos.
At the United Nations General Assembly in September, Foreign Minister Dhananjay Ramful reiterated Mauritius’ position that its sovereignty over the Chagos archipelago was “non-negotiable”. He also described the 2025 agreement as a vindication of international law and said Mauritius was committed to diplomacy and dialogue over the issue.
Beyond official statements and communiques, the Mauritian government has provided few details about the substance of the current discussions.
International relations consultant Bruno Donat, who has previously worked at the UN, says Mauritius should focus on sustained engagement with diplomatic partners, including the African Union, small island states, the Commonwealth Secretariat and sympathetic voices in the US Congress.
“Being in New York corridors for a photo” is not the priority, Donat says. Sustained engagement, he argues, can build pressure on Washington and prevent the issue from remaining unresolved indefinitely.
The Chagos Refugees Group has pursued a similar approach. In June, two months after the treaty stalled, its members travelled to the UK to lobby representatives of British political parties, with the exception of Reform UK.
But Diego Garcia remains the most contentious part of the agreement.
Lalit, a Mauritian political organisation that has campaigned for decades for the closure of the base, opposes its continued military use. Lindsey Collen of Lalit says the treaty, as it stood in April, would have kept the base open and brought Mauritius into a closer relationship with the US military presence on the island.
“In addition to the moral responsibility, we have the knowledge that we might become a target for self-defence if our land is used this way,” she says.
Collen is also concerned about a new partnership between the Mauritius Police Force and the New Mexico National Guard, as well as what she describes as the “enormous military-looking buildings” of the new US embassy in Mauritius.
Donat argues that the treaty could instead give Mauritius greater leverage over how Diego Garcia is used.
“Mauritius has publicly stated that the strikes launched from Diego Garcia against Iran breached international law,” he says. “That is not the position of a government staying silent to protect a lease payment.”
For Bancoult, those wider strategic questions are secondary to the need to ensure that elderly Chagossians have the chance to return to their homeland during their lifetimes.
“We are opposed to war, ethically, but we are also running out of time.”
The Chagos Refugees Group hopes to soon celebrate the 101st birthday of one of its members.
“God willing, he’ll stay with us for more years,” Bancoult says.
Republican Senator Rand Paul is standing in the way of the bipartisan Connected Vehicle Security Act of 2026, sponsored by Senators Bernie Moreno of Ohio and Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, from passing through the Senate. The legislation aims to prohibit the import, manufacture, and sale
Just a few months ago, amidst the avalanche of uncertainties surrounding the kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro by the US military in collusion with Venezuelan forces, we identified six indicators pointing to a clear political reality: the remaining chavista leadership was successfully adapting to the new board under conditions of vassalage to the invading power.
Since then, the core underlying conditions have not changed—the government continues to prevail over the conflict—but new windows of opportunity have opened for the opposition, and new situations have arisen that put this new, Rodríguez-led neochavismo in a tight spot.
The first sign of chavismo’s remarkable capacity for subservience was the sacrifice of some of its own key figures in exchange for US validation. Handing over Alex Saab was a well-calibrated move by the interim government. The primary financial operator of late chavismo had transformed into the manager of an opaque economy, eventually elevating himself into a political actor and a banner of anti-imperialism. Yet his fall came with a successor, a new financial lobbyist bearing the same signature of corruption, but who does not answer solely to chavismo: Alejandro Betancourt is a hinge operator, a pragmatic and elastic figure whose nature allows him to serve multiple partners with conflicting interests at the same time. Thus, the ideological flexibility of chavismo’s newest protagonists aligns perfectly with its broader mutation from a political project into a commercial consortium.
In our previous analysis, we identified supervised economic liberalization as the government’s biggest gamble to buy time. Accelerating economic recovery was seen as a critical opportunity to relieve political and social pressure. However, the expected results have failed to materialize on schedule. No matter how many headlines trumpet investments in the oil, energy, and mining sectors, and regardless of the photos documenting memorandums of understanding with international capital, the revival of the economy remains a fantasy—just as it has been for the past twenty years. If Venezuelans are accustomed to anything, it is chavismo’s delusions. Today, the government faces a scenario in which the domestic economy and access to basic public services deteriorate at the exact same rate that rejection of foreign tutelage grows. Simply put: the strategy of accelerating economic recovery to defuse political pressure has been a complete failure.
In the electricity sector alone—one of the main triggers of protests and street pressure in recent weeks—there is a stark divide between grand announcements and actual binding agreements. Throughout 2026, investment announcements in Venezuela’s electrical grid were measured in megawatts, nearly all framed as recovery agreements with state-owned Corpoelec. In April, talks with Siemens and General Electric were announced to address the crisis in Zulia, but to date, no public contract exists with either company, and the situation remains critical: blackouts lasting between 5 and 12 hours (or more) persist.
On one hand, we see the return of exiled politicians who were persecuted for years. On the other, isolated attempts at arrests.
To date, no agreement has disclosed financial amounts or funding sources. Furthermore, megawatt figures vary depending on the source, and it remains unclear how INSA and Impsa are dividing the work at the Tocoma hydroelectric plant. All of this is unfolding against a backdrop of undeniable social demands that cannot be pacified by press headlines and investment promises. The timeline for economic relief is slipping away, while the timeline for public demand is accelerating.
Ten months later, we can affirm that the relaxation of the repressive system and the amnesty law were purely symbolic gestures directed at Trump, carrying no real dismantling of the persecution apparatus. That tactic of erecting façade after façade regarding human rights has been maintained. Repression cooled down and political prisoners were released—some only partially—during these months under foreign tutelage. However, based on several statements from Washington detached from reality, the interim government confirmed that human rights are simply not on the US agenda. In that sense, there have even been small trial balloons replicating the repression of past months, testing American indifference. The Trump administration is not dismantling the repressive apparatus in Venezuela because its own government is also repressive—one that, in many cases, shares victims with chavismo: Venezuelans on US soil.
Nevertheless, a novel phenomenon is taking place that sends contradictory signals. On one hand, we see the return of exiled politicians who were persecuted for years. On the other, isolated attempts at arrests. This tension within the security apparatus has yet to show a clear trend and will ultimately be defined by the political force deployed by the actors involved.
In the initial months of US tutelage, the most dramatic shift in the interim government’s foreign policy—and the clearest sign of its ability to mutate to survive—was severing its alliance with Cuba. That move brought an alarming deterioration to the island’s economic situation, which had depended on Venezuelan oil for more than two decades. Remaining Chavismo did not hesitate to drop its oldest ideological partner when the cost of sustaining it became Washington’s disapproval. In that sense, it was primarily an existential rupture: one that demonstrated their capacity to sacrifice even their own founding narrative to guarantee the continuity of power.
In Venezuela, China is not competing in the short term. Instead, it is waiting for its window of opportunity to open.
With the discursive framing of the divorce from Cuba settled, this new period in international affairs—beyond the relationship with the US—is marked by the positioning and balancing act required regarding China, particularly concerning its oil assets amidst U.S. penetration into the sector. Unlike Cuba, China is not an ally that can be abruptly discarded without consequences. It is the country’s primary creditor following years of loans repaid with crude oil, and it holds stakes in joint ventures across the Orinoco Petroleum Belt.
For now, the interim government operates in the realm of pure pragmatism: avoiding any signal of alignment with China that might irritate the US, while simultaneously leaving existing Chinese investments untouched. That balance can hold only as long as Washington refrains from directly targeting Chinese assets in the country. Should that happen, Rodriguez-led Neochavismo would find itself trapped between its tutor and its creditor, with no room left to manage ambiguity. China, for its part, is in no rush. Its strategy in the region has long been defined by patience and long-term calculation: it is not competing in the short term; instead, it is waiting for its window of opportunity to open. And under a government that has proven its loyalties are entirely negotiable, that window will open sooner or later.
The other major successful mutation for chavismo coming into view this year has been the dissolution of its anti-imperialist rhetoric. For over two decades, confrontation with the United States served as the narrative anchor of the movement’s project, the story that justified shortages, explained sanctions and failures, unified the militant base, and gave chavismo a distinct place on the international map. Today, that story is entirely untenable for a government cooperating directly with those who kidnapped its president and bombed its country: chavismo can no longer posture as a fortress against empire.
This shift carries heavy political costs. Internally, it opens deep fractures: segments of the rank-and-file and mid-level cadres trained on that narrative watch as their leadership cuts deals with the very enemy they were taught to fight for years, eroding the loyalty that the narrative once guaranteed. Externally, it means losing international alliances that relied precisely on that shared identity. Chavismo can no longer offer its former partners the epic tale of resistance.
The opposition’s challenge lies in constructing a vision of its own—one capable of appealing to an exhausted society that has watched both the revolutionary narrative and promises of a swift transition collapse.
Yet the dissolution of anti-imperialism also poses a serious dilemma for the opposition. For years, the opposition built its moral standing in direct opposition to a regime that simultaneously claimed the anti-imperialist mantle, violated human rights, and destroyed the economy. Now, with chavismo falling in line with Washington, that contrast becomes blurred. The opposition can no longer define itself solely by its antagonism to chavismo, nor can it present alignment with the U.S. as its own unique banner, because the interim government occupies that exact same space.
This forces the opposition to transform, which brings its historical weakness to the surface: its limited capacity for transformation. The Venezuelan opposition has proven effective at resisting, denouncing, and mobilizing during high-tension moments, but it has struggled immensely to renew its discourse, leadership, and strategies when the political terrain shifts. On this new board, its challenge is no longer to prove that chavismo is illegitimate, but to construct a vision of its own. A vision capable of appealing to an exhausted society that has watched both the revolutionary narrative and the promises of a swift transition collapse. If it fails to do so, it risks remaining trapped in a political language aimed at a chavismo that no longer exists.
