The interests of British newspapers varied between evaluating the last session of the United Nations, and what they described as its failure to deal with the serious crises threatening the world, and concern about the future of the death penalty in the United States after the failure of one of the executions. It also discussed the Flydubai plane incident in the context of calls to dispense with human pilots and rely on autonomous driving systems.
Starting with the Guardian newspaper; Writer Nisreen Malek discussed the crisis that the United Nations is experiencing and the “state of complete chaos” witnessed by the General Assembly meetings, in an article entitled: “If the world truly depends on the United Nations at this stage, then we are truly in real trouble.”
The writer highlighted the “dispersed and gloomy atmosphere” of the last session, and said that it summarized a world raging in crises, an international and legal structure that is collapsing, and a humanitarian system on the verge of collapse. The meeting was not a platform for resolving conflicts as much as it was a display of political display, frustration, and sharp division.
The author believes that there are four intractable global crises for which there are no real solutions on the horizon. They began with the Russian-Ukrainian war, then the American-Iranian war, and the issues of Palestine and Sudan.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stood up to attack Russia after five years of death and destruction in Ukraine and the failure of sanctions, while Trump repeated his usual threats to “crush” Iran. The Iranian president responded that his country was a victim of American terrorism and would defend itself forcefully, which prompted the only American diplomat in the room to withdraw in full view of everyone.
Regarding the issue of Palestine, the writer criticized "Israel's increasing impunity and disregard for international law for decades." Instead of correcting course, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court, “addresses the United Nations General Assembly as a leader and in an offensive tone to assert that international law has become worthless.”
She also believed that the Sudan crisis "revealed a stark contradiction to the UAE, which sings of peace while being accused of arming and financing the Rapid Support Forces involved in genocide crimes."
The writer observed what she described as “blatant procedural manipulation of the international organization because it is located on American soil.” The Trump administration has turned the “visa system” into a weapon directed against those it does not want, as Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and about 80 Palestinian officials were prevented from entering the country for the second time, and the Prime Minister and Commander of the Sudanese Armed Forces were also prevented from attending, and this was a result of what it called “successful diplomatic maneuvers by the UAE” in Washington.
Malik warned that the crises have become much deeper than the struggle between diplomats. The nature of military conflicts themselves is changing at a rapid pace due to the spread of artificial intelligence and drones, as wars are conducted remotely with high- and low-intensity attacks, suspending normal life and preventing any clear resolution, as was demonstrated in the Gulf, Sudan, and Gaza.
In the end, the author explains that the 2026 United Nations meetings were a reflection of the deterioration of international law and the collapse of the concept of international community.
Writer Victoria Richards discussed in The Independent newspaper the recent failure of the execution of Christa Pike (50 years old), who was sentenced to death when she was only 18 years old in 1996, after she was convicted of torturing and killing her classmate, Colleen Slimer.
The article focuses on the "atrocity and absurdity" surrounding Pike's recent execution attempt at Riverbend Prison in Nashville, Tennessee, considering it an embodiment of the cruelty and inhumanity of the death penalty.
The writer describes the nightmarish scene that Pike experienced after all these years when she recently received news that a date had been chosen for the execution of the death sentence against her, and she lived in a terrifying psychological spiral between postponing the execution of the sentence and re-approving it.
During the execution attempt, she was injected with pentobarbital twice, and those present witnessed the curtain come down after the injection and she died, then suddenly the curtain was reopened twice so that she would not die, while the long physical and psychological torture continued, before it was finally announced that the operation had failed and she was transferred to the hospital. Pike's legal team considered what happened "unnecessary torture," while the governor of Tennessee ordered an independent investigation and suspended executions for the rest of the year.
The author criticizes the entire death penalty system, noting that it places human society at a lower barbaric level. She supports her position with numbers. Data from the Death Penalty Information Center show that the United States executed 1,682 people over the past 50 years, with a stark racial disparity that highlights the targeting of people of color (blacks reached 34 percent and Latinos 8 percent), not to mention the risk of fatal judicial errors.
At the global level, the author points out that the United States is considered an exceptional and anomalous country in its adherence to the death penalty, at a time when the majority of countries in the world are moving towards abolishing it (170 countries out of 193 members of the United Nations have abolished or suspended it).
She notes that executions have witnessed a sharp increase since the Donald Trump administration returned to power, and there has been an increased reliance on the controversial drug pentobarbital, which the Biden administration had previously excluded due to concerns about its causing unjustified pain and suffering.
The author concludes her article by emphasizing that “the cruel and unusual treatment that Christa Pike was subjected to should prompt us all to stop and examine the mirror of our humanity.”
An article in the Telegraph newspaper dealt with the incident of the Flydubai plane that landed at Tabuk Airport after a crisis on board. The author of the article, a specialist in defense and aviation affairs, Lewis Page, called for the abolition of the role of human pilots on board commercial aircraft. Because modern technologies allow fully autonomous flights to be conducted more safely.
The writer argued that this step would contribute to improving air safety, “given that tragic aviation accidents are often linked to the human element.” There have been many incidents resulting from the suicide of pilots, such as the Germanwings flight incident in 2015, which killed 150 people, and the doubts surrounding other incidents such as Malaysia Airlines flight (MH370), the Air India incident, as well as the attacks of September 11, 2001.
Although safety measures were tightened and the cockpit was provided with fortified doors, they were poorly exploited in cases such as the Germanwings incident, when one of the pilots was able to close the door on himself after his colleague left and deliberately shot down the plane.
There are other aspects of the danger of the human element, which are embodied in miscalculation and mishandling of technical faults, which is the largest cause of modern aircraft crashes (such as the Air France 447 accident in 2009). Statistics indicate that more than half of fatal accidents today are due to pilot errors.
