Global Pulse

博客

  • India built the world’s biggest digital payments miracle. Now comes the bill

    India built the world’s biggest digital payments miracle. Now comes the bill

    For more than a decade, instant, no-fee digital payments via India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) have become a seamless part of daily life for hundreds of millions of people across the country. From street-side vegetable vendors in Kolkata to horseback riding operators on coastal beaches, businesses large and small display simple printed QR codes that let customers complete transactions in seconds, no cash, card machines, or visible charges required. But that long-standing no-fee model may be poised for change, as New Delhi paves the way for banks and payment processing firms to impose a small merchant discount rate (MDR) on certain UPI transactions, kicking off a high-stakes debate over the future of the world’s most active real-time payment network.

    The government has emphasized that consumers and person-to-person UPI transfers will remain completely free of charge. Under current proposals, fees would only apply to transactions above a set threshold at larger businesses, with the proposed MDR ranging between 0.3% and 0.5% — a small cut that merchants pay to the banks and fintech companies that process UPI payments. Officials are still finalizing the exact rate and scope of the new policy, but early frameworks are crafted to limit disruption to everyday small-value transactions.

    The stakes of this policy shift are hard to overstate. Since its launch in 2016, UPI has grown from a niche digital payments experiment to a global powerhouse, fundamentally reshaping how India does business. Official data shows that in July alone, the network processed 23.6 billion transactions worth a total of 29.87 trillion rupees, equal to roughly $313.5 billion. In the 2025-2026 financial year, total annual transactions hit nearly 241.6 billion — almost 12,000 times the volume recorded in UPI’s first full year of operation. Today, more than 550 million Indians use the system regularly, and UPI has expanded beyond India’s borders to enable digital payments in 11 other countries.

    Unlike many closed, privately owned payment networks, UPI’s unique open design has been central to its success. India built a shared, public digital infrastructure operated by the non-profit National Payments Corporation of India, allowing competing fintech providers such as Google Pay and PhonePe to battle for customers while still enabling cross-platform transactions. But what many observers overlook is the critical role that merchant incentives, specifically the zero-MDR policy, played in driving the network’s explosive growth.

    New research from economists Abhinav Motheram and Sharon Buteau confirms that widespread merchant acceptance was not just a side effect of UPI’s popularity — it was one of the core drivers of adoption. Districts with denser merchant networks consistently saw faster, higher uptake of UPI among consumers. For small, informal traders such as vegetable sellers and street food vendors, accepting UPI requires no expensive card terminal, only a cheap printed QR code. With no processing fees to absorb, there was virtually no financial barrier for these small businesses to join the network, creating a self-reinforcing cycle of adoption: more merchants attracted more users, which in turn attracted more merchants.

    The current proposal is intentionally designed to minimize disruption to this dynamic. One leading option under discussion would apply fees only to transactions above 2,000 rupees at large businesses, leaving small traders and low-value everyday purchases completely untouched. According to analysis from global brokerage firm Jefferies, transactions above this threshold make up just 4% of total UPI merchant transaction volumes, but account for roughly 67% of the total value of those transactions. This structure would allow banks and payment firms to collect up to an estimated $1 billion in new annual revenue, while leaving payments to neighborhood grocers and local vendors unchanged.

    The push for fees also addresses a growing, unignorable financial reality: while UPI feels free to users, it is not free to operate. Servers must be maintained, transactions settled in real time, fraud detected, and the entire system defended against constant cyber threats. For a decade, the Indian government has compensated banks and payment providers for these costs, framing UPI as a public infrastructure project to expand digital inclusion. But as Reserve Bank of India Governor Sanjay Malhotra recently noted, “Someone will have to pay the cost” of maintaining the network long-term.

    Still, economists warn that the impact of even a small fee depends heavily on which merchants it affects. Small informal traders operate on extremely thin profit margins, so even a nominal MDR could change their incentives to accept UPI — particularly in less developed districts where merchant networks are still growing and adoption has not yet matured. Motheram warns that if fees eventually expand to cover small and informal traders, they could slow the expansion of the merchant network that has been the backbone of UPI’s success. “Even a small fee could matter if it changes the incentives of small merchants operating on thin margins,” he explained.

    India now faces a delicate balancing act: it needs to make UPI financially sustainable for providers, without eroding the open, low-barrier conditions that turned the network into a national utility. The challenge is not unprecedented: Brazil’s successful instant payment system Pix also offers free transactions for individual users, while allowing low-cost processing fees for businesses, and it has become the world’s fastest-growing real-time payment network with more than 140 million users and 4 billion monthly transactions.

    Economist Renuka Sane argues that a well-designed fee structure could bring “commercial sanity” to India’s digital payment ecosystem, allowing providers to price risk properly, invest in infrastructure upgrades, and build a more resilient network long-term. Most experts agree that the powerful network effects of UPI make a mass exodus of users unlikely even after fees are introduced, especially with fees limited to large high-value transactions. But there are still notable risks: a 2024 survey from Indian polling firm LocalCircles found that 75% of UPI users said they would stop using the service if transaction fees were imposed, with just 22% willing to pay.

    The larger risk is more subtle: if merchant fees reduce small businesses’ enthusiasm for accepting UPI, or discourage new small traders from joining the network, UPI could lose the frictionless, universally accepted quality that made it a household name. After a first decade spent building the network and onboarding hundreds of millions of users and millions of merchants, India is now entering its third era of UPI: figuring out how to fund the system without undermining the success that made it a global model for digital public infrastructure.

  • ‘Ghana was the crime scene’ – the country leading the demand for slavery reparations

    ‘Ghana was the crime scene’ – the country leading the demand for slavery reparations

    In 2026, the global discourse surrounding the transatlantic slave trade has shifted dramatically, with growing, unignorable pressure on former colonial powers and complicit institutions to issue formal apologies, cancel unjust national debts, and pay billions in reparations for one of the worst atrocities in human history. This movement finds its most vocal and unyielding leader in Ghana, a West African nation whose soil holds the deep scars of the trade and whose political and traditional leaders are driving a global campaign for reparatory justice.

    Earlier this year, Ghana spearheaded a landmark United Nations resolution that formally classified the transatlantic slave trade as “the greatest crime against humanity.” The vote laid bare global divides on the issue: while the resolution passed, the United States voted against it, and every European nation chose to abstain. Among Western powers that built vast wealth from the trade, the United Kingdom — which alongside Portugal controlled the largest share of the transatlantic trafficking network — has repeatedly rejected calls for reparations. This refusal comes as no surprise: independent estimates put the potential value of reparations owed by the UK to affected African nations in the many trillions of pounds.

    This resistance has done nothing to weaken Ghana’s resolve. As the first sub-Saharan African nation to win independence from colonial rule, Ghana has a long history of pan-African leadership, and the African Union has formally designated the country the global champion for reparatory justice. The nation’s connection to the atrocity is deeply personal: of the roughly 12 million African people forcibly kidnapped from their homelands and shipped across the Atlantic, 10 to 15% were taken from what is now modern Ghana, and millions more passed through its coastal trading forts before embarking on the deadly Middle Passage. “Ghana was the crime scene where these atrocities took place, so Ghana cannot afford to be silent on ensuring that we hold perpetrators accountable,” Ghanaian Foreign Minister Samuel Okuzeto Ablakwa explained in an interview.

    Ablakwa has laid out a clear vision for reparatory justice that goes beyond one-off cash transfers. He proposes a systemic framework that would fund need-based educational grants across Africa, provide seed venture capital for young African entrepreneurs, and support long-term research into intergenerational health issues linked to the malnutrition and violence of enslavement. While he emphasizes that the campaign is not aimed at lining the pockets of African political leaders, one core demand agreed at the June reparations summit in Accra — which drew delegates from 80 nations — is full cancellation of odious debts owed by former slave-trading affected states to Western powers. The foreign minister also called out individual Western institutions that amassed wealth from slavery to step forward and accept accountability, singling out the Church of England as a key example.

    Historical records confirm the Church of England was deeply complicit in the trade: in the 18th century, its missionary wing operated slave plantations and owned hundreds of enslaved people, while scores of independent clergy owned enslaved people themselves. A recent internal audit of the Church’s endowment fund also confirmed the institution made massive, profitable investments in the transatlantic slave trade that generated wealth that persists to this day.

    In July, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dame Sarah Mullally, made a high-profile visit to Ghana, one of her first international trips since taking office. Her itinerary included a stop at Cape Coast Castle, a British-built coastal fortress where tens of thousands of enslaved people were held in overcrowded, inhumane dungeons before being marched through the iconic “Door of No Return” to waiting slave ships bound for the Americas. After touring the dark holding cells and walking through the door, a visibly moved Mullally stopped to pray, and later prayed in the castle’s 17th-century chapel — a space built directly above the dungeons where enslaved people were held.

    “For me that is such a stark illustration of the way the Church was involved in the slave trade,” Mullally told reporters. “How can the church have sat above the horrors that were going on below?” The Archbishop acknowledged that the Church of England has previously apologized for its role in the trade, but said action must match words. In response, the Church established a £100 million ($135 million) social impact fund to support communities still grappling with the intergenerational legacy of slavery. Even so, the fund has faced internal resistance from Church leadership, mirroring the broader global pushback against national reparations.

    Critics of reparations often argue that some African leaders and communities were complicit in the capture and sale of fellow Africans, a point used to deflect blame from Western powers. Ablakwa has forcefully rejected this framing, calling it a deliberate divide-and-conquer tactic designed to obscure the core responsibility of Western colonial powers. “The entire architecture of chattel enslavement was curated by Western slave-owning powers, who simply utilised local actors to help carry out their plans,” he said, noting that no African representatives were present when Western powers drafted the laws, insurance policies, and financial systems that underpinned the trade. “We denounce and totally reject those claims that Africans are as guilty and complicit as those who masterminded this whole atrocity,” he added.

    Within Ghana itself, however, the conversation about local complicity is far more nuanced, and some traditional leaders have argued that acknowledging local involvement in the trade is a necessary step toward national and global healing. Earlier this year, King Tackie Teiko Tsuru II, the Ga Mantse and traditional leader of Ghana’s Ga people, made history with a public apology for the role his ancestors played as middlemen for European traders. For centuries, the Ga people operated as intermediaries, trading gold, ivory, and eventually captured enslaved people from internal African conflicts to British and Dutch traders in exchange for manufactured goods including textiles, alcohol, and firearms.

    “I stand on the same point of apologising on behalf of all traditional authorities and my ancestors and forebears for the part they also played in the slavery of our brothers and sisters,” the king said. “It has affected lives and societies up to now, and to be able to go forward, you have to look at your past. It dawns on us to admit our fault and correct it.” King Tackie Teiko Tsuru II also committed to contributing to financial reparations, arguing that taking responsibility for local involvement does not weaken the case against Western powers — instead, it strengthens Africa’s moral standing and sets an example for accountable global healing.

    Beyond its diplomatic campaign for reparations, Ghana has also led the way in efforts to heal the intergenerational trauma of the slave trade through its high-profile initiative to invite members of the African diaspora — particularly African-Americans who trace their ancestry to enslaved people shipped from West Africa — to visit and reconnect with their ancestral homeland. The initiative was originally framed as a people-centered effort to repair broken family and cultural ties, bringing a shared sense of closure for a trauma that has separated communities for centuries.

    But not all observers are satisfied with how the initiative has evolved. Yaw Asare, a Ghanaian PhD student at Howard University who previously worked for Ghana’s Presidential Diaspora Office, which administers the program, said that while the initial gatherings of diaspora and local communities were profound and focused on healing, the Ghana Tourism Authority quickly co-opted the initiative to drive commercial tourism growth. Over time, the program shifted away from trauma-informed repair to hitting visitor revenue quotas, he said, with diaspora visitors increasingly framed as a source of foreign currency rather than people seeking healing.

    Asare explained that the commercialization of the initiative has driven up local prices for basic goods and services, pushing low-income local Ghanaians to the economic margins. Even more concerning, he argues, is that the focus on profit has overshadowed the deep psychological work that is needed for both local Ghanaians and returning diaspora members to address intergenerational trauma. The impact of that trauma remains visible in Ghana today, he points out: in Accra’s historic Jamestown district, the oldest settlement built around a British slave fort, residents still build their homes in tight, clustered arrangements, a habit rooted in centuries-old fear that people living further from the community core would be kidnapped by slave traders.

    “We are dealing with humans, we are dealing with people. We cannot reduce them to, ‘come see this site, pay this entrance fee’,” Asare said, noting that it is particularly problematic that diaspora visitors are charged the same high entrance fees as white European tourists at sites like Cape Coast Castle, even though the initiative is meant to address their trauma. For Asare, true reparatory justice must prioritize human connection and healing over financial gain and tourist revenue. “We have to remove the band-aid and then look at the sore, the gaping wound that’s present,” he said. “And see how we can dress it and nurse it and heal.”

    The BBC will air a full documentary on Ghana’s reparations campaign on its program *Global Eye* on BBC Two at 19:00 Monday for UK viewers.

  • Trump says US scaling back military drills with South Korea

    Trump says US scaling back military drills with South Korea

    Just days ahead of the annual Ulchi Freedom Shield joint military exercise between the United States and South Korea, former and current US President Donald Trump has announced sweeping cutbacks to the long-planned drills, opening a new chapter of friction in alliance politics and reshaping regional security dynamics on the Korean Peninsula.

    In a public post shared to his Truth Social platform Sunday, Trump laid out his rationale for the order, tying the decision directly to his self-proclaimed positive personal relationship with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. “Based on my very good relationship with Kim Jong Un, of North Korea, I am not happy with the fact that the United States has, long ago, agreed to participate in Joint Military Exercises with South Korea,” he wrote.

    Trump argued that the costly drills, which the US has shouldered a large share of the financial burden for for decades, send an unnecessarily hostile signal to Pyongyang, which he claimed has remained unthreatening and respectful during his current presidential term. With the exercise set to kick off Monday, Trump said a full cancellation was no longer logistically feasible, so he directed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to implement a substantial scaling back of the drill’s scope.

    The 11-day Ulchi Freedom Shield exercise is a core annual defense training event for South Korean and US forces, designed to prepare troops to defend against potential aggression from nuclear-armed North Korea. This year’s iteration, which was already planned to involve around 18,000 South Korean troops alongside US forces stationed in the country, was set to place an unprecedented focus on emerging modern threats, including drone warfare, GPS jamming, and large-scale cyber attacks. When contacted for comment following Trump’s announcement, South Korea’s defense ministry confirmed that the drills would “proceed as previously notified and scheduled,” leaving unclear how the US cutbacks will impact on-the-ground execution.

    North Korea has for decades decried these joint drills as invasion dress rehearsals, routinely responding with heightened military posturing and diplomatic outrage. The current presence of roughly 28,500 US troops in South Korea dates back to the 1950-1953 Korean War, which concluded with an armistice agreement rather than a formal peace treaty, leaving the Korean Peninsula technically divided in a state of ongoing conflict.

    Trump’s announcement is not an isolated shift, but rather part of a broader pattern of challenging long-standing US alliance commitments that has defined his second term. Just as he has repeatedly criticized NATO allies for failing to meet defense spending commitments and aligned his foreign policy against Iran in an ongoing military conflict that has dragged on for six months without any path to a negotiated resolution, Trump used Sunday’s post to publicly call out South Korea for declining to join the US-led effort to denuclearize Iran. “I recently asked the President of South Korea if they would like to join us in the Denuclearization of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and they said, ‘No thanks!’” he wrote.

    Regional security experts note that North Korea has significantly expanded its nuclear and missile capabilities since Trump’s first-term talks with Kim collapsed, with their last in-person meeting taking place in 2019. In the years since that breakdown, Pyongyang has also deepened its strategic partnership with Russia, following Moscow’s full-scale 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Analysts widely confirm that North Korea has supplied thousands of troops and large stockpiles of munitions to support Russia’s stalled war effort, in exchange for much-needed economic aid, food supplies, energy exports, and advanced military technology.

    Weeks ahead of the exercise, Combined Forces Command spokesman Colonel Ryan Donald noted that this year’s drill would specifically prepare troops to counter North Korean forces that have gained combat experience through their deployment alongside Russian troops in Ukraine. The shift in training priorities comes as new South Korean President Lee Jae Myung, who took office in June 2025 after defeating his hawkish predecessor, has made outreach to Pyongyang a core policy priority. Lee has repeatedly offered to hold unconditional denuclearization and peace talks with North Korea, but as of yet, Pyongyang has not responded to these overtures.

  • Thailand has a gun problem – 10 million of them

    Thailand has a gun problem – 10 million of them

    Just three days after a 14-year-old gunman killed eight people at a provincial school before taking his own life, a second fatal shooting in the same Thai province laid bare the kingdom’s long-running and deeply troubling relationship with civilian gun ownership.

    The incident involved 71-year-old Chalong Riewrang, a former local politician, who entered a regional administration building to confront the office chief Thongchai Yenprasert – a man Chalong describes as a personal friend – over an unpaid large sum of money Chalong claims he was owed. What began as a scheduled discussion quickly devolved into violence: Chalong drew a handgun and fired four shots through the window of Thongchai’s parked car, striking both Thongchai and his driver. Thongchai later succumbed to his injuries.

    After fleeing the scene, Chalong contacted a journalist he knew mid-way through her live YouTube broadcast to confess to the shooting. Police intercepted him shortly after and took him into custody, where he spoke to reporters while casually smoking a cigarette, showing no visible distress over the killing. Chalong told reporters he “did not intend to shoot his friend”, claiming he opened fire only after the driver drew a weapon. Investigators did recover two guns from Thongchai’s car, but confirmed neither was in a condition to be fired.

    This double tragedy was far from an isolated event on that same day. In Prachinburi, a province east of Bangkok, a police sergeant shot his wife in the head during an argument while she was driving the pair to pick up their young son. After the car crashed, the sergeant turned the gun on himself, and his wife later died in hospital treatment. Local analysts estimate many more unreported gun deaths occur across the country each day.

    While Thai authorities do not track an official annual count of gun-related fatalities, independent estimates place the yearly death toll between 2,000 and 3,000. To put this in perspective, the United Kingdom – which has a roughly similar population to Thailand – records fewer than 50 gun deaths annually.

    Gun use in hired robberies and contract killings is not unheard of in Thailand, where hitmen can be hired for relatively low fees. But most gun fatalities stem from ordinary conflicts: domestic arguments, financial disputes, and alcohol-fueled bar fights. With more than 10 million civilian-held guns circulating nationwide – 4 million of which are unregistered – even minor disagreements can quickly escalate into deadly violence.

    “It’s very unfortunate that Thailand has a very high tolerance for violence,” explained Boonwara Sumano, a researcher at the Thailand Development Research Institute. “Guns are seen as a status symbol, and there are so many ways that civilians can get them. Also, showing strength, wielding power, is seen as the right thing to do in Thai society. So, when you have a norm that promotes the possession of weapons to show your strength, and access to those weapons, this is the result.”

    On paper, Thailand’s gun laws appear relatively strict. Prospective buyers must first obtain a purchase permit, then apply for a separate possession permit after buying a firearm, and a third permit to carry the weapon outside the home. Imported firearms, which make up most of the country’s supply, carry steep price tags. But major loopholes undermine these rules: possession permits are valid for life, no mandatory mental health screening is required for gun owners, and there are no rules mandating safe gun storage. This is how the 14-year-old school shooter gained access to his grandfather’s legally owned gun and ammunition to carry out his attack.

    A long-running government program also amplifies the illegal gun market: the scheme allows police officers and public officials to purchase firearms at heavily discounted prices. Since launching in 200, an estimated 200,000 firearms, mostly sourced from the United States, have been imported through the program. Permit holders are allowed to resell the guns after five years, turning the program into a lucrative black market trade that has faced repeated corruption investigations. Combined with unregistered locally manufactured guns from informal artisans, the program is a major source of illegal firearms across the country.

    In response to the latest string of attacks, Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul has ordered immediate emergency measures to strengthen gun control: the discounted government purchase scheme has been suspended, and all new purchase permit approvals have been halted. Anutin has also proposed limiting the validity of possession permits, offering an amnesty to encourage unlicensed gun owners to surrender their weapons, ordered parliament to draft new gun legislation, and promised harsher penalties for gun law violations.

    However, this pattern of response is nothing new for Thailand. After a 2022 mass shooting that killed 36 people at a rural nursery, carried out by a former police officer, and a 2023 mass shooting at Bangkok’s busiest shopping mall by another 14-year-old gunman, Anutin – who was serving as interior minister at the time – ordered identical crackdown measures. The discounted purchase scheme was suspended, then quickly reinstated. A ban on civilian gun carrying was also imposed after a school shooting in February 2024, but enforcement has been lax.

    Experts say the problem extends far beyond inadequate regulation. The massive existing stockpile of firearms, widespread systemic corruption, lax enforcement of all national laws, cultural glorification of gun ownership, and decades of military influence in Thai society all combine to create the current crisis. Even among sitting government ministers, gun ownership is common: public asset declarations show more than a dozen current ministers own guns, with the justice minister holding 10, the environment minister owning 12, and one female member of parliament declaring 48 registered firearms.

    Sumano points to the deep cultural roots of gun acceptance in Thailand, shaped by decades of military rule that continues to influence society even under elected civilian government. “If you notice every Children’s Day in Thailand, instead of taking children to a museum or park, many families take their children to an army or air force base to see the weapons, take photos holding guns, this kind of thing,” she explained. “It’s in the culture. You see big men in the military looking so powerful, they kind of make you want to become one of them.”

    Thailand stands out as an outlier among Southeast Asian nations. With a population four times larger than Thailand’s, Indonesia only has 82,000 registered civilian guns, while Malaysia counts just 107,000, and both nations see extremely rare gun homicides. Only the Philippines shares Thailand’s pervasive gun culture and high rates of gun violence.

    Some Thai gun rights advocates argue that new restrictions on legal ownership will not solve the crisis, and will only penalize responsible gun collectors. Yod, a 53-year-old Bangkok businessman who owns a collection of more than 70 guns that he describes as luxury collectibles, most of which he has never fired, says “Most of the gun crimes in this country are carried out by illegal weapons. New measures to control legally owned guns are not the right solution. There are blank guns and spare parts which can be assembled as real guns being imported legally into the country. Why hasn’t that been chased up?”

    Another gun shop owner with a collection of more than 40 guns, Sathit, says widespread crime and weak law enforcement are why ordinary people choose to arm themselves. “Look around this country nowadays. There are crimes every day. It is not safe. Drugs are rampant. People need to protect themselves because there are not enough police officers. People should have access to guns to survive, for their own safety.”

    As Chalong waits in custody to be charged with the murder of his friend, the former politician, who once held permits for nine guns and had reduced his collection to just one, expressed shock at how quickly a routine financial dispute turned deadly. “I can’t believe I’m in this position, sitting here. Throughout my life, I have never had to come to a police station,” he told reporters. For Chalong, and for Thailand as a whole, one easily accessible gun was enough to end a life and upend decades of normality.

  • Iran and Oman work on temporary Hormuz shipping route as Trump threatens to claim the strait

    Iran and Oman work on temporary Hormuz shipping route as Trump threatens to claim the strait

    Tensions over the strategically critical Strait of Hormuz have spiked in recent days, following a provocative territorial claim from former U.S. President Donald Trump that has drawn sharp pushback from Iranian officials, even as Tehran progresses on talks with Oman to establish a new temporary shipping lane through the waterway.

    Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi announced Sunday that Tehran and Muscat have been in active negotiations to map out a temporary maritime route for commercial vessels, noting that the original shipping lanes currently remain non-functional after Iran imposed restrictions on navigation last month. “For now, we are designing a temporary route, which can then, at a later stage, be turned into a final route,” Araghchi stated, adding that talks are progressing and a final agreement could be reached in the near term.

    Crucially, Araghchi emphasized that discussions of the new route are entirely separate from any potential full reopening of the strait. Even after the temporary lane is finalized, he clarified, a full reopening will only move forward if the United States meets pre-existing conditions that Tehran has laid out.

    The diplomatic developments come just one day after Trump made an extraordinary threat during a speech at a New York police academy Friday. In the address, the former president claimed the U.S. had “badly defeated” Iran, and announced that Washington would “pretty soon” formally declare the Strait of Hormuz as U.S. territory. He also reiterated that the ongoing blockade remains in place, claiming “No ships get through unless we want them to.”

    Iranian officials across government levels have responded to the claim with unified, fierce rejection. Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi dismissed Trump’s declaration in a post on X, arguing that the strait cannot be seized by social media post, military deployment, political speech, or executive order. “The Strait of Hormuz has been Iranian, is Iranian, and will remain Iranian; this strait will only be closed and opened under Iran’s command,” Gharibabadi wrote, adding that Iran will maintain its blockade as long as the U.S. refuses to abandon what he called “fanciful delusions.”

    Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei also weighed in, quoting a passage from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s *The Brothers Karamazov* to criticize Trump’s remarks. “The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others,” Baghaei wrote.

    On Sunday, Iran’s army chief Amir Hatami issued an additional warning, per Iranian state media, stating that Washington would face lasting regret should it attempt any move to seize control of the strait.

    This escalation comes amid a long-running standoff over the waterway, which has left broader diplomatic efforts to resolve the navigation dispute stalled. Iran first closed the strait on February 28 following joint military strikes carried out by the U.S. and Israel, and has since restricted all non-approved transit through the key chokepoint, which carries roughly 25% of all global seaborne crude oil trade.

    As of latest reporting, commercial oil tanker traffic through the strait remains heavily disrupted. Reuters confirmed that only two vessels were recorded passing through the waterway on the day of the report, with no large-scale crude oil shipments documented.

  • Centcom chief visits US carrier enforcing Iran blockade amid reports of severe strain on crew

    Centcom chief visits US carrier enforcing Iran blockade amid reports of severe strain on crew

    Against a backdrop of months-long heightened tensions between the United States and Iran over control of the strategic Strait of Hormuz, the top commander of U.S. Central Command, Admiral Bradley Cooper, has traveled to the Arabian Sea to inspect the USS Abraham Lincoln, the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier leading the U.S. blockade of Iranian maritime activity.

    Cooper’s on-board visit comes amid growing public scrutiny of the Lincoln’s unprecedented deployment: the carrier and its 5,000-plus crew have spent more than 250 consecutive days on station in the Middle East without a single scheduled port call — a break from standard deployment protocols that have left the crew grappling with widespread mental health distress, dwindling supply stocks, and plummeting morale.

    During his remarks to the crew Saturday, Admiral Cooper framed the extended deployment as a historic milestone, stating, “History will record this deployment as one of the most operationally intense and consequential of the modern era.” But his words come as multiple alarming incidents have underscored the depth of the crew’s crisis. CNN first reported earlier this month that a sailor wearing a life vest fell overboard from the Lincoln; the service member was rescued within an hour and evacuated from the ship for urgent medical care, according to the network. That incident was far from an isolated event. U.S. military-focused publications Stars and Stripes and Navy Times have separately documented a second incident where crew members intervened to stop a fellow sailor from jumping overboard, as exhaustion and mental strain spread across the vessel. In testimony shared at a public town hall with Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao, one spouse told officials her husband assigned to the Lincoln has become so despondent that he “hopes he doesn’t wake up tomorrow,” Stars and Stripes reported.

    In response to mounting concerns from U.S. lawmakers over the well-being of the Lincoln’s crew, Pentagon officials confirmed this week the carrier will soon rotate out of the region. It will be replaced by the USS George Washington, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. The planned rotation comes just after U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth publicly stated the U.S. blockade of Iran could be maintained “indefinitely,” even as clashes over control of the Strait of Hormuz — a critical chokepoint through which 20% of the world’s oil supplies pass — continue with no ceasefire agreement on the horizon. Tensions between Washington and Tehran have escalated sharply in recent months: Iran has targeted commercial vessels carrying oil and petroleum products owned by Gulf states outside the strait, while the U.S. has launched reciprocal strikes against vessels linked to the Iranian government and military.

    While nine-month at-sea deployments are standard for U.S. aircraft carriers during active wartime operations, even extended deployments almost always include regular port stops to restock essential supplies, perform maintenance, and give crew members critical time off to rest and recover. The Lincoln’s extended stretch without any port access is highly unusual and has amplified strain on personnel.

    Admiral Cooper’s regional trip also included stops in Israel, Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, where he held high-level talks with senior political and military leaders across the Gulf and Middle East, a Centcom spokesperson confirmed.

    On Sunday, Iran’s armed forces general staff issued a defiant public statement, pledging to achieve the “complete defeat” of both the U.S. and Israel in the Middle East. The statement emphasized that Iran’s legacy of “resistance” to Western and Israeli influence has been fully passed to a new generation of Iranian fighters.

  • Scrumhalf Noah Hotham to join the All Blacks in South Africa

    Scrumhalf Noah Hotham to join the All Blacks in South Africa

    Ahead of this Saturday’s highly anticipated opening test match against world-champion South African Springboks in Pretoria, New Zealand’s All Blacks have been hit by a crippling wave of injuries that has forced the coaching staff to make last-minute squad adjustments, including a late call-up for uncapped scrumhalf Noah Hotham.

    Hotham, who was controversially left out of the All Blacks’ original 44-man touring squad when selectors chose his Crusaders backup Kyle Preston instead, will travel to South Africa to provide injury cover for two injured halves: Cortez Ratima and Cam Roigard. Ratima picked up a knee injury during the All Blacks’ warm-up match against the Bulls in Pretoria earlier this week, while Roigard has been sidelined with a calf injury since before the tour began and has yet to take the field in South Africa.

    The injury crisis does not end at scrumhalf: prop Ollie Norris has also been forced to withdraw from the entire tour after damaging knee cartilage. Norris will immediately fly back to New Zealand to receive treatment, and the All Blacks Rugby Union confirmed that a replacement for the front rower will be announced at a later date.

    This tour of South Africa, which features a four-test series between the top-ranked world champion Springboks and the second-ranked All Blacks, has already seen a staggering number of key players fall to injury before the first official test even kicks off. Prior to the latest wave of injuries, three other All Blacks had already been sent home: hooker George Bell (calf injury), center Billy Proctor (broken shoulder blade), and winger Caleb Clarke (shoulder tendon injury).

    Several other injured starters are still remaining with the touring squad but are uncertain to feature in Saturday’s opening test. These include flyhalf Damian McKenzie, who is carrying an ankle injury, and star winger Will Jordan, who has yet to play a single minute on tour due to a persistent back injury. Both Roigard and Ratima are also still with the squad as they undergo assessment, but their game readiness remains in doubt.

    The injury crisis has thrown the All Blacks’ preparations for one of the biggest rugby series of the year into disarray, leaving coaching staff scrambling to assemble a fit and competitive side just days out from the first battle with the world champions.

  • Reform UK benefits ban for foreign nationals would include EU citizens

    Reform UK benefits ban for foreign nationals would include EU citizens

    Reform UK has ignited a fierce national political debate with a sweeping proposal to bar almost all foreign nationals from accessing UK welfare benefits, a central pillar of the party’s planned overhaul of Britain’s social security system ahead of the next general election. The controversial policy, set to be formally launched on Monday by shadow chancellor Robert Jenrick in a dedicated speech on welfare reform, would even extend the ban to European Union citizens holding settled status — a legal designation granting indefinite leave to live, work and study in the UK after five years of continuous residence.

    Policy analysts and rival political parties warn that implementing the ban would require full renegotiation of the post-Brexit trade and cooperation deal struck between the UK and the EU under the previous Conservative government. This opening of a major Brexit negotiation, they note, carries a clear risk of reciprocal action from Brussels: British expats who have built lives in EU member states could lose their own rights to access equivalent social security benefits in their countries of residence. Reform UK has acknowledged this risk, saying it has already budgeted for a potential £500 million cost if British expats are forced to return to the UK to claim benefits in response to EU retaliatory measures.

    Jenrick defended the proposal in pre-speech comments, framing it as a matter of economic sense and basic fairness to UK taxpayers. “Forcing British workers to pay for the benefits of foreigners is not just economically illiterate but plain immoral,” he said. “People are more than happy to support their neighbours in hard times, but the British taxpayer cannot afford to subsidise everyone on the planet, especially those who have not paid in.”

    Per Reform UK’s projections, the foreign national benefit ban would save the UK public purse £21 billion annually by the fifth year of a Reform government. The ban covers nearly all major working-age and family welfare payments, including housing benefit, pension credit, jobseeker’s allowance, child benefit, free childcare and disability benefits. Only a tiny set of narrow exemptions apply, such as war widows’ pensions and Armed Forces compensation schemes. This builds on a previous Reform pledge to block foreign nationals from claiming Universal Credit, the UK’s main working-age benefit. The entire 50-page welfare overhaul, which the party says it has spent six months developing, is projected to deliver £50 billion in annual public spending savings, with a separate plan to replace the existing Personal Independence Payment (PIP) disability benefits system already announced over the weekend.

    Current official figures show the UK government expects to spend a total of £322 billion on welfare across Great Britain this year, equal to 10.6% of national GDP, with just over half of that spending allocated to pensioner benefits.

    The proposal has drawn sharp criticism from all other major UK political parties, who have questioned both its feasibility and its ethics. The Labour Party said the plan would “plunge the UK back into years of Brexit renegotiations” and strip critical support from millions of people who have lawfully lived, worked and paid taxes in the UK for years, in many cases for decades. Labour also noted that the vast majority of migrants already do not qualify for UK welfare benefits, undercutting Reform’s core argument for the policy.

    Helen Whately, the Conservative Party’s shadow pensions secretary, dismissed Reform’s plans as hastily “cobbled together”, arguing that British voters prioritize controlled welfare spending, cracking down on actual abuse, and upholding dignity for disabled people rather than reopening divisive Brexit disputes. The Liberal Democrats said reducing the overall welfare bill requires prioritizing fixes to the NHS and social care system, not targeting foreign nationals. The Green Party went further, calling the policy cowardly, arguing that instead of cutting support for vulnerable groups, the government should raise revenue by taxing the super wealthy — a jab that references the £5 million donation to Reform leader Nigel Farage before he took his parliamentary seat, which is currently under investigation by the parliamentary standards watchdog.

  • Trump orders Pentagon to scale back joint exercises with South Korea

    Trump orders Pentagon to scale back joint exercises with South Korea

    On a Sunday in Washington, former and returning U.S. President Donald Trump made a sudden, consequential policy shift, directing the Pentagon to sharply curtail a planned large-scale joint military exercise with South Korea that was scheduled to kick off later that same week. The announcement tied the move to two separate developments: a claimed South Korean refusal to back U.S. efforts to denuclearize Iran, and Trump’s own long-held view that large-scale drills send an unnecessarily hostile message to North Korea.

  • Trump says US will scale back military drills with South Korea

    Trump says US will scale back military drills with South Korea

    In a sudden announcement that upends long-standing U.S. security policy in Northeast Asia, former President Donald Trump has revealed that if he holds office, the United States will dramatically scale back its long-running joint military exercises with South Korea. The announcement, made in a Sunday evening post on his Truth Social platform, directly ties the proposed cut to Trump’s self-proclaimed positive rapport with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

    Trump argued that the large-scale military drills carry two major flaws. First, he emphasized the significant financial burden of the exercises, claiming that as has been the case in past security arrangements, the United States covers the majority of associated costs. Second, he contended that the drills send an unnecessarily hostile and inappropriate signal to Pyongyang, a framing that departs from the traditional U.S. position that the exercises are purely defensive in nature and designed to deter North Korean aggression.

    In a notable addendum to his announcement, Trump also pointed out that South Korea recently refused to partner with the United States in efforts to advance the denuclearization of Iran, a remark that analysts say hints at a broader shift in U.S. alliance priorities under a potential new Trump administration. The comment comes amid growing debate over burden-sharing and strategic alignment between Washington and its key Asian allies.

    Trump’s approach to North Korea has long broken with decades of bipartisan American foreign policy norms. He made history as the first sitting U.S. president to meet face-to-face with a North Korean leader, holding multiple summits with Kim between 2018 and 2019. His last in-person visit with the North Korean leader took place in 2019, when he made an unprecedented trip across the Demilitarized Zone to step into North Korean territory.

    The timing of Trump’s announcement is particularly striking: the United States and South Korea are scheduled to launch their annual routine joint military exercises on Monday, a drill that has long drawn fierce condemnation from North Korea, which views the exercises as preparation for a potential invasion of the country. This breaking story remains ongoing and will be updated as new details emerge.