Global Pulse

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  • KMT chairwoman highlights industry insights during Meituan visit

    KMT chairwoman highlights industry insights during Meituan visit

    On Wednesday, Cheng Li-wun, Chairwoman of the Chinese Kuomintang (KMT), led a cross-party delegation on an official visit to the global headquarters of leading Chinese local lifestyle service platform Meituan in Shanghai, where the delegation got a first-hand look at the company’s cutting-edge drone delivery operations and core business strategies.

    During the visit, Cheng emphasized that the trip offered a rare, valuable opportunity to observe end-to-end on-ground operational processes, examine the internal policy frameworks that drive the company’s growth, and gain front-line perspective on the industry’s forward-looking strategic planning for future development. The on-site experience of Meituan’s autonomous drone delivery service, a breakthrough innovation in last-mile logistics that has reshaped urban consumer access to goods, gave the KMT delegation direct insight into the pace of digital innovation unfolding on the Chinese mainland.

    This visit comes as part of a broader series of cross-Strait exchanges focused on opening dialogue across multiple sectors, with the Meituan stop designed to deepen KMT leadership’s understanding of the mainland’s thriving digital economy and private sector innovation. The engagement reflects growing momentum for people-to-people and industry-focused exchanges between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait, creating space for shared understanding of emerging economic and technological trends.

  • Spreading Islamist insurgency dominates Benin’s presidential campaign

    Spreading Islamist insurgency dominates Benin’s presidential campaign

    As Benin prepares for a pivotal presidential election on Sunday, the entire campaign season has been overshadowed by growing alarm over the expansion of a violent Islamist insurgency that has already destabilized much of West Africa, turning this once largely peaceful nation into the conflict’s latest front line.

    The vote comes just four months after outgoing two-term President Patrice Talon survived a coordinated coup attempt, a crisis that was only averted when regional power Nigeria deployed warplanes to target mutinous soldiers plotting to overthrow his civilian government. Nigeria’s swift intervention stopped Benin from following the trajectory of neighboring Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali, all of which have fallen to military takeovers in recent years amid widespread public anger over civilian governments’ failure to counter al-Qaeda and Islamic State-affiliated militant groups.

    Benin’s own vulnerability to the insurgency was underscored in late March, when fighters from Jama’a Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), an al-Qaeda affiliate, killed 15 Beninese soldiers in a raid on a military outpost in Kofouno, near the Niger border. The attack continued a deadly pattern that emerged in 2025: that January, 28 soldiers died in an assault on W National Park, a vast protected reserve that spans Benin, Niger and Burkina Faso, and a further 54 troops were killed in the same area just three months later, marking the deadliest single string of losses for Benin’s military at the hands of insurgents.

    W National Park, along with adjacent Pendjari and Arly Parks, forms West Africa’s largest contiguous protected wilderness, covering more than 1.7 million hectares of dense forest. Combined with the region’s highly porous international borders, the terrain provides ideal cover for militants to establish hidden bases and cross between countries undetected by security forces.

    According to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (Acled), a violence monitoring organization, attacks in the border triangle linking Niger, Benin and Nigeria have spiked dramatically over the past 18 months, turning once-quiet remote transit routes into active conflict zones. Acled data shows that at least 1,000 people were killed in this border region in 2025, more than double the death toll recorded in 2024.

    The rising violence has spread fear and disruption among local communities, who now worry their country could face the same level of devastation that neighboring Nigeria has endured from decades of Boko Haram insurgency. “We only want to work, to educate the youth, but it’s becoming so difficult,” a local school teacher told the BBC. “We can’t imagine our country becoming like Nigeria with Boko Haram’s threats, which has killed so many people.” A mother of one added: “We are afraid to go to the fields. I don’t know what to do, where to go. Anytime, those guys could come here and rape us, steal our stuff or kill us. It’s not easy. Benin doesn’t deserve this. The youth don’t deserve this.”

    Heading into Sunday’s vote, the race for the presidency is a two-candidate contest between Romuald Wadagni, the 49-year-old incumbent finance minister and ruling coalition candidate who is currently the poll front-runner, and 56-year-old challenger Paul Hounkpè, a former culture minister.

    In a bid to ease voter anxieties over security, Wadagni opened his campaign in March in Kandi, a key trade hub near the Niger-Nigeria border, before touring other violence-hit northern localities including Banikoara and Ségbana. Addressing thousands of cheering supporters, he pledged to make the safety of all Beninese citizens a non-negotiable daily priority if elected. “We will not let any dark forces come and take our lands or threaten citizens,” Wadagni said. “We will make sure our whole country is under protection.”

    Hounkpè, who launched his campaign from Benin’s economic capital Cotonou, has echoed the focus on security while calling for a major shift in regional diplomacy. “We must join forces with our neighbours without losing our dignity,” he said. “Benin cannot act alone, close cooperation with Niger and Burkina Faso is essential.”

    Hounkpè’s call for detente carries particular weight, as relations between Benin and the coup-ruled military governments of Niger and Burkina Faso have collapsed since 2023. Benin is a member of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), which suspended the membership of the three coup-hit nations and initially threatened military intervention to restore civilian rule in Niger. In response, the three military-led states formed a separate political alliance, reoriented their foreign policy toward Russia, and accused ECOWAS of acting as a proxy for Western powers – a claim the regional bloc denies.

    While Wadagni has also signaled openness to improving ties with the military governments, he is widely viewed as closer to Western powers than Hounkpè. Relations between Benin and Niger, currently led by Gen Abdourahmane Tiani, are particularly strained: Niger has kept its border with Benin closed since Tiani seized power in 2023, citing what it calls “hostile manoeuvres” originating from Benin’s territory, a charge Talon’s outgoing government rejects.

    The election comes as Talon steps down after completing two full terms in office. His supporters argue he has preserved Benin’s standing as a stable civilian democracy, a key distinction at a time when military leaders in the region such as Burkina Faso’s Capt Ibrahim Traoré have publicly argued that democracy “kills” and that populations must abandon democratic governance. But Talon’s critics say democratic institutions have eroded during his tenure, pointing to changes to electoral and party registration laws that have drastically reduced opposition participation in national politics.

    The new rules led to the main opposition bloc, The Democrats, being completely shut out of all seats in January’s parliamentary elections. The party’s intended presidential candidate was also disqualified from Sunday’s vote, after failing to secure the required number of candidate sponsorships. In a recent analysis, the South Africa-based Institute for Security Studies noted that Hounkpè’s qualification for the race was only possible through a political arrangement with the ruling coalition, which provided the sponsorship signatures he needed to meet legal requirements.

    With the main opposition excluded from the contest, many high-profile Democrats have thrown their support behind front-runner Wadagni, a move widely seen as a pragmatic bet on his likely victory and expectation of future government posts. Hounkpè, however, remains confident he can pull off an electoral upset, framing himself as the candidate of real change for Benin.

    Regardless of which candidate claims victory on Sunday, most Beninese voters are anticipating a peaceful transfer of power, and share the same core hope: that the new administration will make greater progress repairing strained regional relations and rolling back the insurgency that has brought growing violence and uncertainty to the country’s northern borderlands.

  • Brazil’s Supreme Court postpones decision on how Rio picks a governor, extending political chaos

    Brazil’s Supreme Court postpones decision on how Rio picks a governor, extending political chaos

    RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – A weeks-long political standoff in one of Brazil’s most high-profile states has been extended, after the country’s Supreme Court announced a last-minute delay Thursday to a critical ruling on who will assume the Rio de Janeiro governorship. The vacancy, which opened three weeks ago, has left the state’s urgent policy matters, from public security funding to transit infrastructure and fuel pricing, in the hands of an interim caretaker with limited mandate to act.

    The opening for the governorship was created by law on March 23, when incumbent Cláudio Castro stepped down to launch his campaign for a Senate seat in Brazil’s October general election, a requirement under Brazilian electoral law. What was meant to be a straightforward succession has instead devolved into chaos, as every constitutionally next-in-line candidate is unable to take office.

    Thiago Pampolha, Castro’s former deputy governor, would have been the automatic replacement, but he resigned from the deputy role earlier in 2025 to take a position at a state government oversight agency, disqualifying him from the succession. The next candidate in line is Rodrigo Bacellar, speaker of the Rio state legislature, who was recently arrested on corruption charges and removed from his public post.

    The Supreme Court’s delay came after Justice Flávio Dino requested additional time to review the central legal question of the case: whether Castro’s interim replacement, who will serve only until January 2026, should be selected by a special early popular election or appointed by the state’s historically scandal-plagued legislative body. Dino will have up to 90 days to complete his review and return the case for a final court ruling. As of Thursday’s partial vote, the 10-member court is split 4-1 in favor of an appointment by the state legislature, with the remaining votes yet to be finalized.

    Currently, the top justice of Rio’s state judiciary, Ricardo Couto de Castro, is serving as acting governor on an emergency basis. Local media reports indicate that the interim role was never intended to be long-term, leaving Couto de Castro facing major pushback from state administrative officials who are unwilling to commit to major policy decisions under an unelected temporary leader.

    Notably, a new permanent governor will not take office until January regardless of the Supreme Court’s ruling, as Rio voters are already scheduled to elect their next full-term leader as part of October’s national general election. But the months-long leadership vacuum has already created tangible harm for Rio residents, political analysts warn.

    Thomas Traumann, a veteran political consultant and former Brazilian government minister, called the prolonged uncertainty not just a national embarrassment, but a public risk. “The federal government recently reached an agreement to bring down sky-high diesel prices, which have spiked because of ongoing conflict in the Middle East,” Traumann explained. “Rio is one of the only states that has not been able to sign on to the deal, because there is no sitting governor with the authority to approve it. That means Rio will now have the most expensive diesel in all of Brazil.” He added that the vacuum leaves the state vulnerable to security crises: “If criminal gang violence erupts tomorrow, who has the authority to order police to respond?”

    Local media also added that justices within Rio’s state judiciary are growing increasingly concerned that their core work will grind to a halt, as their leader is tied up managing the entire state’s executive branch with no clear end to his interim tenure in sight.

    The succession dispute has already become tangled up in national political tensions, with major partisan actors lining up behind opposing outcomes. Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro, son of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and a prominent conservative voice ahead of October’s election, has publicly pushed for the legislature to appoint state lawmaker Douglas Ruas to the interim post. On the opposing side, supporters of current President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva — and Lula’s endorsed candidate for Rio governor, Eduardo Paes — have argued that the vacancy requires a direct popular vote to fill the interim role.

  • Russia and Ukraine agree to truce for Orthodox Easter

    Russia and Ukraine agree to truce for Orthodox Easter

    In the heart of Kyiv’s St. Michael’s Cathedral on April 9, 2026, a solemn yet hopeful ceremony unfolded days before Orthodox Easter. Metropolitan Epiphanius I, the primate of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, performed a blessing by sprinkling holy water over stacks of Easter cakes, all bound for Ukrainian troops holding defensive positions along the country’s frontlines. This quiet act of spiritual support comes as both Moscow and Kyiv have formally announced a temporary ceasefire set to coincide with the religious holiday, a rare break in a conflict that has stretched on for years.

    The path to this truce began with repeated ceasefire appeals from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, all of which were previously rejected by the Kremlin. In an unexpected shift, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that he had ordered all Russian military forces to hold their fire across the entire frontline from 16:00 local time (14:00 BST) on April 11 through Easter Sunday. Putin added that he expected Ukraine to mirror Russia’s gesture, while also ordering his troops to remain on high alert to respond to any perceived Ukrainian provocations or aggressive actions.

    This framing of the truce, which positions Russia as the initiator to seize diplomatic initiative, has historically created friction with Ukrainian officials, but Kyiv moved quickly to confirm its willingness to match the pause. Shortly after Putin’s announcement, Zelensky published a post on X confirming Ukraine would take reciprocal steps. “People need an Easter free from threats and real movement toward peace,” he wrote, adding that Russia had an opportunity to extend the pause beyond the holiday weekend rather than resuming offensive strikes.

    Days earlier, Zelensky revealed he had asked the United States to relay his proposal for a holiday truce to Moscow, framing the temporary pause as a small but critical first confidence-building step toward broader peace talks. For frontline soldiers who face constant harassment from Russian attack drones along the hundreds of kilometers of eastern front, any halt to active fighting would bring much-needed relief. The truce would also grant a rare reprieve to civilians across Ukraine, where daily air raid sirens, regular Russian missile and drone strikes have become a normalized part of life, with civilian casualties reported just days before the truce announcement.

    Just last week, multiple civilians were killed when a drone struck a passenger bus in Nikopol, a southeastern Ukrainian city near the frontline. In Zhytomyr, a city west of Kyiv, a woman died when a Russian missile landed adjacent to her home in the middle of a weekday morning. Even moments after the truce was publicly announced, air raid sirens blared again across Kyiv, a stark reminder that the conflict remains active. In recent weeks, Ukraine has also ramped up its own cross-border drone campaign against Russia, with strikes focusing heavily on Russian energy export infrastructure, though Moscow claims residential areas have also been hit in the attacks.

    Despite the announcement of a temporary pause, many Ukrainians remain deeply skeptical that this truce will hold beyond the holiday weekend. Past Russian-declared ceasefires have been short-lived and marred by violations, reinforcing Kyiv’s distrust of Moscow’s intentions. Earlier this year, Putin announced a so-called “energy truce” that paused Russian strikes on Ukraine’s critical power infrastructure during the coldest months of winter. That pause only lasted long enough for Russia to reposition and rearm for a new wave of large-scale missile attacks. In May 2025, Russia declared a unilateral ceasefire to mark the 80th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany; Ukrainian officials recorded hundreds of Russian ceasefire violations during that planned pause.

    For Ukraine, the end goal remains unchanged: Kyiv has repeatedly pushed for a full, permanent ceasefire as the first step toward formal negotiations to end Russia’s full-scale invasion. Moscow, by contrast, has insisted that a final peace agreement be reached before any lasting ceasefire can take effect, a position that has led Kyiv to accuse the Kremlin of acting in bad faith and lacking genuine commitment to ending the war. Multiple rounds of peace talks mediated by the United States have taken place over the course of the conflict, but negotiations have been stalled since the Trump administration redirected its diplomatic focus to the ongoing crisis in the Middle East.

  • Hot in the city: Energy crisis tests Singapore’s air-con addiction

    Hot in the city: Energy crisis tests Singapore’s air-con addiction

    Against the backdrop of the ongoing Iran war that has choked global energy supply chains, Singapore — a small tropical city-state long synonymous with near-universal, often excessive air conditioning use — has rolled out mandatory energy-saving measures for its public sector, joining a growing number of Asian nations grappling with spiking fuel prices. On April 8, Singapore’s Ministry of Sustainability and the Environment announced that all government employees must adjust office air conditioning thermostats to a minimum of 25 degrees Celsius (77 degrees Fahrenheit), alongside strict requirements to monitor runtime of cooling systems. The guidance notes that every one-degree increase in cooling temperature cuts energy consumption by roughly 10%, a significant efficiency gain for the power-reliant nation. Beyond temperature adjustments, public offices will also roll out energy-efficient upgrades including LED lighting systems and smart power sensors to further cut unnecessary energy use.

    Singapore’s reliance on air conditioning runs deep in the nation’s modern history. As founding prime minister Lee Kuan Yew, the architect of Singapore’s transformation from a resource-poor post-colonial outpost to one of Asia’s wealthiest advanced economies, once famously noted, air conditioning was the foundational innovation that enabled reliable indoor work in the region’s sweltering tropical climate. Shortly after taking office, Lee installed air conditioning in all civil service buildings, calling the move critical to boosting public sector efficiency. Decades later, air conditioning has permeated nearly every corner of daily life in Singapore: nearly all offices, shopping malls, public transit vehicles and the vast majority of private homes have permanent cooling systems. It is common for office workers to keep cardigans or sweaters at their desks to combat overcooled indoor spaces, and pedestrians walking past mall entrances are often hit with gusts of frigid air vented out to the street. For years, observers have pointed out that the nation’s cooling use far exceeds what is necessary for comfort.

    The current energy crisis stems from the Iran war, which has effectively closed off the Strait of Hormuz — the critical shipping chokepoint through which most of the Middle East’s oil and gas exports travel to global markets. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, roughly two-thirds of Singapore’s crude oil imports originate from Middle Eastern nations, leaving the country heavily exposed to supply disruptions. Local fuel prices have already climbed sharply, and Singaporean authorities have warned the public to prepare for further economic disruptions tied to the Middle East conflict. As of early April, the nation has not tapped its strategic fuel reserves or implemented fuel rationing.

    Singapore is far from alone in taking urgent action across Southeast Asia and broader Asia. Thailand, another major economy dependent on Hormuz shipping, has ordered public sector employees to work from home and asked all residents to set home and office air conditioning between 26 and 27 degrees Celsius, while encouraging carpooling and greater use of public transport to cut fuel consumption. The Philippines, which sources 98% of its total oil imports from the Middle East, became the first Asian nation to declare a national energy emergency in March after petrol prices more than doubled in just a few weeks. Manila has shortened the workweek for all government offices and ordered public agencies to cut overall electricity and fuel use. Even South Korea, which imports more than two-thirds of its total energy from the Gulf region, has launched a nationwide energy-saving campaign urging residents to take shorter showers and only run washing machines on weekends to cut overall power demand.

    Energy analyst Ichiro Kutani, of Japan’s Institute of Energy Economics, described the broader economic fallout from the Iran war as an emerging “Asian energy crisis”. He noted that developing economies across the region are bearing the brunt of the shock, due to their high volume of gasoline-powered vehicles and widespread household reliance on gas for energy. In the long term, Kutani argued, the crisis serves as a critical wake-up call for the entire region: “We have to learn from this crisis, and work toward both more efficient oil use and greater diversification of our energy supply sources to prevent similar shocks in the future.”

  • Ukraine and Russia will cease fire for Orthodox Easter

    Ukraine and Russia will cease fire for Orthodox Easter

    Four years into the deadliest European conflict since World War II, Russia and Ukraine have agreed to a historic 32-hour ceasefire for the Orthodox Easter holiday, a rare pause in fighting that has already claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and displaced millions. The dual announcements made by both nations’ leaders on Thursday mark one of the few coordinated truces in a conflict defined by broken agreements and near-constant frontline combat.

    The ceasefire will take effect at 13:00 GMT on April 11 and remain in place through the end of April 12, 2026, according to a late Thursday statement from the Kremlin. Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the halt to all offensive operations across every frontline sector in honor of the upcoming Orthodox Easter celebration, the statement confirmed, while directing Russian troops to remain on high alert to respond to any potential Ukrainian provocations. The Kremlin also expressed its expectation that Ukraine would honor the truce reciprocally, but made no mention of Kyiv’s earlier truce proposal that set the agreement in motion.

    Hours after the Kremlin’s announcement, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed that Kyiv would match Russia’s ceasefire, noting that Ukraine had first floated the idea of a holiday truce earlier this year through U.S. mediation. “People deserve an Easter free from the constant threat of shelling and attack,” Zelenskyy said. “This ceasefire gives Russia a genuine chance to step back from hostilities and move toward real progress in peace talks, rather than resuming fighting once the holiday ends.”

    The path to this truce has been complicated by shifting global priorities, with long-stalled peace negotiations pushed off track by ongoing conflict in the Middle East. Multiple rounds of U.S.-led talks have failed to bridge core divides between the two sides: Moscow currently occupies roughly 19 percent of Ukrainian territory, most seized in the opening weeks of the 2022 invasion, and demands territorial and political concessions that Zelenskyy has repeatedly rejected as a demand for unconditional surrender. With U.S. foreign policy attention now focused heavily on Iran, no major breakthrough in formal peace talks is expected in the near term.

    Frontline fighting has drifted into a near stalemate in recent years, with Russia making incremental territorial gains at the cost of massive casualties, according to open-source military analysis from the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW). Since late 2025, however, Russian advances have slowed considerably, a shift analysts attribute to two key factors: successful Ukrainian counterattacks in southeastern Ukraine, and restrictions that have cut Russian forces off from critical communications infrastructure. Russia’s military was blocked from accessing SpaceX’s Starlink satellite network, and Moscow’s own domestic crackdown banned the widely used Telegram messaging app — tools that Russian troops had relied on to coordinate frontline operations and drone strikes, which have become a defining feature of the conflict. Despite this slowdown, ISW notes that the tactical situation remains heavily unfavorable for Ukraine in eastern Donetsk Oblast, particularly around the strategic cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, which Moscow has demanded Kyiv surrender as a condition of any final peace deal.

    In recent weeks, Ukraine has ramped up long-range strikes on Russian energy infrastructure, particularly targeting oil export terminals, after global energy prices spiked following the escalation of conflict in the Middle East. Past short truces between the two nations have quickly collapsed, with both sides blaming each other for almost immediate violations, leaving observers cautious about whether this holiday pause will lead to any longer-term de-escalation.

  • Russia bans Nobel-winning rights group, raids independent newspaper, in one day

    Russia bans Nobel-winning rights group, raids independent newspaper, in one day

    In a sweeping new escalation of its post-invasion crackdown on independent civil society, Russia has implemented a full ban on Nobel Prize-winning human rights organization Memorial and launched a law enforcement raid on the Moscow offices of iconic independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta, actions that mark one of the sharpest blows to remaining dissident voices in the country in recent years.

    Both institutions, rooted in the collapse of the Soviet Union, have stood as Russia’s most respected and high-profile watchdogs documenting systemic human rights abuses for decades. Since Moscow launched its full-scale military incursion into Ukraine four years ago, the Kremlin has rapidly rolled back civil liberties, implementing a nationwide crackdown on dissent that has no precedent since the final decades of Soviet rule.

    Memorial was first founded in the late 1980s with a core mission: to preserve the memory of millions of people killed in the Soviet Union’s Gulag penal system and document the fates of those targeted by political repression. The organization faced near-constant government pressure from its earliest days, and was formally ordered to liquidate its Russian operations by the Supreme Court in 2021, forcing most of its work to shift abroad.

    Thursday’s court ruling reclassifies the entire organization as “extremist,” a designation that effectively outlaws any form of collaboration with Memorial across Russia. Any individual found supporting the group now faces criminal prosecution, eliminating even the quiet grassroots work the organization had managed to maintain inside the country since 2021.

    Novaya Gazeta, Russia’s preeminent independent newspaper for nearly 30 years, was established in 1993 by a group of veteran journalists led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dmitry Muratov. For decades, the outlet drew relentless government targeting for its unflinching investigative reporting on human rights violations, high-level corruption, and Kremlin policy. Early backing for the paper came from Mikhail Gorbachev, the final Soviet leader who oversaw the perestroika reforms that opened the Soviet Union to greater political freedom.

    Muratov, who shared the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize with Memorial, was forced to step down as editor-in-chief in 2023 after being labeled a “foreign agent” — a designation that effectively brands recipients as enemies of the Russian state. After the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, Novaya Gazeta cut its print circulation inside Russia drastically, and many of its leading journalists went into exile to launch an independent European edition, Novaya Gazeta Europe, based outside the country. But the outlet’s original Russian website remained accessible to domestic readers despite repeated court orders to take it down.

    On Thursday, law enforcement agents entered Novaya Gazeta’s Moscow offices in early morning and carried out raids that stretched into the evening. During the operation, officers detained senior investigative reporter Oleg Roldugin, who has led high-profile probes into corruption among Russia’s top political leaders, including former president Dmitry Medvedev and Chechen Republic head Ramzan Kadyrov. Police claimed the detention was tied to allegations of illegal access to personal data.

    In a statement posted to social media after the raid, Novaya Gazeta said: “We are concerned about the condition of our colleagues and demand an end to this lawlessness.” The outlet has a long history of targeted violence against its reporters: more than a dozen of its journalists have been killed in attacks widely linked to their critical work, most notably Anna Politkovskaya, who exposed military abuses in Chechnya and was gunned down in her Moscow apartment building on Vladimir Putin’s birthday in 2006.

    Led originally by iconic Soviet dissident and Nobel laureate Andrei Sakharov, Memorial built the world’s largest publicly accessible database of Gulag victims, preserving a historical record that successive Russian governments have sought to downplay. Emerging as a defining symbol of hope during Russia’s turbulent transition to democracy in the 1990s, the organization in recent decades shifted to documenting the gradual erosion of political freedoms under President Putin, as well as ongoing human rights violations across the country and in Russia’s military conflicts.

    As of 2026, Memorial’s ongoing research documents more than 1,000 political prisoners held in Russia — a dramatic jump from just 46 recorded in 2015, reflecting the accelerating pace of repression amid the Ukraine war. The list includes opponents of the invasion, critics of Putin, and people targeted for their religious beliefs, including more than 200 imprisoned Jehovah’s Witnesses. Memorial has also documented abuses against Ukrainian prisoners of war and rights violations tied to Russia’s military campaigns in Chechnya and Syria.

    Natalia Sekretaryeva, head of Memorial’s legal department, told AFP Thursday that the Supreme Court’s ruling was “absurd” but had been widely expected by the group’s leadership. Outside the Supreme Court building during the ruling, a lone protester held up a sign reading: “Hands off Memorial. Freedom to political prisoners,” a small act of resistance that underscored the growing risk to any open dissent in contemporary Russia.

  • BBC tours Orion spacecraft model ahead of Artemis II return

    BBC tours Orion spacecraft model ahead of Artemis II return

    Ahead of one of the most anticipated milestones in modern space exploration, the BBC has been granted an exclusive behind-the-scenes tour of a full-scale model of NASA’s Orion spacecraft, the vehicle that will carry the Artemis II crew safely back to Earth following their groundbreaking lunar mission. Scheduled for re-entry and splashdown on April 10, the upcoming return marks a critical juncture for NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to reestablish human presence on the moon and lay the groundwork for future deep space missions to Mars.

  • Argentina to play friendlies at Texas A&M and Auburn ahead of World Cup

    Argentina to play friendlies at Texas A&M and Auburn ahead of World Cup

    Argentina’s 2026 FIFA World Cup title defense campaign is taking shape, with the Argentine Football Association confirming this Thursday that the reigning world champions will wrap up their pre-tournament preparation with two high-profile friendly matches at major American college football venues. Led by global football icon Lionel Messi, the South American side will first kick off their final warm-up series against Honduras on June 6 at Kyle Field, the home stadium of Texas A&M University’s athletics program located in College Station. This iconic venue boasts a seating capacity of more than 102,000, making it one of the largest collegiate sports facilities in the United States. Four days after the Honduras matchup, Argentina will face Iceland on June 9 at Jordan-Hare Stadium, the home ground of Auburn University’s Tigers, based in Alabama. This friendly comes just 48 hours before the official opening kickoff of the expanded 48-team 2026 World Cup, which is being co-hosted across three North American nations: the United States, Mexico, and Canada. Following the conclusion of their pre-tournament tune-ups, Argentina will formally launch their title defense on June 16 in Kansas City, Missouri, where they will square off against Algeria in their first Group J fixture. The two remaining group stage matches for Argentina will both be hosted in Arlington, Texas: the squad is scheduled to face Austria on June 22 before closing out group play against Jordan five days later on June 27. The selection of large-capacity college stadiums for pre-World Cup friendlies reflects the growing popularity of top-tier international soccer in the U.S. collegiate sports landscape, as the country prepares to co-host its first World Cup in more than 30 years. The matches are expected to draw massive crowds of both American soccer fans and Argentine expatriates eager to see Messi and the reigning champions compete on U.S. soil ahead of the global tournament.

  • ‘I wished for death’: Sexual violence in Israel’s prisons is an ‘organised state policy’

    ‘I wished for death’: Sexual violence in Israel’s prisons is an ‘organised state policy’

    A groundbreaking new investigation by Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor has concluded that the widespread sexual torture and abuse of Palestinian detainees from Gaza held in Israeli detention facilities constitutes an organized state policy, explicitly endorsed by Israel’s highest political, military and judicial authorities. The report, which was shared exclusively with Middle East Eye, draws its chilling conclusions from first-hand testimonies collected from dozens of recently released Palestinian former detainees, painting a devastating picture of systematic, institutionalized cruelty across Israel’s prison network.

    Accounts from survivors center heavily on Sde Teiman, the notoriously opaque detention facility where independent monitors and legal representatives have long been barred from access. One 42-year-old female detainee from northern Gaza, who was held at the site, described being bound naked to a metal table and repeatedly raped by two masked soldiers over a 48-hour period. She told researchers she was left shackled, naked and bleeding through the night before the assaults resumed the next day, recalling that her captors filmed the entire ordeal. Later, while she was hung by her wrists during interrogation, soldiers played the footage back to her and threatened to release it publicly if she refused to cooperate with their demands. Describing the unrelenting horror of her experience, she said she begged for death and framed the abuse as “another genocide behind walls.”

    Multiple male survivors shared similarly graphic accounts of brutality, often involving the use of military dogs trained to carry out sexual assault. Amir, a 35-year-old detainee also held at Sde Teiman, recalled being forced to strip naked before soldiers ordered their dogs to urinate on him and rape him. “The dog penetrated my anus in a trained manner while I was being beaten,” he said. “This continued for several minutes. I felt profoundly humiliated and violated.”

    In another documented case, Khaled Mahajna, an attorney with the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs, described an incident where a soldier inserted the nozzle of a fire extinguisher into a Palestinian prisoner’s anus before discharging its contents, causing catastrophic internal injuries and extreme, prolonged pain. Forty-three-year-old Wajdi, another former Sde Teiman detainee, recounted a days-long campaign of abuse that began when he was shackled to a metal bed and repeatedly raped by both soldiers and a trained military dog. “I felt severe pain in my anus and screamed, but every time I screamed, I was beaten. This continued for several minutes, while soldiers filmed and mocked me,” he said. “The soldier left after ejaculating inside me. I was left in a humiliating position. I wished for death. I was bleeding.” After that first assault, Wajdi said he was untied and raped by the dog, before another soldier forced him to perform oral sex and urinated on him. The repeated assaults by multiple soldiers continued for days.

    Khaled Ahmed, a field researcher for Euro-Med who conducted interviews with survivors, called Wajdi’s case uniquely devastating, noting that it accumulated “almost every form of torture, physical, psychological, and moral, layered with systematic humiliation.” “It also includes the deliberate use of multiple perpetrators and trained dogs as instruments of sexual violence,” Ahmed told Middle East Eye. “The result is not a single act of abuse, but an extended pattern of cruelty designed to destroy dignity, bodily integrity, and any sense of safety. These are acts that defy comprehension.”

    Survivors consistently told researchers that the assaults were filmed and carried out in purpose-built, well-resourced institutional spaces specifically designed to enable torture and sexual violence. This structural coordination, the report argues, confirms the violence is not the work of rogue individual soldiers but an institutionalized state policy.

    Ahmed acknowledged that collecting these testimonies was an emotionally grueling process. “The details the survivors described and the way they relived the emotions and events were overwhelming,” he said. Many interviewees broke down into uncontrollable crying fits while recounting their experiences, and a large number of potential survivors declined to speak publicly due to fear of reprisal from Israeli authorities and deep-seated social stigma around sexual violence in Palestinian conservative society. “But what we noticed was that all of them spoke about what happened as if they were seeing it in front of them,” Ahmed said. “They remembered every detail, as though the scene had been etched into their memory and could never leave it.”

    Ahmed added that the vast majority of survivors who agreed to speak with researchers were men, as women face far more severe social stigma for sexual assault, making it nearly impossible for them or their families to disclose abuse. Researchers also documented that women’s bodies are frequently weaponized to blackmail male relatives: the report includes multiple cases of sexual assault against women who have family ties to Palestinians labeled as “wanted” by Israeli authorities.

    Euro-Med Monitor’s final conclusion is unambiguous: the hundreds of testimonies collected do not reflect isolated incidents of abuse, but concrete evidence of a deliberate policy supported by Israel’s most senior civilian and military leaders, either through explicit orders or tacit approval, enabled by a broader culture of complete impunity for perpetrators.

    The report explains that this scale of systematic abuse has only been made possible through Israeli legislation, military directives and emergency regulations that strip detainees of all legal protections. The 2002 Unlawful Combatants Law, for example, vastly expanded Israeli military detention powers without requiring any judicial oversight, effectively removing all legal safeguards for detainees. In the aftermath of the October 7 attacks, these legal frameworks have accelerated enforced disappearances of Palestinian detainees and turned Israeli detention centers into unaccountable “black holes” where human rights abuses thrive with no outside oversight. Sde Teiman, where multiple independent investigations have already documented routine torture, rape and murder, is the most prominent example of this system, as the International Committee of the Red Cross and legal representation for detainees are routinely denied access to the facility.

    The report also stresses that institutional responsibility extends far beyond the soldiers who directly carry out the abuse. Medical personnel and the Israeli judicial system actively collude to cover up crimes and shield perpetrators, the investigation finds. Doctors reportedly help obscure evidence of torture by hiding injuries in official medical records, concealing perpetrators’ identities, and issuing “fit for interrogation” certificates that clear the way for further abuse. Meanwhile, the Israeli judicial system has repeatedly protected abusers by suppressing victim and witness evidence, downgrading serious felony charges to minor offenses, and dismissing cases entirely. Most notably, in March 2024, the Israeli military dropped all charges against five soldiers accused of gang-raping a Palestinian detainee at Sde Teiman, despite leaked CCTV footage that showed soldiers surrounding the detainee and pinning him against a wall during the alleged assault.

    The authors of the report argue that these widespread abuses violate the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The abuse causes severe, lasting harm to individual detainees and members of the Palestinian community, and is intentionally aimed at preventing births within the Palestinian group, all as part of a broader goal of destroying the Palestinian community in Gaza partially or fully. The report reaffirms that legal and moral responsibility for these crimes extends to Israeli leadership and state institutions that shelter perpetrators, not just the individual soldiers who carry out the assaults.

    This new investigation is not the first to document widespread sexual violence against Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons. Multiple independent rights groups and news organizations, including Middle East Eye, have published extensive investigations confirming the scale of the abuse. A recent United Nations inquiry went as far as accusing Israel of using sexualized torture and rape as “a method of war… to destabilize, dominate, oppress and destroy the Palestinian people.”

    Ahmed explained that the systematic use of sexual violence serves a deliberate, long-term strategic purpose for Israeli authorities. “It keeps the victim trapped in a cycle of violence, unable to escape it, even after the violence has practically stopped,” he said. “It continues to accompany the victim throughout their life. The survivor keeps experiencing both physical and psychological pain, and in many cases feelings of shame, humiliation, self-blame, inferiority, loss of dignity, and a lack of safety.”

    The trauma does not end with the survivor, he added: it ripples outward to damage entire families and communities. “Especially in a conservative society where anything related to sexual assault is seen as an attack on the dignity of the entire family,” Ahmed said. “It is a complex crime that deeply impacts and fractures the very fabric of society.”