In a moment decades in the making, NASA’s long-awaited Artemis II mission reached its dramatic milestone this week, as four astronauts guided the Orion spacecraft on a close swing around the far side of the Moon. While the mission unfolded 240,000 miles from Earth, hundreds of agency staff packed into Houston’s historic Johnson Space Center White Flight Control Room on Monday to capture a celebratory group photo, their grins reflecting the excitement of a feat not accomplished by American astronauts in 50 years. For thousands of NASA team members who have spent years, even decades, developing the Artemis program, this successful lunar flyby comes at a uniquely challenging moment for American scientific research. The Trump administration has ushered in sweeping cuts to federal science spending, frozen long-planned projects, and reduced agency workforces across the sector. Just one week before Artemis II reached its lunar milestone, the White House tabled a new budget proposal that would slash NASA’s overall operating budget by 23%, with deep cuts to the agency’s core science programs. Space policy analyst Clayton Swope of the Center for Strategic and International Studies notes that NASA has navigated these severe headwinds to deliver on one of the nation’s most high-profile exploration goals. “It’s been under very challenging circumstances,” Swope told Agence France-Presse, affirming that the mission team has delivered on its promise despite widespread resource cuts. For the scientists and engineers who built the Artemis program, the successful mission has been far more than a technical achievement — it has been a much-needed injection of institutional morale. Exploration scientist Jacob Bleacher, who has worked on the initiative for more than a decade, called the milestone a “massive positive moment” for the entire agency. Speaking from Johnson Space Center’s Science Mission Operations Room, Bleacher described the experience as surreal. Most current NASA staff and the majority of the American public were not alive during the 1960s Apollo Moon landing era, turning the iconic lunar missions into a distant historical myth rather than a living, ongoing achievement. “This is my generation’s first chance to step up and really do this,” Bleacher said. “I like to think about it as walking through a doorway into how humankind explores the solar system going forward.” Amanda Nahm, a program scientist based at NASA Headquarters, echoed that sentiment, saying the mission’s progress has already offered a substantial “morale boost” for staff across the agency. “We all work at NASA because of this — and I think it’s helping remind us that our base mission is this hard, exciting exploration — seeing new things, trying out new things we’ve never done before,” Nahm said. “I think it will hopefully reinvigorate us all.” For the four astronauts on board Artemis II, the weight of the moment has not been lost on the crew. Mission commander Reid Wiseman emphasized that the mission’s success belongs to the thousands of ground staff who prepared for the flight over years of work. “We just feel like we’re lifted up by the team that supports us, and you just sort of execute the plan,” Wiseman said as the crew traveled away from Earth. “A lot of people telling us how to work this and manage this vehicle, and a lot of great training, and you just kind of go step by step, which I think is pretty remarkable, what this team can do. It really highlights their excellence.” The Artemis program’s ultimate goal — set by the Trump administration, which has pushed for a crewed lunar landing before the end of the second presidential term in 2029 — remains on the horizon, but this first crewed lunar flyby in a generation has already renewed momentum for a program navigating significant political and budgetary headwinds.
作者： admin
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China is winning one AI race, the US another – but either might pull ahead
Seventy years ago, the most high-stakes global technological contest of the Cold War saw the United States and the Soviet Union pour billions of dollars and the world’s top scientific talent into developing increasingly powerful nuclear arsenals. Today, a new great power rivalry is unfolding, this time between Washington and Beijing, with a completely different prize at stake: global dominance of artificial intelligence (AI).
Unlike the Cold War nuclear race, this contest plays out not just in classified government facilities, but in university research labs, the boardrooms of Silicon Valley’s most valuable startups, and the campuses of China’s leading tech hubs, with trillions of dollars of investment and the future of the global economy hanging in the balance. As University College London cognitive neuroscience researcher Nick Wright frames it, the competition can be neatly split into a battle between AI “brains” and AI “bodies” — with each power holding distinct historical advantages that are rapidly shifting as the race accelerates.
For years, the United States has held an unchallenged lead in AI “brains”: the software, microchips, and large language models (LLMs) that power conversational AI tools like ChatGPT. The turning point for mainstream AI came in November 2022, when California-based OpenAI launched ChatGPT, the first widely accessible LLM trained to hold natural, conversational interactions with users. The launch sent shockwaves through the global tech industry, with social media flooded by users sharing innovative use cases for the new tool overnight.
Today, OpenAI reports more than 900 million weekly users of ChatGPT — nearly one in eight people on Earth — and rivals including Google, Anthropic, and Perplexity have poured billions of dollars into developing competing LLM systems to capture a share of the emerging commercial market, which threatens to upend entire white-collar industries. But beyond commercial gain, US policymakers have framed AI dominance as a core strategic priority in the rivalry with China, with American advantage built not just on clever algorithms, but on control of the advanced hardware that powers cutting-edge AI.
Virtually all of the world’s most advanced high-performance microchips, required to train and run large LLMs, are designed by US firm Nvidia, which in 2024 became the first company in history to reach a $5 trillion market valuation. Most of these chips are manufactured by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) in Taiwan, a US ally. Washington has leveraged a decades-old framework of export controls, strengthened dramatically by President Joe Biden in 2022 as the AI race heated up, to block China from accessing these chips. The US’s “foreign direct product rule” forces even foreign manufacturers like Dutch semiconductor equipment giant ASML — the only company in the world that produces the extreme ultraviolet lithography machines required to make advanced chips — to comply with US export restrictions, blocking shipments to China.
For years, this policy appeared to successfully lock in US advantage in AI “brains” — but in January 2025, the same week that Donald Trump was inaugurated for his second presidential term, China upended the status quo with the launch of its own conversational AI chatbot, DeepSeek. For end users, DeepSeek delivers comparable performance to ChatGPT: it can answer complex questions, write functional code, and is available entirely for free — at a fraction of the development cost of leading American LLMs.
The launch triggered immediate market upheaval: Nvidia lost $600 billion in market value in a single day, the largest single-day loss in US stock market history. AI journalist Karen Hao argues that Washington’s export control policy may have backfired dramatically: forced to develop LLMs without access to cutting-edge American chips, Chinese developers were pushed to innovate more efficient model architectures, accelerating the country’s push for AI self-reliance.
In Beijing, DeepSeek acted as a major catalyst for the country’s AI ecosystem, according to Selina Xu, a researcher focused on Chinese AI policy working in the office of former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. The launch also highlighted a key structural difference between the two countries’ AI industries: while US firms tightly guard AI intellectual property behind closed, proprietary systems, Chinese developers have adopted a widespread open-source approach, publishing model code publicly to allow other firms to build on existing work rather than starting new projects from scratch. As a result, Xu notes, while top American proprietary models may still hold a small quality edge, Chinese models deliver 90% of the capability at just 10% of the cost, erasing much of the US’s historical lead in AI brains.
When it comes to AI “bodies” — the physical robotics and drones that integrate AI into real-world tasks — China has held the upper hand for more than a decade. Beginning in the 2010s, the Chinese government poured billions of dollars in subsidies into robotics research and manufacturing, leveraging the country’s position as the world’s leading manufacturing hub to build a dominant domestic industry. Today, China is home to more than two million working industrial robots — more than the rest of the world combined — and international visitors to major Chinese cities are often surprised by how fully integrated robots are into daily life, from autonomous drone food deliveries to automated retail restocking.
China has made particularly rapid progress in humanoid robots, human-shaped machines designed to replicate human movement and task performance. A 2025 report from the bipartisan US think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies highlighted a fully automated “dark factory” in Chongqing, where 2,000 robots and autonomous vehicles work together to roll a new car off the production line every minute, capable of operating 24/7 without any human staff. Facing a rapidly aging population that will see more than 300 million people aged 60 or older by 2035 — a total larger than the entire current population of the United States — the Chinese government sees humanoid robots as a critical solution to filling labor gaps in manufacturing and elder care. Today, China controls 90% of global exports of humanoid robots.
Even with this lead in physical robotic systems, however, China still faces a gap when it comes to the intelligent software “brains” that enable robots to carry out complex, variable tasks. Simple repetitive industrial tasks only require basic control software, which China can produce domestically, but advanced robots capable of adapting to unstructured environments need agentic AI — a form of AI that can operate as an independent actor to complete multi-step assignments without constant human input. For this high-value AI software, Wright notes, the United States still holds a clear lead — and 80% of a robot’s total value comes from its brain, not its body.
Today, both powers are racing to integrate agentic AI into physical robotic systems, and US firms have already demonstrated breakthroughs in this space. Boston Dynamics, the American engineering firm, has integrated agentic AI into its famous four-legged robot Spot, which has become a viral online sensation with millions of views of its capabilities. Spot now carries out autonomous safety inspections in industrial warehouses, detecting overheating equipment, gas leaks, and chemical spills, then feeds its findings to AI analytics software that can resolve issues without any human intervention.
Beyond industrial applications, the fusion of AI and robotics is already transforming military conflict: last year, Ukraine deployed the Gogol-M, an AI-powered aerial mothership drone that can fly hundreds of kilometers into Russian territory, release smaller attack drones, and allow those drones to autonomously identify targets and detonate without any human guidance.
With no clear finish line to the AI race, it remains impossible to predict which power will come out on top, says Greg Slabaugh, professor of computer vision and AI at Queen Mary University of London. Unlike the 1969 moon landing, Slabaugh argues, AI victory will not come down to one singular, defining moment. Instead, long-term sustained advantage will depend on which country most effectively embeds AI across its entire economy and sets global standards for the technology — just as with past transformative technologies like electricity and computing, the ability to scale and adapt matters more than inventing the technology first.
The two powers are also pursuing fundamentally different governance models for AI: large US private tech companies are pushing to speed development with minimal regulation, while China’s government places strict state oversight over all AI research. One model promises a future of hyper-charged consumer capitalism built around AI, while the other frames the technology as a tool to be directed by the state for national goals.
Oxford Said Business School professor Mari Sako notes that each power is well-positioned to succeed under its own framework, but when two competing systems clash, the side that can win the support of global users and adopters is most likely to emerge on top. With the entire global balance of power in the 21st century hanging in the balance, this AI race could well be the contest that decides which nation emerges as the world’s leading superpower.
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More than 1,700 Brits who fell ill in Cape Verde join action against Tui
A growing mass legal action against major European travel operator Tui has now drawn more than 1,700 claimants who fell ill during all-inclusive package holidays to the popular West African destination of Cape Verde, with law firm representatives confirming an updated death toll of eight British nationals linked to post-travel illnesses.
Leading the multi-claimant personal injury suit, UK-based law firm Irwin Mitchell says new inquiries are still coming in as recently as two weeks ago, indicating that safety issues at popular Cape Verde resorts frequented by Tui holidaymakers have not been resolved months after official health warnings were issued. Lead solicitor Jatinder Paul described the case as unprecedented in his decades of personal injury practice, noting that no other similar claim has involved this many affected claimants or such a high number of fatal outcomes.
Clairmants have reported a range of serious gastrointestinal and parasitic infections contracted during their stays, including E. coli, salmonella, shigella, and cryptosporidium. Vulnerable groups including infants as young as six months old are among those affected. In February 2026, the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) issued an official public warning to British travellers over trips to Cape Verde, confirming that between October 2025 and February 2026 alone, 112 cases of shigella and 43 cases of salmonella had been linked to travel to the archipelago. Both infections cause severe diarrhea, abdominal cramping, and high fever, and can turn life-threatening for vulnerable people.
Cape Verde, a former Portuguese colony off the coast of West Africa, has grown into one of the most popular winter sun destinations for European travellers seeking warm weather and golden sandy beaches. Tui, one of the largest tour operators serving the region, has brought more than one million British holidaymakers to the islands since 2022 alone.
Lawyers have collected on-the-ground evidence of systemic hygiene failures at multiple resorts popular with Tui packages. Video footage reviewed by the BBC shows multiple hazards: undercooked food served at hotel buffets, swarms of flies surrounding open buffet stations, and visible mould growing inside guest rooms.
Two high-profile fatal cases highlight the severity of the risks. Sixty-four-year-old Elena Walsh from Birmingham travelled to the five-star RIU Cabo Verde resort on a Tui package in August 2025. She developed acute illness just two days into her trip and died in a local hospital within 48 hours of falling sick. Her son, Sean Walsh, recalled the rapid and shocking deterioration of his mother’s health, urging other travellers to avoid booking trips to Cape Verde despite its reputation as a budget-friendly sunny destination. “People can go and be fine, but my mum wasn’t. I just don’t want anyone else to go through what our family has,” he said.
A second 64-year-old traveller, Karen Pooley from Lydney, developed acute gastric illness during her Tui-booked two-week Cape Verde holiday in October 2025. After falling ill, she slipped on water leaking from a faulty fridge while rushing to the bathroom, breaking her leg. She was airlifted to a hospital in Tenerife for advanced care but died the next day from sepsis and multi-organ failure. Her daughter, Liz Pooley, holds Tui fully responsible for her mother’s preventable death. “No family should have to FaceTime their mum on a Friday and plan her funeral by the next Friday. This should never have happened,” she told reporters.
RIU Hotels and Resorts, which operates the resort where Walsh stayed, has pushed back against the claims, releasing a statement asserting that “the health and safety of guests are our main priority” and that all its Cape Verde properties “follow the strictest international health and hygiene standards, certified by external prestigious consultancy firms specialised in health and safety.”
Tui, for its part, says it is currently conducting its own internal investigation into the claims. The company told reporters it is “not in a position to provide a formal statement at this stage” as it still has not obtained access to the full official Cape Verde public health report into the outbreaks, which remains unpublished. The tour operator added that it provides targeted support to any customer who becomes unwell while staying at partner resorts, arranging access to appropriate medical care and assistance when needed.
Lawyers for the claimants say they are pursuing full damages from Tui, arguing the company had a core responsibility to ensure package holidays it sells do not expose customers to life-threatening health hazards. If an out-of-court settlement cannot be reached, Paul says the case will proceed to the UK High Court, where claimants are seeking millions of pounds in total compensation for illness, loss of life, and emotional harm.
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‘I’ve got to go where the best opportunity is’: Jack Cole could leave Penrith at the end of the season
One of the National Rugby League’s most promising young playmakers is facing an uncertain future at the Penrith Panthers, with a potential move to a new club for the 2027 season growing increasingly likely as his path to consistent first-grade football is blocked by established stars.
Twenty-two-year-old Jack Cole, who has been a part of the Panthers organization since he was 15 years old, is currently in his fourth season with the club. However, he has been stuck behind star halfback Nathan Cleary, rising talent Blaize Talagi and experienced recruit Jack Cogger in the team’s depth chart, leaving him with little room to break into the top side. Out of contract at the end of the current season, Cole has emerged as a potential target for rival NRL clubs, though he has ruled out a move to the UK’s Super League at this stage of his young career.
In an interview with NewsWire, Cole shared that he expects more clarity around his future over the next one to two months, and is focusing on his on-field performance to attract interest from suitors, whether that be Penrith or rival clubs. “I don’t know yet. It’s still early days, obviously being round five. Hopefully I get a bit more clarity maybe over the next month or two,” Cole explained. “Enjoying my footy and just focusing on my footy is going to help that cause. So I’m not really trying to worry about too much else really. Just trying to knuckle down and get better. And then obviously that will create more interest.”
While Cole made clear he holds deep affection for the Panthers organization that has developed him from a teenager, he acknowledges that professional rugby league is a business, and his next move will be driven by the opportunity to secure consistent first-grade game time and long-term financial security. He is eager to make the jump from understudy to a starting leading man at a club, and is open to a move if Penrith cannot offer him that path. “I love it at Penrith and we’ll just see what happens. I’ve got to go where the best opportunity is, because at the end of the day, it is a business. If there wasn’t an opportunity here for me at the end of the year to progress or play consistent NRL, then you’d obviously have to try to have a look,” he said.
This season, Cole has turned in strong performances in the NSW Cup after recovering from major shoulder surgery that cut short his pre-season training. During his rehab, he leaned heavily on Panthers star Nathan Cleary, who underwent the same procedure years earlier, for guidance on the mental side of recovery. Cleary shared a key mental skills technique he uses – visualization – to help Cole prepare for a return to playing, focusing on routine game processes rather than big high-pressure moments. “He told me to focus on the video and the mental side of the game. There are a lot of good things here we do about visualisation, which obviously if you can train your mind and visualise some stuff then it’s going to help with the physical side when you’re back doing that stuff too. Most people close their eyes and just put yourself in scenarios. It’s more so about process instead of picturing big moments like matchwinning tries,” Cole explained. Cleary also shared diet tips, including bone broth and oysters, though Cole admitted he has not tested the oyster recommendation.
Cole has not yet featured in first-grade this season, but he stands ready to step up into the side when Cleary is away representing New South Wales in the annual State of Origin series. He credits Penrith’s “next man up” culture and the NSW Cup side’s alignment with the first-team game plan for making it easy for reserves to slot straight into the top side when called upon. “I think that’s a big part of Penrith where everyone’s got to be ready. It’s sort of a next man up mentality here, so we all train the same, we all have the same sequences, set plays. Our Cup team models our game off the NRL team, so I think that helps that when someone does get called up, you sort of just slot straight in,” he said. “If I get called up, I’ll be ready and just enjoy it and take it with both hands.”
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Japanese national believed to be NHK journalist detained in Iran released on bail
TOKYO — In a development announced this Tuesday, Japan’s highest-ranking government spokesperson confirmed that a Japanese citizen held in Iranian custody since early this year has been granted temporary release on bail.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara shared with reporters in Tokyo that confirmation of the bail release came from Iranian officials on Monday. While Japanese authorities have welcomed this step, they remain firm in their push for the detainee’s full and unconditional release from custody, Kihara added.
According to Kihara, Tamaki Tsukada, Japan’s sitting ambassador to Iran, has already held an in-person meeting with the recently bailed citizen. The ambassador verified that the detainee is in stable good health, though no further identifying details or context around the detention have been released by the Japanese government to date.
Independent reports and advocacy records point to the detainee being a staff journalist with NHK, Japan’s national public broadcasting service. This case marks the second detention of a Japanese national in Iran within the last year: another Japanese citizen held in Iranian custody starting last June was released and repatriated to Japan back in March of this year.
Tuesday’s official confirmation comes just 24 hours after a high-stakes telephone conversation between Japanese Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi and his Iranian counterpart, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. The call covered a range of pressing regional issues, including Iran’s ongoing military tensions with the United States and Israel. But Japan’s top diplomat also used the discussion to reiterate the country’s longstanding request for the full release of the January detainee. A post-meeting statement from Japan’s Foreign Ministry noted that Araghchi responded by saying he would treat Japan’s formal request with full seriousness.
New York-based press freedom advocacy group the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has publicly named the detained individual as an NHK reporter. Citing anonymous sources who requested anonymity out of fear of official reprisal, the CPJ reported that the journalist was taken into custody by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on January 20, before being transferred to Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison on February 23.
Associated Press correspondent Mayuko Ono based in Tokyo contributed reporting to this update.
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Australian soldier arrested for alleged war crimes in Afghanistan
In a landmark development that caps years of investigations into alleged atrocities by Australian special forces in Afghanistan, one of the nation’s most celebrated former military personnel has been taken into custody on multiple charges of war crime murder. Australian Federal Police (AFP) announced Tuesday the arrest of 47-year-old Ben Roberts-Smith, a recipient of the Victoria Cross — Australia’s highest award for battlefield gallantry — who has long been at the center of mounting allegations of unlawful killings of unarmed civilians and prisoners during his deployment.
AFP Commissioner Krissy Barrett confirmed to reporters that the former Special Air Service Regiment (SASR) soldier faces five counts of war crime murder. The alleged offenses took place between 2009 and 2012, during Australia’s long-term participation in US- and NATO-led counter-insurgency operations in Afghanistan. All of the victims were civilians or detained prisoners who were not actively engaged in hostilities at the time of their deaths, Barrett said. Prosecutors will argue that the victims were either shot directly by Roberts-Smith, or killed by his subordinates acting on explicit orders from him.
Once hailed as Australia’s most distinguished living war hero, Roberts-Smith’s reputation began to unravel in 2018, when investigative journalists from *The Age* and *The Sydney Morning Herald* published a series of explosive reports linking him to a pattern of unlawful killings and unprofessional conduct during his tour of duty. The outlets alleged that Roberts-Smith kicked an unarmed Afghan civilian off a cliff before ordering his troops to shoot the man, and that he participated in the machine-gun killing of a man with a prosthetic leg — later repurposing the limb as a drinking trophy during celebrations with fellow soldiers.
The 2018 media reports triggered a sweeping national inquiry into allegations of war crimes committed by Australian special forces in Afghanistan. A landmark 2020 military-led investigation ultimately confirmed that special forces personnel unlawfully killed 39 unarmed Afghan civilians and prisoners between 2005 and 2016, uncovering widespread evidence of summary executions, competitive body-counting practices, and systemic torture among deployed troops.
Under intense public and international pressure to hold perpetrators accountable, the Australian government established a dedicated special investigation unit to pursue criminal charges against current and former service members linked to the atrocities. Throughout the years of investigation and public scrutiny, Roberts-Smith has consistently maintained his complete innocence. He launched a costly defamation lawsuit, reported to be worth millions of Australian dollars, against the newspapers that first published the war crime allegations against him.
Over the 20-year duration of the Western military campaign in Afghanistan, Australia deployed more than 39,000 troops to the country to fight against the Taliban and other affiliated militant groups. In recent years, as veterans have returned to civilian life, the conduct of Australian troops during the conflict has come under unprecedented legal and public scrutiny, with Roberts-Smith’s arrest marking one of the most high-profile legal actions to date in the national reckoning over wartime conduct.
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Trump boasts about ‘subterfuge’ in operation to rescue US airman in Iran
On a Monday appearance at the White House, former US President Donald Trump delivered a detailed account of a high-stakes cross-border rescue operation that recovered two downed US airmen from Iranian territory earlier that weekend, framing the mission as a remarkable success for US military capabilities. The incident unfolded after an American F-15E Strike Eagle was shot down over Iranian soil on Friday, triggering an urgent race between US special operations teams and Iranian security forces to locate the jet’s two crew members: the pilot and a weapons systems officer. While the pilot was evacuated by US forces the same day the jet crashed, the second injured airman remained at large for nearly 48 hours before being recovered by US troops on Sunday.
US officials had initially released almost no verifiable details about the crash location or the exact parameters of the rescue mission, leaving open source analysts and international observers to piece together information from fragmented reports. Speaking publicly for the first time after the operation concluded, Trump compared the challenge of locating the wounded airman to “finding a needle in a haystack,” emphasizing the increased difficulty of the mission given the officer’s life-threatening bleeding and vulnerable position deep in enemy territory. “That’s a long time when you’re in tough shape and when you’re bleeding,” Trump told reporters, praising the airman’s resilience in evading capture for two full days.
Conflicting reports of the crash and rescue locations quickly emerged, with public observations placing US search and refueling aircraft over Iran’s southwestern Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad province over the weekend, a sighting that prompted Iranian authorities to mobilize thousands of regular soldiers, Basij paramilitary fighters and civilian volunteers to launch a massive manhunt in the region. However, reporting from Reuters placed the actual F-15E crash site in central Iran’s Isfahan province, hundreds of kilometers away from the area Iranian forces were searching. Trump confirmed this discrepancy was no accident: it was a deliberate deception tactic designed to distract Iranian security forces from the true recovery zone.
“ We were bringing them all over, and a lot of it was subterfuge. We wanted them to think he was in a different location because they had a vast military force out there. Thousands of people were looking, so we were scattered all over like we were right on top of them,” Trump explained. The geographic mismatch drew immediate scrutiny from open source intelligence analysts, and some unsubstantiated speculation emerged that the rescue mission served as cover for a secret separate operation to seize Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium stored at a nuclear site located in Isfahan, a facility that was the target of a US strike in June.
Iranian officials quickly amplified these claims, though they offered no concrete evidence to support the allegation of an undisclosed secondary mission. “The possibility that this was a deception operation to steal enriched uranium should not be ignored at all,” stated Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei. Speaking to Middle East Eye on condition of anonymity, two former US defense and intelligence officials pushed back against these claims, noting that while an unusually large contingent of US military personnel was deployed to the mission, the additional manpower was intended to secure the landing zone and provide backup firepower for the extraction team, not for a separate nuclear operation.
Competing narratives have also emerged around the losses suffered during the operation. Iranian officials have framed the entire incident as a decisive defeat for the US, pointing to the downing of the F-15E as well as the reported loss of additional US assets including C-130 transport planes, H-60 Black Hawk helicopters and at least one MQ-9 Reaper surveillance drone. Trump acknowledged that US forces were forced to destroy two aircraft that became stuck in soft sand during the extraction, but downplayed the loss as a planned part of the mission’s contingency protocol.
“We had a contingency plan which was unbelievable where lighter, faster aircraft came in and they took them [US soldiers] out. We blew up the old planes… because we had equipment on the planes,” Trump said, referencing sensitive anti-aircraft systems mounted on the abandoned aircraft that the US refused to leave in Iranian hands. Trump also confirmed that three US helicopters were used in the rescue operation, and defense experts who have examined photographs of debris from the US landing zone have identified wreckage matching the frame of an MH-6M Little Bird, a small, highly maneuverable helicopter typically used for special operations insertions and extractions that was likely used to retrieve the downed airman and transfer him to the main extraction landing zone.
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Departing Griezmann back at Barca in search of Atletico grand finale
When the Champions League quarter-final first leg kicks off between Atletico Madrid and Barcelona at Camp Nou on Wednesday, all eyes will fall on Antoine Griezmann, the French striker whose chapter at Barcelona ended in bitter disappointment, but now returns to the Catalan ground chasing a fairytale final trophy for his Atletico Madrid career.
The 35-year-old, who announced last week he will leave La Liga at the end of this season to join Major League Soccer side Orlando City, has one unfulfilled goal before he departs: deliver Atletico’s first-ever Champions League title, and end his trophy drought at the club stretching back to 2018. Atletico have twice fallen at the final hurdle of Europe’s top club competition, losing the 2014 and 2016 finals, and Griezmann has not lifted silverware with the Rojiblancos since their 2018 Europa League triumph and subsequent UEFA Super Cup victory.
Griezmann’s history with both clubs is tangled. He first left Atletico for Barcelona in a high-profile 2019 transfer, but his two-year stint at Camp Nou was marked by struggle: he never clicked alongside Lionel Messi, and was part of the side that suffered a humiliating 8-2 defeat to Bayern Munich in the 2020 Champions League quarter-finals. He also missed out on Atletico’s 2021 La Liga title – a trophy that has eluded Griezmann across his entire career. He returned to Atletico on loan in 2021, before making the move permanent a year later, and has since become the club’s all-time leading goalscorer with 211 goals to his name.
Orlando City had originally pushed for Griezmann to join the club by the end of March, but the forward insisted on staying to chase two major trophies: the Champions League and this season’s Copa del Rey. A key part of Diego Simeone’s dynasty across the Argentine coach’s 14-year reign at Atletico, Griezmann has blended tireless work ethic with world-class technical quality, earning praise even from his opponent’s dugout this week. “Griezmann is a maverick, it’s unbelievable how he plays football,” Barcelona head coach Hansi Flick said last week. “It seems so light, it’s like he’s dancing.”
This is not Griezmann’s first iconic Champions League performance at Camp Nou. A decade ago in the 2016 quarter-finals, he scored twice to knock out Barcelona’s superstar attacking trio of Messi, Luis Suarez and Neymar and send Atletico through – though that run ultimately ended in a crushing final loss to Real Madrid in Milan. This week, after starting in Atletico’s 2-1 La Liga defeat to Barcelona at the weekend, Griezmann is likely to start the quarter-final from the bench, with reduced minutes across this season a key factor in his decision to move on at the end of the campaign.
Joining Griezmann in the spotlight for Atletico is Argentine striker Julian Alvarez, who has been repeatedly linked with a transfer to Barcelona amid speculation over his future at the Metropolitano. The 2024 signing from Manchester City – who cost Atletico £81.5 million ($108 million) – fuelled rumours earlier this season when he refused to rule out a summer move, answering “maybe yes, maybe no” when asked if he would stay beyond this campaign. While Barcelona’s ongoing financial struggles mean they are unlikely to afford the steep transfer fee Atletico would demand, Alvarez will have a prime opportunity to impress his potential suitors on Wednesday, where he is expected to start.
After a rocky start to the season that saw him go through a winter goal drought, Alvarez has found his form in recent months, earning consistent public backing from Simeone. He scored in Atletico’s 4-0 Copa del Rey semi-final first leg win over Barcelona in February, where Griezmann also found the net as the Catalans capitulated.
While five-time Champions League winners Barcelona enter the tie as favorites, Atletico carry unique motivation: Griezmann chasing a career-defining piece of silverware to cap his Atletico legacy, and Alvarez out to prove his quality to suitors. With both players hungry to make their mark, the quarter-final showdown is set for a dramatic clash at Camp Nou.
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PSG look to pile misery on Liverpool as sides meet again in Champions League
Twelve months ago, when Paris Saint-Germain and Liverpool shared a Champions League pitch at Anfield, the English side was steamrolling its way to a Premier League trophy, earning high praise from PSG manager Luis Enrique, who called Jurgen Klopp’s outfit “an almost perfect team”. A lot can change in a year in top-flight European football, and as the two historic clubs prepare to lock horns once again in the 2025-26 Champions League quarter-finals, the tables have turned dramatically. The opening leg of the tie, set to kick off in Paris on Wednesday, sees a red-hot PSG enter the matchup as overwhelming favorites, their trajectories having diverged sharply from the pair’s last encounter.
That 2024 Champions League last-16 clash proved to be a pivotal moment for PSG, as they held their nerve in a penalty shootout at Anfield to knock Liverpool out, a win that propelled them to their first-ever Champions League title. That result came after the French giants dominated the first leg in Paris but fell to a 1-0 defeat, forcing them to claw back the deficit on enemy soil to force penalties. In the year since that night, both clubs have followed wildly different paths.
For Liverpool, Arne Slot’s side managed to grind out the 2024-25 Premier League title despite a late-season slump that followed their exit from Europe. This campaign, however, has been nothing short of a massive disappointment for the Merseyside club. Heading into Wednesday’s clash at Parc des Princes, Liverpool is reeling from a demoralizing 4-0 thrashing at the hands of Manchester City in the FA Cup quarter-finals, leaving the squad in a deeply downbeat mood.
After the humbling defeat to City, Slot publicly called out his side for a lack of fighting spirit, while captain Virgil van Dijk admitted the team had given up and acknowledged the challenge of lifting their form against PSG would be enormous. “But we have a responsibility, not only to ourselves but especially to the fans and, if we want to make something out of this season, we have to try and do something special in the next three games,” van Dijk told reporters, noting the Champions League tie falls between a tricky league fixture against Fulham. “The matter of fact is now, PSG are waiting for us. It will be so tough again. So we have to be ready mentally as soon as possible.”
Liverpool’s recent form backs up the collective pessimism: the side has only claimed one win in its last five outings, and has suffered a staggering 15 defeats across all competitions this season. Currently sitting fifth in the Premier League table, the club’s most realistic top target for the remainder of the campaign is now securing a spot in next season’s Champions League, rather than challenging for domestic or European silverware.
In stark contrast, PSG, despite a season interrupted by frequent injury setbacks, appears to be hitting their peak form at exactly the right time. A 3-1 victory over Toulouse last Friday, headlined by a sensational solo goal from reigning Ballon d’Or winner Ousmane Dembele, stretched PSG’s lead at the top of Ligue 1 to four points over second-place Lens, with a game in hand still to play. For the French giants, however, the Champions League remains the ultimate priority – so much so that the Ligue de Football Professionnel granted PSG’s request to postpone this weekend’s crucial away trip to Lens to allow the squad to focus entirely on preparing for Liverpool.
“I think we have shown for a long time that we are ready, regardless of the competition, but there are obviously things we can improve,” Luis Enrique told reporters ahead of the tie. Dembele, who scored against Liverpool at Anfield last season, is fully fit and in scintillating form, while Georgian winger Khvicha Kvaratskhelia proved the difference-maker in the previous round, where PSG dismantled Chelsea 8-2 on aggregate. It’s worth noting that Wednesday’s clash will be PSG’s 14th match against a Premier League opponent since January 2025, giving the side extensive experience against English opposition’s physical and tactical style.
PSG does carry one clear weakness into the tie, however: the club has yet to adequately replace star goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma, the hero of last season’s penalty shootout who made a high-profile move to Manchester City over the summer. Lucas Chevalier was signed as Donnarumma’s replacement, but he has since lost his starting spot to Russian keeper Matvey Safonov, who made two costly, glaring errors that led to goals against Toulouse at the weekend. Luis Enrique was quick to defend his keeper, telling reporters: “A goalkeeper is like any other player. They can make mistakes, because that is normal in football.”
For Liverpool, the X-factor could well be forward Hugo Ekitike, the club’s leading goalscorer this season with 17 goals across all competitions, who is set to face his old club for the first time since leaving PSG. The 23-year-old Frenchman joined PSG from Reims in 2022, but managed just four goals in 18 months in Paris, struggling to break into a star-studded attacking line that featured Kylian Mbappe, Lionel Messi and Neymar. After moving to Eintracht Frankfurt, then to Liverpool, Ekitike has revitalized his career, and now returns to France as a serious contender for a starting spot in France’s 2026 World Cup squad. Dembele, Ekitike’s France international teammate, was full of praise for the forward ahead of the clash: “Hugo is a great player. He is really in form so we are just hoping he won’t be against us.”
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Vietnam elects Communist Party chief as president, echoing China’s power structure
In a historic vote that reshapes Vietnam’s long-standing governing framework, Vietnam’s National Assembly has unanimously confirmed Communist Party General Secretary To Lam as the country’s new president for a five-year term, bringing the top posts of both the ruling party and the state under the control of a single leader. The landmark appointment breaks from decades of collective power-sharing tradition in Vietnam, where the two top leadership positions have customarily been held by separate individuals to balance authority – an alignment that now mirrors the concentrated power structures seen in neighboring China and Laos.
The outcome was widely anticipated by regional political analysts, who flagged the power consolidation as a likely next step after Lam was re-elected to lead the Communist Party during its national congress in January. This is not the first time Lam has held both leadership posts: he briefly assumed both roles in early 2024 following the death of his predecessor as party chief, Nguyen Phu Trong.
After his formal swearing-in, the 69-year-old newly minted president addressed the National Assembly, outlining his core policy priorities. He emphasized that maintaining national peace and political stability would be his top focus, framing that stability as the non-negotiable foundation for Vietnam to achieve fast, long-term economic growth. “We aim to improve people’s livelihoods so all can share the benefits of development,” Lam told the assembled legislators.
Regional experts say the concentration of power in Lam’s hands is the most significant shift in Vietnam’s political landscape since the country launched its 1980s doi moi reform process, which transitioned Vietnam from a closed state-run economy to a market-oriented system open to global foreign investment. Nguyen Khac Giang, a Vietnam researcher at Singapore’s ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute, notes that Lam now holds a far stronger policy mandate and much greater room for political maneuver to advance his policy agenda than any Vietnamese leader has enjoyed since the 1980s reforms began.
“The opportunity is obvious. Faster decision-making, greater policy coherence, and a better chance of pushing difficult reforms at a pivotal moment,” Giang explained. “But the risk is that concentration of power can move faster than institutional reform.”
To Lam’s rise to the pinnacle of Vietnamese politics caps a decades-long career that began in Vietnam’s internal security services, rising through the ranks of the national police force to eventually take charge of the Ministry of Public Security. His ascent was accelerated by his role leading the sweeping national anti-corruption campaign launched by his predecessor Nguyen Phu Trong, when he served as public security minister.
Since taking over as party chief, Lam has already overseen the most ambitious restructuring of Vietnam’s state bureaucracy since the 1980s. His reform agenda to date has included cutting redundant civil service positions, merging overlapping government ministries, redrawing internal provincial administrative boundaries, and advancing large-scale national infrastructure projects. His core economic focus centers on boosting private sector growth and upgrading national economic performance, with the goal of moving Vietnam beyond its current labor- and export-led growth model – a model that has lifted tens of millions of Vietnamese out of poverty and built a large manufacturing-focused middle class over the past three decades. Under Lam’s leadership, the country has set an ambitious target of hitting 10% or higher annual economic growth over the course of his five-year presidential term.
Despite the clear policy opening created by concentrated power, significant challenges remain on multiple fronts. The immediate hurdle is translating Lam’s ambitious economic vision into tangible progress, against a backdrop of a global economy disrupted by energy market shocks stemming from the ongoing conflict in Iran. Vietnam’s first-quarter economic growth came in at an annualized 7.8% this year, up from 7.1% in 2025, but still missed the government’s 9.1% target and was slower than the expansion recorded in the final quarter of 2025.
Beyond economic headwinds, Lam also faces political hurdles to build cross-party consensus for his reform plans, and must continue navigating the delicate balancing act that defines Vietnam’s pragmatic foreign policy. The country currently faces growing trade pressure from the United States over its bilateral trade surplus, while also needing to maintain stable relations with China – Vietnam’s largest single trading partner, and a competing claimant to territorial sovereignty in the South China Sea.
“Vietnam has benefited from a careful balancing strategy in foreign policy, but maintaining that position will become harder in a more turbulent world,” Giang added.