Global Pulse

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  • ‘Moonies’ church leader jailed for two years over bribery offences

    ‘Moonies’ church leader jailed for two years over bribery offences

    In a landmark ruling that has sent shockwaves through South Korean political and religious circles, 83-year-old Han Hak-ja, the current leader of the highly controversial Unification Church, has been sentenced to two years behind bars over charges of bribing former South Korean first lady Kim Keon Hee and committing multiple violations of political funding regulations. The Seoul Central District Court delivered the sentence on Monday during a public sentencing hearing that Han attended in person, marking the culmination of a high-profile probe into opaque ties between the religious group and national political elites.

    The court found clear evidence that the Unification Church, led by Han, provided Kim Keon Hee — wife of ousted South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol — with luxury gifts valued at a total of 80 million won (equivalent to approximately $57,900 and £42,500): two high-end Chanel handbags and a diamond necklace. This conviction follows an earlier ruling from earlier this year, where Kim Keon Hee herself was sentenced to 20 months in prison after being found guilty of accepting the improper bribes from the religious organization.

    Han, who is the widow of Unification Church founder Sun Myung Moon, has maintained a consistent stance of denying all allegations against her throughout the investigation and trial, dismissing the charges as entirely fabricated. A special independent counsel team assembled specifically to investigate this case outlined that the luxury gifts were transferred to Kim between April and July 2022, in exchange for promised business advantages and political favors for the church and its affiliated entities.

    Prosecutors emphasized that this investigation marks the first time South Korean law enforcement authorities have formally verified and documented the Unification Church’s deliberate efforts to purchase political influence within the country. As part of the probe, investigators also uncovered $19 million (£14 million) in cash stored inside a personal safe owned by Han, photos of which have been released to the public.

    Kim has publicly acknowledged receiving the Chanel handbags, but has claimed that she returned the items before ever using them. When called in for questioning last August, Kim issued a public apology to the South Korean public, stating, “I am truly sorry that a nobody like me has caused concern to the people.”

    The Unification Church, officially registered under the name The Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, was established in South Korea in the 1950s by Sun Myung Moon, who publicly claimed to be the messiah. The group gained global attention primarily for its large-scale mass wedding ceremonies, where thousands of couples were blessed and married by Han and Moon in massive stadium venues. For decades, critics have labeled the organization as cult-like, with legal representatives of former members alleging that it coerces followers — colloquially referred to by critics as “Moonies,” a term most church members reject as offensive — into making exorbitant monetary donations to the group.

    The Unification Church was thrust into the global spotlight in 2022 following the assassination of former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe. The suspect who assassinated Abe publicly blamed the organization for ruining his family’s finances, and held Abe responsible for his alleged public support of the group. The church has long claimed to have extensive political connections across multiple world capitals, including Seoul, Tokyo, and Washington D.C. In 2021, a range of high-profile global political figures sent pre-recorded video messages to congratulate the launch of the church’s new policy think tank; the list included former U.S. President Donald Trump, former U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, Shinzo Abe, and the mayors of South Korea’s two largest cities, Seoul and Busan.

    Currently, the group is banned entirely in multiple jurisdictions around the world, including Singapore. Last year, Japanese courts ordered the Unification Church to be formally dissolved in the country, following years of public outcry over predatory fundraising practices.

  • Everything you need to know about the 2026 Venice Film Festival

    Everything you need to know about the 2026 Venice Film Festival

    The world’s oldest major film celebration, the 83rd Venice Film Festival, is set to open its doors to A-list celebrities, acclaimed filmmakers, and awards hopefuls on Wednesday on the Italian island of Lido, kicking off the annual fall festival circuit in typical high-profile fashion.

    Widely ranked as the second most prestigious film festival on the global calendar, trailing only Cannes, the Venice Film Festival carries a long, storied history dating back to its 1932 founding as a non-competitive event under the umbrella of La Biennale di Venezia. Early screenings included Hollywood classics such as *Grand Hotel* and *It Happened One Night*, before organizers transitioned it to an annual competitive gathering in 1935. Concerns over fascist political influence on the 1938 edition directly spurred the creation of the Cannes Film Festival as an alternative European event. The festival’s iconic top prize, the Golden Lion, was introduced in 1949, and its roll of winners reads as a who’s who of cinema history, from Akira Kurosawa’s 1951 *Rashômon* to last year’s recipient *Father Mother Sister Brother*.

    This year’s 12-day iteration will run through September 12, when the main competition jury, led by American actor and filmmaker Maggie Gyllenhaal, will announce this year’s award winners. The festival opens with Danny Boyle’s *Ink*, a big-screen adaptation of the hit stage play tracking Rupert Murdoch’s early career and controversial acquisition of British tabloid *The Sun*, starring Guy Pearce in the lead role alongside supporting turns from Jack O’Connell and Claire Foy.

    As has become tradition, the 2025 edition draws an extraordinary lineup of global stars, many of whom are attached to buzzy projects already drawing early awards attention ahead of next year’s Oscars. A-list mainstay George Clooney will return to the Lido to accept a lifetime achievement Golden Lion, alongside fellow honoree Ellen Burstyn. Other notable guests confirmed to attend include Oasis’ feuding Gallagher brothers Noel and Liam, sisters Rooney and Kate Mara, Robert Pattinson, Penélope Cruz, Javier Bardem, Pamela Anderson, Sam Rockwell, John Malkovich, Louis Garrel and *Parasite* star Cho Yeo-jeong.

    Among the narrative competition titles, the most heavily anticipated is Martin McDonagh’s dark comedy *Wild Horse Nine*, which follows two CIA operatives in the lead-up to the 1973 Chilean coup, with Rockwell and Malkovich in the lead roles. McDonagh’s two prior works, *Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri* and *The Banshees of Inisherin*, both premiered at Venice before going on to earn Oscar best picture nominations, cementing expectations for this latest entry. The lineup also includes Florian Zeller’s psychological drama *Bunker* starring real-life couple Cruz and Bardem; Werner Herzog’s *Bucking Fastard* featuring the Mara sisters as twin siblings; and revered South Korean filmmaker Lee Chang-dong’s first feature in eight years, *Possible Love*. Robert Pattinson will draw headlines for his portrayal of former *To Catch a Predator* host Chris Hansen in *Primetime*, a project that has already drawn attention for being produced without Hansen’s participation.

    The documentary lineup is equally high-profile, anchored by Oscar-winning documentarian Alex Gibney’s nearly four-hour deep dive into billionaire Elon Musk, titled simply *Musk*. Other nonfiction entries include Julia Loktev’s continuation of her portrait of independent Russian exiled journalists in *My Undesirable Friends: Part II — Exile*, and *Oasis: Don’t Look Back in Anger*, which follows the Gallagher brothers on their highly anticipated 2025 reunion tour. A last-minute addition to the competition lineup also includes *NAZA*, a documentary focusing on the Gaza Strip.

    For all its cinematic glamour, the 2025 festival has not escaped the geopolitical tensions that have increasingly disrupted global cultural events in recent years. The most prominent controversy centers on Ilya Khrzhanovsky’s competition entry *DAU*, a project exploring the lives of Soviet atomic physicists. Ukraine’s foreign ministry, culture ministry and Italian embassy have publicly condemned the film’s inclusion, arguing it is tied to Russian state and its influence networks. Festival director Alberto Barbera has pushed back against the criticism, defending the selection in an official statement noting the film “is not a Russian film. It is not pro-Putin propaganda. It is a film that denounces totalitarian regimes and their intrusion into citizens’ lives to restrict their freedom.” Khrzhanovsky has also publicly rejected the claims, stating his opposition to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and calling for the film to be judged on its content rather than unsubstantiated associations. The controversy follows similar unrest at the 2025 Venice Biennale art exhibition earlier this year, where the entire jury resigned in protest over the participation of Russian and Israeli artists.

    A second activist campaign, organized by the group Venice4Palestine, is calling on the festival to suspend all formal agreements with Israeli government-linked institutions and fly the Palestinian flag across festival venues throughout the event. Two Palestinian independent films are included in the 2025 official selection. The festival has also faced criticism over gender representation in its main competition: out of 21 features competing for the Golden Lion, only one, *Woman Unknown* directed by May el-Toukhy, is helmed by a woman filmmaker. This marks the first time since 2018 that the competition has included just one woman-directed feature, despite a 2018 commitment from organizers to reach 50% women-directed competition entries by 2020, a goal that has yet to be met.

    Beyond the red carpets and controversies, the festival retains its unique character as a cinematic event hosted on Lido, a 11-kilometer barrier island located a 20-minute vaporetto ride from Venice’s historic central districts. Once a 12th-century military outpost, Lido transformed into a luxurious seaside resort popular with European aristocrats by the late 1800s, and served as the setting for Thomas Mann’s classic novella *Death in Venice* and its 1971 film adaptation by Luchino Visconti. Many A-list guests stay in luxury hotels across Venice’s surrounding islands, from the iconic Hotel Excelsior (the only five-star property on Lido) to the Hotel Cipriani on Giudecca, the Gritti Palace, and the Aman Venice — the venue where George and Amal Clooney married in 2014. Most celebrities arrive at premieres and press events via private water taxi, with short trips from nearby hotels sometimes made by sponsored car, a rarity in car-free central Venice.

    Beyond glamour and controversy, the Venice Film Festival has cemented itself as one of the most influential stops on the road to the Academy Awards. Festival director Barbera has traced this reputation back to the 2013 premiere of *Gravity*, which went on to win seven Oscars months later. As the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has grown more internationally diverse, Venice’s influence on the Oscar race has only expanded: since 2014, four best picture Oscar winners have premiered at the festival, and 2024’s lineup produced two best picture nominees. With this year’s packed slate of star-driven, critically acclaimed projects, that streak looks set to continue.

    The jury for the 2025 main competition includes Gyllenhaal alongside Tunisian filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania, English composer Daniel Blumberg, French filmmaker Xavier Giannoli, Afghan filmmaker Shahrbanoo Sadat and Hong Kong auteur Johnnie To. All award winners will be revealed during the closing ceremony on September 12.

  • US futures fall and oil prices surge after US hits Iranian sites in the Strait of Hormuz

    US futures fall and oil prices surge after US hits Iranian sites in the Strait of Hormuz

    Global financial markets swung sharply on Monday after U.S. forces carried out the first direct military action against Iranian rocket launchers in the Strait of Hormuz in a month, ending a weeks-long lull in regional tensions and stoking new fears of broader conflict in the oil-rich Middle East.

    The targeted strike, which came on Sunday, has upended recent market calm that had begun to reduce the geopolitical risk premium baked into global crude prices. As of early Monday trading, U.S. stock futures pointed to clear downward momentum: futures tied to the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average each dropped 0.2%, while Nasdaq 100 futures slipped a more modest 0.1%. European markets followed the negative trend, with Germany’s DAX index falling 0.8% to 26,364.99 and France’s CAC 40 edging slightly lower to 8,399.55. British markets were closed for a national bank holiday, and Asian markets finished the trading day mixed. The U.S. dollar edged down slightly against the Japanese yen, falling to 159.72 yen from 160.10 yen, while the euro ticked up modestly to $1.1602 from $1.1580.

    The most dramatic market movement came in the energy sector, where crude prices surged in response to renewed geopolitical risk near the Strait of Hormuz, a critical chokepoint through which roughly a fifth of global oil supplies pass daily. International benchmark Brent crude jumped 3.4% to reach $91.10 per barrel, while U.S. domestic benchmark West Texas Intermediate crude rose 3.6% to trade at $86.40 per barrel. Stephen Innes, a strategist at SPI Asset Management, noted that the strike shattered the quiet that had allowed traders to start rolling back geopolitical risk pricing. “The Middle East had finally gone quiet enough for oil traders to start sanding some of the war premium out of crude,” Innes wrote in a market note. “Then Sunday arrived, with a reminder that quiet in the Strait of Hormuz is not the same as peace.”

    Along with the geopolitical shock, the Trump administration has rolled out new economic measures targeting Iran, amplifying market concerns over the potential for further escalation of hostilities that could disrupt global energy supplies. For U.S. consumers, the price jump has already translated to record-high fuel costs this month: AAA data shows the national average gasoline price has stayed above $4 per gallon every single day in August, marking the most expensive August for gasoline on record. This milestone outpaces even the severe supply chain disruptions that pushed fuel prices higher during the COVID-19 pandemic in August 2022, creating additional widespread economic pressure on households both in the U.S. and around the globe.

    Not all equities moved downward on Monday. GameStop, the video game retail chain, saw its shares surge more than 5% in pre-market trading after the company released preliminary second-quarter earnings results that outperformed its year-ago performance. On the other hand, professional services firm Aon saw its share price dip slightly after the company announced it would acquire insurance broker USI Insurance Services from private equity firm KKR in a $17 billion deal that includes assumed debt.

    Beyond the immediate geopolitical shock, markets are also bracing for two key coming events: the release of U.S. August jobs data later this week, and a potential interest rate hike from the U.S. Federal Reserve. July’s jobs report delivered an unexpected slowdown, with employers cutting 23,000 jobs, and revised Labor Department data later slashed an additional 103,000 jobs from May and June payrolls. The Fed, meanwhile, signaled its continued commitment to lowering inflation in a high-profile speech Friday by Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh at the annual Jackson Hole economic symposium in Wyoming, even acknowledging that the policy would likely bring short-term economic pain. Following Warsh’s remarks, the yield on the two-year Treasury note, which closely tracks investor expectations for Fed policy, jumped to 4.35% from 4.22% before the speech.

    The Fed’s potential rate hike sets up a new clash with President Donald Trump, who appointed Warsh and has repeatedly pushed publicly for lower interest rates to boost economic growth. Warsh reaffirmed Friday that the central bank will move away from giving explicit forward guidance to markets about future policy moves, while emphasizing that short-term interest rates remain the Fed’s primary tool to pursue its dual mandates of stable low inflation and a strong labor market.

    In alternative asset trading, Bitcoin extended its monthly rally on Monday, climbing roughly 1% to $78,625. The leading cryptocurrency has already gained roughly 25% so far this month, outperforming many traditional asset classes amid ongoing market volatility.

  • Rescue efforts continue on both sides of Nepal-Tibet border

    Rescue efforts continue on both sides of Nepal-Tibet border

    In the wake of devastating flash floods that have swept across the shared border region between Nepal and China’s Tibet Autonomous Region, coordinated rescue operations are accelerating on both sides, as emergency responders race against time to locate missing people trapped by the disaster.

    On the Tibetan side of the border, specially trained search-and-rescue canines have been deployed to comb through waterlogged terrain, mudslides, and debris-strewn areas in a persistent hunt for flood victims. The challenging topography of the Himalayan border region, combined with lingering flood-related hazards, has complicated search efforts, but teams have continued operations around the clock to maximize the chance of finding survivors.

    Meanwhile, in Nepal, emergency management officials and response teams have worked nonstop through the night at a hydropower plant located near the border, where official counts indicate hundreds of people remain unaccounted for following the flood surge. The disaster, which struck without much warning, swept through infrastructure and residential areas along the border, leaving widespread disruption and a trail of missing persons that has stretched local response capacity.

    Cross-border communication has remained active as both sides coordinate to address the aftermath of the flood event, with additional resources being mobilized to support the ongoing search and rescue missions.

  • ‘I adopted stray cats I fell in love with on holiday’

    ‘I adopted stray cats I fell in love with on holiday’

    For most tourists, a Mediterranean holiday is all about sun, sea, and relaxation. For UK cat lover Eve Gaut, a 24-hour stop in the Cretan village of Sissi in September 2023 changed the lives of two tiny stray kittens – and transformed her own approach to animal welfare.

    Gaut, a resident of Shropshire, had long made a habit of feeding stray cats during her travels, often pained by seeing them scavenge through garbage bins for leftover food to survive. But when two orphaned black-and-white kittens bounded up to greet her immediately after she stepped out of her rental car, the encounter struck a chord she never expected.

    “It sounds crazy, I just felt this connection,” Gaut recalled. “Stavros was meowing nonstop, and I just got the feeling he was asking me for help. I knew right then that if we could get them back to the UK, we could give them a far better life than they could ever have on the streets.”

    The two kittens, who would later be named Stavros and Nikos, were brothers whose mother had been killed by a passing car. Their situation reminded Gaut of the two cats she already had at home, and for the rest of her stay, the pair followed her everywhere around the village while she shared what food she could spare. But constant worry for their safety lingered: watching the tiny kittens dart across busy roads, dodging vans and motorbikes, left Gaut terrified that they would meet the same fate as their mother. By the end of her trip, she had made up her mind: “I love these cats, and I’m going to save them,” she told her husband.

    Gaut immediately began coordinating the rescue, reaching out to local Greek animal rescue charities to get help. After she returned to the UK, a local volunteer used the photographs she had left behind to track down and capture the two brothers, kicking off the formal rehoming and relocation process. After months of veterinary care – totaling more than £1,500, which covered vaccinations, microchipping, and treatment for health issues – a period of foster care in Greece, and coordinated international transport, Gaut was finally reunited with Stavros and Nikos in January 2024.

    Against all odds, the transition went smoothly. “They both adapted incredibly well,” Gaut said. “They’re super affectionate, and they eat nonstop – I think they still remember what it was like to never know where their next meal would come from. They’ve just been such wonderful additions to our home, and everyone adores them.”

    Stavros and Nikos’ happy ending is far from the norm for the hundreds of thousands of stray cats living across Southern Europe, however. According to International Cat Care, an animal welfare nonprofit, uncontrolled breeding has left Mediterranean holiday destinations facing what the organization calls an overwhelming stray cat population crisis. On the island of Cyprus alone, estimates suggest there are as many as 2 million stray cats – more than the country’s entire human population of 1.2 million.

    Harry Eckman, global advisor on cat population management for International Cat Care, says he understands the impulse animal lovers feel when they bond with a stray during a trip. “There is an enormous unmet need for help for these animals, and the scale of the problem is huge,” he explained. But he also cautions that bringing a stray cat home isn’t always the best choice for the animal, urging travelers to prioritize the cat’s needs over their own emotional impulse. “A cat that’s happy to sit on your hotel balcony and take food and scratches from you isn’t necessarily going to be happy living inside a home in another country,” he said. “Uprooting a cat from its familiar environment, especially if it’s never lived indoors, can cause incredible stress and distress.”

    In many regions, well-managed community cat programs already provide the best long-term care for stray populations. In these managed colonies, cats are neutered (marked by a clipped ear to signal the procedure), provided with regular food and veterinary care by local volunteers, and allowed to live out their lives in the territory they know. For example, the Portuguese capital of Lisbon has more than 1,300 registered managed cat colonies, with local residents overseeing their ongoing care.

    Eckman’s advice for travelers who want to help is simple: support local efforts rather than trying to rescue cats on your own. “In every destination you visit, there are already local people and organizations working as hard as they can to help these cats,” he said. “Seek out those local groups, and offer your support – that will make a massive difference not just for the one cat you met, but for hundreds and thousands of cats over months and years to come.”

    Gaut agrees with that guidance, acknowledging that not every stray cat relocation works out well, and many cats are better off remaining in their native environment. “Mine is a happy story, but I’ve heard so many sad ones where people brought a cat home and it didn’t work out,” she said. “You have to be realistic about what’s best for the animal.”

    Since bringing Stavros and Nikos home, Gaut has continued to help stray cats on her visits to Greece, spending hundreds of pounds of her own money on cat food and encouraging local residents to take more action to care for strays. On a recent trip to the Greek island of Andros, she tracked down the owner of a property where she spotted a severely ill kitten, convinced him to take the animal to a vet for treatment, and covered the cost of care herself.

    “It breaks my heart every time I go back to Greece, because when I see the street cats, all I can think is that this was the life Stavros and Nikos were going to have,” she said. “Sometimes I wonder if I should even go back, because it doesn’t feel like a holiday when you see all that suffering. But if I don’t go, I’m just turning my back on the problem, and every small bit of help counts. Realistically, there aren’t enough homes in Greece for all these stray cats, or they wouldn’t be on the streets in the first place.”

  • Seoul court sentences Unification Church leader Hak Ja Han to 2 years in prison

    Seoul court sentences Unification Church leader Hak Ja Han to 2 years in prison

    In a landmark ruling that caps a year of seismic political upheaval in South Korea, the Seoul Central District Court sentenced Hak Ja Han, the leader of the Unification Church and widow of the movement’s founder Sun Myung Moon, to two years in prison on multiple corruption charges on Monday.

    Court public affairs officials confirmed the verdict against Han, who was taken into custody last year. The charges against her span a web of graft that entangled the country’s former presidential administration: prosecutors allege Han instructed senior Unification Church officials to deliver bribes to Kim Keon Hee, wife of conservative former South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, and to a prominent pro-Yoon politician when Yoon held the nation’s highest office.

    Beyond the bribery scheme, Han faces convictions for two additional serious offenses: embezzlement of millions of dollars in church funds, and ordering the destruction of evidence documenting her gambling activities in the United States.

    Han’s conviction is the latest development in a sprawling corruption scandal that has already fundamentally reshaped South Korea’s political landscape. Earlier this year, the same Seoul Central District Court found Kim Keon Hee guilty in January of accepting over $100,000 in luxury gifts from the Unification Church, including a high-end Graff diamond necklace and a Chanel handbag, in exchange for political favors the church sought from the administration. The former first lady was initially handed a 20-month prison sentence, but an appeals court in April upped the sentence to four years after adding additional convictions, including that she accepted a second Chanel handbag from the church and manipulated publicly traded stock prices for personal gain.

    The scandal triggered a rapid, dramatic collapse of the Yoon administration. After Yoon attempted to impose martial law amid growing public outcry over the corruption revelations in late 2024, the South Korean National Assembly moved to impeach the president, ultimately removing him from office. The series of convictions this year marks the formal legal conclusion to a political scandal that ended the careers of both South Korea’s former head of state and his wife, while holding the leader of one of the country’s most powerful religious organizations accountable for systemic graft.

  • An upcoming election could produce modern Germany’s 1st far-right state governor

    An upcoming election could produce modern Germany’s 1st far-right state governor

    In the small eastern German town of Moeser, a campaign event for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) carried the buzz of what the party itself frames as a once-in-a-generation political turning point. This Sunday’s state legislative election in Saxony-Anhalt stands on the cusp of rewriting modern German political history: if current polling holds, it could deliver the country its first far-right state governor since the end of World War II, sending shockwaves through national politics and testing long-held taboos surrounding radical right-wing governance.

    Multiple pre-election surveys place the AfD, an anti-immigration party founded just 13 years ago, with a substantial lead over the incumbent center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which has held uninterrupted control of Saxony-Anhalt’s state government since 2002. For the AfD, capturing the governor’s mansion and leading a state administration would mark the most significant milestone in the party’s history, a symbolic and political blow to Chancellor Friedrich Merz and his embattled national government, which is currently grappling with widespread public discontent over a stagnant national economy.

    Political analysts warn that an AfD-led state government would break a long-standing taboo that has set Germany apart from many of its European neighbors in the postwar era. “If AfD wins the election and forms the government, that would be kind of breaking a taboo in Germany,” explained Wolfgang Merkel, a political science professor at Berlin’s WBZ Social Science Center. He noted that modern Germany has long remained an exception across the continent, with no radical right-wing party ever holding governing power at the national, state, or major municipal level to date.

    The AfD’s rise has been fueled by growing voter frustration with mainstream parties, amplified by a stagnant national economy that has left Merz’s administration struggling to build public confidence. In last year’s national election, the AfD notched the strongest postwar result ever recorded by a German far-right party, taking 20.8% of the national vote to claim the position of Germany’s largest official opposition party. Its support has long been concentrated in Germany’s former communist eastern states, including Saxony-Anhalt, and the party has expanded its appeal by capitalizing on voter anger across a range of issues beyond its core signature policy of curbing immigration.

    In Saxony-Anhalt, the AfD is targeting an absolute majority in the state legislature – a result that would break the so-called “firewall” maintained by all mainstream German parties, which have refused to enter into any governing coalition or cooperation with the AfD. Saxony-Anhalt’s AfD regional branch is one of several party wings classified as a proven right-wing extremist organization by Germany’s domestic intelligence service, a label the party forcefully rejects.

    “This is a historic opportunity that we have here in Saxony-Anhalt,” AfD gubernatorial candidate Ulrich Siegmund, a charismatic 35-year-old, told the Associated Press at his Moeser campaign event, where supporters gathered over beer and sausages to meet the candidate. “We will write history here.”

    Siegmund’s policy agenda centers on hardline immigration measures: he has called for a widespread deportation offensive targeting people living in Germany illegally, and pledged to cut social welfare incentives that he claims attract migrants to exploit Germany’s social system. He has also proposed launching a multi-year process to withdraw Saxony-Anhalt from the regional public broadcasting consortium, citing unsubstantiated claims of widespread disinformation from the network. Other key policy priorities include legalizing home schooling – currently banned across Germany – banning official rainbow flag displays in public schools, mandating that only the German national flag be flown, ending German financial support for Ukraine, and pushing to lift international sanctions against Russia (though the latter two policies fall under federal, not state, jurisdiction).

    For the AfD, governing Saxony-Anhalt would represent a massive step up from its only previous local executive win: the party captured a single county administration in neighboring Thuringia in 2023. Holding a state governorship would supercharge the party’s long-term ambition of making further electoral gains and eventually winning control of the national government. German states hold extensive policymaking authority, including oversight of public security and the entire state education system, giving an AfD-led administration substantial room to implement its policy agenda.

    Addressing concerns about his party’s extremist labeling, Siegmund sought to reassure voters: “No one here needs to be afraid, quite the contrary. Every honest person in Saxony-Anhalt will benefit from an AfD-led government.”

    Incumbent CDU Governor Sven Schulze, Siegmund’s main challenger, warned that an AfD government would push Saxony-Anhalt into political isolation and reverse decades of progress the state has made since German reunification in 1990. The state, which is home to 2.1 million of Germany’s 83.5 million people and counts among Germany’s least prosperous regions, has seen steady economic growth and falling unemployment under CDU leadership, Schulze argued.

    He added that the AfD’s hardline anti-immigration stance would devastate the state’s economy: “The far right effectively doesn’t want to have anyone here who was born abroad and lives and works here. With many immigrants working in hospitals and companies, for example, that would be a huge problem for Saxony-Anhalt.” Schulze, who has reiterated that the CDU will never enter into a coalition with the AfD, criticized the party for only highlighting voter grievances without offering actionable solutions.

    Even if the AfD wins a plurality of seats, its path to forming a government remains uncertain. If the party fails to secure an absolute majority, political analyst Wolfgang Merkel notes, there are no viable mainstream coalition partners willing to work with it, leaving the AfD locked out of power. In that scenario, Schulze would likely attempt to assemble a minority or multi-party coalition with smaller left-of-center parties, a move that would likely draw accusations from the AfD that mainstream parties are clinging to power against the popular will.

    The outcome of Sunday’s election carries major implications for Merz’s national government, which is already fighting to overcome low approval ratings and shake off what Merz calls “widespread moroseness” gripping the electorate. Additional poor results for the CDU and its coalition partner, the center-left Social Democrats, in September 1 elections in Berlin and another eastern state, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, could amplify the pressure on Merz’s administration.

    While Merkel argues that Saxony-Anhalt’s small size means it is unlikely to trigger immediate national political upheaval, a strong AfD win would reinforce the growing narrative that Germany’s traditional mainstream large parties are in long-term decline. Merz’s government has staked its credibility on delivering sweeping economic and political reforms, but so far has failed to produce visible, high-profile wins to win over voters. “When the economy isn’t running, basically all areas of politics are infected,” Merkel noted.

    After a recent cabinet meeting last week, Merz struck an optimistic tone, emphasizing his government’s commitment to pushing through its reform agenda. “We must get out of this climate of glumness and anger,” he said. “Together, we must shake off this widespread moroseness that has long paralyzed our country.”

  • Rescue efforts intensify after Nepal-Tibet flooding as deaths climb past 900

    Rescue efforts intensify after Nepal-Tibet flooding as deaths climb past 900

    A catastrophic glacial collapse in the high Himalayas has triggered devastating flash floods that have claimed at least 900 lives and left more than 4,700 people unaccounted for across southern Nepal and the Tibet Autonomous Region of China, with international rescue teams joining local emergency responders in scaled-up search operations.

    Brigadier General Raja Ram Basnet, spokesperson for the Nepali Army, confirmed that search and rescue operations are ongoing across flood-stricken hill communities, riverside settlements and isolated lowland areas, where many residents and travelers remain stranded by fast-moving floodwaters.

    Among the most urgent rescue missions are operations to reach dozens of construction and maintenance workers trapped in incomplete and active hydropower plant tunnels beneath flood-damaged mountain slopes. Multiple foreign specialized rescue teams have deployed alongside local emergency crews to access the blocked, waterlogged tunnels, with officials confirming that at least 90 people remain trapped across multiple hydropower sites.

    Updated data released Monday by Nepal’s national disaster management agency puts the country’s confirmed death toll at 903, with 4,247 people still listed as missing. That missing count includes 592 foreign nationals who were in the region for trekking, work or tourism when the floods hit. On the Chinese side, official data reported Sunday recorded 1 confirmed deaths, with 546 people still unaccounted for. Chinese state media reports add that 261 of the missing in Tibet are foreign nationals, including more than 100 Nepali citizens.

    The disaster unfolded Wednesday when a massive bedrock collapse occurred beneath a high-altitude Himalayan glacier, dragging a large section of the frozen ice sheet down the mountain with it. Analysis of satellite imagery by glaciologists and geoscientists confirms the scale of the collapse was so large that it registered as a magnitude 5.2 seismic event on global monitoring networks.

    The sudden collapse released a massive surge of rock, debris and melted glacial water that rushed down into the river valleys below. The unprecedented torrent of water and debris overwhelmed riverbanks, swept away entire buildings, destroyed critical bridge infrastructure, and scoured entire settlements from valley floors as it moved through both Tibet and Nepal, leaving widespread destruction and loss of life in its path.

  • Russian strikes destroy 12 million books ahead of Ukraine’s first week back at school

    Russian strikes destroy 12 million books ahead of Ukraine’s first week back at school

    A wave of coordinated Russian missile and drone attacks across Ukraine has targeted critical publishing infrastructure and iconic cultural heritage sites, leaving a trail of destruction that Ukrainian officials describe as a deliberate campaign to erase national identity.

    On the outskirts of Kyiv, the charred, twisted wreckage of a major printing press offers a stark example of the damage. The facility was weeks away from delivering 1.3 million textbooks – 10% of Ukraine’s total annual schoolbook supply – when a Russian missile struck overnight amid a production ramp-up for the new academic year. Among the ash and rubble, a single scorched page from an English textbook survives as a haunting symbol: it reads, “My name is William, I’m from the UK. My grandmother lives in Nottingham. It’s a beautiful city.”

    No materials have been salvaged from the site. Pages that escaped the fire were left waterlogged by firefighting efforts or damaged by exposure after the roof collapsed. Viktoria Haidai, commercial director of Ukrainian publisher Konvi, called the attacks a calculated strategy against Ukrainian statehood. “Over the past two months, some of the largest publishing houses have lost their logistics warehouses, where very large quantities of books were stored,” she explained. “The Russians are also destroying printing houses in an attempt to erase Ukraine as a nation. But frankly they will not succeed.”

    Across the country, the scope of destruction to the publishing sector is staggering. Recent attacks have hit more than 35 publishing facilities, destroying 12 million finished books – accounting for one-third of all books printed in Ukraine so far this year, according to local media reports. The damage is not limited to new publications: Kyiv’s historic Pochaina second-hand book market, a beloved cultural gathering spot, was also struck, wiping out hundreds of independent vendor stalls and thousands of rare, out-of-print volumes.

    Even before the embers cooled at the market, 28-year-old book blogger Liliya Velyka was sifting through the rubble, searching for anything she could rescue. Clutching a waterlogged science fiction novel, she summed up the grief of many Ukrainians: “Books are saving us and losing this is like losing our hearts.”

    This campaign against cultural infrastructure extends far beyond the publishing sector. Museums, art galleries, film studios, public libraries, and opera houses across Ukraine have sustained damage in the attacks. One of the highest-profile targets is Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, a sprawling medieval monastery complex and one of Ukraine’s most significant cultural landmarks, which was hit in a June drone attack. While religious artifacts were moved to safety ahead of the strike, a large portion of the Dormition Cathedral’s roof caught fire, damaging the structure’s iconic golden domes. Repair estimates put the cost at $11.2 million, with work expected to take two years to complete.

    The monastery complex, which also houses Ukraine’s Museum of Books and Printing, was added to UNESCO’s World Heritage List in 1990, and marked as a World Heritage Site in Danger in September 2023. During recent celebrations marking the 975th anniversary of the monastery’s founding, UNESCO Director-General Khaled El-Enany expressed profound sorrow over the damage and condemned the attacks. “UNESCO firmly condemns all attacks against cultural property protected under international law,” he told assembled dignitaries, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

    Ukraine’s Culture Minister Tetyana Berezhna drew a clear connection between military attacks on Ukraine and the deliberate targeting of cultural sites. “This is an existential war, so Russia wants to destroy us as a nation, to erase us as a nation, like Ukrainians do not exist and have never existed,” she said during a tour of the damaged cathedral with El-Enany. “That’s why Russia targets our cultural heritage, the symbols of our presence here for a long time. They understand that it’s very important for us because we protect our identity, we protect our culture, and Russia wants to ruin everything that it cannot appropriate.”

    As of the latest reports, Berezhna confirmed that Russian forces have damaged more than 1,900 individual Ukrainian heritage sites and over 2,000 cultural institutions. To mitigate ongoing losses, the Ukrainian government has accelerated digitization efforts to preserve art, literature, and educational content, ensuring children can still access learning materials even as physical book stockpiles are destroyed. Industry leaders warn that the entire Ukrainian publishing sector is at risk of collapse without urgent international support.

    For Haidai, the survival of publishing is non-negotiable for preserving Ukrainian identity. “The word is everything,” she said at the bombed-out Kyiv printing plant. “It is our development, our culture, and our historical heritage that is passed down from generation to generation.”

    The targeting of cultural sites aligns with long-standing Russian rhetoric questioning the legitimacy of an independent Ukrainian state and culture. In a 2021 essay, Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed that Russians and Ukrainians were “one people” and rejected the idea of a distinct Ukrainian national identity.

    In response to requests for comment from the BBC, the Russian Embassy in the UK shifted blame to the Ukrainian government, claiming that Ukraine had already damaged its own cultural heritage by dismantling Soviet-era monuments and renaming streets. The embassy also repeated a common Russian claim that cultural sites have been used to conceal military equipment. The Kremlin has consistently denied deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure throughout five years of full-scale invasion, despite widespread documentation of missile and drone strikes on residential neighborhoods, public services, and cultural sites across Ukraine.

  • British Arabs urge UK government to impose binding restrictions on Israeli settlements

    British Arabs urge UK government to impose binding restrictions on Israeli settlements

    A coalition of over 40 leading figures from Britain’s Arab community has issued a high-profile call for the UK government to translate its verbal condemnation of illegal Israeli settlements into tangible, legally binding action that cuts off British economic support for continued settlement expansion.

    In an open joint letter addressed to Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband, dated August 24, 2026, the signatories argue the UK must now uphold the international legal obligations it has already publicly acknowledged. These obligations, they note, include the core duties of non-recognition of illegal settlements, non-assistance to settlement activity, and formal legal differentiation between the state of Israel and the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel since the 1967 Six-Day War.

    The letter frames the current global conversation around settlements as having moved far past the debate over whether the settlements themselves are unlawful under international law. Instead, the central question now facing Western governments like the UK is whether the current mix of voluntary industry guidance, limited tariff differentiation, and narrow targeted sanctions is actually sufficient to meet the country’s binding international legal commitments. This includes the clear obligation outlined by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in its landmark 2024 advisory opinion to block any trade or investment activity that serves to sustain or expand illegal settlement construction.

    Signatories to the letter span multiple sectors of British civil society, including leading voices from Palestinian advocacy groups, legal associations, health worker coalitions, and grassroots solidarity movements. Notable signatories include Adnan Hmidan, chair of the Palestinian Forum in Britain; Sabah Almukhtar, president of the UK’s Arab Lawyers Association; Dr. Omar Abdel-Mannan, head of Health Workers 4 Palestine; and Feda Shahin, secretary general of the Palestine Solidarity Movement, among dozens of other prominent public figures. The letter remains open for additional public signatures from across British society.

    Among the concrete policy measures the coalition calls for are legally binding restrictions on all UK economic activity that generates profits for or supports settlement expansion, the extension of existing UK sanctions to cover both individual actors and private companies tied to settlements, mandatory full differentiation between Israel and occupied territories in all UK government procurement processes and public sector engagements, and coordinated action with international allies to prevent bad actors from circumventing restrictions via third-country corporate structures.

    The letter emphasizes that the UK already holds full domestic legal authority to implement these measures under the 2018 Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act. It also anchors the demands in prior UK diplomatic commitments: the UK’s 2016 vote in support of a binding UN Security Council resolution that confirmed Israeli settlements have no legal validity, and the ICJ’s July 2024 advisory opinion that ruled Israel’s prolonged presence in the occupied Palestinian territories is unlawful and ordered an immediate end to all settlement activity.

    Beyond economic measures, the coalition is pushing the UK to work with global partners to establish a formal international protection mechanism to shield Palestinian civilians from escalating settler violence. This request draws on a 1994 UN resolution that the UK itself co-sponsored, which laid the groundwork for international protection for Palestinian communities. The proposed mechanism would include independent third-party monitoring of violence, systematic documentation of displacement and abuses, and targeted protection support for communities at highest risk of attack.

    The letter explicitly clarifies that these demands do not amount to a call for hostility toward the state of Israel or ordinary Israeli citizens, nor do they seek indiscriminate restrictions on fully legal trade with Israel within Israel’s 1948 borders. Instead, the signatories argue that Britain’s long-stated commitment to upholding international rule of law cannot only be expressed through rhetorical statements of principle—it must be demonstrated through consistent, effective policy implementation.

    The call comes as the UK government has already signaled it is preparing new action over Israel’s controversial E1 settlement plan, a proposed expansion east of Jerusalem that would cut the occupied West Bank into two disconnected parts and effectively eliminate the territorial contiguity required for a viable Palestinian state under a two-state solution. Earlier this month, Foreign Secretary Miliband publicly condemned the E1 plan, warning it poses an existential threat to the two-state solution and confirming he had formally called on Israel to halt all settlement expansion. Miliband also noted that the UK would lay out a broader package of new measures in the coming weeks, leaving space for the government to adopt some of the changes the British-Arab coalition is calling for.