Global Pulse

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  • Trump-Xi summit to weigh US energy sales amid Hormuz crisis

    Trump-Xi summit to weigh US energy sales amid Hormuz crisis

    As U.S. President Donald Trump prepares for a three-day summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing starting Wednesday, energy trade cooperation has emerged as a central negotiating priority, with Washington pushing Beijing to commit to restarting routine purchases of American crude oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG).

    U.S. diplomatic and trade officials have confirmed that a broad energy purchase agreement is currently under active discussion, a negotiation shaped by ongoing conflict in Iran and recent blockades of the Strait of Hormuz, which have forced China to reassess the vulnerability of its critical energy supply lines that rely heavily on Middle Eastern exports.

    Two-way energy trade between the two powers has been largely frozen since the escalation of a tit-for-tat tariff war launched by the Trump administration in April 2025, after hitting $8.4 billion in total U.S. energy exports to China in 2024. Breakdown of 2024 trade data shows China imported 193,000 barrels of U.S. crude oil per day that year, totaling roughly $6 billion in value. But all imports of U.S. crude have ceased since May 2025, following the imposition of a 20% import tariff that made American shipments uncompetitive. China has offset this gap by ramping up crude imports from other major producers including Canada and Brazil.

    The trajectory of U.S. LNG imports to China has followed a similar downward trajectory amid rising trade tensions. In 2021, China imported 7.04 million tons of U.S. LNG, but that figure dropped to 4.15 million tons by 2024, as Chinese buyers shifted to cheaper, more cost-effective long-term contracts with Russian and Qatari suppliers compared to volatile U.S. spot cargoes. After China imposed a 25% tariff on U.S. LNG in 2025 as part of its retaliatory trade measures, annual imports plummeted to just 26,000 tons for the year.

    Not all U.S. energy product exports to China have suffered the same decline, however. Shipments of U.S. ethane and propane, both key feedstocks for plastic manufacturing, have remained largely resilient to bilateral political tensions. As of 2025, the U.S. remained China’s sole supplier of ethane and retained its position as Beijing’s largest source of propane imports.

    Washington has employed a mixed carrot-and-stick strategy to pressure China into restarting large-scale energy purchases. On the coercive side, the U.S. Treasury Department imposed sanctions in April on independent Chinese “teapot” refiners and dozens of vessels linked to Iran’s informal oil shipping network, while also threatening to impose secondary sanctions on Chinese financial institutions that facilitate transactions for Iranian crude imports. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer reiterated this position in a May 6 statement, arguing that purchases of Iranian oil fund Tehran’s activities Washington labels as terrorist, and warned that China’s non-compliance with U.S. sanctions would be a core topic of the bilateral summit.

    On the diplomatic side, President Trump has framed expanded energy trade as a mutually beneficial opportunity for both sides. During a May 5 White House media briefing, Trump described President Xi as a “tremendous guy” and emphasized that he maintains a positive working relationship with his Chinese counterpart. “We’ve offered that if he wants to send the ships to the U.S., I made a statement: send your ships to Texas. It’s not that much further. Send your ships to Louisiana. Send your ships to Alaska. Alaska is actually very close to a lot of the Asian countries; people don’t realize it,” Trump said.

    Trump added that the U.S. has already finalized large energy supply deals with South Korea and Japan, both of which have faced major supply disruptions following the closure of Hormuz shipping lanes. He also noted that while 60% of China’s total crude oil imports pass through the Strait of Hormuz, President Xi has remained respectful in discussions about the disruptions caused by the Iran war.

    Beijing has so far offered no formal public response to Washington’s proposal. When asked directly about Trump’s call for China to shift purchases from Iranian to American crude during a regular Foreign Ministry briefing, spokesperson Lin Jian declined to comment directly and directed inquiries to China’s competent trade authorities.

    Among Chinese policy commentators and analysts, opinions on the proposal are deeply divided. One camp argues that the ongoing supply disruptions in the Middle East make a strong case for China to expand its energy supply diversification, including a resumption of U.S. energy imports.

    A Hunan-based columnist writing under the pen name Xu Sanlang noted that China halted most U.S. energy imports as a retaliatory measure after Trump’s return to the White House in early 2025, with the last U.S. crude purchase completed in February 2025 and LNG imports ending that December. Citing Chinese customs data, Xu pointed out that U.S. crude made up just 1.8% of China’s total $325 billion in 2024 crude imports, falling to near zero in 2025. However, ship tracking data from analytics firm Kpler shows nearly 600,000 barrels per day of U.S. crude were loaded onto tankers bound for China in April 2026, a shift driven directly by Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz and recent strikes on energy infrastructure across Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.

    “Faced with this situation, the most rational response is to diversify procurement sources,” Xu wrote. “Although the U.S. is China’s trade rival, it does have sufficient energy supplies. China’s purchases of US energy were previously interrupted by a tariff war in 2025, but the situation has since changed. Supply security is more important than anything else.”

    Xu added that longstanding U.S. demands for China to expand purchases of American agricultural goods, aircraft and energy could be ignored by Beijing during the height of the 2025 trade war, but current Middle East conflicts and global supply chain volatility have made Washington’s request far more palatable for Chinese leaders. Resuming U.S. energy purchases would both advance China’s own energy security goals and grant Trump a diplomatic win during his Beijing visit, he argued, creating a “kill two birds with one stone” outcome that supports energy security while creating favorable conditions for broader bilateral negotiations.

    Critics of the proposal, however, argue that Beijing should not deepen its energy reliance on Washington, pointing to what they frame as the U.S.’s illegal use of coercive power to control oil exports from U.S. adversaries including Iran and Venezuela.

    A Henan-based political commentator pointed to Trump’s recent claim that the U.S. is now receiving “hundreds of millions of barrels of oil” from Venezuela for refining in Houston, noting that just four months prior, U.S. military forces raided Caracas and detained former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife. The commentator added that the U.S. Treasury Department revoked oil major Chevron’s original operating license in Venezuela on March 1, before issuing a new broad license that allows U.S. firms to do business directly with the state-owned Petróleos de Venezuela. “This is not normal international trade. This is naked plunder,” he wrote.

    The critic further argued that the U.S. is intentionally tightening pressure on Iran, disrupting Hormuz shipping lanes, and then pushing third countries to buy Venezuelan crude refined on U.S. soil. As global oil prices rise, the Venezuelan crude held under U.S. control grows more valuable, turning the entire arrangement into a form of coercion rather than fair cooperation, he added.

    Other critics point to China’s existing stable overland energy supply networks that eliminate the maritime risks of Hormuz disruptions. A Hebei-based commentator noted that China has spent two decades building cross-border pipelines to bring oil and gas from Central Asia, which has operated consistently without disruption. The Central Asia-China Gas Pipeline delivered 4.67 million tons of natural gas to China in January and February 2026, averaging 79,200 tons per day. The pipeline runs from Turkmenistan through Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan before entering China at the Xinjiang border, making it an entirely overland route that avoids disputed international waters. In 2025, China imported $8.41 billion worth of natural gas from Turkmenistan, making it China’s second-largest gas supplier after Russia, which supplied $9.41 billion that year. “Together with LNG imports from Australia, Qatar, Russia and other suppliers, China has effectively built a diversified energy network,” the commentator wrote. “No matter how strong a maritime power is, it cannot cut off the steel pipelines running through the heart of Central Asia.”

    Some analysts have also suggested that China could increase heavy crude imports from Canada as an alternative to U.S. or U.S.-controlled Venezuelan crude, even with a $10 per barrel price premium over Venezuelan shipments.

  • Treasurer Jim Chalmers speaks at National Press Club after budget

    Treasurer Jim Chalmers speaks at National Press Club after budget

    Fresh from handing down Australia’s most ambitious federal budget in recent memory, Treasurer Jim Chalmers has opened up about how escalating conflict in Iran upended months of policy planning, forced major adjustments to long-planned tax changes, and forced the government to accelerate reform efforts amid global economic uncertainty. In his traditional post-budget address to Canberra’s National Press Club this week, Chalmers revealed that while the Albanese government had reached a broad agreement to pursue sweeping tax reform over the 2023-2024 summer, final decisions on contentious changes to capital gains tax (CGT), negative gearing and trust taxation were only locked in after the outbreak of hostilities in Iran.

    The Iran conflict has fundamentally altered the federal government’s medium-term budget forecasts, Chalmers explained. Treasury now operates under the assumption that global Brent crude prices will hold around $US100 a barrel through the end of June 2025 before easing back to $US80 a barrel. This baseline projection means Australia will face stickier inflation, weakened household consumption, and slower overall economic growth than officials predicted just six months ago.

    Far from pausing ambitious policy changes to wait out global volatility, however, Chalmers said the upheaval reinforced the government’s commitment to pushing ahead with structural reform. “If you wait for perfect stability to reform, you’ll be waiting forever,” he told attendees. “This global turbulence is no excuse to roll up into a little ball and hope that it passes quickly. If anything, it’s a reason to do more on resilience and more on reform, more urgently. And that’s the attitude that we adopted here in the budget.” While Chalmers acknowledged that a number of progressive policy proposals had been delayed by the unpredictable external environment, he confirmed that the core of the government’s reform agenda remained fully intact, centered on advancing intergenerational fairness through a rebalanced tax system.

    Turning to the domestic political context of the budget, Chalmers positioned the Australian Labor Party as the last bulwark of sensible centrist politics in the country, amid a global rise in far-right populism. He pointed to recent gains by right-wing populist forces, from Nigel Farage’s Reform UK in the United Kingdom to One Nation’s historic by-election win in the regional New South Wales seat of Farrer at the weekend – which ended 77 years of continuous Liberal Party control of the electorate. “We are the last ones standing in the sensible centre of Australian politics but we aren’t standing still,” Chalmers argued. “Standing still would make us the reluctant defenders of a status quo that doesn’t work. We stand for real change that makes a real difference.” One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has longstanding close political ties to Farage, making the string of recent far-right gains a point of explicit focus for the government’s political framing.

    The centerpiece of the government’s tax reform package is a set of sweeping changes to Australia’s housing investment tax concessions that break a key 2022 federal election promise made by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Ahead of last year’s election campaign, Albanese explicitly pledged that a Labor government would not alter existing CGT or negative gearing settings. The new budget reverses that commitment: it will scrap the 50 per cent CGT discount introduced by the Howard-era Coalition government in 1999, replacing it with an indexation-based system, while limiting negative gearing tax deductions exclusively to newly constructed residential properties.

    Chalmers acknowledged the shift in the government’s position, admitting that it was “not unfair for people to point out that the position we put last night in the budget is different to the position that we held and expressed 12 months ago.” He added that the government always expected the decision to spark political controversy, but framed the changes as a necessary correction to longstanding market distortions. The 1999 CGT discount, he argued, had skewed investment incentives across the Australian housing market, driving up prices for aspiring home owners and favoring wealthy property investors over first-time buyers. The government has designed the reforms to minimize near-term market disruption, Chalmers said, taking into account the millions of Australian investors who made long-term financial decisions under the previous concession regime. This broken campaign promise marks the second major reversal for the Albanese government, after its 2024 decision to roll back the former Coalition government’s stage 3 income tax cuts.

    On defence policy, Chalmers defended the growing cost of the trilateral AUKUS nuclear submarine pact with the United States and the United Kingdom, as new budget figures revealed rising near-term spending on the program. The upcoming 2025-2026 financial year will see $512.5 million allocated to the Australian Submarine Agency, a 33 per cent increase from the previous year’s allocation, while the total projected cost of the nuclear submarine program has risen by an extra $431 million. Over the full 10-year implementation timeline, the total cost of Australia’s undersea warfare program is now projected to reach as high as $130 billion.

    Pressed on whether the ballooning cost of AUKUS would force cuts to other critical defence and social programs, Chalmers acknowledged that large-scale defence capability projects always carry inherent risk of cost blowouts, but argued that the investment was non-negotiable amid growing regional security tensions. “Declaring the world a “dangerous place”, he said “I recognise that national security and economic security are effectively the same thing now, and nothing comes cheap in defence if you’re serious about making Australians safer. And I know that there’s been a range of views about that, but from my point of view, big investments in national security make a lot of sense.” The AUKUS pact, which aims to deliver Australia a fleet of eight nuclear-powered submarines – three built in the U.S. to the Virginia-class design, and five jointly designed Australian-built AUKUS-class boats – is the centerpiece of Australia’s 21st century defence strategy, designed to deter Chinese military aggression in the Indo-Pacific.

  • A rare sanctuary in Congo looks after baby bonobos away from poaching threat

    A rare sanctuary in Congo looks after baby bonobos away from poaching threat

    Deep in the forested fringe of Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, sits a one-of-a-kind safe haven for the world’s most threatened great apes: Lola ya Bonobo, the only sanctuary on Earth dedicated exclusively to rescuing and raising orphaned bonobos. For 24 years, Micheline Nzonzi has served as a foster mother to these vulnerable young primates, and she currently cares for a sleepy 1-year-old orphan whose life depends on her care. With consistent maternal attention, bottle feeding, and regular social play with other rescued young bonobos, this tiny ape stands a strong chance of survival. “Without me, without us, these bonobos cannot survive,” Nzonzi explained. “They survive thanks to human affection.”

    Bonobos, one of humanity’s closest living genetic relatives sharing 98.7% of our DNA, have existed as a distinct species only since 1933, when American zoologist Harold Coolidge formalized the classification first proposed by German anatomist Ernst Schwarz four years earlier. Found only in the dense equatorial rainforests south of the Congo River, these apes are famously known for their female-led social structures, peaceful temperament, and high emotional intelligence, earning them the nickname “hippie apes” for their conflict-resolution and social behaviors. A 2025 study from Johns Hopkins University even suggests bonobos may possess a capacity for imagination, cementing their status as one of the most fascinating species on the planet.

    Yet today, the species faces imminent collapse. Population estimates have plummeted from 100,000 wild bonobos in the 1980s to roughly 20,000 today, landing the species on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s endangered list. The primary threat driving this decline is the unregulated commercial bushmeat trade. While bonobos are legally protected from hunting across the DRC, demand for wild game extends far beyond the Congo Basin, and the iconic apes fetch a premium price on black markets. Poachers often use captured baby bonobos as live bait: when adult bonobos approach to investigate the cries of the trapped infant, they are shot and killed for their meat. The surviving infants are then trafficked, sometimes kept as pets or sold into the exotic pet trade before being rescued by sanctuary workers.

    Cultural beliefs have compounded conservation challenges in the DRC, unlike neighboring Uganda where great apes are not hunted for consumption. “In Congo, they believe that you can become as strong as the primate you eat,” explained primatologist Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka, founder of Uganda-based conservation group Conservation Through Public Health. To curb hunting and protect bonobo habitat, Congolese authorities launched a novel proposal last year: “bonobo credits”, a market-based conservation model modeled after carbon credits that would reward local communities for preserving old-growth forest. As of early 2025, the program has not yet been implemented.

    In Kinshasa, the illegal primate meat trade has been pushed underground after a nationwide ban aimed at preventing the spread of zoonotic diseases like Ebola. Local vendors confirm that open sales of monkey and ape meat have ceased, though unregulated trade in other wild game from giant rodents to pythons continues openly in city markets. For sanctuary staff, the work of rescue and education remains an ongoing battle. “The bonobos are in danger. We are educating people to not kill the bonobos,” said Arsène Madimba, an educator at Lola ya Bonobo. “We can’t kill them, we can’t keep them as pets at home, we can’t eat them. Because of poaching, we see large-scale trafficking of orphaned bonobos across the entire country.”

    Today, Lola ya Bonobo, run by the Congolese conservation nonprofit Les Amis des Bonobos du Congo, houses dozens of adult bonobos, some of whom have lived at the sanctuary since it opened in 2002, plus 11 orphaned infants in its on-site nursery, with the most recent arrival arriving earlier this year. Each baby is paired with a long-term foster caregiver who will care for it for three to five years – matching the slow reproductive and developmental cycle that makes bonobos particularly vulnerable to population loss – before the young ape is integrated into a larger social group open to visitors. In rare, carefully planned cases, rehabilitated bonobos are eventually reintroduced to protected wild habitats, a process that requires years of preparation.

    For the sanctuary staff that works with the apes daily, the human-bonobo bond is tangible. Feeder Frank Lutete, who paddles across the sanctuary’s waterways to deliver fruit to the social groups, says the apes regularly show their gratitude. “Some bonobos thank me,” he explained, “tapping their chests in a gesture of gratitude.”

  • Mortgage holders warned of rate hike as budget fails to tame inflation

    Mortgage holders warned of rate hike as budget fails to tame inflation

    Australia’s recently unveiled federal budget has left many financially squeezed mortgage holders bracing for steeper home loan repayments, with leading economists warning the document fails to rein in excessive government spending, tame persistent inflation, or ease pressure on the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) to implement additional monetary tightening. The outcome has put already overstretched household budgets at further risk, as global energy market volatility driven by Middle East tensions between the U.S. and Iran continues to push up fuel and broader living costs.

    AMP’s chief economist Shane Oliver, one of the most widely followed experts on Australian monetary and fiscal policy, sounded the alarm over the budget’s structural trajectory, noting that it locks in elevated public spending and ongoing budget deficits over the medium term. In comments to Australian NewsWire, Oliver explained that the budget even includes minor near-term stimulus measures that could add marginal upward pressure on inflation, which remains above the RBA’s target range. “It’s not huge but it certainly doesn’t make the Reserve Bank’s job any easier,” he said. Prior to the release of Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ fifth budget on Tuesday, Oliver had already predicted the RBA would implement another interest rate hike in August. The budget’s lack of meaningful fiscal contraction has not changed that forecast, he confirmed.

    David Bassanese, chief economist at leading investment firm Betashares, echoed Oliver’s assessment. While he noted the budget does not dramatically worsen near-term inflation risks, it also fails to deliver the fiscal restraint needed to reduce the RBA’s burden of further policy tightening if inflation remains stubborn. “The Budget is hardly super restrictive either, so does not lessen the burden on the RBA to tighten policy further if need be,” Bassanese said.

    On a more positive note, economists did acknowledge that the federal government resisted widespread political pressure to roll out broad, untargeted relief for households struggling with rising cost of living — a move that Oliver said would have been a catastrophic mistake for long-term inflation and interest rates. Many state Australian budgets have rolled out broad household relief in recent months, but the federal government held back from large-scale across-the-board support even as mortgage and energy costs climb. Oliver noted that broad-based relief would have added significantly to inflation, ultimately forcing bigger rate hikes that would leave mortgage holders worse off over time. “The temptation would have been to do more – like some of the state budgets – that would have been disastrous,” he said. “It was good to see the government holding back, I think we needed to see more of a cut back in the near term.”

    Oliver added that any government support should be targeted exclusively at the most vulnerable households, rather than distributed to all Australians regardless of income. Untargeted universal relief is unnecessarily costly and adds unnecessary inflationary pressure, he argued. That pressure is already being amplified by a sharp rally in global crude oil prices, which have surged from roughly $US56 per barrel to briefly touch $US131 per barrel amid Middle East supply fears, driving up fuel prices across Australia. Industry calculations show every $US10 per barrel increase in crude adds 10 Australian cents per liter to retail fuel prices, stretching household transport budgets further. Official budget forecasts project oil prices will remain above $US100 per barrel before easing to $US80 per barrel next year.

    Along with inflation and interest rate risks, the budget also reveals a steep upward trajectory for Australia’s national gross debt over the coming decade. Current data from the Australian Office of Financial Management puts gross national debt at $964.2 billion at present. Treasury projections show debt will rise every year over the next four years, hitting $982 billion by the 2026 financial year, crossing the $1 trillion mark in mid-2026, rising to $1.051 trillion in 2027, $1.12 trillion in 2028, and peaking at $1.249 trillion, equal to 35.6% of national GDP. After hitting that peak, debt is projected to gradually decline, falling back to 27.2% of GDP by 2037 as the country begins paying down accumulated obligations.

    Oliver argued that Australia needs far more aggressive fiscal consolidation to get public spending back to sustainable pre-pandemic levels, which would ease pressure on the RBA, reduce inflation, and free up economic capacity for private sector growth. He estimates the government needs to cut roughly $100 billion in cumulative spending over the next four years to bring public spending down to 25% of GDP, a level that prevailed before the COVID-19 pandemic. “If you did that it would take us back to levels that prevailed prior to covid and free up capacity for stronger private sector activity and allow for lower interest rates without generating inflation,” he explained. “We saw only a small share of that in Tuesday’s budget.”

  • Around the island in 48 days: White-tailed eagle goes on Irish grand tour

    Around the island in 48 days: White-tailed eagle goes on Irish grand tour

    More than a century after white-tailed eagles vanished from Ireland, a landmark conservation initiative is bearing remarkable new fruit — and one young feathered adventurer has captured the public’s imagination with an unprecedented cross-country journey.

    Aspen, a juvenile white-tailed eagle hatched in 2024 at Glengarriff Nature Reserve in County Cork as part of Ireland’s ongoing white-tailed eagle reintroduction programme, embarked on a cross-island odyssey that began on March 22. Over the course of just seven weeks, a satellite tracker fitted to the bird recorded its extraordinary route: spanning all four of Ireland’s provinces — Leinster, Ulster, Connaught, and finally back to its native Munster — and touching 26 of the island’s counties along the way. In Northern Ireland alone, Aspen visited Armagh, Down, Tyrone, Londonderry, and Fermanagh, making her journey one of the most widely documented young eagle movements in recent Irish conservation history.

    This ambitious trek is no surprise to the ecologists who have monitored Aspen since the day she hatched. Clare Heardman, a National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) ecologist who has tracked the reintroduction programme since its launch in 2007 and currently monitors roughly 90 tagged eagles, shares a unique bond with the young bird. “I helped tag her when she was eight weeks old, then she fledged when I was 13 weeks,” Heardman explained. “On her first solo flight, she already did a massive loop of Munster — that isn’t unheard of for young eagles, but it proved right away that travelling is in her personality.”

    Aspen’s name comes from an unusual aspen tree growing near her birth nest, a rarity among the untagged, unnamed eagles monitored by the programme. What makes her extra special for Heardman is her lineage: her mother is a Norwegian eagle brought into the programme as part of reintroduction efforts, while her father is the first generation of Irish-born eagles produced by the scheme — a milestone that marks the programme’s long-term success. Since the map of Aspen’s cross-country journey was shared on social media, the public has embraced the young eagle just as much as the conservation team, with Heardman noting “her route touched so many counties, it helped people across the island relate to her.”

    White-tailed eagles, also called sea eagles for their coastal habitat and nicknamed “flying barn doors” for their massive 2.5-meter wingspan, were driven to extinction across Ireland and the United Kingdom by the early 20th century. Decades of deliberate reintroduction work, using founder birds sourced from healthy Norwegian populations, have reversed that decline. In 2024, a breeding pair in County Fermanagh made history as the first white-tailed eagles to successfully raise chicks in Northern Ireland in more than 150 years, and established mating populations have now been confirmed across Kerry, Cork, Clare, Galway, and Donegal.

    Dr. Eimear Rooney, a member of the Northern Ireland Raptor Study Group which monitors birds of prey across Northern Ireland, explained that Aspen’s long wander is typical for young white-tailed eagles. “This time of year, it is common for sub-adult white-tailed eagles to go wandering. They catch thermal hot air currents, and with their size, they can cover hundreds of miles in a very short space of time,” Rooney said. The tracker’s data also reflects the species’ feeding habits: Aspen often stayed close to coastlines and wetlands, where the birds hunt for fish and marine prey, while her inland forays into higher ground like the hills of Donegal were likely driven by her scavenging instinct, as the eagles feed on carrion when it is available.

    While Aspen’s journey is a heartwarming win for conservation, Rooney also highlighted the ongoing risks facing young eagles during their nomadic adolescent years. White-tailed eagles do not reach breeding age until they are four or five years old, and the sub-adult stage is the most dangerous period of their lives. “The people tracking these birds during this part of their lives are biting their nails constantly,” Rooney said. Major threats include accidental poisoning from carcasses laced with toxins — two eagles were confirmed killed by poisoning in County Antrim in 2023 — collisions with wind turbines (three eagles died from turbine strikes in South Donegal alone that same year, per NPWS data), severe storms, and exposure to avian influenza.

    For now, Aspen has returned to her native Munster, but where she will settle long-term remains an open question. “Just because it was hatched in Cork doesn’t mean it’ll stay in Cork,” Rooney noted. “A very common path we see these birds follow takes them to the Antrim Hills, Rathlin Island, onto the Mull of Kintyre, then they’ll spend some time in Scotland before coming back. The point is, you can never be too sure where they’ll end up.”

  • Perth man Gregory John Welton, 57, pleads guilty to child exploitation charges linked to author Craig Silvey

    Perth man Gregory John Welton, 57, pleads guilty to child exploitation charges linked to author Craig Silvey

    A Western Australian man has entered a guilty plea on child exploitation-related charges, marking the second defendant connected to the high-profile criminal investigation centered on acclaimed Australian author Craig Silvey.

    Fifty-seven-year-old Gregory John Welton, a resident of Maylands, appeared before Perth Magistrates Court on Wednesday to admit to four total offences: producing child exploitation material, distributing child exploitation material, and unlawful possession of a restricted weapon. Court proceedings revealed that the illegal content Welton created was almost exclusively explicit written material, and he shared one graphic exploitative image across two months earlier this year, between January and February.

    When law enforcement officers executed their search of Welton’s home, they also uncovered an unlicensed firearm stored in his bedside table. Court documents confirmed the weapon came into Welton’s possession during his time working as a security guard years prior. For the weapons offence alone, the magistrate issued a $300 fine, and granted Welton bail ahead of his sentencing for the exploitation charges.

    During the hearing, Welton’s legal representation requested a modified bail condition that would allow the defendant access to the internet. The request specified that online access would be permitted for four key purposes: searching for fly-in fly-out (FIFO) work opportunities, obtaining legal counsel remotely, attending telehealth medical appointments, and general personal entertainment. The court granted this modified bail arrangement.

    Welton’s case has now been transferred to the Perth District Court for sentencing, with his next scheduled appearance set for July 10.

    This prosecution is the second to emerge from the wider investigation that first made headlines when police raided Silvey’s Fremantle residence in January, seizing multiple electronic devices as part of evidence gathering. Earlier this month, Silvey himself pleaded guilty in Fremantle Magistrates Court to charges of possessing and distributing child exploitation material.

    A third accused, 68-year-old grandmother Glenda Joy McGregor from Perth, also faces allegations of producing and distributing child exploitation material tied to the same network connected to Silvey. McGregor has not yet entered a plea on her charges, and remains in custody at Melaleuca Prison. She was remanded on the exploitation charges and an additional offence of failing to comply with mandatory sex offender reporting obligations.

  • Smart glasses are ‘an invasion of privacy’ – Meta’s are selling better than ever

    Smart glasses are ‘an invasion of privacy’ – Meta’s are selling better than ever

    The emerging market for AI-powered smart glasses is facing growing scrutiny over deep-seated privacy risks, even as some of the world’s largest technology corporations prepare to scale up sales of the wearable devices in the coming years, with projections pointing to hundreds of millions of units sold globally by the end of the decade.

    Currently, Meta dominates the fast-growing segment, holding an estimated 80% of all global smart glasses sales thanks to its early entry into the mainstream market with the Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses, produced in partnership with eyewear giant EssilorLuxottica. The product blends the iconic, understated design of classic Ray-Ban frames with cutting-edge tech: a nearly undetectable built-in camera, integrated small speakers, and lightweight lenses that display contextual information for wearers. Recording can be activated with a simple tap on the frame, making it extraordinarily easy to capture photos and video without drawing attention to the act.

    This discreet recording capability has already spawned widespread misuse, most notably a growing trend where male wearers of Meta’s smart glasses secretly record unsuspecting women in public spaces — from beaches to retail stores — for online content. Many women only discover they have been filmed after the videos, which often include harassment and abusive commentary, go viral on social media. Legal options for affected people remain limited, as photography in public spaces is widely protected under law in most jurisdictions. One woman who spoke to the BBC reported that when she requested the removal of a non-consensual recording of her, the creator demanded payment to take it down.

    Beyond non-consensual public recording, the devices have faced legal pushback over the processing of user content. Two class-action lawsuits were filed against Meta after contract workers in Kenya, hired to review smart glasses recordings to train Meta’s AI models, revealed they were forced to view deeply graphic content including sexual activity and private bathroom use. Many plaintiffs said they had no idea their recordings were being reviewed by human staff, despite Meta’s assertion that the possibility of human review is clearly disclosed in its terms of service.

    Even with these mounting controversies, sales have surged to more than 7 million units sold to date, with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg calling the product line “some of the fastest-growing consumer electronics in history” in a recent statement. Meta spokesperson Tracy Clayton defended the company’s position, noting that the firm has dedicated teams working to mitigate misuse, but argued that “the onus is ultimately on individual people to not actively exploit” any technology.

    The market’s growth is attracting new entrants, with a wave of major tech companies preparing to launch their own smart glasses offerings in the next 18 months. Apple is reportedly developing its own AI and AR-enabled smart glasses, expected to launch as early as 2025. Snap has confirmed it will release a new iteration of its Specs smart glasses later this year, and Google is preparing for a second attempt at consumer smart glasses more than a decade after the high-profile failure of Google Glass, which was pulled from the market over identical privacy concerns just two years after launch. All upcoming models are expected to follow Meta’s blueprint, combining AI features with augmented reality that relies on built-in cameras to function.

    Not all user experiences are negative, however. Mark Smith, a tech-savvy early adopter and enterprise software advisor at ISH, wears his Meta Ray-Bans daily. He praised the device’s practical perks: listening to music and podcasts while doing household chores without blocking out ambient noise the way over-ear headphones do, seamless hands-free phone calls, and quick, convenient photo captures while traveling that eliminate the need to pull out a smartphone. Even so, Smith acknowledged that obvious privacy risks remain, noting that the small indicator light that activates during recording is nearly invisible in bright daylight, leaving most bystanders unaware they are being filmed.

    Industry projections indicate that if current growth trends hold, as many as 100 million consumers could own a pair of AI smart glasses within the next few years. That scale of adoption would create unprecedented challenges for regulators and public institutions that restrict recording in sensitive spaces including courthouses, hospitals, movie theaters, museums, and bathrooms. David Kessler, head of U.S. privacy practice at global law firm Norton Rose Fulbright, said corporate clients are already scrambling to adapt to the new reality. “There are some pretty dark places we could go here,” Kessler said. “I’m not anti-technology in any sense, but as a societal matter…will I need to think [of being recorded] anytime I go out in public?”

    Risks could grow even more acute: Meta is reportedly planning to add facial recognition technology to a future update of its smart glasses, which would give wearers the ability to not only secretly record passersby, but also instantly identify them by name. Meta markets its current glasses under the tagline “Designed for privacy, controlled by you,” and advises users to avoid recording people who object and to turn off devices entirely in sensitive spaces. But these voluntary guidelines are widely ignored, with a rising trend of prank content that targets unsuspecting members of the public for online clout.

    Public backlash is already starting to build. When a man posted a video complaining that a woman on the New York City Subway broke his Meta glasses after he secretly recorded her, social media users widely celebrated the woman’s actions, calling her a hero. Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth argued earlier this month that strong sales indicate broad public acceptance of the devices, but former Meta AI researcher David Harris, now a professor at UC Berkeley and AI policy advisor to the U.S. and EU, said the current generation of smart glasses faces the same fate that doomed Google Glass over a decade ago. “Technology like this is fundamentally an invasion of privacy and it’s really going to face more and more backlash,” he said.

  • Macron faces backlash after interrupting Africa summit panel in Kenya

    Macron faces backlash after interrupting Africa summit panel in Kenya

    NAIROBI, Kenya — Amid a high-stakes diplomatic push to rebrand France’s relationship with the African continent after decades of colonial dominance, French President Emmanuel Macron has found himself at the center of growing controversy following an explosive public confrontation at the Africa Forward Summit, held in Nairobi.

    The gathering, which brought together 30 African heads of state, was designed to highlight Paris’s long-promised policy shift: moving away from the patronizing, hegemonic “Françafrique” system that defined France’s post-colonial influence to a new framework Paris frames as a genuine equal partnership. On the summit’s second day, Macron unveiled a flagship €25 billion ($27 billion) investment package targeting key African sectors including renewable energy, artificial intelligence development, and agricultural modernization.

    But the event’s carefully curated diplomatic narrative unraveled on Monday, when a disruptive audience during a panel featuring African artists and young entrepreneurs prompted Macron to storm the stage, grabbing the microphone from the featured speaker to demand immediate order. Visibly frustrated by ongoing side conversations that interrupted the session, Macron rebuked attendees for what he called a “total lack of respect,” announcing he would step in to “restore order” before delivering a public reprimand in English.

    Clips of the confrontation spread rapidly across social media platforms within hours, splitting public reaction. Some attendees applauded Macron’s intervention as a necessary correction of unprofessional behavior, but criticism quickly poured in from across the African continent and in France itself.

    In Dakar, Senegal, Thierno Mbaye, a history student at the capital’s leading university, framed the outburst as a revealing throwback to colonial-era paternalism. “Just imagine what would happen if an African leader did the same thing in America or Europe,” Mbaye told the Associated Press. “He acted like a schoolteacher scolding children.”

    Danièle Obono, a hard-left France Unbowed lawmaker in Paris, echoed that critique in a post on X, writing: “It’s stronger than him: as soon as he sets foot on the African continent, he can’t help but behave like a colonizer.”

    The controversy is not an isolated incident. It comes against a backdrop of escalating diplomatic friction between Paris and its former West African colonies, where growing anti-French sentiment has forced France to withdraw thousands of troops from the region over the past three years, completing a full military pullout from Senegal in July. Even before the stage confrontation, Macron had already sparked widespread backlash for a remark made at a pre-summit press conference alongside Kenyan President William Ruto, where he claimed “we are the true Pan-Africanists.”

    The claim struck a raw nerve given Pan-Africanism’s core roots as an ideology built to oppose colonial rule. In an open letter released Monday, Togolese human rights activist Farida Nabourema pushed back sharply against Macron’s framing. “Pan Africanism is not a brand, Mr. Macron, neither is it a diplomatic posture,” she wrote. “It is a political philosophy that said no to everything France spent three centuries saying yes to: slavery, colonialism and neocolonialism.”

    Geopolitical analysts note that Macron’s pivot to East Africa for the summit is a deliberate strategic move in the wake of Paris’s major setbacks in West Africa, where Moscow has expanded its influence to become the leading security partner for several military-led governments that ousted French-aligned leaders. Beverly Ochieng, a senior analyst at geopolitical risk firm Control Risks, explained that the summit is designed to signal that France is shifting its strategic priorities to regions of the continent where it still holds widespread goodwill.

    Ochieng added that the combination of Macron’s Pan-Africanism claim and his on-stage outburst has amplified existing skepticism about whether Paris’s policy reset amounts to a genuine shift toward equal partnership, or simply rebranded rhetoric for continued French influence. Alioune Tine, founder of Dakar-based think tank Afrikajom Center, noted that Macron’s reference to “true Pan-Africanism” also doubles as a subtle jab at Russia, pointing out that Paris views pro-Russian Pan-African voices online as politically manipulated and inauthentic.

    Tine acknowledged that relations between Western powers and African states have long carried inherent paternalistic overtones that France has not fully escaped, but added that Macron, the first French president born after the end of French colonial rule in Africa, has taken steps to move past the Françafrique legacy with a more informal diplomatic style aimed at rebuilding trust. Pre-summit polling from Ipsos, conducted across nine African nations for the French Foreign Ministry, offers some support for that effort: 74% of respondents reported holding a positive view of France, with the highest support recorded in English-speaking African countries and among adults under 35.

    In comments Tuesday, Macron reaffirmed France’s commitment to respecting African sovereignty, saying: “Paris will be respectful of each African country’s independence… sovereignty and autonomy is shared, and your success is our success.” As of Wednesday, neither the French presidency nor the French Foreign Ministry had issued an immediate response to requests for comment on the growing backlash over the summit confrontation.

  • Gulf investments and economic interests motivate Beijing to help Trump end war

    Gulf investments and economic interests motivate Beijing to help Trump end war

    As U.S. President Donald Trump prepares to land in Beijing for a high-stakes two-day summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping this Thursday, trade and economic agreements between the world’s two largest economies top the official agenda — but the lingering conflict between the U.S.-led coalition and Iran will hang over every closed-door discussion, shaping the trajectory of bilateral relations amid shifting global power dynamics.

    Analysts point out that China’s ongoing military and technical support to Iran amid its war with the U.S. and Israel has delivered tangible strategic benefits, but the regional conflict has also created unforeseen strains on Beijing’s ties with wealthy Gulf Arab states and exposed vulnerabilities in China’s export-driven economic model.

    For Beijing, the U.S.’s failed campaign to neutralize Iran has been a quiet strategic win, says Wang Yiwei, an international relations scholar at Renmin University of China. “Iran’s brave response to U.S. attacks taught Trump a lesson,” Wang told Middle East Eye. “Trump cannot blackmail China — let alone Iran — with his so-called ‘art of the deal.’”

    Long framed as peer competitors, the U.S. and China remain locked in systemic rivalry spanning cutting-edge artificial intelligence development, access to critical mineral supplies, and competing claims over the Taiwan Strait. Far from remaining a passive bystander, China has played an active role in arming Iran throughout the escalating conflict, multiple media outlets have confirmed.

    Middle East Eye was the first outlet to reveal that China supplied advanced air defense systems to Iran after the 2025 June war between Iran and Israel that ended with U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear infrastructure. MEE further reported that Beijing delivered kamikaze drones to Iran on the eve of the 2026 U.S. escalation. The New York Times later corroborated that shipments of Chinese man-portable air defense systems to Iran took place in April, while the Financial Times has confirmed that Iran used sophisticated Chinese satellite intelligence to target U.S. military installations across the Persian Gulf.

    A number of geopolitical analysts have drawn a parallel between the U.S.’s stalled campaign against Iran and the 1956 Suez Crisis, framing the conflict as a “Suez moment” that could mark the beginning of the end of long-standing U.S. regional dominance in the Middle East, just as the 1956 conflict accelerated the collapse of British imperial influence in the region.

    Despite a sustained U.S. blockade of Iranian ports, former senior U.S. official Amos Hochstein acknowledged earlier this month that Iran will retain permanent control over the strategic Strait of Hormuz, the chokepoint through which 20% of the world’s daily oil shipments pass. To date, the U.S. has failed to seize Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium or eliminate the country’s large arsenal of ballistic missiles, leaving core U.S. war objectives unmet.

    Jake Werner, director of the East Asia program at the U.S.-based Quincy Institute, told MEE that a successful U.S. overthrow of the Iranian government earlier this year would have sparked panic in Beijing. But even amid this strategic windfall, Beijing remains deliberate and cautious. “They see a very powerful country, the U.S., bogged down, and they don’t want to provoke it unnecessarily,” Werner explained.

    The Iran war has already delivered tactical gains for China closer to its own backyard: to bolster its military operations in the Middle East, Washington has been forced to temporarily reposition key military assets away from the Indo-Pacific, easing pressure on China’s regional interests. Even so, both Beijing and Washington share overlapping core interests in securing a ceasefire in the region, notes Ahmed Aboudouh, associate fellow at Chatham House and head of the China Studies unit at the Emirates Policy Center.

    “China and the U.S. are aligned in opposing Iran having nuclear weapons and seeing the Strait of Hormuz reopened to commercial shipping,” Aboudouh told MEE.

    Pakistan, one of China’s closest security and economic partners, has already stepped into a mediating role between Washington and Tehran. Just two days after U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called on China to take a more active diplomatic role to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi traveled to Beijing to hold talks with China’s top diplomat Wang Yi.

    Aboudouh notes the timing of the visit was no coincidence. “The Chinese want to show the Americans they have leverage over Iran. But they genuinely want this war to end,” he said.

    Trump has downplayed the prospects of a ceasefire, telling reporters Monday that the proposed truce is on “life support” as he rejected an Iranian peace proposal. A day later, he pushed back on the idea that the U.S. needs Chinese assistance to end the conflict. “I don’t think we need any help with Iran. We’ll win it one way or the other, peacefully or otherwise,” Trump said.

    Jesse Marks, CEO of Middle East and Asia-focused consulting firm Rihla Research and Advisory, predicts that Xi will not offer Trump a full exit from the quagmire of the Iran war, but could assist with the technical implementation of a revised nuclear deal. “If there is a clear deal on the table where China can play a role it sees as productive, and where it can deliver without getting entangled deeply, then Beijing is likely to play that role,” Marks said. “China has already explored helping remove the existing enriched uranium from Iran as part of a negotiated deal.”

    Beijing has clear domestic and economic motivations to bring the conflict to a swift end. The war has sent shockwaves through Asian economies, which are overwhelmingly dependent on Gulf oil and gas exports. Over the weekend, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi even called on Indian citizens to cut consumption of petrol and diesel and suspend gold purchases to offset market volatility.

    Werner notes that the conflict has severely disrupted China’s large-scale investments across the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). “U.S. allies in the region – Japan, South Korea and India – are likely to face economic pressure before China does because of the Hormuz closure,” he said. “Beijing likes to see those countries’ bilateral ties to the U.S. weakened, but they aren’t happy about the economic damage because they are deeply integrated into those economies. China’s entire growth model is rooted in global trade and exports.”

    Before the outbreak of full-scale war, China absorbed roughly 90% of Iran’s oil exports, a relationship that has drawn intense scrutiny from U.S. officials. Earlier this month, Beijing ordered its domestic firms to refuse to comply with U.S. sanctions targeting five major oil refiners that process Iranian crude.

    Even so, China’s economic stakes in Iran pale in comparison to its billions in investments across the oil-rich Gulf. In 2025, Saudi Arabia ranked as the third-largest recipient of Chinese construction contracts under China’s signature Belt and Road Initiative, totaling roughly $20 billion in activity. China is also the fourth-largest source of foreign direct investment for the United Arab Emirates, with Chinese firms pouring billions into Abu Dhabi’s Khalifa Industrial Zone. State-owned Chinese shipping giant Cosco has even made Abu Dhabi’s Khalifa Port its regional hub for the entire Middle East.

    “China has poured billions of dollars into the GCC, a lot more money than it has invested in Iran,” Werner said. “Those investments are not looking so great now. The war has upended China’s investments in the Gulf.”

    Aboudouh adds that Beijing’s top regional priority is preventing GCC states from being drawn directly into the conflict, a key point of divergence with the U.S., which has actively lobbied Gulf nations to join the anti-Iran coalition. China hopes to build on the 2021 China-brokered normalization deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia, which Aboudouh says Beijing views as a replicable model for broader regional peace once hostilities end. “They see that as a model that can be replicated at a larger scale when the missiles and drones stop flying,” he said.

  • Princess Catherine takes her first solo trip abroad after cancer goes into remission

    Princess Catherine takes her first solo trip abroad after cancer goes into remission

    LONDON – Almost five months after announcing her cancer is in full remission, Britain’s Princess of Wales, Catherine (commonly known as Kate), is preparing to step back onto the international stage for her first overseas trip since her 2024 cancer diagnosis. The two-day working visit to northern Italy will center entirely on deepening her work advancing early childhood education, a policy and advocacy area that has become the defining royal cause for the 44-year-old mother of three, who is set to become Britain’s queen in the future.

    The princess will travel to the city of Reggio Emilia, a global hub of innovative early education practice that has drawn attention from educators across the world for its decades-old child-centered learning framework. Kensington Palace confirmed the trip is structured as an official international fact-finding mission, designed to examine how alternative education models can better support young children and the caregivers who guide their early development.

    The choice of Reggio Emilia as the destination for Catherine’s first post-recovery international trip is no random selection. Early years development – focused on learning and growth from birth to age five – has been the signature issue of Catherine’s public work since she launched the Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood in 2021. The organization’s core mission is to raise widespread public awareness of how investment in early childhood lays the foundation for lifelong health, resilience and success.

    Joe Little, managing editor of Majesty Magazine, explained that the trip sends a clear signal about Catherine’s priorities moving forward. “She wants to make a point that she is going to keep making this her cause,” Little said, adding that the child-focused Reggio Emilia approach aligns perfectly with the launch of the center’s expanded international engagement work. A statement from Kensington Palace added that the visit will emphasize the critical role that supportive environments and positive human relationships play in building healthy, resilient futures for children.

    The Reggio Emilia approach to early education is rooted in the core principle that children express understanding and make meaning of the world through hundreds of unique modes of communication, and that educators must meet young learners where they are rather than enforcing rigid, one-size-fits-all curricula. This model has been adopted and adapted by early education programs in more than 120 countries around the world since its development in the years following World War II.

    Catherine’s return to international public duties comes after a highly personal, uncharacteristically open journey through cancer treatment that reshaped public discourse around royal health transparency. When she first announced her cancer diagnosis earlier this year, she broke with longstanding royal tradition of guarding personal health details closely by sharing her news in a warm, accessible social media video. Later, after completing chemotherapy and announcing her remission, she spent a full day meeting and supporting other cancer patients at London’s Royal Marsden Hospital, the facility where she received her treatment.

    In a public note shared after the remission announcement, signed with her initial “C”, Catherine wrote: “It is a relief to now be in remission and I remain focused on recovery. As anyone who has experienced a cancer diagnosis will know, it takes time to adjust to a new normal.”

    That new normal centers on expanding her advocacy for early childhood education in Britain, where advocates have long flagged systemic gaps: a nationwide shortage of accessible early education spaces and widespread gaps in specialized training for early years educators. Experts say Catherine’s high-profile engagement has already brought much-needed attention to an issue that is often overlooked in public policy debates.

    Edoardo Masset, associate research director at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, noted that the princess’s focus on the issue is backed by robust academic research. “This relationship between early years education and success later in life is supported not only by strong theoretical arguments, but also by a large body of evidence on the effectiveness of programs for preschool children,” Masset explained. As one of Britain’s most popular royal figures, Catherine has a proven track record of drawing sustained public and media attention to the causes she champions, and her upcoming Italian trip is expected to generate global focus on early childhood education reform.