Global Pulse

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  • US court limits mail-order access to abortion pill mifepristone

    US court limits mail-order access to abortion pill mifepristone

    On a Friday ruling that has upended the ongoing national battle over abortion access in the United States, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has issued a temporary order that sharply curtails access to mifepristone, the core medication used in most US pregnancy terminations, by banning mail distribution and telemedicine pharmacy dispensing. The decision reverses a 2023 U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) policy that permanently eliminated the longstanding requirement that patients pick up the drug in person from a clinical provider, a rule that grew out of pandemic-era access expansions first enacted in 2021.

    The legal challenge that led to this ruling was brought by the state of Louisiana, which argues that the FDA’s relaxed distribution rules directly invalidate the state’s total ban on abortion. In its official order, the appellate court wrote that every abortion enabled by the FDA’s policy overrides Louisiana’s abortion ban and contradicts the state’s official stance that “every unborn child is a human being from the moment of conception and is, therefore, a legal person.”

    Mifepristone is the first drug in the two-step medication abortion regimen endorsed by the FDA: it blocks progesterone, a hormone required to sustain a pregnancy, and is followed by misoprostol, which empties the uterus. The drug was first approved for use up to seven weeks of pregnancy in the U.S. in 2000, with approval extended to 10 weeks in 2016. It is also used off-label to treat incomplete miscarriages and Cushing syndrome, while misoprostol has long been prescribed for stomach ulcers and postpartum hemorrhage, a non-abortion use that has kept it out of most recent regulatory battles.

    Mainstream U.S. medical bodies including the FDA and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists have repeatedly confirmed mifepristone’s safety after more than two decades of use. FDA data shows more than 3.7 million American women used the drug between 2000 and 2018, and clinical data puts the effectiveness of the full two-drug regimen at roughly 95%, with less than 1% of cases requiring additional invasive medical intervention.

    This latest ruling comes against a shifting legal backdrop for abortion access in the U.S. In 2022, the Supreme Court overturned the federal constitutional right to abortion established in Roe v. Wade, leaving regulation up to individual states. Two years later, in 2024, the Supreme Court unanimously rejected one high-profile effort to restrict mifepristone, but left open the possibility for future state-led challenges to the drug’s distribution rules. Friday’s ruling also overrides a recent lower court decision that paused the case to allow the FDA time to complete a regulatory review of the 2023 policy.

    Reaction to the ruling has split sharply along pro-choice and anti-abortion lines. American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) attorney Julia Kaye condemned the decision in an official statement, arguing it ignores established medical science and existing legal precedent to advance an anti-abortion policy that a majority of Americans oppose. Kaye added that for vulnerable groups including rural patients, survivors of intimate partner violence, and people living with disabilities, eliminating telemedicine and mail access will cut off access to the vital medication entirely.

    Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, who brought the challenge, celebrated the ruling, claiming the Biden-era FDA rule enabled the deaths of thousands of unborn children in Louisiana and millions across the country. “I look forward to continuing to defend women and babies as this case continues,” she said.

    Other state officials have moved to reassure patients that abortion access will remain unchanged in jurisdictions where it remains legal. New York Attorney General Letitia James confirmed Friday that abortion care, including medication abortion, will remain legal and accessible in New York regardless of the appellate ruling. “Mifepristone is safe, effective, and essential. Restrictions on abortion care are restrictions on life-saving health care. This decision puts lives at risk,” James said.

  • Ghana becomes the latest African country to reject a US health deal, citing data sharing concerns

    Ghana becomes the latest African country to reject a US health deal, citing data sharing concerns

    On Friday, a senior Ghanaian official confirmed to the Associated Press that Accra has turned down a proposed bilateral health partnership with the United States, joining a growing list of African nations walking away from the agreement over unaddressed data privacy and national sovereignty risks. The core sticking point for Ghana was the deal’s provisions granting U.S. entities broad, unsupervised access to the country’s most sensitive health data without adequate regulatory safeguards, according to Arnold Kavaarpuo, executive director of Ghana’s Data Protection Commission, the government body directly involved in negotiation talks. Kavaarpuo emphasized that the scope of data access the U.S. demanded far exceeded the standard parameters aligned with the deal’s stated public health objectives.

    The U.S. State Department has not issued an immediate response to requests for comment on Kavaarpuo’s remarks. The framework of these health partnerships was first rolled out under the Trump administration’s “America First” global health strategy, which replaced a fragmented network of older health aid agreements overseen by the now-restructured U.S. Agency for International Development. To date, Washington has finalized similar deals with close to 24 African countries, offering hundreds of millions of dollars in funding to nations that previously faced U.S. aid cuts, with the stated goal of shoring up local public health systems and strengthening outbreak response capacity.

    Despite the financial incentives on offer, the agreements have sparked widespread criticism and pushback across the continent over long-standing concerns about data governance and national sovereignty. Zimbabwe became the first country to publicly reject the proposal back in February, citing identical worries around health data access, unfair terms, and threats to national sovereignty. Zambia has also pushed for revisions to problematic sections of the draft agreement, though it has not yet announced a final decision on whether to move forward.

    African privacy and public health activists have repeatedly flagged that most versions of the agreement lack sufficient guardrails for sensitive personal and population health data. In some cases, the deals also include restrictive provisions: for example, in Nigeria, the U.S. has committed to prioritizing funding exclusively for Christian faith-based healthcare providers, limiting access to support for broader public health infrastructure. Jean Kaseya, Director General of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, previously told reporters that the organization holds “huge concerns” about the deal’s terms around both health data and pathogen sharing between African nations and U.S. entities.

    For Ghana, the proposed $300 million total agreement would have allocated roughly $109 million in U.S. funding to the country over a five-year period, with matching supplemental investment from the Ghanaian government. Kavaarpuo outlined that the most problematic provision allowed U.S. entities to de-identify patient data at their own discretion, a policy that effectively amounted to outsourcing Ghana’s entire national health data governance infrastructure to a foreign power. The agreement would have granted access not just to aggregated health datasets, but also to underlying metadata, public health dashboards, national reporting tools, standardized data models, and official data dictionaries. Up to 10 separate U.S. entities would have been permitted to access this full suite of data with no requirement for prior approval from Ghanaian authorities, regardless of the intended use case.

    “We did not get any assurance that Ghana would retain meaningful governance and oversight over how this sensitive data would be used,” Kavaarpuo explained. “The agreement only required U.S. entities to notify Ghana after they had already completed a project involving data access, rather than establishing a mandatory prior approval framework.”

    Kavaarpuo confirmed that Ghana has formally communicated its rejection of the current draft agreement to U.S. officials, and has requested revised negotiations to address the country’s core concerns around data governance and sovereignty before any new deal can be reached.

  • US appeals court temporarily halts mail delivery of abortion pill

    US appeals court temporarily halts mail delivery of abortion pill

    In a move that reignites the decades-long national debate over abortion access in the United States, a federal appeals court imposed a temporary suspension on mail and pharmacy delivery of mifepristone Friday, the medication that accounts for the majority of abortion procedures across the country. The order came in a lawsuit filed against the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) by the state of Louisiana, a southern U.S. state with some of the nation’s most restrictive anti-abortion policies.

    The ruling came from a three-judge panel of the conservative-majority 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. It reverses an earlier lower court decision that permitted mail delivery of the drug to continue while the FDA undertakes a review of its existing regulatory framework for mifepristone. Under the new order, any person seeking mifepristone anywhere in the U.S. must obtain the drug in person from a licensed health clinic, eliminating all options for delivery by post or commercial pharmacy.

    Supporters of tighter restrictions on mifepristone have centered their arguments on a non-peer-reviewed study conducted by a conservative think tank, which was released via a public website rather than a peer-reviewed scientific journal. The FDA first granted formal approval to mifepristone, which is sold under the brand name Mifeprex, back in 2000. Today, it is the most widely used method of abortion care in the U.S., and it is also a standard treatment for managing early-stage pregnancy loss.

    In clinical use, mifepristone works by halting the progression of a pregnancy, and it is paired with a second medication, misoprostol, which expels the uterine lining. Together, the two drugs are approved by the FDA for terminating pregnancies up to 10 weeks (70 days) of gestation.

    Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, a leading opponent of abortion access, celebrated the court’s decision, framing it as what she called a “Victory for Life!” In a statement following the ruling, Murrill claimed the Biden administration had facilitated what she labeled an “abortion cartel” that caused “the deaths of thousands of Louisiana babies (and millions in other states) through illegal mail-order abortion pills,” adding that “today, that nightmare is over.”

    But abortion rights advocates have sharply condemned the ruling, which is already on track to be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, called the order politically motivated rather than evidence-based. “This isn’t about science — it’s about making abortion as difficult, expensive, and unreachable as possible,” Northup said in an official statement.

    Julia Kaye, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), emphasized that the decision creates unnecessary barriers to a medication that has been used safely by both abortion patients and people experiencing miscarriage for more than two and a half decades. “Anti-abortion politicians have just made it much harder for people everywhere in the country to get a medication that abortion and miscarriage patients have been safely using for more than 25 years,” Kaye noted.

    The latest legal development comes amid a sweeping shift in U.S. abortion policy that followed the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling that had enshrined a constitutional right to abortion nationwide for 50 years. Since that 2022 ruling, roughly 20 states have implemented full or partial bans on abortion care. Despite aggressive pushes from conservative groups to outlaw or severely limit abortion, consistent public opinion polling shows a majority of U.S. adults support maintaining widespread access to safe, legal abortion.

    Most recently, in 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed a separate challenge to mifepristone access, ruling that anti-abortion groups and physicians who brought the suit lacked the legal standing required to challenge the FDA’s approval of the drug.

  • Thousands of ‘lost Canadians’ have applied for dual citizenship – is Canada ready?

    Thousands of ‘lost Canadians’ have applied for dual citizenship – is Canada ready?

    For more than a century, millions of people with French-Canadian roots across the United States have carried unrecognized ancestral ties to Canada, cut off from formal citizenship by outdated and discriminatory laws. That historic injustice began to be corrected in December 2024, when a landmark Canadian citizenship law came into force, opening the door for any descendant of a Canadian citizen to prove their ancestral connection and claim citizenship – a change that has sparked a surge of applications and reignited conversations about cultural identity across North America.

    The roots of this crisis stretch back to the 19th and early 20th centuries, when more than one million French-Canadians left Canada for New England in search of mill and farm work. In Maine, where many settled, state laws once banned French instruction in public schools, and social stigma labeled French speakers as second-class citizens. Compounding this displacement, outdated Canadian citizenship rules barred generations of descendants born in the U.S. from claiming citizenship, leaving millions of people now referred to as “lost Canadians” disconnected from their formal national identity.

    Joe Boucher, the youngest of five children growing up in a French-Canadian family in Maine, embodies this generational disconnect. While both his parents spoke French to one another and raised their children with pride in their heritage, Boucher never learned to speak the language; his older siblings defaulted to English when talking among themselves, shaped by the stigma and legal barriers that once marginalized French speakers in the state. Today, Boucher is among the thousands of applicants pursuing formal citizenship proof under the new law. For him, the process is not about seeking a new home – though he dreams of one day retiring in Quebec City, where his 17th-century ancestor Pierre Boucher once served as governor of the French colonial settlement – but about reclaiming a core part of his identity.

    “It’s nice to know that the connectivity to the home country, as it were, is there,” Boucher told the BBC. Growing up, his father instilled fierce pride in their Acadian and French-Canadian heritage, and now as a musician, Boucher celebrates that history, even adapting Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem *Evangeline*, which chronicles the 18th-century expulsion of Acadians by British forces, into a original song. “My ancestors arrived in Canada 400 years ago and spent generations creating communities and cultivating the land in Quebec and Acadie. This is the family I know and this is in large part who I am,” he explained.

    For many applicants, the new law comes at a moment of particular uncertainty, coinciding with the start of the second term of U.S. President Donald Trump. Multiple applicants, including another Mainer of French-Canadian descent Tim Cyr, note that current political uncertainty has made securing a second citizenship an appealing safety net. “It’s not a great time to have an American passport,” Cyr said, though he added he has no plans to leave the U.S. permanently. Boucher emphasized that his own motivation goes beyond political contingency, centered on cultural identity rather than an “escape hatch” from the U.S., where his immediate family and life are rooted.

    In the first six weeks after the law took effect – between December 15, 2025, and January 31, 2026 – Canadian immigration officials received 12,430 applications, processed 6,280, and granted citizenship to 1,480 applicants. The surge in interest has upended industries that support the application process, most notably professional genealogy. Montreal-based genealogist Ryan Légère, who specializes in tracking French-Canadian ancestral records, says his former side business has quickly become a full-time occupation, so busy he is now considering hiring additional staff. “It’s completely taken over my life,” he said.

    But Légère also warns of growing challenges and unforeseen strains on the system. The law was passed after an Ontario court ruled that limiting citizenship eligibility to only first-generation descendants was unconstitutional, but Légère says Canadian institutions are understaffed, overwhelmed, and poorly prepared for the volume of applications they have received.

    Many applicants also face steep practical barriers to proving their ancestry. Quebec did not standardize civil birth certificates until the 1990s; before that, most births were recorded only in parish baptismal records, which are often handwritten in archaic, hard-to-read French script. Many families anglicized their surnames after moving to the U.S., erasing paper trails: Desjardins became Gardner, Bonenfant became Goodchild, and countless other names were altered to fit English language norms. The low nominal application fee of just C$75 (around $55 USD) can balloon to thousands of dollars when factoring in genealogist fees, record retrieval costs, and legal assistance, putting the process out of reach for some applicants.

    A spokesperson for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada confirmed to the BBC that all applications are reviewed on an individual basis to confirm eligibility, and warned that data from commercial online genealogy platforms cannot be used as the sole proof of ancestry. The law does include some parameters: applicants must trace their lineage to a direct parental ancestor who became a Canadian citizen on or after January 1, 1947, when Canada’s first Citizenship Act came into force. Going forward, any Canadian parent must have resided in Canada for at least 1,095 days to pass citizenship to their children born abroad. No limit is placed on how far back an eligible ancestor can be, however, meaning millions of U.S. residents could qualify for citizenship under the new rules.

    For people like Boucher, the law represents more than a change in immigration policy: it is a long-overdue recognition of a history of displacement and marginalization, and a chance to formalize the connection to the heritage his parents worked hard to preserve.

  • Love, lies, angry ghosts: Indians are bingeing on two-minute dramas

    Love, lies, angry ghosts: Indians are bingeing on two-minute dramas

    Across the busy cities and quiet small towns of India, millions of viewers like Neeta Bhojwani are carving out small pockets of daily leisure around a new entertainment phenomenon: bite-sized micro-dramas. For 36-year-old Bhojwani, a homemaker based in Udaipur, the trend started when a promotional ad popped up on her Instagram feed. Today, she is one of the format’s most loyal fans, buying an annual subscription to streaming platform Story TV and logging hours of weekly viewing, binge-watching snappy episodes that rarely top two minutes each. “Watching these is such a great way to pass time,” she says of the quick-hit shows that fit seamlessly into fragmented daily schedules.

    Defined as snackable, mobile-first fictional content designed for viewing during snatched breaks, micro-dramas have exploded from a niche novelty into India’s fastest-growing entertainment category, according to a 2025 report from venture capital and investment firm Lumikai. The sector is currently valued at $300 million (£222 million), with projections forecasting exponential growth to $4.5 billion by 2030.

    Like many global digital entertainment trends, micro-dramas originated in China, where the format is known as duanju. Major Chinese-backed platforms such as DramaBox and ReelShort pioneered the model, together boasting a combined valuation of $3 billion to $4 billion by industry estimates, and Chinese micro-drama revenues already outpaced domestic box office earnings in 2024. The format first gained traction in India around 2024, when homegrown startups including Kuku and Reelies built initial audiences through targeted social media advertising. For years, the format was dismissed as a passing fad far from the mainstream of Indian entertainment. That narrative has shifted dramatically in recent months, as some of the country’s biggest and most established media powerhouses rush to stake their claim in the booming market.

    Zee Entertainment Enterprises, India’s oldest private television network, and Balaji Telefilms, one of the country’s top television production houses, have each announced new partnerships with micro-drama startups to develop original content. In April 2026, JioStar – the media conglomerate owned by Mukesh Ambani, Asia’s wealthiest individual – launched its dedicated micro-drama platform Tadka, which already hosts more than 100 original shows spanning genres from teen coming-of-age dramas to cross-class romantic melodramas. Industry reports also indicate that Yash Raj Films, India’s oldest major film studio, and Red Chillies Entertainment, the production banner owned by Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan, are evaluating potential investments in the space, though neither company has commented publicly on the speculation.

    Media analyst Vanita Kohli-Khandekar, a contributing editor at *Business Standard*, says the move by big media into micro-dramas is an inevitable evolution of the entertainment industry. “It is only natural for big media companies to get into this [micro-drama] space. If Disney or Warner Bros can be in anything from films and TV to streaming and theme parks, it makes sense for them or other larger firms to be in micro-dramas too,” she explains.

    The micro-drama boom arrives at a pivotal moment for India’s traditional entertainment sectors. In the years following the Covid-19 pandemic, Bollywood and India’s legacy film and television industries have struggled to adapt to shifting audience viewing habits, while competing with a crowded field of new digital entertainment options. Traditional television advertising revenues have declined as digital ad spend grows, and while box office revenues continue to climb, almost all growth is concentrated in a small handful of major blockbusters, leaving smaller productions struggling to turn a profit. For media companies looking for new growth avenues, micro-dramas offer a particularly attractive value proposition: low production costs paired with massive, untapped audience demand.

    Gagan Goyal, a partner at India Quotient, the venture capital fund that backs leading Indian micro-drama startup Kuku, confirms the platform is already generating consistent revenue from user subscriptions, though he declined to share specific financial figures. Kuku, one of the first Indian startups to enter the space, targets the millions of Indian consumers who skipped personal computers and moved directly from traditional television to smartphone-based entertainment, a demographic that makes up a large share of India’s massive online audience.

    Lal Chand Bisu, co-founder and CEO of Kuku, frames the rise of micro-dramas as the fourth major evolution of video entertainment, following the launch of cinema halls, broadcast television, and long-form streaming. “We are in the fourth video-content evolution wave since cinema halls were established, which is mobile-first premium content viewing,” he says.

    Production costs for the format remain drastically lower than traditional film or long-form television. A full micro-drama series, which typically runs 50 short episodes adding up to a total runtime of 90 to 120 minutes, costs between 1 million and 1.5 million rupees ($10,878 to $16,316) to produce. As Goyal puts it: “It is like creating a dozen 90-120 minute films (the usual length of a full micro-drama) with the budget of one blockbuster movie.”

    Unlike long-form video, which finds most of its audience on YouTube, micro-drama viewers overwhelmingly discover new content through ads on Instagram and Facebook, capitalizing on users’ habitual scrolling through short-form feeds. But converting a casual click into a loyal platform user comes with unique challenges. Because viewers typically tune in during short intervals – such as office lunch breaks or commutes – micro-dramas must hook audiences within seconds, with straightforward, uncomplicated plots that can be picked up and put down easily. Even after a viewer finishes an entire series, platforms face the ongoing challenge of encouraging users to stay on the app and watch additional content.

    To address these hurdles, most platforms rely on two key strategies: maintaining a massive library of content to binge, and ending every single episode on a cliffhanger to keep audiences coming back. “The high volume helps in reducing drop-offs and targeted social media ads then help bring viewers back,” explains Sajal Kumar, a screenwriter who leads Kuku’s content team. Platforms also leverage granular audience demographic data to develop concepts tailored to specific viewer groups, further boosting engagement.

    Currently, Kuku produces 150 new shows per month, and the company plans to scale output to 1,000 shows monthly over the next two years with the help of artificial intelligence tools to streamline production. This focus on high volume has led to an industry-wide trend of story copying and cross-language remakes, with many early Indian startups building their libraries by adapting popular Chinese and Korean micro-dramas. But a growing number of industry insiders argue that long-term sustainability will depend on prioritizing quality over quantity, and investing in original intellectual property.

    Vicky Bahri, founder and CEO of Mumbai-based micro-drama platform Klip, says his company has focused entirely on original content written by an in-house team of writers. “Many start-ups in India have created remakes of Chinese and Korean micro-shows to build up their content library. But shows on our platform are completely original and created by a team of in-house writers,” he says. Bahri notes that original concepts will allow his company to build valuable, reusable intellectual property down the line, so he has increased per-series production budgets to between 2 million and 4 million rupees, and has begun casting recognizable actors to draw larger audiences. Even Kuku has followed suit, raising its average production budget to 2 million to 2.5 million rupees per series.

    For all the sector’s explosive growth, building long-term profitability remains a key hurdle for most new players. Bahri says he is prepared to invest up to 2 billion rupees over the next few years to grow Klip without turning an immediate profit. Sanket Vanzara, founder of Don Vanzara Productions, which is currently developing a micro-drama for JioStar, says the industry as a whole needs to reframe its priorities to cement micro-dramas as a permanent, legitimate entertainment vertical. “The industry needs to recalibrate and focus on producing high-quality content instead of just focusing on high volume of shows,” he says. “Quality shows will help retain audiences and actually help in turning micro-dramas into a legitimate entertainment avenue.”

    As millions of Indian viewers continue to integrate micro-dramas into their daily routines, and major media players pour capital into the space, the format is well on its way to transforming India’s entertainment ecosystem for good.

  • Oscars says AI actors, writing cannot win awards

    Oscars says AI actors, writing cannot win awards

    As artificial intelligence increasingly reshapes creative industries, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) has enacted a landmark update to Oscar eligibility rules, explicitly restricting the prestigious awards for acting and writing to work created exclusively by human creators. The announcement, made Friday, marks the first time the governing body of Hollywood’s most celebrated awards program has codified such a requirement, responding to growing industry debate over AI’s expanding role in film production.

    Under the revised eligibility criteria, any performance nominated for an acting Oscar must be “demonstrably performed by a human,” while all nominated writing work must be “human-authored.” AMPAS described the adjustment as a substantive change to long-standing Oscar rules, a shift prompted by a wave of high-profile AI integration in film projects over recent months.

    The new guidelines come amid several notable cases that have pushed the issue into the public spotlight. Following the 2025 passing of veteran actor Val Kilmer, an upcoming feature plans to use AI technology to recreate Kilmer’s likeness and performance as a lead character. Last year, London-based comedian Eline van der Velden made headlines when she revealed she had built an entirely AI-generated deepfake actor positioned to be marketed as a global entertainment star. Questions around AI’s impact on Hollywood creatives first erupted into mass industry action two years ago, when the Writers Guild of America centered AI’s unregulated use in script writing as a core demand during their historic strike.

    Legal tensions over AI in entertainment have also escalated: nearly all existing generative AI tools are built on large language models trained on decades of copyrighted human-created text, images, and video scraped without creator consent. In response, Hollywood studios, working actors, and published authors have already filed dozens of high-profile copyright infringement lawsuits against major AI developers.

    Notably, the new rules do not amount to a full ban on AI use in Oscar-eligible films. For production roles outside of performance and screenwriting, AMPAS confirmed that AI tools do not inherently help or hurt a project’s chances of earning a nomination. “The Academy and each branch will judge the achievement, taking into account the degree to which a human was at the heart of the creative authorship when choosing which movie to award,” the organization added. It also noted that it retains the right to request additional documentation about AI use and the extent of human creative input if eligibility questions arise.

    Industry observers point out that technology has long been integrated into filmmaking, with computer-generated imagery (CGI) a standard industry tool since the 1990s. The key distinction between traditional CGI and modern generative AI, AMPAS implicitly acknowledges, is that CGI is overwhelmingly a manually executed craft shaped and refined by human artists to build film elements, while generative AI is designed to fully automate creative output from simple user prompts. The updated rules strike a balance between embracing technological innovation and protecting the core recognition of human creative work that the Oscars have celebrated for nearly a century.

  • US to withdraw 5,000 troops from Germany in next 6-12 months, fulfilling Trump’s threat

    US to withdraw 5,000 troops from Germany in next 6-12 months, fulfilling Trump’s threat

    The Pentagon officially confirmed Friday that approximately 5,000 United States military personnel will be pulled out of Germany over the next six to 12 months, carrying out a threat issued by President Donald Trump amid a sharp public clash with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz over Washington’s ongoing war with Iran.

    The dispute that triggered this latest troop withdrawal plan erupted earlier this week, after Merz publicly stated that U.S. leadership had been “humiliated” by Iran’s government and harshly criticized the Biden administration’s lack of a clear strategic framework for the conflict. Trump picked up on the criticism quickly, moving to follow through on his long-stated goal of shrinking the U.S. military footprint in the European NATO ally.

    In an official statement, Pentagon press secretary Sean Parnell framed the troop drawdown as the outcome of a comprehensive review of the Defense Department’s force posture across Europe, noting the decision aligns with current theater operational requirements and on-the-ground security conditions. Germany currently hosts a sprawling network of critical U.S. military infrastructure, including the joint headquarters for U.S. European Command and U.S. Africa Command, Ramstein Air Base — a key logistics and transport hub for U.S. operations across Europe, Africa and the Middle East — and Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, which for decades has treated combat casualties from the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. The country also hosts deployed U.S. nuclear missiles as part of NATO’s collective deterrence framework.

    The 5,000 troops scheduled for withdrawal make up roughly 14% of the 36,000 active-duty U.S. service members currently stationed across Germany. Nico Lange, a senior fellow at the Center of European Policy Analysis, told the Associated Press earlier this week that most of the U.S. troops deployed to Germany primarily serve core American strategic interests, including the global projection of U.S. military power, rather than focused support for Germany’s territorial defense.

    As President Trump boarded Air Force One following an economic policy rally in Ocala, Florida Friday, he declined to answer reporter questions about the withdrawal decision. This is not the first time Trump has advanced a plan to cut U.S. troop numbers in Germany: during his first term, he proposed pulling roughly 9,500 troops from the then-garrison of 34,500 U.S. personnel, but never initiated the drawdown process. Shortly after taking office in 2021, former Democratic President Joe Biden formally canceled the planned withdrawal.

    The unpredictable U.S. leader has publicly debated reducing the American military presence in Germany for years, and has repeatedly criticized NATO for declining to join the U.S.-led war against Iran, which began February 28 with coordinated U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iranian targets. In a social media post Wednesday, Trump confirmed the administration was reviewing potential troop reductions and would announce a final decision imminently. The next day, he doubled down on his criticism of Merz, posting that the German chancellor should focus more on ending the Russia-Ukraine war and addressing domestic economic problems in Germany instead of commenting on U.S. policy toward Iran.

    NATO allies across Europe have been preparing for a potential U.S. troop drawdown since Trump began his second term, after the administration repeatedly signaled that Europe would need to take full responsibility for its own collective security going forward, including security support for Ukraine. Overall, the U.S. maintains a rotating troop presence of between 80,000 and 100,000 personnel across Europe, and allies have anticipated for more than a year that troops deployed to Eastern Europe after Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine would be the first to be repositioned or withdrawn.

    Ed Arnold, a European security expert at the London-based Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), explained that many European capitals are more concerned about potential U.S. plans to reposition Patriot missile defense systems and stockpiled ammunition from Germany to the Middle East to support the Iran war than the overall troop drawdown itself. The U.S. already confirmed a troop reduction on NATO’s eastern border with Ukraine back in October, cutting between 1,500 and 3,000 troops on short notice — a move that sparked unease in NATO member Romania, which hosts a key NATO air base on the Black Sea.

  • ‘No going back’ for Colombia’s workers as the right eyes return

    ‘No going back’ for Colombia’s workers as the right eyes return

    As Colombia prepares to head to the polls on May 31 to elect a successor to its historic first leftist government, working-class voters and left-wing political leaders are drawing a firm line in the sand: there will be no return to the old order that dominated the country for generations.

    Four years after former guerrilla Gustavo Petro made history by winning the presidency, breaking a century of conservative and elite rule, two right-wing contenders are fighting to flip the executive branch and roll back the progressive social and labor reforms Petro enacted during his term. But at a raucous May Day rally held in central Bogota on Friday, thousands of working-class supporters packed the plaza outside Congress to rally behind Petro’s handpicked political heir, Senator Ivan Cepeda, who is currently leading polls in the race’s first round.

    Cepeda used the address to warn attendees that hard-won labor gains—including an unprecedented 23% increase to the national minimum wage, and expanded overtime pay for night and weekend shifts enacted as part of Petro’s landmark 2024 labor reform—would be immediately rolled back if a right-wing government took power. He slammed his two leading rivals, ultra-right lawyer Abelardo de la Espriella and conservative Senator Paloma Valencia, as standard-bearers for the same neoliberal model that concentrated wealth in the hands of a small, unproductive elite for decades before Petro took office in 2022. “Comrades, don’t allow them to take away what we have achieved!” Cepeda told the cheering crowd under the hot Andean sun. Former Health Minister Carolina Corcho echoed the rallying cry, telling supporters: “The people have awoken. There’s no going back.”

    Just a few months ago, political analysts widely predicted a right-wing wave would wash over Colombia, following a regional trend that saw voters oust left-wing governments across Latin America from Argentina to Chile and Bolivia, with critics faulting incumbents for mismanaging economies, failing to curb rising crime, and tolerating corruption. Petro himself faced intense scrutiny from U.S. President Donald Trump earlier this year, who threatened the Colombian leader after he supported ousted Venezuelan left-wing president Nicolas Maduro. But a diplomatic reset during a recent White House meeting between the two leaders, paired with the popular minimum wage hike, has sent Petro’s approval ratings soaring—and lifted Cepeda’s polling numbers with them.

    For ordinary working Colombians, the labor reforms have delivered tangible change. Alejandro Guayara, a 38-year-old doorman at a Bogota apartment building and father of two who struggled to make ends meet for years, said the minimum wage increase brought his family much-needed “peace of mind.” While only 2.4 million Colombians earn the federal minimum wage, millions more have benefited from the overtime pay expansions included in Petro’s labor overhaul. “People have experienced new-found hope with this president because ordinary people are being taken into account,” Guayara said. Jose Cruz, a 60-year-old former member of the M-19 guerrilla group that Petro belonged to in his youth, echoed that sentiment, telling Agence France-Presse: “Today the power is in our hands, that of the people.”

    Still, Petro’s administration has faced persistent criticism over a sharp rise in guerrilla and dissident violence across the country, a issue the right-wing candidates have centered their campaigns on. Critics have long used Petro’s past as a member of M-19, which disarmed in 1990, to accuse him of being too soft on the dozens of armed groups and cocaine trafficking networks that control large swathes of northeastern and southern Colombia. Last year was the most violent Colombia has seen in the decade since the FARC Marxist rebel army signed a historic peace deal ending a 50-year civil war, and just last weekend, a dissident FARC faction opposed to the 2016 peace deal bombed a southern Colombian highway, killing 21 people—a attack the faction later called an “error.”

    Yann Basset, a political science professor at Bogota’s University of Rosario, noted that for decades, Colombia’s left was tarred by its public association with leftist guerrilla violence. But today, he said, “a large part of the population associate it with something else, with the social reforms of the Petro government in particular, and much less with violence.” Still, the surge in violence has eroded support for Cepeda, who was a key architect of Petro’s peace negotiation strategy with armed groups, among some left-leaning voters. The security crisis has also boosted support for the right-wing candidates’ signature “mano dura” (hard hand) crackdown policy, which calls for harsher prison sentences and aggressive policing of armed groups. For many younger voters like 18-year-old engineering student Juan Manuel Cespedes, the security situation has become untenable. “Security has been terrible in recent years,” Cespedes said, echoing the right’s call for harsher penalties.

    Polling currently shows Cepeda leading the first round of voting, but no candidate is projected to hit the 50% threshold needed to win outright, meaning the race will almost certainly go to a run-off. It remains unclear whether Cepeda can hold onto his lead against either de la Espriella or Valencia in a head-to-head race, leaving Colombia’s political future hanging in the balance as voters head to the polls next week.

  • Met Police chief accused of misinformation over Palestine marches synagogues claim

    Met Police chief accused of misinformation over Palestine marches synagogues claim

    A public dispute has erupted between the organisers of London’s recurring pro-Palestine ceasefire marches and the head of London’s Metropolitan Police, after Commissioner Mark Rowley claimed protest leaders have repeatedly sought to route demonstrations near Jewish synagogues — allegations organisers and prominent Jewish community figures have vehemently rejected as false and inflammatory.

    Rowley made the remarks during an interview with *Good Morning Britain* earlier Friday, when he was pressed over how his force is safeguarding London’s Jewish community following a stabbing attack that injured two people in Golders Green, a north London neighbourhood with a large Jewish population. Rowley told reporters he was “really troubled” by what he described as intentional planning to march near synagogues, adding that police had been forced to impose route restrictions every time to block the move. “Even that intent causes me concern that they repeatedly ask to do such things,” he said.

    But senior leaders of the UK’s Palestine Solidarity movement immediately pushed back against Rowley’s claims, framing the comments as dishonest and dangerously divisive at a time of already elevated community tension across the UK. Ryvka Bernard, deputy director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), the lead organiser of the central London marches, called Rowley’s intervention reckless, arguing it would only stoke unnecessary fear.

    “It’s shocking that Rowley would make such dishonest and reckless comments in a moment when his police force should be focused on protecting vulnerable people,” Bernard said. She emphasized the movement has consistently rejected any effort to conflate the Jewish community with the actions of the Israeli government, adding that “this dangerous misinformation … will only serve to create more fear and anxiety.”

    Bernard flatly denied Rowley’s core accusation: “None of our marches or proposed march routes has ever targeted a synagogue or even directly passed one along its route, and the Met Police knows that.” She clarified that the demonstrations are rooted in solidarity with Palestinians facing Israeli military action in Gaza and opposition to the UK government’s support for Israel’s campaign, a mission that will hold for the upcoming 16 March march as well.

    Lindsey German, convener of the Stop the War Coalition, another key organising partner for the protests, echoed the denial, calling Rowley’s claims “simply untrue.” “We have never set out with intent to march near a synagogue and we have never intentionally held a demonstration outside or near to one,” German said, noting that organisers intentionally plan routes to keep far away from Jewish places of worship.

    She pointed to a high-profile January dispute as evidence of organisers’ willingness to compromise. During that demonstration, police blocked organisers from assembling near the BBC’s London headquarters over the presence of a synagogue several hundred yards away, forcing the group to shift a static gathering to near the UK Parliament and leading to the arrest of senior organisers who attempted to walk to the BBC to lay a wreath for Palestinian children killed in Gaza. German said organisers had already offered multiple adjustments to the timing and route ahead of the event to avoid disrupting worshippers, only to have those compromises rejected.

    The latest controversy comes amid growing political pressure on UK police to crack down on large pro-Palestine demonstrations, which have drawn hundreds of thousands of participants since Israel launched its military campaign in Gaza in October 2023. Last week, Jonathan Hall, the UK’s independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, called for a formal “moratorium” on the recurring marches, citing a recent uptick in antisemitic attacks across London tied to demonstrations.

    But many prominent Jewish community leaders have pushed back against that narrative, including senior north London Rabbi Herschel Gluck, who explicitly rejected any link between the pro-Palestine marches and the Golders Green stabbing Wednesday. “It is certainly not the marches that caused the tragic stabbing attacks on Wednesday in Golders Gluck,” Gluck told Middle East Eye.

    Gluck, who also serves as president of the Shomrim neighbourhood patrol group that serves London’s Jewish communities, noted that a large proportion of regular march participants are Jewish, saying “pro rata, there are more Jews than any other community” taking part in the demonstrations. He added that banning the protests over antisemitism concerns would be counterproductive, noting that restricting free speech runs counter to longstanding Jewish values.

    He also argued that police are facing undue political pressure to harden their stance on the marches, accusing politicians from the Labour, Conservative, and Reform UK parties of exploiting concerns over antisemitism to distract voters from pressing domestic issues including sluggish economic growth, the ongoing cost of living crisis, and global instability. “They are just using the situation for their own ends and not really caring for the Jewish community. They are using the conflict to create more conflict,” Gluck said.

    Gluck called on political leaders to engage with all segments of the UK Jewish community, including those that speak out against Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. “They’re not marginal, but sadly, certain politicians choose not to listen also to these Jewish voices. And I think that again borders on antisemitism, when they decide not to listen to the concerns, feelings, and strong sentiments of a very large segment of the Jewish community. We need to enable and foster a more peaceful and harmonious atmosphere.”

    The ongoing row has raised concerns among protest organisers that Rowley’s comments will erode already fragile trust between demonstration leaders and law enforcement, while amplifying harmful narratives that incorrectly paint all pro-Palestine activism as inherently antisemitic. Despite the public conflict, organisers confirmed the 16 May march will proceed as planned, reaffirming their longstanding commitment to peaceful protest and opposition to all forms of racism.

  • US to cut troop levels in Germany by 5,000 amid Trump spat with Merz

    US to cut troop levels in Germany by 5,000 amid Trump spat with Merz

    A sharp public diplomatic clash between U.S. President Donald Trump and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz over the ongoing Iran conflict has triggered a formal Pentagon plan to withdraw 5,000 American military personnel from Germany, with the drawdown scheduled to unfold over the next 6 to 12 months. The announcement of the troop withdrawal came just 24 hours after Merz delivered critical remarks that stung the White House: speaking to university students earlier this week, the German leader argued that the U.S. lacked a coherent strategy for the Iran war, claiming Iranian negotiators had effectively humiliated Washington by drawing out talks and leaving American officials empty-handed after high-profile meetings in Islamabad.

    Merz’s comments quickly drew a fiery retaliation from Trump on his social platform Truth Social. The U.S. president accused Merz of supporting Iran’s nuclear ambitions, dismissed his commentary as uninformed, and lambasted Germany’s overall economic performance. Beyond his attack on the German chancellor, Trump also broadened his criticism of NATO allies who have declined to join U.S. efforts to reopen the Strait of Hormuz amid the Iran conflict, a longstanding point of friction for the president, who has been an open critic of the alliance for decades. When asked Thursday if he would also consider pulling American troops from other NATO members Italy and Spain, Trump did not rule out the move, saying “I probably will” and accusing both countries of refusing to assist the U.S. in the Iran conflict, calling their inaction unacceptable.

    Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell confirmed in an official statement that the order for the German drawdown originated with Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth. Parnell framed the decision as the outcome of a comprehensive review of U.S. military force posture across Europe, saying the adjustment aligns with current theater requirements and on-the-ground conditions. As of last December, the U.S. maintains more than 36,000 active-duty troops deployed across bases in Germany, making it the largest American military footprint in Europe and the second-largest globally, only trailing the U.S. troop presence in Japan. Germany’s Ramstein Air Base, located outside Kaiserslautern in southwestern Germany, serves as a critical logistics and command hub for U.S. operations across the continent.

    This is not the first time Trump has pushed for U.S. troop reductions in Germany. During his first term in 2020, he proposed relocating 12,000 troops out of Germany to other NATO nations or back to the U.S., but the plan was ultimately blocked by Congress and later reversed entirely by his successor, President Joe Biden. At that time, Trump justified the proposed cuts by accusing Germany of failing to meet NATO’s military spending target of 2% of GDP, calling the country delinquent in its alliance obligations. That dynamic has shifted significantly under Merz’s government: Germany is on track to hit 3.1% of GDP in total defense spending by 2027, hitting 2027 levels of €105.8 billion (£91 billion), far exceeding the alliance’s requirement. Currently, the U.S. also stations roughly 12,000 troops in Italy and 10,000 more in the United Kingdom.