Global Pulse

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  • Escaped wolf forces school closure in South Korea

    Escaped wolf forces school closure in South Korea

    A young male wolf that broke free from a South Korean theme park zoo remained unaccounted for on Thursday, forcing local education officials to shutter a nearby elementary school out of public safety concerns, as hundreds of emergency personnel continue a widespread manhunt for the animal.

    The escape unfolded Wednesday at a zoo located within a Daejeon theme park, a major metropolitan city roughly 150 kilometers south of the capital Seoul. Weighing approximately 30 kilograms, the 2024-born wolf escaped after digging under and damaging the zoo’s perimeter fence, according to officials from Daejeon Fire Headquarters. Local media has released public imagery showing the predator wandering openly along a public road in the area.

    In response to the breach, authorities assembled a joint search team of more than 300 people, drawing resources from local fire departments, law enforcement agencies, and military personnel. The operation hit an early setback Thursday, however, when ongoing heavy rain forced crews to retrieve deployed search drones, cutting off a key aerial surveillance tool for tracking the animal.

    Confirming the school closure, a spokesperson for the Daejeon Metropolitan Office of Education told Agence France-Presse that Daejeon Sanseong Elementary School suspended all classes Thursday in direct response to the escape. The decision comes as local communities remain on high alert for the loose wild animal.

    The incident marks the latest high-profile animal escape from a South Korean zoo in less than two years. In 2023, a male zebra named Sero captured global public attention after breaking out of a Seoul zoo and roaming through the city’s residential and commercial streets. That incident ended without harm to the zebra or the public, after Sero was cornered in a narrow alleyway, tranquilized safely, and returned uninjured to his enclosure.

  • Three ways Orban gives himself an edge in Hungary’s vote

    Three ways Orban gives himself an edge in Hungary’s vote

    As Hungary prepares to hold its national parliamentary election this Sunday, long-serving nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban finds himself facing a surprisingly competitive challenge from opposition candidate Peter Magyar — but independent observers and international monitoring organizations have raised urgent alarms over a deeply skewed electoral landscape that heavily favors the incumbent. Over Orban’s 16 consecutive years in power, his ruling Fidesz-KNDP coalition has reshaped nearly every pillar of Hungary’s electoral and media ecosystem to entrench its hold on power, turning what should be a free democratic contest into a test of European democratic norms, analysts say.

    The first and most structurally significant advantage Orban holds stems from sweeping changes to Hungary’s electoral framework enacted after his coalition returned to power in 2010. Analysts note that even if the Fidesz-KNDP alliance loses the overall popular vote by a margin of three to four percentage points, the 2011 electoral overhaul and subsequent redrawing of constituency boundaries would still allow the ruling bloc to retain its parliamentary majority.

    Additional structural advantages come from specialized rules for ethnic minority representation and cross-border voting that disproportionately benefit Orban. Preferential mandates for ethnic minority groups require far fewer votes to secure a parliamentary seat, and representatives from both the German and Roma minority communities have a long history of aligning with the ruling coalition. Orban’s 2010 citizenship law granted simplified naturalization to ethnic Hungarians living in neighboring countries, most of whom hold favorable views of the policy and the prime minister, and these voters are eligible to cast mail-in ballots — a privilege not extended to Hungarian emigrants living further abroad, who tend to hold critical views of Orban’s nationalist government.

    Human rights groups have warned that outdated voter rolls and weak ballot security for mail-in voting create openings for irregularities, including the possibility of ballots being cast in the names of deceased voters. Concerns are further amplified by the fact that political parties allied with Orban oversee the collection of cross-border ballots in Romania and Serbia, leaving the process open to potential manipulation.

    A second core advantage comes from the ruling coalition’s near-total control of Hungary’s media landscape, a transformation overseen by business allies of Orban since 2010. Hundreds of independent media outlets have shuttered over the past 14 years, while remaining independent outlets have been acquired by pro-government oligarchs and converted into mouthpieces for Fidesz. Media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) estimates that 80 percent of Hungary’s print and broadcast media is controlled by business figures tied to the ruling coalition, and these pro-government outlets receive the vast majority of all state advertising spending.

    Critics point to stark data confirming the media’s pro-Orban bias: an 11-month study conducted in 2023 by the independent liberal think tank Republikon Institute found that 95 percent of all coverage of Orban on public television’s flagship news broadcast was positive, while challenger Peter Magyar was portrayed in a negative light 96 percent of the time. Orban’s government has repeatedly denied that it interferes with media editorial decisions.

    The third key advantage for the incumbent stems from widespread allegations that he has diverted taxpayer funds and state resources to power his re-election campaign, a practice the government defends as a legitimate duty to inform the public. In the lead-up to Sunday’s vote, Fidesz has accessed multiple official state mailing lists — including confidential records held by the national tax authority — to distribute campaign messaging directly to voters. The government has also run a massive taxpayer-funded media campaign promoting its anti-Ukraine policy positions, including opposition to Ukraine’s EU accession, with ubiquitous billboards featuring Orban’s image urging Hungarians to “stand together” with his government.

    Multiple state-owned enterprises, including national electricity distributor MVM, have also paid for out-of-home advertising that repeats Orban’s key campaign messaging on energy policy. A 2024 investigation by independent conservative Hungarian outlet Valasz Online found that the government has allocated millions of euros in public funding to dozens of local non-governmental organizations that have direct ties to Fidesz, many of which share office space with local ruling party chapters. Local media has documented that many of these NGOs have been distributing pro-Fidesz campaign pamphlets directly to voters during the election cycle.

    International monitors have been sounding the alarm over Orban’s undue electoral advantage for more than a decade. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) first documented that Fidesz held an “undue advantage” in the 2014 election, and has issued increasingly critical assessments of Hungarian electoral fairness in subsequent cycles. For this election, the OSCE has deployed a full-scale election observation mission — only the third time the organization has done so for an election in an EU member state, and the second consecutive full mission for Hungary.

    Orban has pushed back against all criticism, arguing that Hungary maintains a “very strong” democracy and that his government fully embraces political competition. Nonetheless, the array of advantages stacked against Magyar has led many democracy advocates to question whether the election can truly be considered free and fair, with results that will have far-reaching implications for the future of democratic governance within the European Union.

  • Home where young Bowie dreamt of ‘fame’ to open to public

    Home where young Bowie dreamt of ‘fame’ to open to public

    Tucked away in the unassuming London suburb of Bromley, an ordinary 19th-century terraced cottage holds the quiet origins of one of the 20th century’s most revolutionary music icons. Number 4 Plaistow Grove, a modest home originally built for railway workers, is where David Bowie spent 13 of his most formative early years, and it will soon open its doors to the public as an immersive heritage site celebrating the star’s early creative journey.

    A small blue plaque beside the property’s weathered grey front door is the only current marker of its legendary history, reading simply: “David Bowie Singer and Talented Musician 1955-1968”. Bowie — born David Jones — moved to the home with his family in 1955 at the age of eight, and lived here until 1968. It was within these walls that the quiet schoolboy transformed into an ambitious artist set on global stardom, says Geoff Marsh, a renowned Bowie expert tapped to curate the restoration project.

    Bowie shared the home with his father Haywood, mother Peggy, and older half-brother Terry, who would become one of his earliest and most profound creative influences. Terry introduced the young Bowie to modern jazz, Beat literature and Buddhism, but a schizophrenia diagnosis in 1966 led to frequent stays in psychiatric care, removing him from the family home. Biographers have documented a strained, often emotionally distant relationship between Bowie and his mother Peggy, while his father offered far more consistent support — even purchasing the young artist’s first saxophone, which he kept in his small back bedroom. Haywood died at the home in 1969 at age 56, and Peggy moved out a year later.

    Now, the property has been purchased by the Heritage of London Trust, a leading UK heritage organization, which plans to fully restore the home to its 1963 layout, when Bowie was 16 years old. Organizers aim to welcome the first public visitors by the end of 2027. Just as Beatles fans have traveled for decades to explore the childhood Liverpool homes of John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Bowie fans will soon be able to step directly into the environment that shaped the star’s earliest dreams.

    All modern additions to the home — including central heating, an extended modern kitchen-diner, a conservatory, and an upstairs bathroom — will be removed. In their place, the project will restore the home’s original coal fireplace, outdoor lavatory, compact original kitchen, and the small garden garage that once stood at the property’s rear. The home is located just steps from Sundridge Park railway station, which gave Bowie easy access to the music clubs and bohemian culture of London’s West End and Soho, providing an escape from the constrained expectations of 1950s suburban life.

    Marsh, who curated the groundbreaking 2013 *David Bowie Is* exhibition at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, notes that mid-century suburban culture pressured young people to stay in their place and avoid ambition — a convention Bowie rejected outright. “Music was his way out,” Marsh explained.

    The heart of the restored experience will be the small 9-foot by 10-foot back bedroom where Bowie’s creative path began. It was here that he wrote his first songs, endured five years of industry rejection before scoring his 1969 breakout hit *Space Oddity*, and retreated to escape family tensions and nurture his artistic dreams. In later life, Bowie reflected that the space had stayed with him throughout his career, even as he constantly reinvented his persona and ran from the constraints of his suburban upbringing.

    Alongside the original saxophone gifted by his father, the bedroom will display personal mementos from Bowie’s early years, including a print of Little Richard that a 10-year-old Bowie bought from a local Woolworths and pinned to his wall — an item he kept for his entire life. Friends who visited Bowie at the home recalled a quiet, austere atmosphere in the main house, but a palpable sense of excitement and possibility inside the teen’s bedroom, where the pair would play records and explore the American popular culture that captivated the young artist.

    Local residents who grew up alongside Bowie in Bromley have also shared memories of seeing the young artist walking the neighborhood in bold, experimental outfits assembled from second-hand and surplus finds on London’s trendy Carnaby Street. Even then, neighbors sensed there was something extraordinary about Bowie, and were convinced he would go on to change music forever.

    Nicola Stacey, director of the Heritage of London Trust, says that for fans, there will be no experience more moving than standing in the small room where Bowie’s legendary career first began: “nothing more powerful” than connecting with the moment a global icon first dared to dream of fame.

  • Key Indian states hold elections that will test reach of Modi’s party in opposition strongholds

    Key Indian states hold elections that will test reach of Modi’s party in opposition strongholds

    On Thursday, voters across three Indian regions — the states of Assam and Kerala, and the federal union territory of Puducherry — headed to polling stations to cast their ballots in the first phase of a series of critical state-level elections that are widely viewed as a critical barometer of public support for Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

    These electoral contests have positioned the BJP and its regional coalition partners, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), against a fragmented but unified front of national and regional opposition parties. Currently, the NDA holds governing power in Assam and Puducherry, while Kerala is under the control of a opposition-led administration. Two additional opposition-governed states, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu, are scheduled to hold their polling phases later this April, with official results for all five electoral contests set to be announced on May 2.

    The elections unfold against a backdrop of growing public anxiety over skyrocketing energy prices and tightening supplies of cooking gas, economic pressures amplified by the ongoing conflict in the Middle East that has roiled global commodity markets.

    For Modi and the BJP, the outcome of these state polls carries far-reaching political implications. After the 2024 national election, the BJP was forced to depend on a coalition of regional allies to form its federal government, so a strong performance across these five regions will not only cement the party’s reputation as India’s dominant political force but also strengthen Modi’s standing in the national coalition. A solid showing would also signal that the BJP is successfully making inroads into long-held opposition strongholds, expanding its geographic footprint across the country.

    At the same time, these elections are a make-or-break moment for India’s fragmented opposition, which is working to build a cohesive, sustained challenge to the BJP’s national dominance after weaker-than-expected showings in recent national and state contests.

    Each region carries its own unique political dynamics that shape the BJP’s campaign strategies. In the northeastern border state of Assam, which shares a frontier with Bangladesh, the BJP is fighting to retain its incumbent power by centering its campaign on a hardline stance toward immigration, one of the state’s most persistent and divisive issues. Ruling party leaders have leaned into sharp, polarizing rhetoric centered on claims of illegal immigration by Bengali-speaking Muslim communities, framing the election as a fight to protect the state’s demographic and cultural identity.

    In the southern state of Kerala, the BJP faces a far steeper uphill battle. Power in Kerala has historically alternated between two rival coalitions led by the Indian National Congress and national communist parties, and the BJP has never managed to gain significant electoral traction in the state. Even so, the party has poured unprecedented resources and campaign effort into expanding its political presence in the region in this cycle.

    For the small federal territory of Puducherry, the BJP is working to consolidate its influence by leveraging a pre-election coalition with a prominent regional party to hold and expand its current share of power.

    The most closely watched and contentious of all the upcoming contests remains West Bengal, where the regional Trinamool Congress has held governing power for three consecutive terms. The BJP has never controlled the state, and already high political tensions have been amplified by allegations of widespread irregularities in a recent electoral roll revision process called the Special Intensive Revision.

    Opposition parties claim the process has disenfranchised millions of eligible voters, disproportionately targeting minority Muslim communities. The Election Commission of India has rejected these claims, asserting that the revision was a routine procedural step designed to remove dead, duplicate, and fraudulent voter entries from the rolls. Similar electoral roll updates have already been carried out in multiple other Indian states in recent cycles.

  • Iran blocks Hormuz as Israeli bombing kills hundreds in Lebanon

    Iran blocks Hormuz as Israeli bombing kills hundreds in Lebanon

    Less than 24 hours after a fragile Pakistan-brokered ceasefire between Iran, Israel, and the United States was announced, the entire agreement is on the brink of collapse after Israel launched an unprecedentedly intense bombing campaign across Lebanon, prompting Iran to halt all oil tanker traffic through the strategically critical Strait of Hormuz. This vital waterway handles roughly 20 percent of the world’s daily global oil shipments, and as of Wednesday, more than 180 tankers were already transiting the strait, with hundreds more queued for entry waiting to proceed, according to reporting from Reuters.

    The crisis began unfolding shortly after the truce was finalized on Tuesday. While Israel formally agreed to the two-week cessation of hostilities with Iran, Israeli officials immediately asserted that the terms of the agreement did not extend to its ongoing military campaign against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. Iran, however, counters that a full halt to Israeli attacks on Lebanon is one of the 10 core binding terms of the brokered deal, labeling Israel’s intensified strikes a clear violation of the agreement.

    In the 24 hours following the ceasefire announcement, Israeli forces ramped up their bombardment of Lebanon to levels described by observers as “apocalyptic.” Lebanese health authorities confirm that at least 254 people have been killed in the strikes, with more than 1,160 others wounded — some local official estimates place the death toll as high as 300. More than 100 targets across the country, including densely populated residential urban areas, were hit in a coordinated wave of attacks that unfolded over just a few minutes. Among the fatalities in southern Lebanon are 12 medics who were serving on the front lines of emergency response, Reuters confirmed.

    Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam issued an urgent public appeal on Wednesday, calling on allied and sympathetic nations to bring maximum pressure on Israel to immediately end the bombardment. “All of Lebanon’s friends are called upon to help us stop these attacks by all available means,” Salam said in his statement.

    In response to Israel’s breach of the truce, Iran has taken rapid, dramatic action to enforce its commitments to the agreement. Iranian state media outlet Fars News first confirmed Wednesday that all commercial oil tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has been suspended, timed to coincide with the expansion of Israel’s attacks on Lebanon. Top Iranian officials have also openly discussed two further escalatory steps: resuming full-scale counteroffensives against Israel, and withdrawing entirely from the ceasefire agreement entirely if the Lebanese bombing does not stop immediately.

    “Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi outlined the country’s red lines clearly in a post on his official Telegram channel Wednesday. “The conditions for a ceasefire between Iran and the United States are clear and explicit: America must choose either a ceasefire or the continuation of war through Israel; both cannot coexist,” he wrote. “The world is witnessing the killings in Lebanon. Now the ball is in America’s court, and global public opinion is watching to see whether this country will fulfill its commitments or not.”

    Israeli political commentator Ori Goldberg offered a sharp critical assessment of his country’s actions during a Wednesday interview with Al Jazeera, framing the intensified strikes as a sign of political desperation rather than military strength. Goldberg described the expanded bombing as “a pyrotechnics show meant to demonstrate Israel’s effectiveness while ultimately demonstrating its despair.” He noted that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “bet it all” on aligning with U.S. President Donald Trump to advance his regional agenda and ultimately lost, after far-right Israeli leaders were sidelined from Trump’s decision to pause attacks on Iran.

    Netanyahu, Goldberg argued, has now turned back to Lebanon, a territory that has faced repeated Israeli incursions and sovereignty violations for decades. Since the 1980s, Israeli military operations in Lebanon have killed more than 20,000 people, most of them civilians, and Israel occupied parts of southern Lebanon for 18 years through the end of the 20th century. Many far-right Israeli politicians still publicly claim all of Lebanon as part of their ideological “Greater Israel” project.

    Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz defended the strikes in a Wednesday statement, claiming the operation targeted hundreds of Hezbollah militants at command centers across Lebanon. Katz called the attack “the largest concentrated blow Hezbollah has suffered since Operation Beepers,” the 2024 strike that used booby-trapped communication devices to kill dozens of people, including multiple children. It is worth noting that both Katz and Netanyahu are currently accused of inciting genocide in Gaza before the International Court of Justice, and the pair are also wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes stemming from Israel’s 29-month military campaign and siege in Gaza. That campaign has left more than 250,000 Palestinians dead, wounded, or missing, and has reduced most of the Gaza Strip to ruins, even as hundreds more Palestinians have been killed in the six months since a ceasefire was implemented there.

    Regional and international actors across the political spectrum have widely condemned Israel’s escalation as a deliberate attempt to sabotage the truce. Iraqi government spokesperson Bassem al-Awadi called the strikes “evidence of its hostile plan to sabotage the truce” and “perpetuate conflict.” Qatar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement calling on the global community “to fulfill its responsibilities by compelling the Israeli occupation authorities to halt their barbaric massacres and repeated attacks on Lebanon, and to hold them accountable for respecting international covenants and laws.”

    Major international humanitarian aid organizations have echoed these warnings, emphasizing that the partial ceasefire, which President Trump has touted as a landmark breakthrough for Middle East peace, will not survive unless the bombing of Lebanon stops immediately. David Miliband, president and CEO of the International Rescue Committee, noted that while the Tuesday ceasefire announcement was a “welcome step,” it remains “partial, fragile, and incomplete.” Miliband pointed to the core dispute over the truce’s scope: while Trump and Israel claim Lebanon was never included in the terms, Pakistan — the primary mediator that brokered the deal — confirms that a halt to attacks on Lebanon was part of the 10-point framework agreed to by all parties.

    “Leaving one front of the conflict burning risks prolonging the crisis, not resolving it,” Miliband said.

    Ahmad Alhendawi, Save the Children’s regional director for the Middle East, North Africa, and Eastern Europe, echoed that assessment, noting that the current truce structure “is not enough” to protect vulnerable civilian populations. “We’re urgently calling for a definitive ceasefire for the wider region, which includes Lebanon, to protect children from further harm,” Alhendawi said. “A whole generation of children bears the brunt of this conflict. A definitive ceasefire for the entire regional conflict, including Lebanon, is the only way to truly protect children’s lives and futures and end the suffering. The violence must end before more children suffer irreparable harm.”

    The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that Iran has already notified regional mediators that it will not participate in planned in-person follow-up ceasefire talks in Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, unless a full ceasefire is implemented in Lebanon first. That development comes as Netanyahu has publicly vowed to “continue to strike” Lebanon regardless of the truce.

    “Sounds like somebody needs to rein in Israel ASAP,” Brian Finucane, senior adviser to the US Program at the International Crisis Group, wrote on social media Wednesday. “The American people want this war to end and bombing downtown Beirut is not a path to peace.”

    Despite widespread calls to enforce a full truce, President Trump doubled down on his position Wednesday during an interview with PBS, insisting that Lebanon was “not included in the deal” and framing the Israeli assault as “a separate skirmish.” That position has been rejected by top Iranian officials, humanitarian leaders, and even U.S. lawmakers who support a lasting regional peace, who all argue that conflicts across the Middle East are deeply interconnected.

    “Aggression towards Lebanon is aggression towards Iran,” Gen. Seyed Majid Mousavi, aerospace commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, stated Wednesday.

    U.S. Representative Don Beyer (D-VA) called on the Trump administration to reverse course immediately. “The Trump administration must immediately make clear to Israel that the ceasefire agreement is not and cannot be functional without a ceasefire in Lebanon,” Beyer said. “The American people want this war to end, and bombing downtown Beirut is not a path to peace.”

    Amitabh Behar, executive director of Oxfam International, emphasized in a statement that no durable peace can be achieved without ending all hostilities across the entire region. “Until there is an end to all hostilities, across the entire region, no one will feel truly safe,” Behar said. “Israel’s ongoing invasion in Lebanon, its destructive occupation of Palestinian territory, ground incursion and airstrikes in Syria, its continued attacks in Gaza, and violent attacks and territorial expansion in the West Bank are still continuing despite the provisional cessation of violence with Iran. This deadly toll across the Middle East is intolerable and must stop.”

  • ‘I don’t encourage what’s going on’: Shane Flanagan vows to fight on as pressure mounts on the winless Dragons

    ‘I don’t encourage what’s going on’: Shane Flanagan vows to fight on as pressure mounts on the winless Dragons

    The 2025 NRL season has started in nightmare fashion for the St George Illawarra Dragons, who head into Friday’s clash against Manly Sea Eagles still searching for their first victory. With a winless 0-5 record and growing calls for head coach Shane Flanagan to step down, the veteran mentor has remained unshaken, doubling down on his commitment to turning the club’s fortunes around.

    Last week’s humiliating 0-nil defeat to the North Queensland Cowboys left fans furious, with the home crowd booing the team off the pitch after a dismal attacking performance. That loss amplified the already intense pressure on Flanagan, who has been the target of constant scrutiny from fans and media alike over the past fortnight, coming just two weeks after Manly Sea Eagles terminated the contract of head coach Anthony Seibold. If Flanagan can lead his side to an upset win over Manly on home turf in Wollongong, it would immediately ease the heat on the embattled coach.

    Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Flanagan struck a defiant but pragmatic tone, saying he will not be distracted by speculation over his future. “I’ve never been through this experience, but I’ve just got to battle on. All I can do is my best, and that’s what I’m doing at the moment. I turn up to work every day, prepare the team the best we can and look after the staff as best I can. That’s all I can do,” he said.

    Flanagan emphasized that his priority remains the long-term stability of the Dragons organization, rather than his own job security. “I’m not worried about my future. I’ve got more important things to worry about at this stage of my career. I’ve got to worry about the club, and I value the stability, the team and the whole organisation, rather than self. If I do my job and we get through it, then that’s great. If we don’t, I can walk away and say I did my best.”

    The 2016 premiership-winning coach acknowledged that pressure is inherent to coaching in the NRL, but added that the intensity of recent criticism has been difficult to endure. “It’s the NRL. If you don’t win, it’s going to come. I can’t believe the way that we attack each other in this great game of ours. I love the game, I love the people I’ve met through it and I love the players that I’ve coached. I understand it (the pressure), but I don’t enjoy it and I don’t encourage what’s going on. I wouldn’t wish what’s going on with me over the last few weeks on anyone,” he said.

    For the pivotal Manly clash, Flanagan has made key positional adjustments to address the team’s ongoing attacking woes. Star captain Clint Gutherson will miss the game with a hamstring injury, while playmaker Kyle Flanagan – Shane Flanagan’s son – is set to return to the starting side after a scary head knock ruled him out of last week’s game. Flanagan rejected claims of nepotism around his son’s selection, saying the young halfback has earned his spot through consistent performance.

    “He’s our best halfback in the club and he competes hard. You can ask all our other coaches who have got some qualifications behind them, Mick Ennis and Dean Young and Willie Talau. I don’t go pick Kyle because of his surname. He’s got to do a job and he is within our top three or four players – competitive wise – week in, week out. He’s our best halfback in the club at the moment, so we pick him,” Flanagan said.

    Key recruit Daniel Atkinson, who struggled with a poor kicking performance against the Cowboys while filling in at halfback, has been shifted from halfback to five-eighth. Flanagan explained the change is designed to play to both players’ strengths: Kyle Flanagan will take charge of on-field organization, while Atkinson can focus on his strength: running the ball and generating attacking momentum.

    “As time’s gone on, we just feel that Kyle’s strength is to organise the team and get them around the park. Daniel’s probably felt a bit of pressure, especially last week with Kyle not there, to do both. His strength is his running game and his kicking (even though) he kicked a couple dead last week, but that was probably under pressure being on his own. It’ll take the pressure off Daniel and we’ll go back to Kyle’s strength about getting the team around the park. So I think it’s just a change in number, but it’s also a change in mindset,” Flanagan said.

    The Dragons have already been rocked this season by the sudden departures of star players Ben Hunt and Zac Lomax, departures that have disrupted the team’s structure and left gaps in the starting lineup. Flanagan noted that young development players have stepped up in their absence and shown promise for the future, but a win Friday is critical to turning around the club’s devastating start to the 2025 campaign.

  • Watch: BBC asks Artemis II crew a question in space

    Watch: BBC asks Artemis II crew a question in space

    In a groundbreaking moment connecting space exploration and terrestrial journalism, the four-member crew of NASA’s Artemis II mission has fielded a question from the British Broadcasting Corporation while positioned inside their deep-space capsule, marking a rare interaction between a major media outlet and astronauts ahead of their mission’s conclusion.

  • Trump’s Iran war widens rift with European nationalists once viewed as MAGA allies

    Trump’s Iran war widens rift with European nationalists once viewed as MAGA allies

    BUDAPEST, Hungary – When Donald Trump reclaimed the U.S. presidency one year ago, a core pillar of his international agenda was clear: reinvigorate the close ideological bonds his first administration had built with right-wing and nationalist movements across Europe, laying the groundwork for a new populist global order. Today, that project lies in tatters, as a growing wave of revulsion against Trump’s war with Iran has split the transatlantic right, once seen as a unified rising political force.

    The high-profile visit of U.S. Vice President JD Vance this week, where Vance stumped directly for Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán ahead of this weekend’s hotly contested general election, is increasingly an outlier, not the norm, for European conservative and far-right leaders. Just months ago, most of these figures counted Trump as a key ideological ally. Now, many are openly breaking with the U.S. administration over its Middle East policy.

    Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, one of Europe’s most prominent nationalist leaders, rejected Washington’s request to use a Sicilian U.S. air base for strikes against Iran. Marine Le Pen, head of France’s major far-right National Rally party, has slammed Trump’s war aims as deeply erratic. Even Alternative for Germany, the country’s largest opposition far-right party, has gone a step further: its leader is now calling for all U.S. military forces to withdraw from German soil entirely.

    While a fragile ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran is currently holding, Orbán’s longstanding alliance with the Trump administration faces its biggest test yet ahead of this weekend’s vote. For more than a decade, the Hungarian leader has been the ideological standard-bearer for global right-wing populism, a model that many American conservatives have openly cited as a blueprint for restricting immigration, restructuring state institutions, and locking in long-term partisan control for his ruling Fidesz party.

    Charles Kupchan, a professor of international relations at Georgetown University and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, notes that while Orbán’s longstanding ties to Trump may buffer him from the anti-Trump backlash roiling other European far-right factions, that protection is far from guaranteed. “Getting a blessing from Donald Trump is now a mixed blessing,” Kupchan explained.

    This break between Trump and European nationalists follows an earlier rift triggered by Trump’s controversial demand earlier this year that Denmark cede control of Greenland to the U.S., a move that sparked widespread outrage across the European political spectrum, including among right-wing factions. Trump doubled down on his criticism of the transatlantic alliance earlier this week, writing on social media that “NATO WASN’T THERE WHEN WE NEEDED THEM, AND THEY WON’T BE THERE IF WE NEED THEM AGAIN,” going on to label Greenland “THAT BIG, POORLY RUN, PIECE OF ICE!!!”

    Daniel Baer, a former U.S. ambassador and Obama administration State Department official now with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the ongoing friction between Trump and European far-right groups lays bare the fundamental limitations of his goal to build a global bloc of nationalist leaders. “Building some sort of international coalition around national chauvinism is very difficult,” Baer noted. “It’s clear the majority of people in these countries, if not anti-American, have turned anti-Trump.”

    To date, Orbán has refused to join the wave of criticism against Trump, sticking to the careful neutrality he has maintained throughout the conflict. In a recent interview with British conservative outlet GB News, Orbán argued that the question of whether Trump launched a war or pursued peace remains unresolved. “It hasn’t been decided yet, historians will make a decision on that,” he said. “I think we need some time to understand whether we are moving to the peace by these strikes, or just the opposite. It’s too early to say.”

    Orbán’s reluctance to criticize Trump extends far beyond shared ideology: for years, he has framed his close personal and political ties to Trump, as well as other global strongmen like Russian President Vladimir Putin, as a unique asset that lets him defend Hungarian national interests more effectively than any opposition candidate could. He has repeatedly highlighted Trump’s public praise for his leadership to his conservative base, and built his reelection campaign around the claim that his alliance with the Trump administration guarantees Hungarian security and economic prosperity.

    Still, that strategy carries growing risks as anti-Trump sentiment spreads even among Hungarian voters. Vance’s visit this week, which saw the vice president denounce European Union critics of Orbán as foreign interferers in Hungary’s democratic process, did follow a familiar ideological script: Vance praised a elite Hungarian higher education institution funded by Orbán’s government and led by the prime minister’s political director for “build[ing] up the foundations of Western civilization” — echoing the Trump administration’s own domestic push to reshape the ideological direction of elite U.S. universities.

    But Mario Bikarsku, senior Europe analyst at global risk intelligence firm Verisk Maplecroft, warns that Vance’s high-profile visit could end up hurting rather than helping Orbán’s election chances, as public opinion of the Trump administration has turned increasingly negative even within Hungary. “Vance’s visit could have the opposite effect on Orbán’s popularity than the one intended,” Bikarsku said.

    Kupchan added that most successful European far-right parties have already built solid domestic political foundations independent of American support, giving them little incentive to align with an unpopular U.S. administration on the global stage. “Trump’s effort to create a transnational movement of far-right populists may affect the margins, but the main reason you’re seeing Reform U.K. and AfD and National Rally and other far-right parties prosper has little to do with Trump and more to do with national factors,” he explained.

    That dynamic works against Orbán in particular: across the globe, voters are increasingly leaning toward opposition parties in the wake of widespread economic and political instability. For most European far-right groups, which have spent years out of power, that trend has boosted their poll numbers. For Orbán, who has held uninterrupted power for 16 years, that same wave of anti-incumbent sentiment puts his grip on office in serious jeopardy. “We are living in an age,” Kupchan said, “where being an incumbent sucks.”

  • US resumes processing Afghan visas that will result in denials, says rights group

    US resumes processing Afghan visas that will result in denials, says rights group

    A leading advocacy organization for Afghan evacuees has sounded a sharp alarm over the Trump administration’s recent restart of special immigrant visa (SIV) processing for Afghans who supported the U.S. government, calling the long-awaited resumption a calculated deception preordained to end in widespread, blanket denials.

    #AfghanEvac, the coalition coordinating evacuation and advocacy efforts for at-risk Afghans, made the allegations public in a formal statement released Wednesday. According to group leadership, the Trump administration has begun directing Afghan SIV applicants to coordinate cross-border travel and schedule in-person interviews at U.S. embassies, but it is intentionally withholding a critical piece of information from those applicants: under current administration policies, their applications are almost certainly set to be rejected.

    “This is not speculative rumor — this is confirmed by sworn testimony from a senior State Department official,” said Shawn VanDiver, president of #AfghanEvac.

    The testimony in question comes from Andrew Veprek, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees, and Migration, who submitted the statement to a federal court in Washington, D.C. on March 30 as part of ongoing litigation in the case *Afghan and Iraqi Allies v Rubio*, filed late last year. Veprek confirmed in his testimony that SIV processing resumed in February of this year, a step the administration was ordered to take by the court.

    However, #AfghanEvac emphasizes that processing an application is not equivalent to approving entry into the United States. Veprek’s own testimony acknowledges that the Trump-era Afghan travel ban remains fully in force via executive order, and consular officers face no requirement to notify applicants in advance of potential inadmissibility grounds that will lead to denial.

    The timing of the visa processing restart carries added significance amid a separate administration deadline to close Camp As Sayliyah, a U.S. processing facility in Qatar that currently holds more than 1,000 at-risk Afghans stuck in limbo while waiting for U.S. resettlement approval. The Trump administration originally set a March 31 deadline to shut down the camp, and the State Department has been searching for third countries willing to accept the displaced Afghans. Department officials have also blamed the prior Biden administration for what they claim was inadequate vetting of the Afghan evacuees.

    Interviews with multiple Afghans currently held at the Qatar camp contradict that claim, however. Multiple evacuees told Middle East Eye they have already received approved U.S. visas, some through pathways outside the SIV program, and standard protocol requires extensive pre-screening before evacuees are ever flown to the Qatar facility in the first place.

    As of April 8, the camp remains open, contradicting the original March 31 shutdown timeline. The only Afghans who have been allowed to leave the facility so far have accepted U.S. government stipends to return to Afghanistan — a move the State Department previously told Middle East Eye it would not pursue.

    VanDiver explained the tangible harm of the administration’s deceptive policy: “In plain terms: people are being told to show up for a process that the government already expects to end in denial, without being told that upfront. For many, that means spending scarce resources, crossing borders, and taking on real personal risk for an outcome that is effectively predetermined.”

    Veprek’s testimony also outlined new plans to increase monthly visa interview scheduling at the U.S. embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan — where thousands more Afghans are waiting for SIV outcomes — by 25% this month. Even with that increase, however, Veprek acknowledged the U.S. cannot expand processing much further, noting that allocating the majority of interview slots to Afghan applicants rather than Pakistani citizens risks damaging bilateral relations between Washington and Islamabad.

    Data from the U.S. government compiled by #AfghanEvac underscores the staggering scale of the ongoing backlog. As of August 2025, 178,110 Afghan applicants have already received chief of mission approval, the formal qualification step for an SIV. None of these approved applicants have yet completed their required interviews or received their issued visas. #AfghanEvac warns the backlog could take more than a decade to clear at current processing rates, a timeline stretched even longer by widespread staff cuts implemented last year as part of the Trump administration’s DOGE initiative.

  • Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia a new regional power block?

    Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia a new regional power block?

    In a breakthrough diplomatic development announced by Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, the United States and Iran have reached agreement on a two-week ceasefire that came into effect in the early hours of April 8. Negotiators from both adversarial nations are scheduled to convene for follow-up peace talks this Friday in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, marking the first formal direct engagement between the two sides in months.

    This ceasefire announcement arrives less than two weeks after Islamabad hosted a high-profile summit bringing together Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey. At that gathering, the four nations issued a unified call for an immediate end to hostilities across the Persian Gulf, and formalized their grouping — now dubbed the Middle East Quartet — as the primary mediating channel between Tehran and Washington. Analysts view this collective effort as the foundation of an emerging regional order aimed at reducing the influence of both Iran and Israel, whose escalating confrontations have plunged the Middle East into chaos since the outbreak of full-scale conflict in late February 2026.

    Long before the current war ignited, both Iran and Israel faced growing regional isolation, a shift that has completely upended decades of Western-led diplomatic strategy in the region. The 2020 Abraham Accords, spearheaded by the United States to normalize relations between Israel and Arab states, have effectively collapsed. The accords’ core strategic goal — securing normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia — is now completely out of reach. While the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain signed normalization deals under the accords, Saudi Arabia has repeatedly maintained it will never formalize ties with Israel without the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. That prospect was formally ruled out by the Israeli parliament in a 2024 vote, and recent reporting indicates Saudi Arabia is already moving forward with plans to reroute a key fiber-optic cable connecting the kingdom to Europe, replacing Israel with Syria as the transit hub.

    Regional alienation of Israel has deepened across the Muslim world. Turkey suspended all formal diplomatic and economic ties with Israel in 2024 in protest of the Gaza conflict, while relations between Doha and Tel Aviv broke down completely in September 2025 following an Israeli targeted strike on Hamas leaders in the Qatari capital, an attack that drew unanimous condemnation from the United Nations Security Council.

    For its part, Iran finds itself even more isolated than it was at the start of the conflict. Once counting Russia, and to a far lesser degree China and Yemen’s Houthi movement, as its only core allies, Iran has seen its fragile regional partnerships crumble in recent months. China has deliberately distanced itself from Tehran since the outbreak of full-scale hostilities, while the Houthis, who entered the conflict in support of Iran, have been severely weakened by years of targeted Israeli airstrikes. The long-standing close alliance between Iran and Qatar was severed entirely after Iranian missiles struck Qatar’s critical Ras Laffan natural gas facility on March 18. Even Iran’s 2023 detente with Saudi Arabia, a breakthrough agreement brokered by China after years of open hostility, has collapsed completely following Iranian missile attacks on Saudi energy infrastructure earlier this year.

    It is against this backdrop of mutual pariah status for both Iran and Israel that the four-nation quartet of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey has stepped up to fill the diplomatic vacuum, prioritizing regional stability after months of destructive conflict.

    The quartet’s shared strategic and economic interests have aligned to drive their push for a restructured regional order. All four states maintain robust political and economic ties with the United States, and are active members of U.S. President Donald Trump’s 2026-established Board of Peace, an international body tasked with resolving global conflicts and overseeing long-term reconstruction in Gaza. Each member also brings unique, critical assets to the alliance: Pakistan is a recognized nuclear-armed state with advanced defense capabilities; Saudi Arabia controls the world’s second-largest proven crude oil reserves, giving it unmatched global energy influence; Egypt holds strategic control over the Suez Canal, one of the world’s most vital commercial waterways; and Turkey is a longstanding NATO member with a powerful regional military. Combined, the four nations boast a total population of 500 million, making them the most politically and militarily influential bloc of Muslim-majority countries on the global stage.

    While the quartet’s collective influence is undeniable, the alliance is not without historical friction. For decades, the four nations have endured periods of tense relations, requiring deliberate diplomacy to overcome long-standing divides. Egypt and Saudi Arabia’s relationship has long been described as a “difficult marriage”: Egypt’s mid-20th century leadership of pan-Arab secular nationalism was historically viewed as a direct threat to the Saudi monarchy, but since Abdel Fattah el-Sisi took power in Cairo in 2014, the two sides have resolved their core differences. Sisi offered critical political and military support to Saudi Arabia’s 2015 military operation against the Houthis in Yemen, and the pair have since deepened their defense cooperation significantly.

    Turkey, under the long leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has positioned itself as a regional power broker and conflict mediator, but it too has a history of frosty relations with other quartet members. Ankara’s ties with Cairo collapsed after the 2013 military coup that ousted Turkish ally Mohammed Morsi, while relations between Turkey and Saudi Arabia plunged to a historic low following the 2018 assassination of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. A 2021 U.S. intelligence assessment concluded that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman approved the killing, a claim he has consistently denied.

    In recent years, however, the quartet has worked through these historical divides. A formal rapprochement between Turkey and Saudi Arabia was completed in 2022, followed by a normalization of ties between Turkey and Egypt in 2025. Erdoğan toured both Cairo and Riyadh in February 2026, where he proposed multiple cross-regional geoeconomic projects to connect Asian and European markets, including the proposed Middle East Corridor designed to foster economic integration across Asia, the Persian Gulf, and Europe. Even amid recent tensions — where Pakistan has declined to intervene militarily to support Saudi Arabia against Iranian attacks, despite a 2025 strategic mutual defense pact between the two nations — the bloc has maintained its unified diplomatic push.

    As the US-Iran ceasefire holds and follow-up talks approach, the quartet’s ad hoc alliance of convenience has solidified into a transformative force in the Middle East, filling the power vacuum left by the mutual isolation of Iran and Israel and paving the way for a fundamentally restructured regional order.

    This analysis is by Natasha Lindstaedt, Professor in the Department of Government at the University of Essex, republished with permission under Creative Commons license.