Global Pulse

作者： admin

  • ‘Our dream to join Dosanjh on stage came true’

    ‘Our dream to join Dosanjh on stage came true’

    For any die-hard music fan, sharing the stage with their favorite artist is a fantasy reserved for daydreams. For Wolverhampton-based dance school owners Ravneet and Pritpal Mann, that fantasy became a joyful reality last Friday at Diljit Dosanjh’s sold-out Birmingham show at Utilita Arena.

    The husband-and-wife team, who have shared a love of Bhangra dance and Dosanjh’s music for 15 years, have attended multiple stops on the star’s tours across the UK – from a 2022 Leeds show to last week’s historic Wembley Stadium performance. Dressed in custom Dosanjh t-shirts and standing front-row at the Birmingham gig, the pair never imagined the surprise that awaited them.

    Ravneet, who has co-run the Jodi Dancers school with Pritpal for eight years, said she spent the entire week leading up to the show manifesting the moment. “I kept saying all week, ‘we will get on stage, we will do this’, and it actually happened,” she explained. The interaction unfolded organically: Dosanjh first gestured a heart toward Ravneet, which she said alone was enough to make her night. When Pritpal signaled the couple’s love of Bhangra dance, the star nodded and gave a quiet gesture that he would bring them up – and two songs later, he called the pair onto the stage.

    “I literally grabbed Pritpal’s arm and ran,” Ravneet recalled, laughing that she was so overcome with excitement she temporarily forgot her husband was beside her. Pritpal described the entire moment as a blissful blur, a rush of pure adrenaline and excitement that still feels surreal days later. “This is what cloud nine must feel like,” he said of the experience, which was captured on camera by waiting family members off-stage.

    The couple said dancing alongside Dosanjh on stage was the best moment of their lives, and praised the superstar for his down-to-earth, warm demeanor. “He was so nice, genuinely nice,” Ravneet said. “All we’ve ever wanted in our life is to be able to dance with him… and it happened in an organic way… and to do it together.” Before the pair left the stage, Dosanjh gifted them a custom box with branded hoodies and autographed their event t-shirts – keepsakes the couple say they will treasure forever.

    The surprise on-stage invite comes at a historic moment for Dosanjh’s UK tour: just last week, the Punjabi singing sensation became the first artist from his region to ever headline London’s iconic Wembley Stadium, marking a landmark milestone for Punjabi music on the global stage. The couple, who met through their shared passion for dance, currently run weekly Bhangra classes across Wolverhampton, Telford and Oldbury, and say this moment will stay with them for the rest of their lives.

  • Bound by reality: forging an American strategy for China

    Bound by reality: forging an American strategy for China

    Against a backdrop of rising military tensions, intensifying technological rivalry, and shrinking room for accidental escalation, the US-China relationship currently stands at one of its most dangerous turning points in modern history. As US policymakers continue to debate how to respond to China’s growing global influence, leading analyst David Santoro, President and CEO of the Pacific Forum, argues that American strategy must adjust its ambitions to match on-the-ground material realities. While Washington has long pursued enduring global primacy, technological dominance, and full economic sovereignty, Santoro contends that the only sustainable path forward for the bilateral relationship is deliberate, structured managed coexistence.

    To frame the ongoing policy debate correctly, Santoro first rejects two extreme, unworkable approaches that have gained traction in Washington. The first, pushing for the subversion of the Chinese Communist Party, is labeled both reckless and foolhardy. Attempting to force the collapse of a nuclear-armed major economy that governs 1.4 billion people carries catastrophic risks: even if successful, the move could trigger uncontrolled military escalation, destabilize critical global strategic assets, spark a total collapse of the global economy, and cause unprecedented humanitarian disaster. The second extreme, ceding control of the Indo-Pacific region to Chinese hegemony, is equally disastrous. Unchecked Chinese dominance in the region would choke off critical global maritime trade routes, weaken core US security alliances and partnerships, and upend the long-standing global balance of power.

    The real policy divide in Washington falls between two competing competing visions. On one side are primacists, who argue that the US must enforce full dominance and escalation superiority over China while leading a broad containment strategy. On the other side are realists, who recognize that the era of unchallenged US global primacy has ended, and advocate for building a stable equilibrium with China rooted in military deterrence, targeted economic de-risking, and managed coexistence.

    The primacist vision, while ideologically appealing to many, collides directly with hard material constraints that cannot be ignored. Militarily, primacists push for escalation dominance, using overwhelming offensive power to preserve the status quo in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, arguing that managed competition prioritizes short-term de-escalation at the cost of long-term victory, and that “there is no substitute for victory.” In technology and trade, primacists frame US-China competition as a zero-sum struggle, calling for aggressive state subsidies, increased federal research and development investment, and strict export controls to preserve US leadership in high-stakes sectors including artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and semiconductors. They also push for broad industrial rebalancing, efforts to reverse China’s mercantilist trade practices, reshoring of critical supply chains for goods like critical minerals and pharmaceuticals, full decoupling of major economic sectors, and frame the rivalry as a moral “democracy versus autocracy” crusade aimed at mobilizing US alliances to isolate China and pressure for internal political change.

    But this grand ambition runs up against unchangeable realities. Uncontested US military supremacy along China’s coastal perimeter is now out of reach. China’s layered anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) networks mean the US can no longer project unimpeded military power directly to the Chinese mainland, and any attempt to do so risks triggering a preventive war rather than deterring one. China’s expanding nuclear triad has also eliminated the traditional US strategic immunity that once kept the American homeland largely beyond nuclear threat. As expert Brad Roberts notes, the US will share mutual nuclear vulnerability with China regardless of whether it accepts this reality politically, even as it adapts its nuclear arsenal to counter both Russia and China. Material constraints make achieving nuclear dominance over these two peer adversaries simply impossible.

    On the economic and technological fronts, broad blockades on Chinese progress are equally ineffective. China’s deep pool of tech talent and massive capital reserves guarantee that Beijing can innovate around even the strictest Western export controls. Even former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, a prominent advocate for aggressive innovation competition with China, has acknowledged that both the US and China will develop next-generation AI capabilities: “We cannot prevent it. We cannot hold it to ourselves for a few years of advantage. We are in a race that will shape the world’s future.” Total economic decoupling is also prohibitively costly, given the deep integration of global supply chains, and aggressive use of trade weapons risks retaliation, including Chinese export restrictions on critical inputs such as rare earth elements that are vital to US manufacturing and tech sectors. Most importantly, key US regional allies and Global South partners refuse to choose between Washington and Beijing, preferring to maintain commercial ties with China alongside security partnerships with the US. China’s deepening strategic alignment with Russia, Iran, and North Korea also creates a counter-bloc that undermines Western efforts to achieve full isolation.

    Acknowledging these material limits does not mean American retreat or capitulation, Santoro emphasizes. It simply requires adopting a pragmatic strategy rooted in hard-nosed realism. While some realists (often called offshore balancers) advocate for withdrawing US military forces from the First Island Chain to the Second Island Chain and dissolving mutual defense alliances to reduce the risk of war, a forward-leaning realist camp argues that voluntary retreat would create a dangerous power vacuum that invites the very Chinese aggression deterrence aims to prevent. Instead, these realists argue that the US should maintain a favorable balance of power along the First Island Chain, deter aggression through military denial, manage rivalry through transactional statecraft, and seek equilibrium within the theater rather than retreating to safety behind the horizon. This approach rests on four core pillars:

    ### Pillar 1: Rebuild domestic solvency, tech leadership, and targeted collective resilience
    Sustained global American power begins with strong economic and physical foundations at home. The US should prioritize targeted public investment, next-generation AI infrastructure, green energy supply chains, and expanded domestic manufacturing capacity. Streamlining immigration pathways for top global tech talent and modernizing industrial infrastructure will also create the engines needed to sustain long-term competition. Rather than pushing for full economic decoupling that alienates US allies, Santoro argues domestic revitalization should be paired with collective resilience among partners: Washington should collaborate with allies to build joint critical mineral processing networks, shared strategic reserves, and targeted anti-coercion trade mechanisms. This framework protects both the US and its partners from Chinese economic leverage and export blockades, while preserving open trade channels for non-sensitive goods.

    ### Pillar 2: Deploy a posture of military denial and allied responsibility-sharing
    The US should shift away from vulnerable, concentrated forward military platforms toward a distributed, resilient denial network. Priority should be given to massed autonomous strike systems, long-range mobile anti-ship weaponry, hardened command-and-control nodes, and undersea warfare assets. These capabilities can deter a Chinese amphibious invasion of Taiwan or maritime coercion without relying on escalatory strikes against the Chinese mainland. As strategist Elbridge Colby argues, this approach is the only realistic option to prevent Chinese regional hegemony, since restoring full military dominance over China is unfeasible given China’s size and growing industrial and military capacity. This strategy also requires robust burden-sharing from allies: while reaffirming its extended deterrence commitments, the US should insist that front-line allies take on a larger share of conventional defense. This includes integrating Japan’s new stand-off counterstrike capabilities into joint operational planning, supporting Australia’s expansion of long-range strike capabilities under the AUKUS partnership, and co-developing defense industrial production capacity with regional partners to make the First Island Chain self-sustaining for long-term deterrence.

    ### Pillar 3: Establish strategic and operational guardrails
    As the US strengthens deterrence, it must also acknowledge mutual nuclear vulnerability with China to stabilize the strategic balance and eliminate incentives for worst-case force expansion. Building on this baseline, Washington should pursue targeted risk reduction measures across both strategic and operational domains. Drawing on the precedent of the 1988 US-Soviet Ballistic Missile Launch Agreement, the US should coordinate with allies to push Beijing to adopt formal pre-launch notification agreements for ballistic missiles and space-launch vehicles; recent Pacific Forum research suggests China may be open to such an agreement. Beyond missile-related guardrails, the two powers should secure bilateral commitments to maintain permanent human control over nuclear assets, institutionalize 24/7 military-to-military crisis communication channels, standardize maritime and aerial encounter protocols in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, and negotiate binding rules of the road for military AI, space-based targeting systems, and offensive cyber operations. These confidence-building measures are critical prerequisites for future nuclear arms control talks, which remain out of reach today due to the current asymmetry between US and Chinese nuclear force structures.

    ### Pillar 4: Institutionalize platforms for transactional diplomacy and reciprocal statecraft
    Beyond military risk reduction, preventing routine friction from escalating into open conflict requires resilient diplomatic channels that can withstand periods of political volatility. The US and China should establish joint working task forces to resolve trade disputes, update definitions for targeted export controls, and coordinate action on shared non-zero-sum challenges including global macroeconomic stability, climate change mitigation, global public health threats, and the suppression of illicit illicit precursor chemical networks for illegal drugs. Engagement should move beyond empty dialogue to reciprocal statecraft: Washington can offer calibrated market access or relaxed regulatory restrictions in exchange for verifiable Chinese actions, such as stricter controls on fentanyl precursor exports or commitments to fair debt restructuring standards for developing nations. Anchoring these exchanges in multilateral frameworks will also ensure that agreements reflect regional consensus, making it harder for either power to walk away from commitments during periods of heightened political tension.

    In conclusion, Santoro argues that prudent statecraft requires aligning strategy with material realities rather than ideological ambitions. Shifting from a pursuit of primacy to a realist framework does not require American retreat or capitulation. Instead, it demands a deliberate balance-of-power strategy: anchoring national power in domestic revitalization, enforcing stability through forward military denial and allied burden-sharing, building critical strategic and operational guardrails to reduce risk, and pairing strong deterrence with sustained crisis diplomacy.

  • What is the White House press pool and why is it in a row with Trump?

    What is the White House press pool and why is it in a row with Trump?

    A coordinated boycott by major U.S. television networks has upended live press coverage of a White House event hosted by President Donald Trump, escalating a high-stakes dispute over press access that carries lasting implications for First Amendment rights and the relationship between the executive branch and the national media.

    The conflict erupted late last week, when Trump announced a blanket ban on three major outlets — CNN, Politico and MS NOW — accusing the organizations of spreading what he calls “fake news” and fabricated lies about his inner circle. By Saturday, reporters from the three targeted outlets discovered that their White House press credentials had been revoked without warning or formal disciplinary process. In response, all five major TV networks that make up the White House television press pool announced they would suspend all pool coverage duties starting Monday, launching a collective boycott of the administration’s press access structure.

    The first test of this media blackout came Monday afternoon, at the official ribbon-cutting for a new White House helipad. With no pool cameras or shared audio feed in place, most national news outlets were unable to broadcast live footage from the event. For the few outlets that did secure on-site access, no working shared microphone was available, leaving Trump’s remarks largely inaudible to home audiences. Notably, the boycott did not impact a meeting between Trump and New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani held later that same day, as the event was open to all press and did not rely on the shared pool system.

    To understand the scope of the dispute, it is necessary to explain the function of the White House press pool: a longstanding collaborative arrangement where news organizations pool resources to cover the president across every location, from Oval Office meetings to overseas trips, with separate divisions for television, photography, print, radio and new media. The television pool’s material is shared equally among its five members — CNN, ABC, CBS, Fox News and NBC — to cut down on equipment costs and eliminate the logistical chaos of placing dozens of cameras at every small presidential event. The pool remains on permanent standby for any scenario where the president needs to address the nation unexpectedly.

    In an internal email obtained by the BBC, Fox News Washington bureau chief Bryan Boughton, who held the rotating pool lead position at the time of the boycott, confirmed that “effective today, the TV pool will not be covering events designated as pool coverage” of the president. In a formal joint statement, the five networks laid out their unified position: “The public has a vital interest in receiving accurate, independent information about its government. No administration should restrict a news organisation because it objects to its reporting.”

    The three banned outlets have already filed a federal lawsuit against the Trump administration, arguing that the credential revocation violates core press freedom protections enshrined in the First Amendment. The amendment explicitly forbids the U.S. government from abridging press freedom, a standard courts have long interpreted to bar the government from discriminating against media outlets based on the content of their reporting. A court hearing on the lawsuit is scheduled for Wednesday. In their own joint statement, the plaintiffs emphasized the stakes of the case: “Without notice or process, the White House revoked our journalists’ credentials because it objected to our reporting. Left unchallenged, this threatens press freedom and the public’s right to independent journalism free from government interference.”

    President Trump has doubled down on his position, responding to the lawsuit with scathing criticism on his Truth Social platform, calling the banned outlets “Third Rate Clowns” and a “Crooked and Corrupt Press” that trivializes and demeans his administration’s work. “Fake News people and publications that only write negatively, and who violate our National Security by writing false and defamatory stories with unknown ‘sources,’ shouldn’t be allowed access to the most important Office anywhere in the World,” he wrote, adding that his administration would appeal any adverse court ruling.

    In a parallel move, the White House has recently launched Trump TV, a 24/7 streaming channel hosted on YouTube that bills itself as a centralized hub for the Trump administration’s biggest moments. As of the boycott, the channel consists almost entirely of reruns of past Trump speeches and campaign rallies. To fill the vacant pool slot, the administration has tapped conservative outlet Real America’s Voice as a secondary crew for Trump’s upcoming trip to New York for the United Nations General Assembly. Unlike the traditional non-partisan pool, the conservative outlet has no obligation to share its coverage with other news organizations and will operate independently for its own audience.

    While Trump’s scheduled address to the UN General Assembly will not be affected by the boycott, as it will be carried by non-pool outlets, the president’s travel between events in New York — which is traditionally covered by the press pool — will likely remain without shared broadcast coverage for major networks.

    This is not the first time the Trump administration has clashed with the press over access. Back in February, the White House seized full control of the press pool system, which had been managed by the independent White House Correspondents’ Association for more than a century. That same month, the administration barred Associated Press reporters from restricted areas including the Oval Office and Air Force One over the outlet’s refusal to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America” in its coverage. The AP filed a lawsuit over that ban, which remains pending in federal court.

    Instances of past administrations restricting press access are rare, and none have gone to the extent of the current dispute. In 2009, the Obama administration attempted to exclude Fox News from a single press pool interview with an administration official. After widespread pushback from the other four pool networks, the administration reversed course and granted Fox access. Unlike Trump’s current blanket ban on three outlets from all pool coverage, the Obama dispute was limited to one individual event.

  • The deal Trump and Xi should artfully make

    The deal Trump and Xi should artfully make

    Fifty-five years after Henry Kissinger’s covert 1971 trip to Beijing laid the groundwork for Sino-American rapprochement, a high-stakes meeting between the United States and China is set to unfold in a dramatically altered global landscape.

    In July 1971, then-U.S. National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger used a reported case of gastrointestinal illness during an official trip to Pakistan as cover to slip away on a classified flight to Beijing. Hidden from view behind Cold War divisions, Kissinger’s secret negotiations with Premier Zhou Enlai cleared the path for President Richard Nixon’s iconic 1972 visit to China, the trip widely remembered as the “week that changed the world.” That historic opening turned Cold War ideological adversaries into uneasy strategic partners aligned against a shared Soviet rival, a gamble that redefined global order for decades.

    Half a century later, the geopolitical stage has flipped: on September 24, 2026, U.S. President Donald Trump will host Chinese President Xi Jinping at the White House, a meeting that follows an earlier bilateral summit in Beijing that May, where the two leaders first agreed to work toward “constructive strategic stability.” Unlike Kissinger’s hidden mission, this summit will play out entirely in the public eye, under the intense scrutiny of global media, with no backchannel secrecy and no shared overarching enemy to unify the two sides. Yet the core question facing both leaders echoes the same uncertainty that shadowed Kissinger’s 1971 flight: can two great power rivals forge a lasting, stable peace without ever setting aside their deep mutual differences?

    ### The Rise of Weaponized Interdependence
    For much of the first Trump administration, public discussion of U.S.-China relations centered almost entirely on tit-for-tat tariff disputes. Today, that framing no longer captures the transformed nature of their rivalry, which has evolved into a contest over control of critical global supply chain chokepoints.

    Nowhere is this new dynamic more visible than in the global rare earths market. China holds a near-total dominance over rare earth refining and processing capacity, so complete that even rare earth ore mined in California is currently shipped to China for value-added processing. This gives Beijing significant strategic leverage: China can weaponize its market position to hold critical U.S. industrial sectors – from aerospace and semiconductors to high-performance temperature-resistant coatings – hostage to its geopolitical priorities. Recent Chinese export restrictions have laid bare deep vulnerabilities in U.S. industrial supply chains, illustrating how a little-noted link in global production can suddenly become a major geopolitical flashpoint.

    This dynamic cuts both ways, however. Washington maintains its own formidable set of economic and strategic tools: sweeping tariffs, export controls on cutting-edge semiconductors, regulatory investment restrictions, global financial leverage, and exclusive access to the most advanced artificial intelligence chips. For its part, Beijing’s arsenal draws on unmatched manufacturing scale, control of sprawling global supply chains, dominance of rare earths and critical minerals processing, and access to one of the world’s largest consumer markets.

    Decades ago, political scientists Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye coined the term “complex interdependence” to describe how mutual economic reliance between states generates both constraints and coercive leverage for all parties. What is unfolding between Washington and Beijing today is a far more fraught iteration of this dynamic: their interdependence has become increasingly securitized, turning the deep economic ties that once bound them into a weaponized landscape of mutual coercion.

    ### Diverging Strategic Philosophies and Underlying Fault Lines
    Beyond the new geoeconomics of rivalry, the two sides approach negotiations with fundamentally differing strategic instincts. Trump’s approach to diplomacy is deeply transactional, prioritizing immediate, measurable concessions that can be framed as clear victories for domestic political consumption before global attention shifts elsewhere. By contrast, Xi’s diplomatic style follows a longer time horizon, favoring incremental progress, deliberate sequencing, and calculated ambiguity, prioritizing the gradual expansion of strategic space over short-term wins while avoiding any commitments that could limit future flexibility.

    Washington’s core priorities for the summit include securing more predictable rare earth supplies and commitments from Beijing to curb practices deemed harmful to U.S. economic and strategic interests. Beijing, in turn, is seeking relief from U.S. tariffs and technology restrictions, as well as a stable long-term framework for bilateral engagement. The bilateral Board of Trade established during the May 2026 Beijing summit has already made one modest start, agreeing to cut tariffs on non-sensitive commodity exports worth up to $30 billion annually, laying limited institutional groundwork for an otherwise highly volatile relationship.

    Beneath these surface economic negotiations lies a far more intractable security dilemma. The Taiwan Strait remains the single most dangerous fault line in bilateral relations; during the May Beijing meeting, Xi explicitly warned Trump that mismanaging the Taiwan issue could push relations into “a very dangerous place.”

    Artificial intelligence adds a further layer of growing complexity. The two powers are locked in a fierce race to dominate AI development, yet neither can manage the risks of unregulated AI alone. Every measure one side takes to boost its own security – from export controls to technology restrictions to military deployments and supply chain diversification – is automatically interpreted by the other as an attempt at strategic containment. It remains uncertain whether the U.S.-China AI dialogue mechanism, agreed ahead of the summit to monitor high-risk unregulated AI developments, will actually be activated and meaningfully used amid intensifying competition.

    While these tensions do not make armed conflict inevitable, escalating friction across multiple fronts leaves the relationship vulnerable to unforeseen external shocks. And crucially, this summit’s outcomes will reach far beyond the bilateral relationship: the entire world has a direct stake in how the two leaders manage their rivalry.

    ### Global Expectations of Managed Coexistence
    Recent conflicts in Ukraine and Iran have laid bare the inherent limits of great power influence, while a growing bloc of middle powers have steadily expanded their own geopolitical bargaining power. From India and ASEAN to Europe, Japan, South Korea, Australia, the Gulf states, and much of the Global South, most nations rely on China for manufacturing, on the U.S. for technology and finance, on Gulf producers for energy, and on one another for trade and connectivity. Few have any interest in being forced to choose an outright side between Washington and Beijing.

    India’s focus on strategic autonomy and multi-alignment perfectly captures this global stance, as does ASEAN’s longstanding resistance to binary great power alignments. European governments seek economic resilience without fully severing ties to Beijing, while Gulf states have openly demonstrated that alignment with Washington does not require abandoning closer economic and strategic ties with China.

    The most consequential question facing the 2026 summit is not which side holds greater coercive leverage, but whether their rivalry can leave enough strategic space for all other nations to operate independently. A U.S.-China bilateral condominium that divides global influence would alarm much of the world, just as a full-blown open confrontation between the two powers would carry unacceptable global risks. The only widely acceptable outcome is carefully managed rivalry: a framework that lets the two great powers adjust their equilibrium while allowing other nations to retain full strategic agency. This end goal is not friendship, trust, or even full reconciliation – it is simply stable, mutually accepted coexistence.

    ### Building Guardrails for Sustainable Rivalry
    The success of the summit should not be measured by flashy photo ops or symbolic announcements, but by whether Trump and Xi can agree on a set of modest but durable guardrails to prevent uncontrolled escalation.

    First, the two sides need to deliver greater economic predictability. Global businesses cannot afford to restructure sprawling supply chains every time Washington or Beijing rolls out a new trade or export control measure. Second, they need to reinforce open lines of strategic communication. While military-to-military contacts and crisis hotlines do not build trust on their own, they are proven tools to prevent accidental clashes from spiraling into full-blown crises.

    Third, the two sides should pursue targeted selective cooperation. Issues including climate change, global public health, financial stability, and AI safety all demand urgent collaborative action that can advance even before the two sides resolve their deeper geopolitical differences. Fourth, they need to agree on boundaries for competition: great power rivalry is inevitable, but unconstrained competition carries catastrophic risks for all.

    Finally, both sides must confront a difficult psychological reality: neither power is going away any time soon. The U.S. will remain a formidable technological, financial, and military superpower, while China will remain a major industrial, commercial, and geopolitical heavyweight. Any sustainable bilateral relationship must start from this unshakable reality.

    In 1971, Kissinger’s secret trip proved that yesterday’s adversary could become tomorrow’s partner. In 2026, Trump and Xi face the opposite, equally urgent challenge: proving that today’s rival does not have to become tomorrow’s enemy. Where Nixon and Mao needed a strategic opening to suit Cold War demands, Trump and Xi need a strategic ceiling: a clear agreement to limit the escalation of their rivalry before it slips into catastrophe.

    This summit will not decide which power will dominate the 21st century. But it can deliver a far more consequential outcome: it can determine whether the two great powers can compete peacefully, without forcing the rest of the world to pay the price for their rivalry.

    *This analysis is by Swaran Singh, former professor of diplomacy and disarmament at the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.*

  • Doctor in court to face Rwanda genocide charges

    Doctor in court to face Rwanda genocide charges

    For the first time in United Kingdom legal history, a 65-year-old former Rwandan doctor has appeared before a British court to face charges connected to the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

    Previously known as Vincent Bajinya, Dr. Vincent Brown entered a not guilty plea through his legal representation during his initial hearing at Westminster Magistrates’ Court. Held in custody since his arrest, Brown confirmed his identity and current address from the dock, marking the conclusion of a seven-year long investigation carried out by British law enforcement into his alleged role in the 100-day massacre.

    Brown faces one count of conduct ancillary to genocide, plus six additional counts of conduct ancillary to murder as crimes against humanity. The charges stem from allegations that between April 6 and April 13 1994, Brown participated in the mass killing of Tutsi civilians in the Rugenge district of Rwanda’s capital, Kigali. Prosecutors allege that Brown personally took part in, directed, and encouraged the killing of six named Tutsi victims, including a mother and her young child, and that he acted with the explicit intent to destroy the Tutsi ethnic group, in whole or in part. The charges are brought under the UK’s 2001 International Criminal Court Act, which allows British courts to prosecute individuals for genocide committed overseas, noting that the alleged killings formed part of a widespread, systematic attack against a civilian population that Brown was aware of.

    Background to the case traces back to the 1994 Rwandan genocide, when a Hutu extremist government orchestrated a 100-day campaign of mass violence that left an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus dead. After qualifying as a medical doctor in Rwanda in the 1980s, Brown rose through the ranks to lead Rwanda’s Department of Family Health in Kigali before relocating to the UK. He went on to work at Praxis, a London-based charity supporting refugees, and served on the UK government’s Refugee Nurses Task Force from 2003 onward.

    Sam Blom-Cooper, barrister for the defendant, told reporters outside court that Brown has vigorously denied all allegations and has long awaited his day in court to clear his name before a jury. “For the best part of 20 years, my client has hoped for, longed for, and prayed for this day,” Blom-Cooper said. “While the crimes alleged are appalling and the 1994 murders are unthinkable, this hearing marks the beginning of the end for Dr. Brown, who looks forward to proving his innocence.”

    The case was transferred to London’s Old Bailey for a preliminary hearing scheduled for October 9. A decision on Brown’s bail application will be made later Tuesday. British senior law enforcement officials have emphasized for years that the UK will not act as a safe haven for accused war criminals, and investigators on the case have received specialized training in international war crimes legislation. Investigations into other Rwandan genocide suspects currently residing in the UK are ongoing.

  • PM to warn EU chief of ‘damage’ posed by Made in Europe scheme

    PM to warn EU chief of ‘damage’ posed by Made in Europe scheme

    As Britain’s prime minister travels to New York for the United Nations General Assembly, he has highlighted pressing concerns over a controversial European Union trade policy, while keeping open the question of whether the UK will pursue a full return to the bloc in future election platforms.

    Andy Burnham, who took over the premiership following Keir Starmer’s July resignation, is set to meet European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on the sidelines of the annual UN summit this week to raise alarms over the EU’s proposed Made In Europe initiative, formally known as the Industrial Accelerator Act. The draft policy is designed to reduce the market access of Chinese firms within the EU by prioritizing bloc-based manufacturers for public procurement contracts and regional subsidies. However, Downing Street fears the rules could disproportionately harm British manufacturing and cross-border supply chains, even though the policy is targeted at third-party Asian competitors.

    Speaking to reporters aboard his flight to the United States, Burnham emphasized that the proposals carry avoidable collateral damage for UK industries. “Made in Europe is dealing with a different problem. We are not your enemies here… we are not the problem,” he told journalists, adding that “we both suffer the same effects as other countries, particularly steel and the issue it raises for the steel industry in Europe and in Britain. Let’s avoid collateral damage.” Burnham also noted that his government already has backing for this position among multiple EU member states, giving him leverage to push for changes to the draft legislation ahead of its finalization.

    The policy dispute has already contributed to further delays for a planned annual EU-UK summit, which was first pushed back after Starmer’s sudden departure from office earlier this summer. On the ongoing topic of Brexit and UK-EU relations, Burnham declined to rule out adding a commitment to rejoin the EU to the Labour Party’s manifesto for the next general election, framing the question as a matter for a later date.

    “Our immediate priority is to build on the good work that Keir [Starmer] did in rebuilding bridges, because those bridges were broken in the early part of this decade,” he explained. The premier’s core goal for upcoming talks is to advance practical agreements that will strengthen the British economy, alongside progress on EU proposals for expanded youth mobility between the UK and the bloc.

    Burnham’s own address to the UN General Assembly will mark 10 years since the original Brexit referendum, and he says it will focus on the risks foreign interference poses to democratic processes. “Turbulence comes when outside actors seek to manipulate, to distort facts, influence the British democratic process,” he said. “Going into the next decade, we need to be clear-eyed about that and become stronger and more on the front foot about challenging that.”

    The premier has long voiced personal support for UK re-entry to the EU: last September, he stated he hoped to see the UK rejoin during his lifetime, and earlier this year he acknowledged Brexit has been damaging to the country, while arguing against reopening the divisive referendum debate in the immediate term.

    On Monday, the European Union’s new ambassador to the UK, Jukka Salovaara, addressed the Liberal Democrat conference in Brighton, noting that “the doors are open” for the UK to deepen cooperation with the bloc, and any decision on ambition levels for the relationship ultimately rests with the British public. When asked if the EU’s recent discussion of granting associate membership to Canada could open a similar path for the UK, Burnham said the bloc has already made clear that associate status is not an option for Britain at this time.

  • British man missing after diving into Lake Como to rescue teenager

    British man missing after diving into Lake Como to rescue teenager

    A dramatic search operation is underway on Italy’s iconic Lake Como after a British man in his late 30s went missing while attempting to save a father and son who had gotten into trouble in the cold alpine waters on Monday afternoon.

    The incident unfolded off the coast of the San Siro municipality, on the lake’s western shore, where the missing man was enjoying a day-long boating trip with his close family friends, according to local Italian media reports. When the father and son from the companion group began struggling to stay afloat, the British man immediately dove into the lake to reach the pair. Though the two victims were eventually pulled to safety by a passing private boat, the rescuer never resurfaced after starting to sink below the water’s surface.

    The emergency alert was first raised at approximately 13:30 local time (11:30 GMT) by the teenage boy’s mother, who had remained on the group’s rented boat roughly 600 meters from shore with her other child. She contacted first responders immediately after witnessing the incident. Once brought ashore, the rescued father and son were evaluated by medical teams for early-stage hypothermia, a common risk in the lake’s cooling autumn waters, local news outlet Qui Como confirmed.

    In the days since the man went missing, a large-scale multi-agency search effort has been deployed across the search zone. First responders have already dispatched helicopter patrols, specialized dive teams, and search boat units to comb the area, where Lake Como’s depth plunges to more than 200 meters – too deep for human divers to safely scan the lake bed in many sections. To expand the search into these deep-water zones, rescuers are now preparing to deploy two autonomous underwater robots to conduct systematic sonar scans of the bottom of the lake, Qui Como added.

    The UK Foreign Office has confirmed it is providing consular support to the missing man’s family, and maintains ongoing communication with Italian local authorities leading the search operation.

    Located roughly 30 miles north of Milan, Lake Como is one of Italy’s most popular luxury tourist destinations. Data from the local chamber of commerce shows the destination drew more than 78,000 international visitors in 2024 alone. While the region draws crowds through much of the year, local officials routinely warn that water temperatures drop rapidly starting in September, creating unexpected cold shock risks even for experienced swimmers.

  • ‘I lost my love for swimming’ – Smith comes out of retirement

    ‘I lost my love for swimming’ – Smith comes out of retirement

    South Africa’s most decorated Olympian Tatjana Smith has opened up about the burnout and systemic challenges that pushed her to retire from competitive swimming immediately after claiming the nation’s only gold medal at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games — and why she has reversed that decision to chase a new goal at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.

    Smith, 29, captured her second individual Olympic gold in Paris with a win in the women’s 200m breaststroke, adding to her 100m breaststroke title from the 2020 Tokyo Games. She also took home silver in both Tokyo and Paris, bringing her total Olympic medal count to four — a mark matched only by South African swimming star Chad le Clos, who earned one gold and three silvers across the 2012 London and 2016 Rio Games. But her sudden retirement right after Paris shocked many, given her continued dominant performance at the sport’s highest level.

    Looking back, Smith says she had long lost her passion for the sport that shaped her entire life. After stepping away from competition for two years between Tokyo and Paris, a break that included months where she did not swim at all, Smith said she finally felt free from the pressures that turned her love of swimming into a chore. “My whole life, I was kind of a robot towards swimming,” she shared in an interview with BBC World Service’s Newsday. “You’re so zoned in, you’re obsessed with something, so there isn’t actually time for you to think about things outside of the pool that you potentially have a passion for.”

    While many argued her retirement timing was poor, Smith said she remains convinced the decision was right for her at the time. Beyond burnout, financial instability and a misaligned national sports system also drove her exit. Smith recalled relying on her parents for financial support until she broke a world record at the Tokyo Olympics, when sponsorship interest finally picked up. But she noted that most athlete sponsorships are tied directly to performance, creating constant pressure to deliver results to earn a living. Combined with a dispute with Swimming South Africa over prize money and a system she says does not prioritize athlete well-being, the burden became too heavy to bear.

    Smith, who changed her surname from Schoenmaker after marrying sports agent Joel Smith in 2023, added that shifting life priorities also factored into her choice to step away. As a woman considering starting a family, athletic career planning requires careful timing, she explained: “if you’re pregnant, it’s not like you can still compete.”

    The post-retirement transition was far from smooth, Smith admitted. Having built her entire daily routine around swimming for decades, she experienced the common “post-Olympic emptiness” that many retired athletes describe. “It was such an emptiness in my life, because my whole life revolved around swimming,” she said. “The world is so overwhelming. It’s like, in which direction to go? It was definitely the toughest season that I had to go through.” She initially took on public speaking engagements to cover expenses, but quickly learned the work was not for her: “I hate public speaking. I hate being in front of people.”

    What began as a casual return to the pool for fitness eventually sparked an unexpected change of heart. After a short-lived experiment with triathlon — which she abandoned because the intense training made her realize she missed swimming more — Smith gradually reconnected with the joy of the sport. Over a year and a half away from competitive pressure, she rediscovered the feeling that drew her to swimming as a child.

    Now, Smith is coming out of retirement to pursue a new challenge: the 50m breaststroke, an event added to the Olympic program for the first time for the 2028 Los Angeles Games. Calling the move a chance to reinvent herself, Smith explained that the sprint event requires a completely different physical and training approach than the 100m and 200m distances she dominated for years. “It’s like a 400m runner and a 100m runner. It’s two different body types, two different trainings, and that’s where I’m going,” she said.

    To protect her renewed love for the sport and maintain a balanced lifestyle, Smith has cut her training volume dramatically: from eight swimming sessions a day with 12 kilometers of distance daily to just three sessions a week, totaling 12 kilometers for the entire week, with a new focus on explosive power rather than endurance. Though she already has 20 years of endurance training behind her, she is working to build the fast-twitch muscle fibers required for sprint swimming, a whole new challenge for her body.

    After two decades of competing under external pressure and expectations, Smith says this return is entirely on her own terms. “Swimming was an opportunity given to me by my parents and I believe I took it on full heartedly. But, for the first time, it’s my decision whether I want to come back. I’m choosing swimming. I’ve achieved way more than I ever dreamed in my whole life, so I have nothing to prove.”

  • Olympic champion Smith to come out of retirement

    Olympic champion Smith to come out of retirement

    One of South Africa’s most legendary competitive swimmers and a two-time Olympic gold medalist, Tatjana Smith, has announced she is coming out of retirement to chase a new dream: qualifying for the 2028 Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles. At 29 years old, Smith already holds the status of South Africa’s most decorated Olympian, holding an unmatched medal haul from the previous two Games. She walked away from competitive swimming shortly after wrapping up her participation at the 2024 Paris Olympics, but a persistent pull back to the pool has changed her plans. In an emotional statement shared with media, Smith opened up about her decision, explaining that she has found herself missing the routine, competition and connection to the water that defined her career for more than a decade. “This return feels a little crazy, a little scary and very exciting all at once,” she said. Smith’s decorated Olympic resume already speaks for itself: at the delayed 2020 Tokyo Games, she claimed gold in the 200m breaststroke and silver in the 100m breaststroke, then followed that historic performance with another outstanding showing in Paris, taking home gold in the 100m breaststroke and silver in the 200m breaststroke, bringing her total Olympic medal count to two gold and two silver. For her upcoming comeback attempt, Smith is stepping into uncharted territory: she will target the newly added 50m breaststroke event, an Olympic distance she has never raced before at the Games. Framing the comeback as a fresh start both for her athletic career and personal relationship with the sport, Smith noted that this time around, the choice to compete is entirely her own. “It’s definitely a new challenge, a new event, a new race, but also a new me,” she said. “For the first time, I am choosing swimming and I am choosing the event and I am choosing a new event, that has no history but to try and write some new history.” While Smith has named the 2028 Los Angeles Games as her clear end goal, she was quick to emphasize that nothing is guaranteed. She will need to rebuild her race strategy, regain top competitive form, and earn her spot on South Africa’s Olympic team through qualifying events before she can step onto the starting blocks again. A former world record holder in the 200m breaststroke, Smith previously opened up about losing her passion for competitive swimming in the lead-up to her retirement, making her voluntary return to the sport all the more notable for fans across the globe.

  • Spain battles climate change on several fronts

    Spain battles climate change on several fronts

    High in the Gredos Mountains, just a few hours west of Madrid, Juan Ángel Izquierdo’s cattle graze quietly on a small, sunlit meadow, the only sound the soft clinking of bells around their necks. The peace of this scene, however, is shattered by a grim, visible reminder of disaster: charred, blackened trunks of pine and oak trees stretch as far as the eye can see, the lingering mark of the largest wildfire ever recorded in Spanish history. For Izquierdo, whose family has tended livestock and farmed this land for two centuries, the fire that swept through the region in late July was an event unlike any he had ever experienced.

    The blaze merged with two smaller nearby wildfires to consume nearly 80,000 hectares of land – an area roughly equal to 200,000 acres. By the time the flames were extinguished, more than two-thirds of Izquierdo’s property had burned to ash. Twelve of his 85 cows were killed, and eight additional injured animals had to be euthanized. Worse still, the entire stock of hay he had harvested to feed his herd through the winter was destroyed, leaving the farmer facing an uncertain future. Like many of his peers across the country, Izquierdo has watched seasonal conditions shift drastically in recent years, and growing anxiety has become a constant part of rural life. “For us farmers, summers are getting more and more worrying every year,” he explained. “They are hotter, we get less rain, the wet season ends earlier, and autumn starts much later. Those conditions are just a tinderbox waiting for a fire.” Even when there are no active blazes nearby, the fear never fully fades: “If you don’t think about it, you can feel okay, but as soon as a fire starts in a neighboring village, you start asking: are we next?”

    Izquierdo’s struggle is just one example of the far-reaching damage climate change is inflicting on Spain. Wildfires, droughts, extreme heat, and catastrophic flash flooding have become increasingly common across the country in recent years, leaving thousands of livelihoods damaged or destroyed and threatening the stability of Spain’s most important economic sectors. A new analysis from the international research collective World Weather Attribution confirms that the record-breaking extreme conditions that fueled the 2025 wildfire season across Spain and Portugal are now 40 times more likely to occur than they were before anthropogenic climate change warmed the planet. Ernesto Rodríguez Camino, president of the Spanish Meteorology Association, emphasized that human activity is at the root of the growing crisis: “The main reason we are seeing more frequent and more intense wildfires is the rising concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, driven primarily by the widespread burning of fossil fuels.”

    Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, leader of the country’s Socialist government, has framed the ongoing environmental emergency as an existential threat, noting that Spain sits on the front lines of the global climate crisis. “The climate emergency kills,” Sánchez said during a July visit to the southern province of Almería, where a separate wildfire claimed the lives of 15 people. Data from the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS) underscores the severity of this year’s wildfire season: roughly 300,000 hectares of Spanish land have burned so far in 2026, accounting for nearly half of all burned area across the entire European Union. Over the past four decades, annual wildfire damage has exceeded 200,000 hectares just eight times – and three of those events have occurred since 2022.

    Beyond the immediate human and ecological cost, the damage to Spain’s critical agri-food sector has been staggering. By mid-August, farming insurance group Agroseguro estimated that roughly 16,000 hectares of crops had been destroyed by wildfires, delivering a major blow to an industry that contributes 9% of Spain’s total GDP. Regional authorities in Castilla y León, the area hardest hit by this year’s massive Gredos wildfire, have launched a compensation program offering between €5,500 and €25,000 to individual farmers based on their total losses. But for Izquierdo, the payout will barely make a dent: he estimates it will cover less than half of what he has lost.

    Climate change is now also threatening Spain’s most economically important industry: tourism. For decades, the country’s reliably warm, sunny weather has been one of its biggest draws, turning Mediterranean coastal resorts and the Balearic and Canary Islands into global tourist hotspots and driving decades of steady economic growth. This year, Spain is on track to welcome nearly 100 million international visitors, retaining its position as the second most visited country in the world, behind only France. But growing numbers of travelers are now being deterred by extreme heat that makes summer travel uncomfortable and even dangerous. A recent study from researchers at Madrid’s Rey Juan Carlos University confirmed that repeated heatwaves are acting as a major deterrent for potential visitors. “When a heatwave hits, we see a clear drop in overnight stays at the destinations we studied, and there is also a decline in arrivals from some of Spain’s largest tourist markets,” said María Dolores Sánchez, an economist and co-author of the study. With tourism accounting for 13% of Spain’s total GDP, Sánchez noted that the trend could have serious long-term consequences for the country’s economic competitiveness.

    Toledo, a medieval inland city famous for its historic architecture and cultural heritage, has already experienced this shift firsthand. This summer, Spain recorded 61 straight days of heatwave conditions that stretched into early September, and Toledo repeatedly saw temperatures climb above 40°C. “It is really difficult to lead walking tours in that kind of heat,” said Diego Esteban, a tour guide with local operator Visit Toledo. “Everyone who works in tourism, and all local residents, have to adapt to these new conditions.” Esteban now builds frequent water breaks and shaded stops into all his summer itineraries, but he says more public infrastructure – from shaded rest areas to public drinking fountains – is needed to accommodate visitors. The extreme heat has already reshaped the local tourist calendar, with far more visitors now choosing to visit during the cooler spring and autumn months rather than summer. Warmer summers have also spurred the rise of the “coolcation” trend among domestic travelers, who are increasingly choosing cooler northern Spanish regions for their holidays instead of the hotter southern and coastal destinations that have long been popular.

    Wildfires and extreme heat are not the only climate-related disasters Spain has faced in recent years. After three straight years of below-average rainfall, the northeastern region of Catalonia was forced to implement strict water use restrictions in 2024, including a 25% cut in water allocations for industry and an 80% cut for agricultural production. While heavy rainfall in the months that followed lifted the restrictions, the drought still caused major damage to the regional economy. The deadliest climate event in recent Spanish history came in October 2024, when catastrophic flash floods hit the eastern Valencian region, killing 237 people. Spanish climate research group Climatoc-Lab described the disaster as a clear example of how global warming is altering global hydrological cycles and increasing the risk of extreme rainfall events. The Valencia Chamber of Commerce estimated the floods caused €4.5 billion in direct damage, with thousands of businesses impacted – some completely washed away, and others facing months of recovery before they could reopen. “It was a disaster on every level,” said Laura Llácer Álvarez, manager of the Fepeval industrial park federation in Valencia. “We lost hundreds of lives, and the damage to businesses, workers, and ordinary people was incalculable.”

    Experts note that Spain’s unique geography, topography, and location leave it unusually vulnerable to the impacts of rising global temperatures. In 2024, independent environmental organization Germanwatch ranked Spain as the 20th most climate-vulnerable country in the world, placed just behind Nigeria and Mali on its global Climate Risk Index. Despite these grim challenges, some economic analysts see potential opportunities in the transition to a low-carbon economy. Julián Cubero, head of climate change economics at leading Spanish think tank BBVA Research, acknowledged that rising heat already acts as a drag on economic output: “We all work less effectively when it is extremely hot,” he explained. But Cubero added that a deliberate transition to a greener economy can create new, higher-productivity jobs for Spanish workers. “The key takeaway is that if we fail to act, economic growth will slow down,” he said. “But if we manage the transition correctly, it can become a major opportunity for the country.”