Global Pulse

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  • Delcy Rodríguez visits India: Will oil talks lead to an energy deal?

    Delcy Rodríguez visits India: Will oil talks lead to an energy deal?

    Venezuela’s acting president Delcy Rodríguez touched down in India this Wednesday for her sixth bilateral visit, kicking off a diplomatic trip set to culminate in high-stakes talks with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday. While the official agenda covers a broad range of partnership areas including bilateral trade, cross-border investment, public healthcare collaboration and renewable energy development, the core of the meeting will inevitably focus on one critical commodity that underpins the growing relationship between the two nations: crude oil.

    As the world’s third-largest global oil importer, India relies on foreign purchases for 90% of its total crude demand. For decades, roughly half of the country’s total crude imports – equal to 2.5 to 2.7 million barrels per day – have traversed the Strait of Hormuz, the strategically critical narrow chokepoint connecting the Persian Gulf to global markets. Today, that critical supply route has been effectively closed amid escalating conflict between Iran and Israel, leaving New Delhi scrambling to diversify its supply base away from the volatile Gulf region. That geopolitical shift has catapulted Venezuela, a South American oil producer holding the world’s largest proven crude reserves, into a new and increasingly vital role as an alternative supplier for India.

    Current trade statistics downplay Venezuela’s rising importance to India’s energy security: total bilateral trade between the two nations hit just $679 million in the 2024-25 fiscal year, a tiny share of India’s overall global commerce. Even so, Venezuela has quickly climbed the ranks of India’s crude suppliers in recent months. Data from maritime analytics firm Kpler shows that Venezuela became India’s fifth-largest source of crude imports in May 2026, delivering roughly 266,000 barrels per day, equal to 5.3% of the country’s total monthly imports. Only four major suppliers – Russia, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Brazil – shipped more crude to India that month.

    This resurgence of Venezuelan oil exports to India comes after a years-long pause triggered by sweeping U.S. sanctions targeting Venezuelan crude buyers. When Washington reached a sanctions-easing agreement with Caracas late last year, Indian refiners moved quickly to resume imports in February 2026, marking the end of a nine-month import hiatus. Kpler data projects that incoming Venezuelan crude volumes for June will rise above 300,000 barrels per day, continuing the steady upward trend of purchases that began earlier this year.

    Regional experts frame this growing energy partnership as a win-win for multiple competing geopolitical priorities. Michael Kugelman, a senior South Asia fellow at the Atlantic Council, notes that expanding Venezuelan imports lets India diversify its supply base away from the unstable Middle East, while also aligning with longstanding U.S. preferences that New Delhi reduce its heavy reliance on discounted Russian crude. “Ramping up imports from Venezuela could also give a boost to India’s ties with Washington,” Kugelman explained in an interview with the BBC. Even so, Kugelman cautions that significant risks remain: Venezuela’s long history of political volatility could derail plans for deepened energy cooperation, and New Delhi will have to navigate carefully to avoid appearing that it is shifting away from Russian oil solely at Washington’s direction.

    While the timing of Venezuela’s return to India’s import mix aligns with new supply risks stemming from the Strait of Hormuz closure, industry analysts emphasize that the shift is part of a long-term strategy, not a purely reactive response to the latest Middle East crisis. “The initial cargoes that arrived earlier this spring were likely secured well before the recent disruptions, highlighting a longer-term sourcing strategy rather than a purely reactive response,” explained Sumit Ritolia, lead research analyst at Kpler.

    Beyond geopolitics, Venezuelan crude holds unique practical appeal for Indian refiners. Though it is cheaper than most competing grades on the global market, Venezuelan crude is a heavy, high-sulfur variety that requires specialized refining infrastructure to process efficiently. India’s domestic refining sector is one of the most sophisticated in the world, with many facilities purpose-built to handle heavy sour crude, turning it into high-demand products like diesel and jet fuel for domestic use and export.

    This renewed energy partnership marks a partial return to the close ties the two nations shared decades ago. Before U.S. sanctions halted imports in 2019, Venezuela was consistently one of India’s top crude suppliers. It rose to third place by 2012 and remained in the top five for years after, shipping nearly 16 million tonnes of crude annually by 2019 and pushing total bilateral trade to a peak of $6.4 billion that year, almost entirely driven by energy commerce.

    Despite the current momentum, industry experts widely agree that Venezuela is unlikely to fundamentally reshape India’s overall energy mix in the near term. While Venezuelan oil production has risen by 400,000 to 500,000 barrels per day this year, output still remains far below historic peak levels, limiting the country’s ability to displace larger, more established suppliers. “Instead, Venezuelan barrels are best viewed as an attractive diversification option – providing Indian refiners with access to economical heavy crude while reducing reliance on any single supply region,” Ritolia noted.

    The future of India-Venezuela energy cooperation will depend on three key variables: sustained production growth in Venezuela, future adjustments to U.S. sanctions policy, and shifting global geopolitical dynamics. Even so, New Delhi has made clear that it sees significant room for deepened collaboration. In an official statement ahead of Rodríguez’s visit, the Indian government noted that Venezuela has long been “an important partner” in energy and investment, adding that Indian state-owned oil firms already hold significant stakes in Venezuela’s oil sector and are “keen to explore opportunities for further enhancing their presence.”

    Still, analysts say expectations for major breakthroughs during this visit should be tempered. Kugelman predicts that New Delhi will take a cautious approach, avoiding rushed commitments on large new energy deals even as both sides publicly push for deeper cooperation. “Delhi will tread carefully during this visit and not be willing to commit to much on the energy front just yet. We’ll likely see a big push for deeper cooperation, but not necessarily with the announcement of a new energy deal,” he said.

  • A higher ceiling than Messi? What next for Lamine Yamal?

    A higher ceiling than Messi? What next for Lamine Yamal?

    As the 2026 FIFA World Cup approaches, all eyes in global football are turning to 18-year-old Spanish phenom Lamine Yamal, a teenage talent already being hailed as the next generational great of the game – even by the greatest to ever play the sport.

    During a World Cup commercial event, Lionel Messi was asked to name the standout young player of the new era, and he left no room for debate. “It would be Lamine. No doubt about it: for me, he is the best,” Messi said. Just one week later, when US broadcaster CBS asked Yamal point-blank if Spain would lift the World Cup trophy, the teenager smiled and gave a confident one-word answer: “Yes.”

    What makes Yamal’s ascent genuinely extraordinary is not just the avalanche of praise from football royalty that has landed on his shoulders before his 19th birthday. It is the remarkable poise and self-awareness with which he carries that weight, and how clearly he has already carved out his own identity, both as a footballer and a public figure.

    At 18 years old, Yamal already has a resume most senior players can only dream of: he has featured in a UEFA Champions League semi-final, won the 2024 European Championship with Spain, and inherited Barcelona’s iconic number 10 shirt – the same number Messi wore for nearly 15 years at Camp Nou. While his precocity is staggering, the most striking trait of his game and his character is his unshakable serenity under pressure.

    Comparisons to Messi have followed Yamal throughout his rise, whether he seeks them out or not. Both are left-footed players with the same deceptive dribbling intelligence that makes the most challenging on-field moves look effortless. In fact, many experts argue Yamal has already had a far greater impact at Barcelona at 18 than Messi did at the same age, though any prediction that he will ultimately match the eight-time Ballon d’Or winner’s legacy remains far too early to make.

    One telling statistic, however, highlights just how far Yamal has already come: by his 18th birthday, he had already made 151 appearances for Barcelona’s first team. By the time Messi turned 19 in June 2006, he had only notched 41 top-flight appearances for the Catalan club.

    Football greats who have seen both players develop have been quick to draw a clear lineage between the two generations. Ronaldinho, who played alongside a young Messi at the start of Barcelona’s golden era and won the Champions League with him, drew the line directly in comments to FIFA’s website in March. “Messi and I made history, and now it is Lamine Yamal’s turn. What he has already shown at such a young age is extraordinary,” the Brazilian legend said.

    Former Manchester United defender Rio Ferdinand went even further when asked if Yamal is already a better player at the same age than Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo were. Ferdinand replied bluntly on ESPN: “Yes. His potential or ceiling might be better than theirs. The body of work at 17 years old – no-one has done it. Pele may have, but I didn’t see Pele.”

    Spain national team head coach Luis de la Fuente, who has watched Yamal progress through the country’s youth age groups, says what sets the teenager apart goes far beyond raw talent. “He is a player blessed by God. Football geniuses have something special, and he has it,” De la Fuente said. “You can immediately see those kinds of footballers who are touched by magic that says: you are going to be special.”

    Barcelona manager Hansi Flick, who works with Yamal in training every day and has watched him perform on the biggest club stages all season, echoes that praise. “He is special, he is a genius. In the big matches, he shows up. Players do not usually reach this level of maturity until they are 24 or 25 years old. If this kind of talent only comes every half-century, I am glad it is for Barcelona,” Flick said.

    What truly separates Yamal from the dozens of previous “next Messis” tipped for stardom at Barcelona over the past two decades is his deliberate rejection of trying to fill anyone else’s shoes. While he openly admires Messi, he holds a quiet, unshakable determination to forge his own path. “For me, Messi is the greatest football player in history. He is a legend and I do not find myself worthy of being compared to him,” Yamal said. “I do not want to be Messi and he knows it. I want to follow my own path.”

    The same mindset applies when comparisons to Ronaldo are raised. Yamal does not dismiss either the comparisons or the legendary legacy of the five-time Ballon d’Or winner – he simply refuses to structure his own ambition around matching anyone else. “It is best not to compare yourself to anyone,” he said at an awards ceremony. “Players like Cristiano Ronaldo did what they did because they wanted to be themselves. I try to be me, play my game, and get people to recognise me for being Lamine.”

    Barcelona’s academy has produced no shortage of young talents anointed as the next great hope, only for many to fade under the weight of expectations: Giovani dos Santos, Gerard Deulofeu, Bojan Krkic, Ansu Fati, and Munir El Haddadi are just a few of the prospects who carried the “next Messi” label at one point or another. Yamal, by contrast, lets the media and fans debate his potential while he focuses on playing, even as speculation about a future Ballon d’Or win has followed him since he was 16 years old.

    He says he plays to bring joy to fans, and wants young children to aspire to be like him – not like Messi or Ronaldo. “I am not thinking about the Ballon d’Or. I want to enjoy myself and win with Barca and the national team,” he said. “Pressure does not exist, it is an excuse. If you just think about enjoying yourself and having fun, there is no pressure.”

    That confidence in his own trajectory is nothing new to the coaches who spotted his talent early. Inocente Diaz, one of Yamal’s youth coaches at Barcelona’s famed La Masia academy, made a bold prediction as far back as 2025. “He is even better than Messi,” Diaz told Spanish newspaper Sport. “He possesses a unique blend of physical attributes reminiscent of both Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo. In six years, he will win the Ballon d’Or.”

    For Yamal himself, the immediate target is clear: the 2026 World Cup. He has already laid out his ambitions for the tournament, where he will be the centerpiece of a Spanish squad ranked among the pre-tournament favorites. “I have always imagined playing in a World Cup, seeing my mother in the stands. I hope I can win it,” he said.

    What many casual observers have missed about Yamal’s game, which La Masia coaches recognized long before the rest of the world, is his evolving tactical profile. While he is officially listed as a winger who terrorizes opposing full-backs from the left flank with elite dribbling numbers, Yamal says his childhood approach to the game was far more focused on football intelligence than individual skill. “When I was small I never dribbled much or got past many opponents. I scored a lot of goals, ran a lot, but above all I had very good vision of the game,” he explained. “I focused on what Messi did because he gave different passes – passes that led to goals. And I looked at Modric, who passed with the outside of his foot. That seemed more interesting to me than dribbling, because it is more about the mind.”

    That fascination with a midfielder renowned for his spatial awareness and vision, rather than a dynamic winger, hints at the evolutionary path Yamal is already walking. Over the past two seasons, tactical data has shown Yamal increasingly drifting into central areas of the pitch, operating as a second playmaker as often as he stays wide on the flank. That shift mirrors the transition Messi made early in his career, when he moved from the right wing to the false nine position at the center of Barcelona’s attack, a shift that turned him into the greatest player of his generation. It took Messi more than a decade to complete that transition – Yamal may make the move far earlier.

    Julen Guerrero, who worked with Yamal in Spain’s youth system, says he is not surprised by the teenager’s tactical evolution. “Of course I can picture him as a false nine,” Guerrero said. “But it is a less comfortable position because teams block the centre more, there are fewer spaces, you have to be more patient. But he is very intelligent. He knows how to move.”

    As the 2026 World Cup kicks off, Yamal will be just 18 years old – he will not turn 19 until the day before the tournament’s first semi-final. Spain arrives at the competition as one of the title favorites, built around the teenage talent who has already proven he is far more than just the next Messi. He is Lamine Yamal – and he is ready to write his own story on the world’s biggest football stage.

  • Australians paying almost as much for passports as government’s gas revenue, David Pocock says

    Australians paying almost as much for passports as government’s gas revenue, David Pocock says

    A fiery new exchange at a recent Australian Senate hearing has reignited debate over the federal government’s tax and public service pricing policies, with independent Senator David Pocock doubling down on criticism of the imbalance between petroleum tax revenue and sky-high passport fees.

    At Thursday’s hearing, Pocock highlighted a striking comparison that underscores what he calls the government’s lopsided policy framework: by the end of the current decade, total annual revenue collected from Australian passport fees will only be a few hundred million dollars lower than the total annual take from the Petroleum Resources Rent Tax (PRRT)—the levy designed to deliver public returns from the country’s massive offshore liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports.

    As one of the world’s top LNG exporters, Australia’s PRRT system has faced sustained scrutiny from Pocock, who has repeatedly called out the low revenue it generates for public coffers. The latest data he cited shows that by the 2029-30 financial year, annual revenue from passport services is projected to hit as much as AUD 1.2 billion, up from more than AUD 1 billion forecast for the 2024-25 financial year. By comparison, the PRRT is on track to bring in just a few hundred million more than that figure annually by the end of the decade.

    When it comes to passport pricing, Australia already holds the unenviable title of having some of the most expensive passport fees in the developed world. Starting in 2026, an adult renewing a 10-year passport will pay AUD 422, while seniors and children will pay AUD 213 for a five-year document. Volume projections from government officials show the government is expected to issue up to 2.2 million passports in the current financial year, rising to 2.5 million annually by next financial year.

    Pocock argued that the gap between these two revenue streams is indefensible. “As one of the biggest gas exporters in the world, those two things just don’t seem to square … that’s an absurd comparison,” he told the committee. He also noted that Australian passport costs far outpace prices in comparable nations: a Canadian 10-year passport costs roughly AUD 170, a British equivalent is AUD 195, a New Zealand passport comes in at AUD 225, and a U.S. passport is AUD 250—all less than 60% of the cost of an Australian adult passport. In some cases, Australians pay nearly double what citizens of other wealthy nations pay for the same official document.

    Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong defended the federal Labor government’s policies on both fronts, pushing back against Pocock’s criticism. Wong acknowledged understanding Pocock’s perspective but argued the government has crafted a balanced approach that serves the national interest when it comes to gas policy.

    On the topic of passports, Wong noted that the current government has invested heavily in upgrading the Australian passport system, producing a high-security, advanced travel document that grants Australian citizens visa-free access to more than 120 countries around the world—a key benefit that justifies current pricing. She added that the government has no plans to adjust passport pricing outside of pre-approved inflation indexation, which is already baked into the projected revenue increases.

    When asked why other high-income nations charge far less for passports, Wong responded that she could not speak to the pricing policies of other governments, as she is not responsible for their operations.

    This latest exchange is part of a long-running campaign by Pocock to overhaul the PRRT system, which he argues fails to deliver adequate public returns from Australia’s non-renewable natural resources. In an earlier Senate hearing, Pocock drew similar criticism by pointing out that mid-year financial projections for 2025-26 showed the PRRT would generate only around AUD 1.5 billion in annual revenue—less than the AUD 2.7 billion the government collects annually in beer taxes. “How do we live in a country that exports — one of the biggest gas exporters in the world — and we’re getting more tax from beer than PRRT,” he asked at the time.

    In response to ongoing criticism, the government has defended the PRRT and broader national gas arrangements as part of a balanced policy framework. Since the outbreak of conflict in the Middle East, officials have emphasized that Australia has a responsibility to act as a reliable global energy partner, and the current tax structure accounts for both public revenue needs and broader energy security commitments, alongside additional corporate tax contributions from gas producers.

  • Nepali climber alive after six days missing on Everest

    Nepali climber alive after six days missing on Everest

    In a remarkable story of survival against the harshest conditions on Earth, an experienced Nepali climbing guide who went missing for six days on Mount Everest and was widely presumed dead has crawled back to Base Camp alive, expedition officials confirmed to AFP in an interview on Thursday.

    Hillary Dawa Sherpa, a seasoned high-altitude climber familiar with Everest’s most dangerous terrain, disappeared in the upper reaches of the 8,849-meter world’s highest peak in the early hours of May 30. His unexpected return ended days of fruitless search efforts, when teams had already begun to prepare for the worst outcome.

    Workers from the Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee (SPCC), a local Nepali organization responsible for maintaining climbing routes and clearing accumulated waste from the mountain, made the surprise discovery of Sherpa on Thursday morning just a short distance from Base Camp. “He was crawling down when we found him,” explained Pemba Sherpa of 8K Expeditions, the firm that coordinated the official search and rescue operation for the missing guide. A rescue helicopter has already been deployed to airlift Sherpa to a specialized hospital in Nepal’s capital Kathmandu for urgent medical evaluation.

    British climber Chris Thrall, a former Royal Marine who summited Everest with Sherpa around 5 p.m. on May 29, had shared a heartfelt tribute to the guide on Instagram just one day before his rescue, writing in a post mourning what he believed was Sherpa’s passing. He described Sherpa as an “absolute gentle giant of a man and a true ‘tiger of the mountains’”, echoing the widespread high regard Sherpa holds among the global climbing community.

    Thrall recounted the sequence of events that led to Sherpa going missing as the two climbers began their descent from Camp Four, which sits at roughly 7,950 meters, just below the oxygen-starved zone known to climbers as the “death zone” where the human body cannot sustain itself for long periods. As the pair descended, Sherpa stopped to catch his breath. “He sat down for a rest with his backpack — these guides carry huge loads up and down the mountain,” Thrall recalled. “I turned and I said, ‘Hillary, are you okay, brother?’ He said, ‘Yes, yes, fine Chris, please go, go!’ This is nothing new on the mountain; sometimes climbers pull ahead at their own pace.”

    As Thrall continued downward, he encountered a Polish climber in critical condition: the mountaineer had exhausted his supply of supplementary oxygen, suffered severe frostbite, and was at immediate risk of hypothermia. Thrall faced an agonizing choice, one familiar to climbers who navigate life-or-death decisions high on Everest. The 11-day summit push had already stretched far longer than the typical five-day itinerary, a sign of just how brutal conditions were this season. “Do I go back for Sherpa, who’s probably going to rock up and be fine, as he has done hundreds of times before? Or do I help my fellow climber, who’s got no oxygen, frostbite in his fingers, and obviously you’re never far off hypothermia up there?” he said.

    Thrall chose to stay with the Polish climber, sharing his own oxygen supply as the pair descended slowly to Camp Three. What would normally take just two hours to cover took 11 exhausting hours, a testament to the severe conditions and the strain of the rescue. By the time they reached safety, Thrall knew they had escaped a catastrophic outcome.

    Despite multiple search teams launching missions to locate Sherpa in the days after he disappeared, no trace of him was found until Thursday morning, when he emerged after days of slow, solitary descent down the mountain. This climb was one of the final expeditions of the 2026 spring climbing season, which meant very few other climbers were still on the peak to offer assistance.

    This year’s Everest season has already been marked by tragedy: at least five people — two Indian climbers and three Nepali climbing staff involved in pre-season preparations — have died on the mountain. At the same time, initial counts from Nepali tourism officials show that more than 1,000 climbers have successfully reached the summit this season, making 2026 the busiest climbing season in Everest’s recorded history.

  • Women are the first caregivers in this Ebola outbreak and the most at risk

    Women are the first caregivers in this Ebola outbreak and the most at risk

    In the heart of eastern Congo’s Ituri province, where one of the most rapidly expanding Ebola outbreaks in recorded history is unfolding, 28-year-old Aline Kasiwa makes an unwavering, dangerous choice every single day. For a week, she has cared for her ailing mother—feeding her, helping her drink, washing her clothes—all while acutely aware that every interaction puts her at risk of contracting the deadly Bundibugyo Ebola virus, a strain with no approved vaccine or targeted treatment. Too terrified to bring her mother to a local hospital, where she has heard even medical staff are dying from the disease, Kasiwa says she has no other option: “She is the only family I have left. I cannot abandon her.” With nothing but a low-cost cloth face mask to shield herself, Kasiwa embodies a stark, underreported reality of this crisis: women across eastern Congo are disproportionately exposed to Ebola, forced into frontline caregiving roles that leave them far more vulnerable to infection than their male counterparts.

    Dr. Furaha Elisabeth, director of Bunia’s Karibuni Wa Maman gynecology and obstetrics clinic, explains that social norms in the region place almost all informal care work on women’s shoulders. “It’s the woman who gives them a bath, it’s the woman who feeds them, and it’s the woman who’s there to wash the dirty clothes and everything else,” she says. Beyond at-home care, women also traditionally lead burial preparation for deceased family members—a practice that carries extremely high Ebola transmission risk, given the virus spreads through contact with infected bodily fluids.

    History bears out the lopsided risk of this crisis. Data from past Ebola outbreaks consistently shows women suffer higher infection and death rates than men. During the 1970s first recorded Ebola outbreak, 56% of deaths were women, according to UN Women. In the 2018–2020 Congo outbreak—the deadliest the country has ever experienced—women and girls made up roughly two-thirds of all confirmed cases. Sofia Calltorp, UN Women’s chief of humanitarian action, says the same pattern is already emerging in the current outbreak. “Ebola transmission follows social realities,” she notes. “The virus spreads along the lines of care-giving, domestic labor, front-line health work and burial practices.”

    Compounding this inequality is a catastrophic shortage of critical personal protective equipment (PPE) that leaves both professional health workers and family caregivers defenseless. Staff at Karibuni Wa Maman clinic, which screens symptomatic patients before referring them to larger treatment centers, say they have received no full PPE since the outbreak began, despite repeated appeals to national health authorities. The clinic is run by local aid group Women’s Solidarity for Inclusive Peace and Development, whose president Julienne Lusenge says the only supplies the organization has secured from international and state partners are a small amount of hand sanitizer and a handful of masks for clinical staff. This gap puts even informal caregivers at extreme risk, Lusenge adds: most women caring for sick relatives at home do not even know their loved one may have Ebola, let alone have access to gear to protect themselves. “During previous outbreaks, many women died because they were the ones nursing sick family members,” she says.

    Pregnant women face a particularly devastating, impossible dilemma. Many avoid seeking routine prenatal care at local clinics out of fear of contracting Ebola, leaving them and their unborn children without life-saving monitoring. Anny Ekyambo, a 32-year-old Bunia resident five months pregnant, says she shares this fear with most other pregnant women in her community. “I know that there are steps we must follow with the doctors to monitor the pregnancy and the baby, but we have no choice because this epidemic frightens us,” she explains. UN Women points out that pregnant women already face higher exposure due to their regular need for health services, and Lusenge warns that avoiding care will have dire secondary consequences: “We risk seeing a rise in prenatal and postnatal mortality, for both mothers and children.”

    As of this week, Congolese authorities have confirmed 344 cases of Ebola, including 60 deaths, with dozens more suspected cases yet to be tested. Neighboring Uganda has recorded 15 confirmed cases and one death. The outbreak was identified weeks later than it should have been, because the rare Bundibugyo strain was not included in initial testing protocols. Even with incremental improvements in response coordination and new aid arrivals in recent days, medical charity Doctors Without Borders says the virus is still spreading faster than intervention teams can contain it. “Nobody knows the true scale and severity of this outbreak,” said Dr. Alan Gonzalez, the organization’s deputy director of operations.

    Multiple overlapping challenges have hampered the international and state response to the crisis. Ituri province, where the outbreak is centered, is located more than 1,000 kilometers from Congo’s capital Kinshasa, with crumbling road networks and chronically underfunded, underequipped health facilities. Ongoing violent conflict has further blocked access: the Islamic State-allied Allied Democratic Forces rebel group operates in the region, while the Rwanda-backed M23 rebel militia controls key urban centers in neighboring North Kivu and South Kivu, where additional cases have been confirmed. Decades of conflict have also left local communities deeply wary of outside authorities and medical workers, pushing more people to rely on at-home care from family members rather than seek official treatment—once again shifting the risk onto women.

    This coverage is supported by the Gates Foundation as part of AP News’ global health and development reporting in Africa, with the AP retaining full editorial control over all content.

  • How Ukraine-Russia tension hangs over French Open semi-finals

    How Ukraine-Russia tension hangs over French Open semi-finals

    The 2026 French Open women’s singles draw has already delivered a string of stunning upsets and historic breakthroughs, but all eyes will turn to a highly anticipated semi-final match on Thursday that carries far more stakes than just a spot in a Grand Slam final. With Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine entering its fifth year, the showdown between Ukraine’s Marta Kostyuk and Russia’s teen star Mirra Andreeva will play out against the unavoidable, weighty backdrop of ongoing armed conflict between their home nations.

    Kostyuk, the 23-year-old 15th seed, has emerged as one of the most vocal Ukrainian athlete advocates since the 2022 invasion, consistently using her platform as a top tennis player to keep global attention focused on the human cost of the war. Just last week, she revealed that a Russian missile strike hit a building less than 100 meters from her family’s home in Kyiv during a renewed wave of attacks on the Ukrainian capital. Following her hard-fought quarter-final win over fellow Ukrainian Elina Svitolina, Kostyuk reiterated that speaking out about the war is the most critical contribution she can make amid the crisis.

    “The biggest thing I can do is sit here and talk about [the war] so more people can find out about it and don’t get used to this terrible life,” she told reporters.

    Her opponent, 19-year-old eighth seed Andreeva, has repeatedly declined to engage with questions about the conflict, sticking to that stance again in pre-match press conferences ahead of Thursday’s semi-final. This is Andreeva’s second consecutive appearance in the French Open semi-finals, and she says she is focused solely on executing her game plan, regardless of who stands across the net.

    “It doesn’t matter who I play. I really try to play against the ball that is coming at me,” Andreeva said. “It doesn’t matter to me who I’m playing against, so I’m trying to really focus on the game and on the gameplan that I have to use on the court.”

    This match marks the second meeting between Kostyuk and Andreeva in just over a month. The pair faced off in the Madrid Open final last month, where Kostyuk claimed a 6-3 7-5 victory to win the biggest title of her professional career. Following that match, the two players did not share the customary post-match handshake, a policy adopted by all Ukrainian tennis players against competitors from Russia and Belarus (a Russian ally that backed the invasion) that will remain in place at Roland Garros.

    If Kostyuk defeats Andreeva to extend her 17-match clay-court winning streak to 18, she will face a second Russian player, 22-year-old Diana Shnaider, in Saturday’s final. Shnaider earned her spot in her first ever Grand Slam semi-final after pulling off one of the biggest upsets of the tournament, knocking out Belarusian world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka, who has publicly condemned the invasion.

    Shnaider has already faced her own share of controversy at this year’s tournament. Before her third-round match against Ukrainian player Oleksandra Oliynykova, Oliynykova publicly accused Shnaider of supporting the invasion, citing Shnaider’s decision to compete in a St. Petersburg exhibition event sponsored by Gazprom, Russia’s state-owned energy giant. Oliynykova compared participating in the event to playing in a tournament organized by Nazi Germany during World War II.

    Shnaider defended her choice to compete in the event, noting it was her only opportunity in 2026 to play in front of her family in Russia. Like Andreeva, she has declined to comment publicly on the war, a choice that has drawn sharp criticism from Kostyuk.

    “They are all grown-ups. They know what they’re talking about. They know what’s going on. They have phones. They have Instagram. They have news. They are clearly aware of what’s going on,” Kostyuk told reporters. “I don’t know how you can sleep at night peacefully when you know that this is going on and you have nothing to say about it.”

    For Kostyuk, every win she earns at Roland Garros is a tribute to her war-torn home nation. Though she acknowledges the privilege of building her career away from the active conflict zone, she says the ongoing suffering of Ukrainians back home is her core source of motivation to keep competing and winning.

    Former world No. 5 Slovakian player Daniela Hantuchova, speaking to BBC Radio 5 Live, says the pressure and adversity faced by players from conflict-affected regions in Eastern Europe creates a unique drive to succeed.

    “This desire comes from there being no other options, when you have war behind your courtyard and you know sport in particular is the only way to escape that,” Hantuchova said. “You don’t question anything you are told to do to get where you want. The starting point creates this incredible hunger and willingness to do whatever it takes.”

    In the other semi-final, Shnaider will face unseeded Polish qualifier Maja Chwalinska, who has continued her Cinderella run through the draw after entering the tournament ranked outside the world’s top 100. Remarkably, all four 2026 French Open women’s semi-finalists hail from Eastern or Central Europe, each carrying their own personal story of resilience amid extraordinary pressure. All four players have outperformed pre-tournament expectations in a wide-open draw that lacked many of the tour’s top contenders.

    Regardless of how the semi-finals unfold, Saturday’s final will crown a first-time Grand Slam singles champion, a result that very few tennis pundits or fans predicted at the start of the tournament two weeks ago. The question remaining is not just who will hold the trophy, but how the weight of geopolitical conflict will shape one of the most politically charged matches in recent Grand Slam history.

  • Satellite pix said to show Israel’s overt Gaza territorial goals

    Satellite pix said to show Israel’s overt Gaza territorial goals

    Newly released satellite analysis from Al Jazeera has uncovered a significant violation of the 2025 Israel-Hamas ceasefire agreement: Israel has been quietly constructing dozens of permanent, heavily fortified military outposts across Gaza’s internal perimeter, rather than withdrawing its forces as required by the U.S.-brokered truce.

    Al Jazeera’s Open Source Unit conducted a full review of satellite data collected through May 2026, confirming that 40 completed Israel Defense Forces (IDF) bases have been erected since the October 2025 ceasefire took effect, with one additional outpost still under construction. Independent regional observers warn that this network of permanent infrastructure aligns directly with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s publicly stated goal of seizing at least 70% of the besieged Palestinian exclave.

    Unlike temporary forward observation posts, the infrastructure uncovered by satellite imagery forms a systematic, long-term military occupation grid. The outposts are linked by a connected network of earthen berms, deep trenches, and dedicated military access roads, forming a tight encirclement of major Palestinian population centers from multiple directions. This encirclement has already crippled civilian mobility, blocking ordinary Palestinians from accessing their agricultural lands and moving freely between communities, particularly in areas adjacent to Israeli deployment lines. The buildup also accompanies Israel’s ongoing expansion of its so-called “yellow line” security boundary, which has steadily pushed deeper into Gaza territory since the truce was signed.

    The construction directly contravenes the terms of the October 2025 ceasefire, a 21-point framework negotiated under then-U.S. President Donald Trump that required an immediate end to hostilities, unimpeded entry of humanitarian aid, the disarmament of Hamas, and a phased full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. Palestinian political analyst Abdullah Aqrabawi notes that the buildup reflects a long-entrenched Israeli security doctrine centered on permanent occupation, territorial expansion, and ongoing control over Palestinian land and life.

    Netanyahu has repeatedly articulated his vision for permanent Israeli control over Gaza since the outbreak of conflict in October 2023. In early 2024, he publicly declared Israel would establish “full security control” over the entire strip. In April 2025, he announced the creation of the Morag Corridor, a new security buffer that cuts Gaza into fragmented sections, explicitly framing the move as a tactic to increase pressure on Hamas. Just last week, he told attendees at a youth military academy that Israeli forces currently control roughly 60% of Gaza. When the crowd chanted demands for full control of 100% of the territory, Netanyahu responded that the government would proceed in stages, with 70% as the immediate next target.

    Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz echoed these expansionist goals last year, stating that IDF forces were “expanding to crush and clean” Gaza while seizing large swaths of territory that would be incorporated into Israel’s national security zones to accommodate future settlements. This language references open plans from far-right members of Netanyahu’s governing coalition and settler movement leaders to ethnically cleanse Gaza’s existing Palestinian population and reestablish Israeli civilian settlements in the enclave — a reversal of the 2005 disengagement under then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, when Israel withdrew all settlers and military forces from Gaza after 38 years of occupation following the 1967 Six-Day War.

    Katz and other senior Israeli officials have framed their displacement plan as a U.S.-backed “voluntary migration” initiative for Gaza’s 2 million-plus Palestinians. Critics, however, universally dismiss the term as a deliberate euphemism for ethnic cleansing, noting that the vast majority of Gaza’s residents are descendants of Palestinians forcibly expelled from their lands during the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, and have no willingness to leave the only home their families have known for generations.

    Even under the formal ceasefire, IDF operations have continued to kill Palestinian civilians at rising rates. Gaza’s Ministry of Health confirmed Wednesday that at least 119 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces in May 2026 — the highest monthly death toll recorded this year, including 19 children and 10 women. According to Gaza’s Government Media Office, Israel has violated the ceasefire more than 3,000 times since it took effect last October, leaving more than 900 Palestinians dead and nearly 2,800 injured. Since the start of the current conflict in October 2023, more than 250,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed or wounded, with thousands more still missing and presumed buried under rubble destroyed by Israeli airstrikes and ground operations.

    Wednesday’s satellite report is not the first to expose Israel’s post-ceasefire territorial changes in Gaza. Last week, Al Jazeera published separate satellite analysis showing Israel has systematically erased large sections of southern Gaza, including entire cities, agricultural lands, community infrastructure, and even historic cemeteries, in a campaign researchers described as an effort to “erase geography and memory” of Palestinian presence in the territory. “Satellites photograph the destroyed buildings, but they cannot document the feeling of a human searching for their home to no avail,” said Palestinian journalist Muhannad Qishta. “The hardest thing is not the destruction itself, but the stories buried beneath it.”

  • How Voodoo overcame suppression and became a democratic force in the West African nation of Benin

    How Voodoo overcame suppression and became a democratic force in the West African nation of Benin

    Nestled on West Africa’s Gulf of Guinea, the coastal city of Ouidah holds a unique dual distinction: it is the global birthplace of the indigenous Vodún religion, and an unlikely cradle of the democratic stability that Benin has nurtured across three decades, even as neighboring nations have fallen into a pattern of military takeovers that earned the region the nickname the “coup belt.” That stability, scholars and Vodún devotees argue, is deeply intertwined with the religion’s quiet, unyielding resistance to authoritarian overreach, a story that begins with the rise and fall of former dictator Mathieu Kérékou.

    Kérékou seized power in the 1972 coup that renamed the former colony of Dahomey to Benin, establishing a rigid Marxist-Leninist dictatorship that nationalized nearly all major industries. As he consolidated his control, he targeted Vodún, labeling the centuries-old faith a subversive, backward force that threatened his grip on power. Under his rule, Vodún priests were detained, sacred shrines were demolished to make way for urban development, and the practice of the religion was effectively banned. What Kérékou did not anticipate, however, was that this crackdown would spark a resistance that would ultimately force him to abandon his authoritarian approach.

    Accounts from devotees and former Kérékou advisers confirm the dictator grew deeply paranoid of spiritual retaliation from Vodún leaders, convinced he faced a curse that could turn him into a zombie. Raised Catholic, he converted to Islam before later embracing born-again Christianity in a frantic search for stronger spiritual protection, even recruiting a notorious Malian marabout known as “the Devil” to counter the perceived threat. His fear grew so extreme that he could no longer safely travel to large swathes of the country, where support for Vodún ran deepest. “This is precisely what led him to reconsider his position regarding Indigenous religions,” explained Léon Bani Bigou, a former lawmaker who once served as one of Kérékou’s top advisers.

    By 1990, mounting economic collapse from Kérékou’s nationalization policies, combined with pressure from religious and civil society groups, forced the dictator to call for democratic reforms and a 1991 presidential election he fully expected to win. In a stunning upset, he was defeated by opposition candidate Nicéphore Soglo, who immediately moved to recognize Vodún as an official part of Benin’s national heritage and enshrine religious tolerance as a core national value. When Kérékou returned to power as a civilian democrat after winning the 1996 election, he kept that promise, officializing a national Voodoo Day celebrated every January 10 and establishing a state-led National Voodoo Board to govern the religion’s affairs. By his final campaign in 2001, Kérékou was actively courting the Vodún vote in Ouidah, a far cry from his days as an anti-Vodún dictator.

    Today, Benin stands as a rare beacon of democratic stability in West Africa, where eight successful military coups have occurred across the region since 2020. The most recent peaceful transfer of power took place in May 2024, when former finance minister Romuald Wadagni was inaugurated after incumbent Patrice Talon stepped down at the end of his two-term limit. For scholars and religious leaders, this resilience of democracy traces directly back to the resilience of Vodún itself.

    Roughly 14 million people call Benin home, with U.S. State Department data recording that half identify as Christian. But prominent Beninese politician Mahougnon Kakpo calls Vodún “the first religion of all Beninese,” noting that even many who identify with other faiths still engage with Vodún traditions privately. An animist faith centered on engagement with the spirit world, Vodún holds that divine power is present in all natural features, from rivers to rock formations. Its ceremonies include ritual incantation, traditional dance, and symbolic animal sacrifice, and it has spread across the Atlantic through the trans-Atlantic slave trade, evolving into the Vodou practiced in Haiti and other parts of the Caribbean.

    Ouidah, the historic center of Vodún, was once a major slave trading port, and it is home to the “Door of No Return” monument honoring the millions of enslaved Africans who were forcibly shipped to the Americas. Vodún supreme leader Daagbo Hounon Houna II, who is based in Ouidah, points to a little-remembered chapter of Vodún history to illustrate the religion’s long tradition of resistance: the 1791 Bois Caïman ceremony, where enslaved Africans in Haiti gathered for a Vodún ritual to plot their rebellion against French colonial rule. That uprising led to Haiti becoming the world’s first free Black republic in 1804, proving that even under the most brutal oppression, Vodún could not be suppressed. “The more you attack their religion, the more you raise their spirits,” Houna II said of Vodún adherents during an interview at his Ouidah temple.

    Unlike other postcolonial African authoritarian leaders who successfully consolidated personal power by co-opting or suppressing religious traditions, Kérékou ultimately failed to break Vodún because of its deep roots in daily Beninese life. “Kérékou failed to eradicate Vodún because he was attacking a centuries-old social practice deeply rooted in the daily lives of Beninese people, a resource to which he and officials in his regime had been able to turn in the exercise of power,” explained Narcisse Martial Yedji, a political sociologist at Université d’Abomey-Calavi. “Kérékou could not win over all the guardians of Voodoo traditions. Voodoo is not private property.”

    Today, the faith remains a central part of national life, with devotees across the country making regular pilgrimages to sacred shrines in Ouidah, leaving offerings of fruit and other gifts to honor ancestral spirits. For its followers, the story of Benin’s democracy and Vodún’s resistance is a clear lesson: no leader, however powerful, can successfully stamp out a faith that is woven into the very identity of the nation. “Voodoo is life,” said Dossavi Yovo, a priestess at Houna II’s temple. “If you want to practice Voodoo, you have got to dedicate yourself to it.”

  • Ahead of papal visit, Spain pushes forward with reparations for church sex abuse victims

    Ahead of papal visit, Spain pushes forward with reparations for church sex abuse victims

    MADRID – More than half a century after she endured repeated sexual abuse at the hands of a Marist priest as an 8-year-old catechism student in Valladolid, northern Spain, Paula Alonso-Pimentel is finally pushing for accountability. Decades of buried trauma, followed by years of unmet demands for justice, have led her to this moment: a new joint reparations program between the Spanish government and the country’s Catholic bishops that aims to address long-unpunished abuse cases involving deceased or statute-barred perpetrators. For a nation that has lagged far behind other Western countries in confronting the clerical abuse crisis entrenched within its once-dominant Catholic institutions, this launch marks an unprecedented new chapter in a decades-long reckoning.

    Spain’s journey to this reparations framework began in 2018, when leading national newspaper El País published a searchable public database of alleged clergy sexual abuse cases, pulling back the curtain on a crisis the Catholic Church had hidden for generations. As public outrage mounted, Spain’s Parliament tasked the national ombudsman with conducting a full independent investigation. The resulting 2023 report, an 800-page exhaustive assessment, delivered a damning conclusion: based on a representative survey of 8,000 adults, the report estimated hundreds of thousands of people across Spain had experienced sexual abuse at the hands of Catholic clergy over the course of decades. The Spanish Bishops Conference immediately pushed back against the estimate, releasing its own internal count that documented just 728 identified abusive priests since 1945. Church leaders noted that 60% of those accused abusers were already deceased, and most of the alleged crimes occurred before 1990, placing them far outside the window for criminal prosecution.

    In 2024, the Spanish government threatened to mandate church-backed compensation, arguing the Church had consistently minimized the scope of the crisis. The bishops responded by launching their own unilateral victim assistance program, which critics quickly dismissed as toothless: run entirely by the Church, it lacked independent oversight, making it impossible to ensure fair outcomes for survivors. For many victims including Alonso-Pimentel, the idea of seeking compensation from the same institution that enabled and covered up their abuse was unacceptable. “You can’t be a judge and a jury in your own case,” Alonso-Pimentel put it, a sentiment shared by hundreds of other survivors who avoided the Church’s in-house process.

    The new joint reparations program, approved by both the bishops conference and the government months ahead of Pope Leo XIV’s upcoming visit to Spain, was designed to address that core criticism. Under the new framework, claims are first reviewed by an independent panel of experts convened by the national ombudsman, which proposes a package of compensation that may include symbolic recognition, psychological support, or financial payouts. The Church then reviews the proposal, and if no agreement can be reached, the case moves to a joint committee with representation from the Church, the ombudsman’s office, and victim advocacy groups. If the committee deadlocks, the ombudsman – an independent state official – retains final say over payout decisions, a landmark shift that gives government, not Church leaders, the final word on compensation. Survivors have exactly one year to submit claims, and as of the latest update, 420 people have already filed applications.

    For the Vatican, the program aligns with Pope Leo XIV’s recent public commitments to addressing clerical abuse. In his first encyclical, Leo wrote that listening to abuse survivors requires explicit acknowledgment of harm and delivery of “just reparation.” Josetxo Vera, communications director for the Spanish Bishops Conference, framed the new program as a natural expansion of the Church’s ongoing work to address past harm, while emphasizing that the bishops do not view the crisis as systemic within the Spanish Church. “We believe that, indeed, human nature is flawed, that it has a propensity for evil, and that it needs a great deal of reconciliation and forgiveness,” Vera said. “But I can’t say that it’s a systemic issue. We are part of this society. We share some of its virtues, and we also share some of its vices and crimes.” The conference has already paid out roughly 2 million euros ($2.3 million) to survivors through its earlier internal program, and leaders say they recognize why many survivors were uncomfortable engaging directly with the Church.

    Even with these reforms, the program faces widespread criticism from survivors and advocacy groups, who warn it retains critical structural weaknesses. A core point of contention is the one-year application window, which many argue is too short for survivors who have spent decades hiding their trauma to come forward. Critics also note the program lacks a standardized compensation matrix that ties payout amounts to the severity of abuse, meaning outcomes could be inconsistent across cases. Most alarmingly for opponents, the program is not legally binding, leaving no formal recourse for survivors who disagree with final decisions.

    Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of Bishop Accountability, a U.S.-based nonprofit that tracks global clerical abuse cases and institutional cover-ups, called the new protocol “quite fragile.” “It has a very short time frame. It has no matrix to establish minimum awards for various categories of injuries,” she noted. “So will it be fair? Will it be consistent?”

    Those doubts are echoed by Spanish survivor activist Miguel Hurtado, who has spoken publicly about his own abuse at the hands of a monk at the iconic Montserrat Abbey, a historic Benedictine monastery outside Barcelona. As a 16-year-old Boy Scout in a group led by monk Andreu Soler more than 20 years ago, Hurtado says he was molested by Soler. He says the monastery immediately pressured his parents to not report the abuse to law enforcement, and decades later, after an independent 2019 report acknowledged Soler had abused multiple victims over decades, the monastery still refused to accept formal responsibility for compensation, arguing all claims were time-barred under criminal and civil law. Hurtado says he is disappointed that Pope Leo XIV will still visit the Montserrat Abbey during his trip, despite his detailed submission of the allegations to Vatican and church authorities. Like many other survivors, he fears the new reparations program will ultimately fail to deliver meaningful justice. “The problem is that it’s built on sand,” Hurtado said.

    For her part, Alonso-Pimentel shares that skepticism, but remains cautiously hopeful that the new independent model will deliver the accountability she has chased for 50 years. She declined to participate in the Church’s earlier internal program, distrustful of an institution that enabled her abuse and ignored her claims for decades. When she reached out to the Marist order in Valladolid after Pope Francis’ 2019 global summit on clerical abuse, all she received was the name of her abuser, with no further accountability. Now, she says she will file her claim under the new program no matter what, but is waiting to see if the process lives up to its promises. “It must cost them, the Church,” she said. “It must cost them because this cannot come for free. It cannot be that they can continue doing it without paying a huge price.”

  • Ukraine’s drone strikes set a gloomy tone for Putin’s economic showcase

    Ukraine’s drone strikes set a gloomy tone for Putin’s economic showcase

    In a striking development that overshadowed the kickoff of Russia’s high-profile annual economic gathering, two coordinated Ukrainian drone attacks targeted key infrastructure in St. Petersburg just hours before the opening of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, a signature event where President Vladimir Putin planned to showcase Russia’s claimed economic resilience to global attendees.

    The strikes — one that ignited a large blaze at a city oil terminal and another that hit the historic Kronstadt naval base on a Gulf of Finland island just off St. Petersburg’s coast — delivered another public embarrassment for the Kremlin, which has spent months framing the two-year full-scale invasion of Ukraine as a distant conflict that does not disrupt ordinary Russian life or key national events. Located just 9 miles from the forum’s main venue, the oil terminal strike sent a thick black plume of smoke visible across the St. Petersburg skyline, setting a somber tone for the event that Putin, a St. Petersburg native, was set to address Thursday.

    The attacks underscore a worrying new reality for the Kremlin: Ukraine’s steadily improving drone capabilities now allow it to strike deep within Russian territory, even at heavily protected sites of enormous symbolic importance to the Russian state. Kronstadt, the historic home of Russia’s Baltic Fleet founded alongside St. Petersburg by Peter the Great, remains a landmark of Russian naval heritage despite most of the fleet’s relocation to the Kaliningrad exclave. This is not an isolated incident: in May, Putin ordered a scaled-back version of Moscow’s annual Victory Day military parade over drone strike fears, and just days later, a large drone assault on Moscow suburbs killed three people, confirming the capital’s vulnerability too. In response to the St. Petersburg strikes, local authorities disrupted cellular internet service in an effort to disrupt drone guidance systems, and dozens of flights arriving and departing from the city’s main airport were delayed or rerouted to other airports.

    Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov defended Moscow’s response, saying Russian forces were continuing offensive operations inside Ukraine specifically to prevent further such strikes on Russian territory. He confirmed that the “systematic” strikes on Kyiv that Russia threatened last week are currently ongoing. The escalation follows a massive Russian aerial assault across Ukraine Tuesday that used hundreds of drones and dozens of missiles to hit cities including Kyiv, leaving 23 dead and 151 wounded, according to Ukrainian officials.

    Originally modeled on Switzerland’s World Economic Forum in Davos, the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum has long been Putin’s flagship event to attract foreign investment and highlight Russian economic progress. Following the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, all Western business and political leaders boycotted the gathering, so Moscow has pivoted to courting delegations from the Global South and other partners to advance its stated goal of building a “multipolar world” countering Western dominance. This year, the forum’s guest of honor is Saudi Arabia, which has sent a large official delegation, with other high-level attendees including the presidents of Uzbekistan and Tanzania, China’s vice president, and for the first time in years, a U.S. official: Rodney Mims Cook Jr., head of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts.

    Despite Moscow’s efforts to project economic stability, Russia’s economic outlook has darkened in recent months after an initial post-invasion boost from massive military spending faded. The Russian government has already been forced to raise domestic taxes and increase internal borrowing to keep widening budget deficits under control. While Putin is expected to downplay these ongoing economic challenges during his keynote address, the pre-forum drone strikes have thrown into sharp relief the cascading security and economic risks that the ongoing conflict continues to pose for Russia, even in its most politically and symbolically important cities.