Global Pulse

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  • Vance’s Antichrist comments are a ‘common belief’, his friend tells BBC

    Vance’s Antichrist comments are a ‘common belief’, his friend tells BBC

    U.S. Vice President JD Vance’s recent public reflections on Christian eschatological ideas, including the possibility that the Antichrist already lives among humanity and that the world may be entering its final days, have been framed as a widely held mainstream Christian belief by one of his close personal friends. The comments emerged during a recent interview on a Christian podcast hosted by American creator Bryce Crawford, where Vance opened up about his personal religious views as a convert to Catholicism.

    During the discussion, Vance struck a measured tone about his eschatological speculations, emphasizing that these thoughts do not dominate his daily work or personal life. “Do I think that we’re in the end times? I don’t know,” Vance told the podcast. “And I think that it’s probably bad for me spiritually to focus too much on it, because there are, like, things you gotta do. I gotta be good to my wife. I gotta be good to my kids. I have to be as good of a leader as I can for the United States of America.”

    He went on to add, “I think that there are, like, things about the world that make me feel, like, not shocked if the Antichrist was walking among us.” Reiterating his commitment to his vice-presidential duties, Vance noted that his core priority is advancing what he sees as God’s work in his current role, rather than obsessing over apocalyptic timelines.

    In Christian theology, end times theology centers on prophecies about the final period of human history before the second coming of Jesus Christ, with most mainstream denominations holding that God has a preordained divine plan for the end of the world. The Antichrist, a core figure in these eschatological frameworks, is described as a deceptive evil figure opposed to God that will emerge to seize global power during the final phase of human civilization.

    Rod Dreher, a conservative writer and close friend of Vance who was present at Vance’s 2019 confirmation into the Catholic Church, pushed back against any claims that Vance’s comments would damage his political standing in an interview with BBC’s *Today* program. Dreher argued that apocalyptic beliefs like those Vance outlined are extremely common among Christian voters, particularly the Republican base that forms Vance’s core political support. “Most Americans who are inclined to vote Republican already believe this stuff,” Dreher stated. He added that while the comments may sound outlandish to people outside of Christian faith communities, they reflect a widely shared intuition among religious believers that the world is descending into chaos amid rapid technological change like artificial intelligence development and ongoing global armed conflicts.

    Dreher also drew a parallel to former U.S. President Ronald Reagan, who made similar apocalyptic comments during his time in office without facing significant political backlash from his base, framing the remarks as a perfectly normal expression of faith for conservative American politicians.

    Vance converted to Catholicism in 2019 when he was in his mid-30s, and has previously spoken publicly about how Catholic social and family values align closely with his conservative political ideology. Since taking office as vice president, Vance has had public disagreements with both current Pope Leo and retired Pope Francis, most notably over the Trump administration’s hardline immigration policy.

    Looking ahead, Vance is scheduled to lead the White House press briefing on Thursday afternoon, marking the first on-camera press briefing from the vice president following the departure of former White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.

  • Dozens missing, 5 dead after migrant boat is found drifting near Spain’s Canary Islands

    Dozens missing, 5 dead after migrant boat is found drifting near Spain’s Canary Islands

    A devastating maritime disaster off the coast of Spain’s Canary Islands has left at least five migrants dead and dozens more missing, with activists reporting an even higher death toll following the vessel’s catastrophic breakdown in the Atlantic Ocean. Only 44 people from the overcrowded boat were pulled to safety by Spanish rescue crews this week.

    Spain’s Maritime Rescue Service confirmed Thursday that a surveillance plane first detected the unstable, drifting vessel around 120 kilometers south of Gran Canaria on Wednesday afternoon. Responding quickly to the distress call, rescue teams immediately airlifted three of the most severely injured survivors to a Gran Canaria hospital by helicopter, while the remaining 41 passengers were transported to shore by rescue vessel. The group disembarked early Thursday at Arguineguín port, where local Red Cross teams stood by to provide urgent medical care and support.

    José Antonio Rodríguez Verona, a Canary Islands-based Red Cross spokesperson, told reporters that all 44 survivors are men, including several underage passengers, who originated from Mali and Senegal. In an interview with the Associated Press, Rodríguez Verona explained that the survivors arrived in a fragile state: many were severely disoriented and dehydrated, with a large number collapsing or vomiting immediately after setting foot on land after weeks adrift at sea.

    Due to the survivors’ poor physical and mental condition, it took responders time to piece together the details of the fatal voyage. Survivors told aid workers they departed from Gambia nearly a month earlier, and had been stranded adrift for far longer than anyone anticipated. When their food and fresh water supplies ran out, desperate passengers were forced to drink seawater to survive, a choice that left many gravely ill.

    The survivors also shared chilling accounts of the scale of the disaster: they told the Red Cross that more than 100 people, including multiple women and one infant, were originally on board the small vessel. As passengers died of dehydration and illness over the course of the journey, surviving passengers threw the bodies overboard, until they eventually became too weak to continue the practice.

    Spain’s Maritime Rescue Service stated in an official emailed statement that rough sea conditions, including 2.5-meter-high waves and strong gusting winds, prevented crews from recovering the remains of five deceased passengers found still on the boat when rescuers arrived.

    In a separate update, Helena Maleno, founder of migrant rights organization Walking Borders — a group that tracks fatalities and missing persons along migration routes leading to Spain — has put the total death toll from this voyage at 83, including three women and the infant. Maleno confirmed via a post on the social platform X that the boat departed Gambia 27 days before the rescue. Maleno’s organization regularly receives distress messages from relatives of missing migrants and coordinates rescue requests with Spanish authorities. The Associated Press has reached out to Maleno and Walking Borders for additional context, but has not yet received a response.

    This disaster highlights the ongoing deadly risk of the West African Atlantic migration route to the Canary Islands, which remains one of the most dangerous migration crossings into Europe. While the number of migrant arrivals to the Spanish archipelago has dropped sharply over the past year, tens of thousands of migrants have died or gone missing on the route in recent years. In multiple extreme cases, overcrowded migrant boats have become lost and drifted all the way across the Atlantic Ocean as far as the Americas before being found.

  • Renewed clashes erupt in southwestern Somalia between government and militias

    Renewed clashes erupt in southwestern Somalia between government and militias

    Fresh armed conflict broke out before dawn on Thursday between Somalia’s federal government troops and aligned militias in the peripheral areas of Baidoa, the key southwestern city at the center of a growing national political power struggle. Witnesses and local officials reported sustained heavy gunfire across the front lines, forcing hundreds of civilian residents to abandon their homes in search of safer shelter as the violence intensified.

    According to statements from Somalia’s Defense Ministry, the outbreak of hostilities followed an offensive launched by fighters loyal to Abdiaziz Hassan Mohamed Laftagareen, the former president of Somalia’s South West state, alongside militants linked to al-Shabab, the al-Qaida-affiliated extremist group that has waged an insurgency in Somalia for decades. Wednesday’s clashes mark the most recent escalation of a bitter political and security dispute between Somalia’s central federal government and Laftagareen over administrative control of the strategic South West region.

    The current crisis traces back to late March, when federal security forces seized full control of Baidoa on March 30. Shortly after the government takeover, Laftagareen stepped down from his position as regional leader, a post he had held since 2018. After several hours of intense exchanges of fire, armed clashes tapered off by early Thursday afternoon. As of the latest updates, no official government statement has been released confirming total casualty numbers or the full scope of destruction caused by the fighting. In the aftermath of the violence, government military units deployed to conduct patrols across Baidoa’s urban streets, while emergency ambulances scrambled to reach injured people trapped near conflict zones. Local residents slowly began to reemerge from hiding to assess damage to their properties and clean debris from public walkways.

    Dr. Abdikafi Omar Mohamud, who leads the emergency department at Baidoa’s Bay Regional Hospital, confirmed to the Associated Press that medical teams at his facility had treated 24 wounded civilians and received the body of one civilian killed in the clashes. Abdullahi Haji, a long-term Baidoa resident, described the chaos of the outbreak in a phone interview with AP, saying he fled his residence immediately after hearing heavy gunfire erupt, noting that stray bullets began hitting residential neighborhoods within minutes of the first shots.

    Located roughly 245 kilometers, or 150 miles, northwest of Somalia’s capital Mogadishu, Baidoa holds outsized strategic and humanitarian importance for the entire country. The city serves as a major coordination hub for international aid organizations working across southern Somalia, and it currently hosts more than 500,000 people who have already been displaced by previous rounds of conflict and the severe ongoing drought devastating much of the Horn of Africa. This latest violence comes just weeks after earlier clashes in and around Baidoa killed at least four civilians and left another 98 people wounded, adding to a growing toll of civilian harm in the already unstable region.

    This report was compiled with on-the-ground contributions from Associated Press correspondent Bishar Mayow Mukhtar in Baidoa, Somalia.

  • Eleven people sentenced to death in Vietnam drug trafficking case

    Eleven people sentenced to death in Vietnam drug trafficking case

    In one of the largest transnational drug trafficking busts in Vietnam’s modern legal history, a court has handed down death sentences to 11 convicted individuals, including the alleged ringleader of a billion-dollar smuggling operation that spanned Europe and Southeast Asia, state media confirmed this week.

    In total, 227 people faced trial for their roles in the coordinated network. Penalties across all defendants ranged from 18-month prison terms to life imprisonment, with 11 receiving the ultimate capital punishment. Ha Danh Nam, the man authorities identified as the mastermind who coordinated the shipment of illegal narcotics from France to Vietnam, was among those sentenced to death.

    The investigation into the criminal enterprise traces back to March 2023, when four Vietnam Airlines flight attendants arriving in Ho Chi Minh City from Paris were intercepted with more than 10 kilograms of illicit drugs hidden inside 157 toothpaste tubes. State-run legal newspaper Bao Cong Ly reported that the crew members were never prosecuted, as investigators confirmed they had unknowingly transported the contraband, which included MDMA and ketamine.

    Further probes uncovered that Nam’s smuggling operation systematically hid narcotics inside everyday consumer goods, including dietary supplements, laundry detergent, mouthwash, and coffee. The ring then recruited Vietnamese nationals living or studying in France to transport the hidden drugs, either in personal checked luggage or via international courier services directly to buyers in Vietnam. To evade detection, members of the network relied on end-to-end encrypted messaging platforms and processed financial transactions through bank accounts registered under stolen or fake third-party identities, prosecutors told the court. Over the course of the operation, the total value of illegal drug transactions linked to the network reached nearly 29 trillion Vietnamese dong, equal to roughly $1.1 billion or £815 million.

    Judges handed down sentences proportional to each defendant’s level of involvement in the ring, ranging from masterminding operations to low-level accomplice roles. In addition to the 11 death sentences, around 20 other defendants received life imprisonment for convictions on charges of illegal drug possession, distribution, transport, and organized trafficking.

    The verdict comes amid a period of gradual shift in Vietnam’s capital punishment policy. Vietnam remains one of 54 countries globally that retains the death penalty, according to human rights organization data. The Vietnamese government classifies the total number of people on death row as a state secret, but rights groups estimate that more than 1,000 prisoners are currently awaiting execution across the country.

    Just last month, the Vietnamese government tabled new legislative reforms that would remove the death penalty for six additional offenses, including drug trafficking. The proposed changes have not yet been enacted into law. This proposal follows a 2025 amendment to the national criminal code that eliminated capital punishment for eight other offenses, including embezzlement, espionage, and the charge of attempting to overthrow the government.

    The 2025 legal change already led to a high-profile sentence adjustment: real estate tycoon Truong My Lan, who was sentenced to death for embezzlement in 2024, had her capital sentence commuted to life imprisonment earlier this year after the reform went into effect.

  • Andy Burnham praises UK-EU ties in meeting with Emmanuel Macron

    Andy Burnham praises UK-EU ties in meeting with Emmanuel Macron

    In a landmark diplomatic meeting marking new UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s first bilateral talks with an overseas leader at 10 Downing Street, French President Emmanuel Macron and Burnham gathered Thursday to hash out a sweeping range of shared priorities, from irregular migration across the English Channel to global security conflicts and deeper UK-EU cooperation.

    The meeting opened with a warm public ceremonial moment: the two leaders shook hands and posed for official photos alongside their wives, Marie-France van Heel and Brigitte Macron, outside the prime minister’s official residence before heading into closed-door discussions.

    Macron’s visit to the UK carried a dual purpose: the trip was primarily scheduled to mark the historic loan of the Bayeux Tapestry to London’s British Museum, where the French leader met with King Charles III on Wednesday a week ahead of the medieval artifact’s public opening. But the bilateral talks that followed quickly centered on what has emerged as the most pressing bilateral policy challenge of the moment: the growing use of large “mega dinghies” by people-smuggling gangs to carry irregular migrants across the Channel to the UK.

    The rise of these large vessels, first documented in early August when a 15-meter craft carried a record 230 migrants toward British shores, has sparked fresh scrutiny of border security efforts. This development comes even as overall irregular small boat arrivals to the UK dropped to a seven-year low over the 2026 summer travel season.

    To address the new threat of oversized smuggling vessels, Downing Street announced Thursday that 45 additional British police officers will be deployed to northern French beaches as part of a targeted “surge team” focused on intercepting large dinghies before they can depart. Home Office Minister Anna Turley clarified Tuesday that this reinforcement adds to an existing deployment of more than 1,000 officers already conducting active water-based interventions along the French coast. Turley told BBC Radio 4’s *Today programme* that recent footage shows officers directly targeting smuggling operations: disabling vessels by slashing their hulls, pushing craft back to shore, and operating under dangerous conditions, often facing projectile attacks from smugglers.

    Burnham framed cross-Channel smuggling as a collective European problem requiring coordinated action rather than unilateral fixes. In a social media post on X outlining the latest data on small boat arrivals, return of undocumented migrants and asylum facility usage, Burnham emphasized he is pursuing a new approach to governing rooted in international partnership. Ahead of Thursday’s talks, he welcomed Macron as a key ally, noting it was entirely fitting that the French president was his first overseas guest at Downing Street, describing France as the UK’s closest neighbor and longstanding close partner. He added that the bilateral meeting demonstrates what collaborative action can deliver, pointing to already aligned work on Ukraine, border security and efforts to strengthen overall UK-EU ties.

    Beyond the migration crisis, the two leaders also held in-depth discussions on other pressing global and bilateral issues, including the ongoing armed conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, bilateral defence cooperation and the future framework for UK-EU engagement.

    The main opposition Conservative Party has criticized the current government’s approach, however. Opposition leader Kemi Badenoch told the BBC that while she supports cross-border collaboration with France, the fundamental problem of irregular boat crossings has not been resolved. She argued that the UK has already poured hundreds of millions, potentially billions, of pounds into funding French border security operations, yet crossings continue. The meeting comes as UK politics remains deeply divided over migration policy, with the issue set to remain a central point of political debate in the coming months.

  • Japanese scientist Shirakawa, co-winner of 2000 Nobel Prize in chemistry, dies at 90

    Japanese scientist Shirakawa, co-winner of 2000 Nobel Prize in chemistry, dies at 90

    Hideki Shirakawa, the groundbreaking Japanese chemist who shared the 2000 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his transformative work on conductive polymers, has passed away at the age of 90.

    Shirakawa’s collaborative research with two American scientists, Alan Heeger and Alan MacDiarmid, upended long-held assumptions about the properties of plastic, proving that this ubiquitous material could carry electrical current just as metals do. This counterintuitive discovery unlocked a vast new range of applications across modern electronics, laying the foundation for technologies that shape daily life around the globe today.

    The University of Tsukuba, the Japanese research institution where Shirakawa built his career as a professor and researcher after joining its faculty in 1979, confirmed his death on August 24. The university did not release any details about the specific cause of death. Japan’s leading daily newspaper, Yomiuri, reported that Shirakawa died at a medical facility in Yokohama, a major port city located just west of Tokyo.

    Born in Tokyo in 1936, Shirakawa built his academic foundation early, earning his doctoral degree in engineering from the Tokyo Institute of Technology in 1966. A decade later, he took a research position at the University of Pennsylvania, where he began his landmark partnership with MacDiarmid and Heeger that would redefine materials science.

    Prior to their work, conventional scientific wisdom held that all plastics were natural insulators, incapable of conducting electricity. The trio’s breakthrough defied this common understanding, clearing a path for the development of low-cost conductive materials that outperform traditional metals in key areas: they are far lighter, far more flexible, and adaptable to a wide range of commercial and industrial uses. Today, these materials power critical modern technologies from photovoltaic solar cells to the touchscreens of smartphones and mobile devices, touching millions of lives worldwide.

  • Dolly Parton gets new star on Hollywood Walk of Fame after vandalism

    Dolly Parton gets new star on Hollywood Walk of Fame after vandalism

    The global entertainment community is still mourning the passing of iconic country music legend Dolly Parton, who died last week at the age of 80, leaving behind a decades-long legacy of art, philanthropy and cultural impact. In the wake of her death, an act of vandalism targeting her 40-year-old star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame has prompted a swift, respectful replacement to honor her memory.

    Parton first received her star on the Los Angeles landmark in 1984, in recognition of her decades of contributions to entertainment across music, film and theme park development. In the days after her death was announced, grieving fans flocked to the star to lay tributes: bouquets of fresh flowers, glowing candles, and personal photos that reflected the joy she had brought to millions of lives around the world. That peace was broken earlier this week, when vandals scratched Parton’s name, leaving the plaque heavily defaced.

    Local officials confirmed that repairs had already been scheduled to address pre-existing cracks in the original star before the vandalism occurred. All fan tributes were carefully cleared from the site ahead of construction work, which wrapped up on Wednesday. The Hollywood Historic Trust, which manages the iconic 2,800-star Walk of Fame, announced the replacement in an official Instagram post this week.

    “The Hollywood Historic Trust and Hollywood Chamber of Commerce are proud to honour the legacy of Dolly Parton with a replacement of her star,” the statement read, confirming that the new plaque will be open for public viewing starting Friday. Photographs taken after the repair work show the star temporarily covered ahead of its official unveiling.

    As tributes continue to pour in from across the music industry and beyond, Parton was laid to rest last Friday in a private family funeral in Nashville, where she was buried beside her late husband Carl Dean. The following evening, her niece Jada Star took the stage at the Grand Ole Opry House — widely known as the home of country music — as part of a public tribute concert celebrating her aunt’s life and career.

    At Dollywood, Parton’s beloved Tennessee theme park that draws 4 million annual visitors, new permanent additions are being planned to honor her title as the park’s “dreamer-in-chief”. Parton purchased the then-failing park in 1982, reimagining it as a people-focused counterpart to California’s Disneyland, and grew it into the most visited ticketed tourist attraction in the state. New upgrades will include a tranquil waterfall built outside the park’s chapel, designed to give guests a quiet space to pause, reflect and connect with the natural landscape Parton loved. The chapel will also add custom stained-glass windows inscribed with Parton’s favorite Bible verse: “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.” Next year, the park will also introduce a new character called the Dream Maker, a tribute to Parton’s lifelong commitment to children and her Imagination Library, a global program that has donated millions of free books to young readers across the world.

    For decades, Parton built her reputation as one of country music’s most enduring stars, thanks to chart-topping hits including *Jolene* and 9 to 5, and became a beloved cultural figure far beyond the music industry for her generosity, wit and commitment to public good. Her death has sparked an outpouring of love that continues to take shape in tributes across the United States, from the Hollywood hills to the hills of East Tennessee.

  • Sultan of Oman to make state visit to UK, balancing pressures from US and Iran

    Sultan of Oman to make state visit to UK, balancing pressures from US and Iran

    LONDON – Buckingham Palace announced Thursday that Sultan Haitham bin Tarik of Oman will undertake a three-day state visit to the United Kingdom next month, a high-profile diplomatic engagement unfolding as the strategically positioned Gulf nation navigates intensifying competing pressure from Washington and Tehran.

    King Charles III and Queen Camilla will welcome the Omani leader at Windsor Castle from October 20 to 22, though full details of the visit’s schedule and agenda have not been made public.

    For the United Kingdom, state visits are a carefully calibrated diplomatic tool: the monarchy leverages its full ceremonial grandeur to strengthen ties with long-standing partners and nurture relationships with allies navigating tricky geopolitical positions. Traditionally, these events include a ceremonial horse-drawn carriage procession through castle grounds, a formal inspection of honor guards, a lavish state dinner hosted by the British monarch, and closed-door bilateral talks with the UK’s elected senior government officials. While the monarch formally extends the invitation for these visits, planning and approval are always directed by the UK’s sitting government, with preparations typically taking months to finalize.

    The announcement of Sultan Haitham’s trip comes one month after former U.S. President Donald Trump issued an extraordinary threat to bomb Oman, after the Gulf state appeared close to reaching a bilateral agreement with Iran to coordinate commercial ship traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. This narrow waterway, which borders Oman along its southern coast, carried roughly 20 percent of the world’s total oil and natural gas shipments before the latest escalation of conflict across the Middle East, making its security a critical priority for global energy markets.

    This is not the first meeting between King Charles and Sultan Haitham: the British monarch hosted the Oxford-educated Omani leader for a private tea at Windsor Castle during an unofficial visit to the UK last year. The last full state visit by an Omani sultan to the United Kingdom dates back to March 1982, when the late Queen Elizabeth II welcomed Sultan Haitham’s predecessor, Sultan Qaboos bin Said.

  • Toxic wildfire haze spreads across South East Asia as ‘super’ El Niño intensifies

    Toxic wildfire haze spreads across South East Asia as ‘super’ El Niño intensifies

    A growing public health and environmental emergency is unfolding across Southeast Asia, as months of uncontrolled wildfires in Indonesia have spawned a thick blanket of toxic haze that has drifted across national borders, endangering millions of people and threatening massive carbon emissions from vulnerable ecosystems.

    Weeks after the first blazes ignited across Sumatra and Indonesian Borneo in mid-July, the smog now covers large swathes of Indonesia and has spread to neighboring Malaysia, Singapore, and the Philippines. In the hardest-hit areas, pollution levels have surpassed 15 times the maximum safe limit set by the World Health Organization, pushing air quality into the “acutely unhealthy” range that threatens even healthy adults, not just vulnerable groups.

    For local residents, the daily reality of living under the haze is grim. Nineteen-year-old teaching assistant Rizma Nur Fatimah, who works at a school in Banjarbaru, South Kalimantan, described visibility so poor that “you couldn’t even see your own feet” inside her classroom. Even sealed indoor spaces offer little protection: “Even inside the house, with everything closed, the haze still got in,” she said. Having grown up with annual haze events, Fatimah noted that this year’s crisis is far worse than previous seasons, leaving local communities resigned to chronic poor air quality. Twenty-three-year-old mother Misbah, from nearby Pengayuan village, said her three-year-old daughter has already developed persistent cough, sore throat, and runny nose from prolonged exposure to the smog.

    The health impacts are being felt hundreds of kilometers away, too. On the Philippine island province of Palawan, residents and medical workers report widespread respiratory and allergic symptoms linked to the drifting smoke. “We are now experiencing mild headaches,” said local physician Dr Precious Bañas-Melad. “My cousin who isn’t allergic to anything started developing allergies. My husband is the first one who had itchy eyes and throat.” Across the border in Malaysia, national health authorities have recorded sharp increases in asthma and conjunctivitis cases as air quality declines across the country.

    Between July and August alone, Indonesia’s Ministry of Health confirmed more than 50,000 cases of respiratory infections directly linked to the land and forest fires, with children under five accounting for over 12,000 of those cases.

    While this year’s extreme severity is being driven by a Super El Niño event that has worsened drought conditions across the region, experts emphasize that the recurring crisis is deeply rooted in decades of human-caused land use change. The pattern dates back to the Suharto era, when vast areas of ancient rainforest and carbon-rich peatland in Kalimantan were cleared for logging, industrial agriculture, and large-scale infrastructure projects. Today, environmental groups, researchers, and official government investigations have repeatedly documented that many commercial operators use fire as a low-cost method to clear large tracts of land for industrial plantations.

    Unlike small-scale, community-managed traditional burning practices that are tightly controlled, large-scale clearing fires are far harder to contain and create far greater harm to both public health and the environment. Drained peatlands, industrial timber estates, and oil palm plantations create landscapes that are far more vulnerable to burning, and blazes often reoccur in the same degraded areas year after year.

    What makes this year’s fires on Indonesian Borneo particularly alarming is that they are tearing through one of the world’s largest tropical peatland ecosystems. These unique landscapes act as massive natural carbon sinks: under normal waterlogged conditions, decomposition is slowed, allowing carbon to accumulate underground for thousands of years. But when drained and burned, these same carbon stores turn into what researchers call carbon “bombs,” releasing thousands of years of stored carbon into the atmosphere in just weeks or months, worsening the climate change that drives extreme drought and El Niño events in a dangerous feedback loop.

    “Peatlands are incredibly effective carbon stores because their waterlogged conditions slow decomposition, allowing carbon to accumulate underground for thousands of years,” explained Dr Nisa Novita, a peatland researcher at Indonesian conservation NGO Yayasan Konservasi Alam Nusantara. “But this also means they can become a ‘carbon bomb’ when they are drained or burned, because that carbon can be rapidly released into the atmosphere.”

    As the Super El Niño event continues to intensify through the coming months, experts warn the worst may still be ahead. Forest fire forensics expert Professor Bambang Hero Saharjo, from Institut Pertanian Bogor University, noted that in 2025, without an El Niño event, Indonesian wildfires burned roughly 359,000 hectares of land. This year, he projects the burned area could reach 11 million hectares, putting the 2026 season on par with the devastating 1997-1998 wildfires, one of the worst on record for Indonesia.

    Indonesia’s Forestry Minister Raja Juli Antoni confirmed this week that the fight to contain the blazes is now entering its most critical phase. “Our problems are not over. September is the peak of El Niño,” he said. “September is the main fight for us.”

  • Liechtenstein MPs vote to legalise abortion despite threat of veto

    Liechtenstein MPs vote to legalise abortion despite threat of veto

    In a cliffhanger vote that has underscored deep divisions over reproductive rights in the tiny Alpine European nation of Liechtenstein, the country’s 25-seat parliament has passed a grassroots citizens’ initiative by just a single vote to liberalize the country’s strict abortion laws. The proposal, spearheaded by a coalition of women’s advocates and led by 28-year-old Tatjana As’Ad from the small left-wing Free List party, would legalize abortion on request during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, end the national ban on abortion-related information, and mandate that health insurance cover costs for the procedure.

    After weeks of tense debate, the final vote count came in at 13 in favor to 12 against, a razor-thin margin that reflected the polarizing nature of the issue in the predominantly Catholic country. Despite the narrow parliamentary approval, the legislation is all but certain to be blocked: Hereditary Prince Alois, Liechtenstein’s de facto ruler who holds sweeping executive and legislative powers rare for a modern Western European monarch, has publicly threatened to veto the initiative since it was first introduced.

    To bring the proposal before parliament, supporters gathered more than 4,900 valid signatures from the country’s 41,000 residents – nearly five times the minimum requirement needed to force a parliamentary vote. Advocates have argued that public opinion has shifted sharply in favor of liberalization since Liechtenstein’s last national referendum on abortion in 2011, when 52% of voters rejected a similar proposal. At that time, Prince Alois also signaled he would oppose any change to the status quo.

    Currently, abortion is only permitted in Liechtenstein in extremely limited circumstances: when the pregnant person’s life is at direct risk, or when the pregnancy is the result of sexual violence. Any person who performs an unauthorized abortion can face up to three years of prison time, while a woman who undergoes the procedure can be jailed for up to one year. These restrictions have forced hundreds of Liechtenstein women annually to travel to neighboring Austria or Switzerland to access abortion care. Since 2015, women have not faced criminal penalties for seeking abortion abroad, but the costs of the procedure are not covered by domestic health insurance, creating a financial barrier for low-income residents.

    Lawmakers rejected a separate amendment that would have put the issue directly to a public referendum, leaving the final decision in the hands of the hereditary prince. Roman Catholicism, which officially remains the state religion of Liechtenstein, counts nearly 80% of the population among its adherents, and the church has maintained strong opposition to abortion legalization. The Princely House has echoed this position, stating that its core objection to the initiative is that it does not include sufficient protections for unborn life. That said, Prince Alois has left the door open for more modest adjustments to current law, including lifting the existing ban on abortion-related public information and clarifying ambiguous language in the current regulations.

    Prince Alois exercises all day-to-day public governing duties on behalf of his father, Prince Hans-Adam II, and holds an extraordinary range of powers for a constitutional monarch in 21st century Europe: in addition to being able to veto any legislation passed by parliament, he can dismiss the sitting government or individual ministers, appoint all federal judges, and propose legislative changes directly. Reproductive rights advocates have framed the initiative as part of a broader push to bring Liechtenstein’s abortion laws in line with most other European countries, where abortion is legal on request in early pregnancy across the vast majority of EU member states.