Global Pulse

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  • Australian household spending plunges by most in three years as families tighten budgets

    Australian household spending plunges by most in three years as families tighten budgets

    In a surprising turn that underscores growing financial strain on Australian consumers, national household spending posted its sharpest decline in three years during April 2024, new data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) reveals. The 1.1% month-on-month plunge follows a solid 1.6% expansion in March, with multiple overlapping factors — from temporary federal tax policy to the ongoing Middle East conflict and persistent cost-of-living challenges — combining to pull overall spending lower.

    The single largest contributor to the overall drop was a 4.7% collapse in transportation spending, a shift directly tied to the federal government’s temporary halving of the national fuel excise, alongside state and territory governments forgiving associated GST revenue. The policy change, which took effect on April 1, delivers an average saving of 26 cents per litre at the pump through the excise cut, plus an additional 5.7 cents per litre from the returned GST, pushing down total nominal spending on fuel even as consumption rose.

    “Even though Australians purchased more fuel volume in April compared to March, the tax cut offset that increase,” explained Callam Pickering, senior economist at Indeed APAC. “Ultimately, consumers drove more but spent less out-of-pocket on fuel for the month.” Beyond fuel savings, transportation spending also fell as Australians scaled back air travel, with some trip cancellations tied to market uncertainty stemming from the Middle East conflict further reducing discretionary travel expenditure.

    Beyond transportation, discretionary spending across multiple key sectors also pulled back, with declines recorded in out-of-home dining, recreation, and retail categories including clothing and footwear. Industry analysts note this pullback reflects a broader trend of Australian households tightening their budgets in response to mounting financial pressures.

    “Consumers are increasingly retreating to spending only on essentials and hunkering down against a growing list of economic headwinds, including mortgage stress, softening consumer confidence, rising unemployment, and lingering uncertainty following the release of the recent federal budget,” said Marc Jocum, senior product and investment strategist at Global X. “Discretionary spending has become the first casualty of this more cautious approach.”

    The Middle East conflict that erupted in late February has driven extreme volatility in global oil markets, pushing prices from roughly $US56 per barrel in pre-conflict January to a temporary peak of $US120 per barrel. Prices moderated to around $US110 per barrel by the end of April, but the volatility has created ongoing uncertainty for domestic fuel prices. Every $US10 increase in global crude prices translates to an extra 10 cents per litre for Australian motorists, adding consistent pressure to household budgets.

    A key wildcard for coming months is the upcoming expiration of the temporary fuel excise cut on July 1. Treasurer Jim Chalmers has all but confirmed the policy will not be extended, meaning fuel prices are set to rise sharply just as households are already pulling back on spending. Economists warn that the combination of expiring tax relief, elevated global oil prices, lingering high inflation, and recent interest rate hikes will continue to weigh on household spending in the short to medium term.

    The Reserve Bank of Australia has implemented three consecutive interest rate hikes, lifting the official cash rate to 4.35% to curb persistent inflation. Jocum notes that these higher borrowing costs are already reshaping household behavior, particularly for mortgage holders. “For the RBA, the core risk is that even while inflation remains sticky in some parts of the economy, households are already behaving as if an economic slowdown has arrived,” he added.

    Pickering echoed this cautious outlook, noting that ongoing headwinds will continue to pressure spending in coming months. “If fuel prices stay elevated, that gradually erodes the ability of many households to spend on non-essential items, likely dragging down discretionary spending growth further,” he said. “Higher interest rates are also weighing heavily on household budgets, and the overall economic outlook is far less positive than it was just a few months ago.”

  • ABC managing director Hugh Marks defends AI radio news trial

    ABC managing director Hugh Marks defends AI radio news trial

    Senior leadership at Australia’s national public broadcaster the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) has defended a new artificial intelligence trial that converts on-air radio news bulletins into text-based online content, pushing back against concerns that the project could lead to widespread job cuts and erode local journalism standards.

    ABC Managing Director Hugh Marks outlined details of the pilot program during testimony before a Senate estimates hearing on Thursday, noting the trial has already been rolled out in the Gippsland region of western Victoria. The core goal of the initiative, Marks explained, is to extend the shelf life of local radio news by making it accessible to digital audiences, rather than limiting it to a single live broadcast. He added that the public broadcaster is also developing a feature to customize digital content based on individual users’ preferences for localized local news, a key competitive advantage only the ABC can deliver for Australian communities.

    Extensive consultations with local ABC teams across multiple regional operations preceded the launch of the pilot, Marks confirmed, framing the project as a major step forward in strengthening the broadcaster’s connection with local audiences, a core mission that no other media organization in Australia can fulfill at the same scale.

    The trial faced questions from Senator Peter Whish-Wilson, who asked whether the AI project was just the first phase of a broader push to automate newsroom operations and whether the tool would be used to justify cutting journalist roles. In response, Marks clarified that while the adoption of AI may lead to shifts in job functions over time, the program was never designed to replace existing positions. “This is about making the most of the jobs that exist,” he told the committee, emphasizing that the tool is built to complement rather than replace the work of ABC journalists.

    Marks added that the ABC already uses artificial intelligence to support emergency broadcasting operations, and this news repurposing trial is just one more way the broadcaster is leveraging technology to improve its services. Once radio content is converted to written text, it can also be shared with other local media outlets, boosting the depth and quality of regional news coverage across the country, he noted.

    Crucially, Marks stressed that all AI-generated content will still undergo full human editorial review before publication, and the pilot remains staff-led, with no plans to replace the work of entry-level or junior reporters. “We’re really largely responding to things that staff are doing,” he said. “We’re early in the adoption, and it will be interesting to see how it plays out.”

    ABC Editorial Director Gavin Fang echoed Marks’ comments, noting that the public broadcaster has already begun integrating AI into specific newsroom workflows, most notably for processing and analyzing large datasets that would be impractical for human journalists to work through manually. Fang emphasized that AI remains a support tool rather than an independent creator: “Overall, what we’re seeing is that it’s still relying on the journalists to be able to know what the story is and to know where to point the AI.”

  • Australia sues US giant 3M for $2bn over ‘forever chemicals’ in firefighting foam

    Australia sues US giant 3M for $2bn over ‘forever chemicals’ in firefighting foam

    On Thursday, the Australian federal government announced one of the most significant legal actions in its history, filing a AU$2 billion (US$1.4 billion) damages lawsuit against U.S. manufacturing conglomerate 3M over widespread toxic contamination linked to per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), the persistent “forever chemicals” used in the company’s firefighting foam. The legal claim targets contamination that has impacted 28 separate Australian Department of Defence bases across the nation, marking the largest civil claim ever brought by the Australian government, according to Attorney-General Michelle Rowland.

    PFAS, a family of man-made chemical compounds prized for their water and grease-resistant properties, appear in a wide range of consumer and industrial products from non-stick cookware to waterproof clothing and electronics. But their defining trait — resistance to natural environmental breakdown — has turned them into a persistent public health and environmental threat: the chemicals accumulate in soil, groundwater, and food chains, and can remain in the human body for years, with peer-reviewed research linking long-term exposure to a range of serious health conditions including multiple forms of cancer. In 2022, 3M publicly announced it would phase out all production and use of PFAS globally in response to growing public and regulatory concern over these health risks.

    The Australian government’s lawsuit alleges that 3M engaged in deliberate misconduct spanning decades: the company knowingly withheld critical information about the toxicity and environmental persistence of PFAS found in its aqueous film-forming foam (AFFF), a product widely used by Australian defence forces for firefighting training and emergency response. According to the claim, 3M deliberately misrepresented the safety of the product, repeatedly reassuring Australian authorities that the foam posed no environmental risk even when internal company data confirmed the opposite. The contamination has already imposed massive costs on Australian taxpayers, with more than AU$1 billion spent to date on investigations, site remediation, and risk mitigation across the contaminated defence estate.

    “This misconduct has contributed to substantial costs for defence and the Australian taxpayer,” Rowland said in her official announcement of the suit. “Make no mistake, this legal action against 3M is significant. The government is committed to holding 3M and 3M Australia to account for the economic and environmental harms associated with PFAS contamination.”

    In its official response to the claim, 3M pushed back against the allegations, noting that the company never manufactured PFAS within Australia’s borders and halted all sales of PFAS-containing firefighting foam in the country 20 years ago. The company also pointed out that the Australian Department of Defence continued to use its existing stockpiles of the foam for two decades after 3M stopped sales. A company spokesperson confirmed that 3M intends to vigorously contest the government’s claims through the formal legal process.

  • Australia charges IS-linked woman who returned from Syria with terrorism offences

    Australia charges IS-linked woman who returned from Syria with terrorism offences

    Australian federal law enforcement authorities have announced terrorism charges against a woman with documented connections to the Islamic State (IS) group, following her repatriation to Australia from a detention camp in northeastern Syria. The development comes just weeks after the final two groups of Australian women and children, who had been held for years in the al-Roj camp, arrived back on Australian soil earlier this month.

    Al-Roj camp, established in 2019 after the territorial collapse of the IS caliphate, has held thousands of family members of alleged IS fighters from countries across the globe. Tuesday’s arrivals in Sydney and Melbourne marked the end of repatriations for all known Australian citizens held in the facility, with other groups having returned to Australia in staggered waves over preceding months and years.

    As of Thursday morning, Australian police had not released additional details about the charged woman, including her identity or the specific parameters of the terrorism allegations, with a formal press briefing scheduled for later that day to disclose further information. This latest charge marks the fourth legal action taken against repatriated Australian women this month: three other women who returned from Syria have already been hit with a range of allegations, including crimes against humanity and unlawful presence in a declared active conflict zone.

    The repatriation and legal processing of these Australian citizens has ignited fierce political and public debate across Australia. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has repeatedly reiterated the federal government’s stance that it provided no official assistance to facilitate the group’s return, doubling down on a long-held government position with the remark: “if you make your bed, you lie in it.”

    However, human rights advocates and legal organizations have pushed back against this hardline approach, arguing that all Australian citizens hold a fundamental right to return to their home country. They have emphasized that many of the repatriated people are children, who had no choice in being brought to the region by family members, and require targeted support and rehabilitation rather than punitive action. The unfolding legal process is now being closely watched as a test case for how Australia will handle future repatriations of citizens with links to extremist groups.

  • Trump says he will not ease sanctions on Iran as part of a deal

    Trump says he will not ease sanctions on Iran as part of a deal

    On Wednesday, U.S. President Donald Trump publicly confirmed to reporters that easing harsh, decades-long sanctions on Iran is not on the table in ongoing negotiations aimed at ending active hostilities, reopening critical shipping lanes through the Strait of Hormuz, and rolling back Tehran’s nuclear program. This firm rejection comes as Iranian leadership has made the release of frozen Iranian assets a core confidence-building step — and in some framing, a non-negotiable precondition — for any meaningful progress in bilateral talks.

    Last Monday, Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and the country’s central bank governor traveled to Qatar to discuss unlocking $6 billion in Iranian funds that have been held in the Gulf state at Washington’s directive since September 2023. The high-level visit sparked quiet speculation of a potential breakthrough in the long-strained bilateral relationship. Iran has long argued that it is owed as much as $120 billion in its own oil revenue that has been frozen in foreign financial institutions by sweeping U.S. sanctions first imposed after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

    The framework of U.S. sanctions on Iran has expanded dramatically in the decades since the revolution. The 1996 Iran Sanctions Act extended penalties to third-party entities doing business with Tehran and explicitly barred Iran from pursuing a nuclear weapons program. Starting in 2005, Washington added layer after layer of sanctions targeting individuals and firms accused of ties to terrorist activity. Beyond barring U.S. persons and entities from conducting business with Iran, these restrictions cut Tehran off from the U.S.-dominated global financial system, which operates primarily on U.S. dollars and relies on U.S.-backed transfer infrastructure such as SWIFT. For Iran, this has created a crippling cash shortage that has gutted the country’s economy.

    Speaking during a White House cabinet meeting, Trump noted he remains unsatisfied with the current state of negotiations. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was in attendance, told reporters that while there have been signs of incremental progress and mutual interest in a deal, it remains unclear whether meaningful movement will come in the coming hours and days. Echoing longstanding U.S. policy, Rubio emphasized that “the bottom line is Iran’s never going to have a nuclear weapon.”

    Yet independent analysts argue that Trump’s maximalist negotiating position may be misaligned with the reality on the ground. Ali Vaez, Iran project director at the International Crisis Group, explained that for the Islamic Republic, simple regime survival already counts as a victory. “They have managed to repel an aggression by the mightiest military power in the world, that of the United States, and also the mightiest intelligence service in the world, that of Israel,” Vaez noted. He added that the conflict has given Iran a new deterrent tool: direct operational control over the Strait of Hormuz, a geographic advantage it had never deployed before the current war.

    Trump reiterated that any final deal must prevent any single nation from exercising exclusive control over the strait — a critical global chokepoint through which roughly 20% of the world’s oil supplies pass. “We’ll watch over it, but nobody’s going to control it. That’s part of the negotiation that we have,” he said. The strait was first blocked by Iran to bar passage of U.S. and Israeli-linked vessels early in the conflict, before the U.S. Navy implemented a counter-blockade that halted most Iranian oil exports.

    The president made a shocking, unanticipated threat on Wednesday, saying he would “blow up” Oman if the nation agreed to work with Iran to collect transit fees for ships passing through the strait as part of a peace deal. “The strait is going to be open to everybody,” Trump said. “Oman will behave just like everybody else, or we’ll have to blow them up,” he added.

    Earlier the same day, Iranian state television reported that Tehran had received an unofficial draft framework for a memorandum of understanding with Washington. Under the proposed text, the U.S. would withdraw its military forces from the region and lift its naval blockade, in exchange for Tehran restoring commercial transit through the Strait of Hormuz to pre-war levels within 30 days. The draft would put Iran in charge of traffic management and shipping route oversight in coordination with Oman, and a final agreement reached within 60 days would be codified into a binding United Nations Security Council resolution, Iranian state TV claimed.

    Ali Bagheri Kani, deputy secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, told Iran’s Mehr News Agency on Wednesday that transit rules for the strait will “be completely different from the conditions before the conflict over Iran began.” The White House immediately pushed back against the Iranian report, dismissing any claim of a draft agreement as a “complete fabrication.”

    Vaez added that any long-term non-aggression pact between Washington and Tehran will almost certainly require provisions to end Israel’s ongoing military assault on Lebanon, where Iran’s ally Hezbollah operates. “It’s very hard for the Iranians to throw Lebanon under the bus,” Vaez said. “So, at this point, including the conflict with Lebanon is important for the Iranians.”

    For its part, Israel has made clear it prefers the continuation of hostilities in both Iran and Lebanon. “Israel, I think, is really hoping for no agreement,” Danny Citrinowicz, a senior researcher at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies, said during a recent panel discussion. “The last thing that Israel wants to see is an agreement between the US and Iran.”

    Even as negotiations proceed, military hostilities have not paused entirely. On Monday, the U.S. launched what it described as “self-defence” strikes on Iranian missile sites, breaking the terms of a Pakistan-brokered ceasefire that has been in effect for weeks.

    Looking ahead, it remains unclear how long Trump can sustain the ongoing conflict with Iran. The war has grown deeply unpopular with the American public, and it has driven global petrol prices to alarming new heights. Additionally, heavy consumption of critical U.S. weapons systems during the war, which began on February 28, has sparked widespread concern that the U.S. military lacks sufficient stockpiles to respond to a potential future conflict with China. Drawn-down inventories include long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles, as well as Patriot and THAAD anti-missile and anti-drone interceptors.

    In a report released Wednesday, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) warned that depleted weapons stockpiles have created a “window of vulnerability” for any potential conflict in the Western Pacific. The report also examined Trump’s proposed $1.5 trillion 2027 defense budget, concluding that “the problem today isn’t money; it’s time” to replenish critical supplies.

  • Minister: Israel won’t allow Trump to make a peace deal with Iran

    Minister: Israel won’t allow Trump to make a peace deal with Iran

    Tensions across the Middle East escalated sharply this week as Israel launched a major new bombardment of Lebanon just as the United States and Iran hold high-stakes indirect ceasefire negotiations, drawing accusations that the offensive is deliberately intended to derail diplomatic progress. The attack, which has already left dozens dead and hundreds of thousands displaced, comes amid parallel developments exposing alleged abuses against international humanitarian activists attempting to break Israel’s years-long siege of Gaza, with organizers demanding a full investigation into direct U.S. complicity in the mistreatment of their members.

    On Tuesday, Israeli forces carried out more than 120 airstrikes targeting areas across southern Lebanon and the eastern Bekaa Valley, in a direct violation of the 45-day ceasefire that took effect last month. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the government would intensify its military campaign, confirming the expansion of Israeli occupation in southern Lebanon beyond the country’s previously declared “security zone.” Israeli officials have ordered residents of dozens of Lebanese villages to remain out of their homes, as the military pushes to establish a new buffer zone extending between 5 and 10 kilometers into Lebanese territory.

    Lebanon’s health ministry confirmed that 31 people were killed in the Tuesday strikes, including 14 residents of the southern town of Burj al-Shamali — among them two children and three women. More than 40 others were wounded. Since Israel launched its full-scale offensive in Lebanon in early March, the death toll has climbed to over 3,200 killed and more than 9,700 injured. Even after the April truce went into effect, more than 600 people have lost their lives to ongoing violence.

    Israel’s military strategy in Lebanon follows what Defense Minister Israel Katz has called the “Gaza model”: widespread destruction of civilian infrastructure to force mass displacement. Before last month’s ceasefire, more than 40,000 homes across southern Lebanon were either destroyed or damaged, with demolition operations continuing after the truce. The offensive has displaced more than 1 million Lebanese people, a humanitarian catastrophe that has gone largely underreported in global media. In response to the renewed Israeli strikes, Hezbollah launched drone attacks against Israeli targets, continuing the cross-border exchanges that have persisted through months of declared ceasefires.

    The timing of the renewed offensive has sparked fierce criticism from inside and outside Israel, with many observers arguing the attack is intended to sabotage ongoing ceasefire negotiations between the U.S. and Iran. The influential far-right Israeli Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir openly acknowledged this framing Tuesday, stating explicitly that the entire Israeli cabinet is unified in opposing any potential peace deal that would end the current conflict. “This is an agreement that can harm the state of Israel, and we will not allow this to happen,” Ben-Gvir said in remarks to reporters, adding that the government should cut off electricity across Lebanon, occupy territory up to the Zahrani River, and return to full-scale massive war. Fellow far-right cabinet member Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich doubled down on the aggressive rhetoric, calling for Israel to destroy 10 buildings in Beirut for every Hezbollah drone attack, and expand demolitions to other major Lebanese cities if necessary.

    Shaiel Ben-Ephraim, a former Israeli foreign ministry diplomat and current prominent critic of the country’s regional policy, explained that the deepening incursion into Lebanon is designed to kill both the proposed Lebanese ceasefire and the U.S.-Iran talks entirely. “Israel was “moving to bury not only the supposed ceasefire in Lebanon but also talks on Iran” because its policy “is an endless and wide regional war,” Ben-Ephraim said, adding “Israel forced the US into war and won’t let us end it.”

    The negotiations, which do not include Israeli representatives, come as U.S. President Donald Trump has framed the latest round of talks as promising, even as details of the proposed framework remain contested. On Wednesday, Reuters reported, citing Iranian state television, that Tehran has received an unofficial U.S. proposal that would restore pre-war commercial shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz for a 30-day period, in exchange for a U.S. troop withdrawal from the region surrounding Iran and an end to the U.S. naval blockade. The U.S. has publicly disputed this account of the proposed framework. While Iran has condemned recent U.S. attacks as acts of bad faith and clear violations of prior ceasefire commitments, it has not walked away from the negotiating table. Nuclear issues, which were a core sticking point in earlier U.S.-Iran negotiations, have been pushed to future talks, but Iran has made clear that a lasting peace deal requires an end to Israel’s assault on Lebanon.

    Separately, international activists from the Global Sumud Flotilla, an organization that organizes humanitarian voyages to break Israel’s siege of Gaza, released detailed testimonies this week documenting widespread abuse, torture, and sexual assault of their members at the hands of Israeli forces after their latest flotilla was intercepted in international waters. The activists are calling for a full investigation into U.S. complicity in the abuses, noting that both the ship used by Israeli forces to detain participants and the weapons used to attack them were built and paid for by the United States government.

    Testimonies from the 428 abducted participants describe brutal, systematic abuse. According to the GSF media statement, detained humanitarians, doctors, and journalists were processed one by one through a darkened shipping container, where groups of three to five soldiers beat each person while other waiting captives heard their screams. One participant, Yassine Benjelloun, described being beaten repeatedly within minutes of being detained: “What lasts maybe three or five minutes seems like a lifetime. You don’t know that the door is going to open, and they’re going to kick you out.”

    Dr. Jihan Alya Mohd Nordin, a Malaysian physician on the flotilla, documented 35 participants with fractured or dislocated bones, severe head injuries including concussions and eye and ear trauma, and 14 confirmed cases of sexual assault. Dr. Jihan, who was herself assaulted, forcibly stripped of her hijab, and choked by Israeli soldiers, described the experience of being unable to treat injured captives as devastating. “Being a doctor, the main aim is to reduce the sufferings of people. But when we cannot do anything to help them, it was the worst and most horrible feeling that I have,” she said.

    The Israeli amphibious landing ship used to detain the activists, the INS Nahshon, was built by Bollinger Mississippi Shipbuilding in Louisiana and fully financed by U.S. taxpayers. The vessel was previously used to detain participants from an earlier Gaza-bound flotilla, where dozens of activists required medical care for broken bones sustained during beatings. The weapons used against the civilian activists, including stun grenades and metal projectile rounds, were manufactured by Combined Tactical Systems, a Pennsylvania-based U.S. weapons manufacturer. GSF reports that these weapons were fired at close range into enclosed spaces at participants who were sitting or sleeping, in direct violation of the manufacturer’s own safety guidelines.

    Josh Paul, a former U.S. State Department official who resigned in 2023 to protest U.S. arms transfers to Israel amid its war in Gaza, confirmed that the use of U.S.-origin equipment for this abuse violates U.S. law. “Under US law, arms transfers must only be made for purposes authorized by law,” Paul said. “INS Nahshon‘s use by Israel to conduct an illegal seizure in international waters, and then to act as a base for the torture and sexual assault of foreign civilians, including Americans, who had broken no laws, and were acting from conscience to serve an urgent humanitarian need, plainly and grievously violates those terms.” Paul noted that the risk of misuse was clear decades ago, after the 2010 Mavi Marmara flotilla raid that killed nine activists, including a Turkish-American teenager, but U.S. officials continued to approve arms transfers regardless. “Anything we transfer to Israel, Israel will find a way to misuse – whether it is a bomb, a bulldozer or a boat,” he said.

    GSF emphasizes that the abuse of their members is not an isolated incident, but a direct consequence of decades of unconditional U.S. military and diplomatic support for Israel, which GSF says has enabled the Israeli government to commit sustained war crimes and crimes against humanity against Palestinian people. Successive U.S. administrations, under both Joe Biden and Donald Trump, have provided tens of billions of dollars in military aid to Israel and used United Nations Security Council vetoes to block dozens of ceasefire resolutions for Gaza. Since the October 2023 Hamas attack that triggered the latest Gaza war, Israeli forces have killed or wounded more than 250,000 Palestinians in Gaza, displaced roughly 2 million more, and subjected the enclave to widespread deliberate starvation and lack of access to clean water and medicine.

    Israel’s actions in Gaza are currently the subject of a genocide case at the International Court of Justice brought by South Africa and supported by nearly 20 United Nations member states. The International Criminal Court has also issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza, including murder and forced starvation. A United Nations panel of experts concluded last year that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, a finding endorsed by dozens of governments, hundreds of human rights groups, and leading legal scholars, including prominent Israeli and Jewish Holocaust experts.

    Flotilla organizers stressed that the abuse their members endured for a few days is nothing compared to the ongoing suffering of thousands of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli detention, many held without charge or trial under the country’s administrative detention system. Israeli authorities are currently investigating the deaths of dozens of Palestinian prisoners, with multiple reports of extrajudicial execution, torture, rape, and widespread sexual abuse of detained Palestinians. “What GSF participants survived for days, many Palestinians endure indefinitely without lawyers or consular access,” the GSF statement said.

    GSF is calling on the U.S. government to open an immediate investigation into Israel’s use of U.S.-origin arms and equipment to abuse American citizens, suspend all arms transfers to Israel until the probe is complete, and end the longstanding policy of unconditional military and diplomatic support for what GSF calls a regime actively committing genocide. Legal proceedings are already active in Turkey, Italy, and Spain, with Italian prosecutors opening an investigation into kidnapping and sexual assault connected to the flotilla incident, but the U.S. government has so far declined to take any action, matching its pattern of turning a blind eye to Israeli violations of international law.

  • Google worker charged with using internal data to make $1.2m on bets

    Google worker charged with using internal data to make $1.2m on bets

    A 12-year veteran Google information security engineer has been arrested and charged with breaking U.S. insider trading laws, accused of exploiting confidential internal company data to place high-yield bets on the blockchain-based prediction platform Polymarket and net more than $1 million in illegal profits. Prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York announced the charges against Michele Spagnuolo, an Italian citizen residing in Switzerland, who was taken into custody this week and appeared before a New York federal magistrate following his arrest.

    Court documents outline a scheme that began in 2024, when Spagnuolo started placing bets tied directly to unannounced Google outcomes on Polymarket, a prediction market that exclusively accepts cryptocurrency and operates on transparent blockchain infrastructure. Between October and December 2024, prosecutors allege Spagnuolo wagered a total of $2.7 million on Google-related events, leveraging early access to internal company data he obtained through his employment at the U.S.-based tech giant. His largest single win came from a high-risk bet on the 2025 Google Year in Search results, which had not yet been made public. Prosecutors say Spagnuolo correctly predicted the final rankings of the platform’s most-searched person category: he bet against high-profile candidates including Bianca Censori and former President Donald Trump, and placed a large wager on little-known musician D4vd to claim the top spot at odds that were near zero. At the time he placed the bet in November, Spagnuolo already knew D4vd held the top ranking because he had accessed the internal search data weeks before its public release. D4vd, the musician in question, is currently incarcerated facing charges for the alleged murder of a teenage girl.

    The investigation, a joint effort between the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, was able to trace the illegal activity back to Spagnuolo despite his attempts to conceal his identity. He operated under the account name AlphaRaccoon and spread his funds across multiple cryptocurrency wallets, but investigators linked the account to him after finding one wallet registered with his Italian national identification card. Following his arrest, Spagnuolo was released on a $2.25 million bond, and has not yet responded to requests for comment on the charges against him.

    Google confirmed Wednesday that the engineer has been placed on administrative leave, and that the company is cooperating fully with law enforcement’s ongoing investigation. A company spokesperson noted that the confidential marketing data Spagnuolo is accused of accessing was available through a tool accessible to all Google employees, but that using private internal information for personal financial gain constitutes a severe violation of the company’s internal policies.

    Polymarket also confirmed that it has collaborated closely with authorities throughout the investigation, pointing to the inherent transparency of blockchain-based trading as a key factor that helped investigators trace the illegal activity. “Blockchain trading is transparent, traceable, and bad actors leave footprints,” a Polymarket spokesperson said. The case marks one of the first high-profile insider trading prosecutions tied to prediction markets, highlighting growing regulatory scrutiny of unregulated crypto-based platforms that facilitate trading on real-world events.

  • Trump’s ‘Board of Peace’ fund has no money for Gaza: Report

    Trump’s ‘Board of Peace’ fund has no money for Gaza: Report

    Four months after former U.S. President Donald Trump launched his high-profile Gaza post-war reconstruction body dubbed the ‘Board of Peace’, the organization remains entirely devoid of major funding, trapped in overlapping legal and political uncertainty, according to an exclusive new report from the Financial Times published Wednesday.

    The FT’s investigation builds on a previous exclusive report from Middle East Eye, which first uncovered that a senior U.S. official involved with the initiative traveled to Saudi Arabia back in April to pressure Riyadh to follow through on a previously announced $1 billion funding pledge to the board.

    Multiple anonymous sources, one an Arab official and one a U.S. official, confirmed to Middle East Eye that Aryeh Lightstone — the top American official leading Gaza post-war planning for the board — held direct talks with Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan specifically to push for the long-promised donation to be transferred.

    Trump first established the Board of Peace in October 2025, immediately after the U.S. brokered a ceasefire to end Israel’s year-long military campaign in Gaza. That conflict, which has left more than 72,800 Palestinians dead according to local health officials, has been formally recognized as a genocide by the United Nations, leading global human rights experts, and scores of world leaders.

    When launching the initiative, Trump courted multi-billion-dollar donation pledges from wealthy Gulf Arab states and boasted that the organization would go down as one of the most impactful global bodies in modern history. But the FT’s reporting confirms that four months on, the dedicated World Bank-managed fund created for the board has yet to receive a single dollar in pledged contributions.

    Instead of formal contributions through the transparent World Bank channel, the board has only secured small, direct donations sent to a separate JPMorgan Chase bank account. Critically, this off-book structure does not require the board to disclose any information about its donors or the source of funds to its 25 member states, a lack of transparency that has already sparked growing concern among international observers.

    This secretive separate funding arrangement is expected to fuel renewed questions about hidden backers of the initiative, the influence unreported donors could exert over post-war Gaza policy, and potential conflicts of interest for U.S. and international officials assigned to work with the board.

    Documents and on-the-ground reporting already confirm that as of late last year, Lightstone and his team of U.S. advisors were operating out of two luxury beachfront hotels in Tel Aviv — the iconic Kempinski and Hilton properties — while drafting their long-term plans for Gaza, at a time when the enclave remains under Israeli military occupation and widespread humanitarian crisis.

    Among the most controversial plans drafted by the U.S. team is a proposal to redevelop Gaza into a specialized artificial intelligence technology hub and large-scale modern megacity. Critics across the global have widely condemned this proposal as a thinly veiled effort to carry out ethnic cleansing of the native Palestinian population from their ancestral land.

    In a November interview with The New York Times, Lightstone openly confirmed one core element of the plan: building segregated housing for thousands of ‘pre-vetted’ Palestinians that would be confined behind an Israeli military-controlled boundary known as the ‘yellow line’ in the occupied Gaza Strip.

    To date, the board has only received small direct contributions to cover basic operating costs and staff salaries. Morocco has contributed $3 million, while the United Arab Emirates sent $20 million to fund the office of the board’s high representative, Nickolay Mladenov, and the team of Palestinian technocrats working under him.

    While Trump retains the ceremonial title of head of the board, Mladenov — a former United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process and currently a senior leader at the UAE’s Anwar Gargash Diplomatic Academy — serves as the body’s active top official leading post-war planning.

    The FT also revealed that $100 million in UAE funding specifically earmarked for training a new Palestinian police force for post-occupation Gaza remains frozen, with no timeline for release.

    Bishara Bahbah, the Palestinian-American businessman who mediated ceasefire talks between the U.S. and Hamas, described the board’s current financial standing to the outlet as ‘really dismal’. He confirmed the organization has not been able to launch any tangible development or reconstruction work inside Gaza whatsoever, noting that ‘there is a complete lack of any funding to enable them to execute anything on the ground’.

  • Fund for climate-exposed Pacific nation invests in fossil fuels

    Fund for climate-exposed Pacific nation invests in fossil fuels

    An investigation by Agence France-Presse has uncovered a deeply contradictory revelation: the $200 million trust fund established to support low-lying Pacific island nation Tuvalu, one of the countries most vulnerable to catastrophic climate change, holds investments in coal mining, natural gas exploration, and the world’s highest-emitting crude oil refinery. As Tuvalu braces to host a pre-COP31 climate summit this year to draw global attention to the existential threat rising seas pose to its territory, the disclosure has sparked urgent calls for transparency and a full review of the fund’s portfolio.

    A chain of tiny coral atolls situated halfway between Australia and Hawaii, Tuvalu faces some of the most severe climate impacts on Earth: ocean acidification is eroding its coral foundations, storm surges and chronic sea-level rise are increasingly inundating its limited land, and tropical disease risks are growing. With just 26 square kilometers of dry land across the entire archipelago, infrastructure is stretched so thin that the main international airport’s runway doubles as a community sports field. With almost no natural resources and a deeply fragile economy, Tuvalu relies almost entirely on its government-managed trust fund to cover the skyrocketing costs of climate adaptation and disaster response.

    Established in 1987 with founding financial support from Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, the Tuvalu Trust Fund has long served as the nation’s largest single financial asset, providing critical ongoing revenue for a state heavily dependent on international aid. Management of the fund was handed to global advisory firm Mercer in 2022, with formal investment guidelines that explicitly require the portfolio to align with Tuvalu’s unique climate vulnerability: the fund’s official objectives state Tuvalu is “particularly susceptible to the adverse impacts of climate change” and mandate that managers minimize exposure to fossil fuel reserves and carbon emissions wherever possible.

    AFP’s review of public financial records and government reporting, however, tells a different story. Analyzing holdings data from 14 Mercer-managed funds held by the Tuvalu Trust Fund as of December 2025, investigators found that Tuvalu’s money is tied to some of the world’s largest fossil fuel companies and highest-emitting energy projects.

    Among the most high-profile investments is a stake in Indian multinational Reliance Industries, held through Mercer’s emerging markets fund. Reliance owns the Jamnagar petrochemical complex in western India, the world’s largest single-site crude oil refinery. Non-profit climate monitoring group Climate Trace recorded the facility emitted nearly 20 million tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2022, making it the planet’s top-emitting oil refinery.

    Further holdings include investments in U.S. utility giants The Southern Company and Duke Energy, ranked the second and third largest greenhouse gas emitters in the United States, according to data from the Political Economy Research Institute. A 2024 report from the U.S.-based Energy and Policy Institute documented that The Southern Company spent $60 million funding groups behind climate disinformation campaigns between 1993 and 2004.

    Tuvalu’s portfolio also includes stakes in mining giant Rio Tinto and Australian oil and gas supermajor Woodside Energy, both listed among Australia’s 10 largest greenhouse gas emitters in official government data. The Woodside investment is particularly striking: earlier in 2025, when the Australian government approved a 40-year extension of Woodside’s North West Shelf gas project, Tuvalu’s Climate Change Minister Maina Talia publicly condemned the decision, warning the project’s emissions threatened Tuvalu’s very survival and urging Australia to reject the extension.

    Roughly 12% of the entire Tuvalu Trust Fund, equal to around $25 million, is allocated to Mercer’s Australian shares fund, whose single largest holding is BHP Group, the world’s biggest mining firm and one of Australia’s most valuable companies. While BHP has divested most of its thermal coal assets in recent years, it still retains stakes in Australian thermal coal mines that produce the fossil fuel for steel manufacturing.

    For Tuvalu’s climate activists, the findings are deeply disheartening. “It was really shocking to see our nation tied up with fossil fuel companies,” Richard Gokrun, a Tuvaluan climate advocate and former weather forecaster, told AFP from the capital Funafuti. “We stand strong for the phase-out of fossil fuels, because we see the impacts to our country every day. The major changes that we are seeing are sea-level rise. We are starting to see new places are getting flooded or inundated.”

    The contradiction comes at a pivotal moment for Tuvalu’s global climate advocacy: later this year, the nation will host global leaders for a special pre-COP31 summit ahead of the United Nations’ next major climate conference, an event designed to highlight the devastating toll climate change is already taking on small island developing states. A September 2025 government report also shows Tuvalu is actively courting new donors to contribute additional capital to the trust fund through the UN climate process, with Prime Minister Feleti Teo repeatedly stating that opening new fossil fuel projects is “immoral and unacceptable” and a “death sentence” for his nation.

    Climate finance experts say the current portfolio fails utterly to meet the fund’s stated climate commitments. Sebastian Gehricke, a climate finance specialist at the University of Otago, told AFP the investments appear to show “virtually no formal consideration for climate change.” Ivan Diaz-Rainey, a finance professor at Australia’s Griffith University, said AFP’s findings “clearly warrants further investigation” and called for “full disclosure of holdings and a clear account of what actions have been taken to give effect to the fund’s commitments to climate action.”

    In response to AFP’s reporting, a spokesperson for the Tuvalu Trust Fund said the fund is currently reviewing its fossil fuel exposure in light of the new findings, reaffirming that “since Tuvalu is particularly susceptible to the adverse impacts of climate change, the TTF continues to seek to minimise the fund’s exposure to fossil fuel reserves and carbon emissions.” When contacted for comment, Mercer declined to address the holdings, stating it “does not provide commentary or analysis on our clients or their investment portfolios.”

  • ‘Shoebox’ flat reform leaves low-income Hong Kong residents in limbo

    ‘Shoebox’ flat reform leaves low-income Hong Kong residents in limbo

    For decades, Hong Kong has grappled with a crippling housing crisis: sky-high rents, acute supply shortages, and deep-rooted inequality have pushed hundreds of thousands of low-income residents into cramped, substandard living spaces known as “shoebox flats.” Now, a long-awaited regulatory reform aimed at phasing out these unsafe, tiny units has pushed the city’s most vulnerable households into limbo, as early evictions and a lack of affordable alternatives leave many unsure where they will go next.

    The new regulation, which came into force in March, grew out of a directive from Chinese President Xi Jinping for the global financial hub to address its long-running housing woes. Under the new rules, any subdivided unit smaller than 8 square meters (86 square feet) is banned, and mandatory safety and hygiene standards are imposed – requirements including at least one openable window, an enclosed toilet space, and permanent access to a sink. Property owners who register their subdivided units are given until 2030 to complete required renovations or restructure their properties, but many landlords have already moved ahead with eviction notices to clear out tenants ahead of the deadline.

    Forty-eight-year-old Lisa Lau, a welfare recipient who receives roughly $930 per month, $330 of which goes to rent, has been living in a 3-square-meter (32-square-foot) subdivided unit in Sham Shui Po, one of Hong Kong’s poorest neighborhoods. Her unit is one of nine separate cubicles split from a single apartment in a 60-year-old walk-up, separated only by thin wooden dividers. With no space for a kitchen, Lau cooks soup and noodles on a rice cooker placed directly on her bed, and shares a single toilet and shower with all other residents of the unit. To keep out rodents and cockroaches, she has taped a foam board across the bottom of her doorway. Months ago, she received an eviction notice, and like many other low-income tenants, she has no clear plan for what comes next.

    “I’ll stay here day by day,” Lau told Agence France-Presse. “I don’t know where to go. I’m scratching my head.” Despite the cramped, unsanitary conditions, Lau is reluctant to leave the neighborhood where she has built a small social network, and is waiting to hear if her application for nearby transitional housing will be approved. “As long as the landlord doesn’t come to evict residents, we are so at peace, we are so comfortable,” she said.

    Local authorities estimate that more than 220,000 people across Hong Kong’s 7.5 million population live in these shoebox subdivisions, with roughly one-third of all units requiring major structural upgrades to meet the new standards. The Hong Kong Housing Bureau says that more than 100 households have already moved out of Lau’s building, and officials are working to support the remaining 40 households to secure alternative accommodation. In response to inquiries, a government spokesperson noted that authorities have significantly expanded public housing supply, with a target of delivering roughly 196,000 new public units over the next five years, and have sped up application processing for residents waiting for public housing. These measures, the spokesperson said, will reduce overall demand for subdivided units and help keep private market rents stable.

    But advocacy groups working with low-income communities say the reform does not go far enough to address the underlying shortage of affordable housing in central, well-connected areas of the city. The Society for Community Organization, a non-profit that supports underprivileged groups, acknowledges that the new rules will help eliminate some of the most dangerous living conditions in the city. But deputy director Sze Lai-shan argues that without more accessible government-supported housing, many poor residents will be left without viable options.

    “Don’t expect these people who live in very small flats to move into the new basic housing units. They won’t be able to afford it,” Sze said. “A lot of the poorest people will be very dependent on the government to resettle them.” The organization has documented roughly 300 households already facing forcible eviction – a far higher number than the 35 eviction notices the government says it has received – and Sze expects hundreds more cases to emerge in coming months. While some evicted residents have moved into public or transitional housing, many others have simply relocated to other unregulated, substandard subdivided flats as a temporary stopgap.

    The crisis hits even closer to home for low-income workers like 63-year-old Liu Xiaoli, who faces eviction from her current subdivided unit. Divorced, Liu works two part-time jobs as a cook and cleaner to support her daughter and granddaughter on mainland China, and already stretches her income to cover current rent. “If the rent here or in other places goes up, I really can’t afford it,” Liu said. She has been unable to find any alternative accommodation in the area that meets the government’s new size and safety requirements, so she is only delaying the inevitable. “Right now, I’m just delaying as much as I can.”

    Notably, the new regulations do not extend to Hong Kong’s even more cramped “coffin homes” – stacked cubicles that resemble oversized bunk beds in dilapidated shared dormitories. Sixty-four-year-old Wan Hon-cheung has lived in a plywood coffin home roughly the size of a single bed for 10 years. He suffers from mobility issues that require a cane, making climbing into his elevated cubicle difficult, and is regularly bitten by bedbugs. He says he hopes the government will eventually extend reforms to improve conditions for people like him, but he has accepted his circumstances. “For us lower classes… this is reality, there’s nothing to complain about.”