Global Pulse

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  • Iceland holds knife-edge referendum on EU – and it could be decided on fish

    Iceland holds knife-edge referendum on EU – and it could be decided on fish

    On a small North Atlantic island with a population of just under 400,000, Icelanders are heading to the polls this Saturday to settle one of the most consequential and long-running debates in their modern history: whether to restart frozen negotiations to join the European Union. Latest polling shows the race is a statistical dead heat, with neither side holding a decisive lead, making the final outcome impossible to call with any certainty.

    Inside a sunlit waterfront fish processing plant outside Reykjavik, workers in hairnets and heavy blue overalls sort through freshly caught cod and haddock, with most of the finished fillets destined for European markets. For Pétur Pálsson, head of the Visir fishing firm, the threat of EU membership hangs heavy over his operation. He warns that joining the bloc would mean ceding control of Iceland’s lucrative fishing waters to Brussels policymakers, risking thousands of domestic jobs and pushing processing facilities overseas. “If we are in the EU, they will be the ones who make the policy,” Pálsson says.

    The push for a new referendum comes after Prime Minister Kristrún Frostadóttir’s centre-left government won a snap 2024 election on a pledge to revisit the EU question by 2027. That timeline was accelerated dramatically by shifting global geopolitics: Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has sharpened great power rivalries in the Arctic, while unpredictable trade policy from former U.S. President Donald Trump, including tariff threats and repeated public remarks about his desire to acquire Greenland, has pushed the question of Iceland’s global standing to the top of the national agenda.

    “Things have been moving very rapidly with respect to geopolitical challenges,” Finance Minister Daði Már Kristófersson, whose Liberal Reform Party leads the pro-accession campaign, told the BBC. “That has pushed Iceland’s place in the world up the agenda.” Iceland occupies a strategically critical position at the mouth of the GIUK Gap, a key North Atlantic shipping and surveillance corridor where Western militaries closely monitor Russian maritime activity. A founding member of NATO, Iceland has no standing military of its own, relying instead on a 1951 bilateral defense pact with the U.S. and collective security commitments from its NATO allies.

    Polling has shifted dramatically in the lead-up to the vote: one recent survey put the Yes camp ahead by a slim 51.3% to 48.7% margin, while earlier polls showed the two sides deadlocked. “It’s impossibly hard to predict,” said Eirikur Bergmann, a professor of politics at Bifröst University. “Both camps are throwing everything they have at it.” For supporters, the case for EU membership rests on two core pillars: security and economic stability. Kristófersson argues that joining the bloc would strengthen Iceland’s position against competing great powers, while adopting the euro would tame the country’s notoriously volatile currency and curb sky-high living costs that have left many struggling. “We see the opportunity of joining the EU and adopting the euro as a very significant benefit to Icelandic companies and to the Icelandic general public,” he says.

    A Yes vote this weekend will only restart negotiations with Brussels: any final membership deal would require a second national referendum and approval from all 27 existing EU member states. A No vote would shelve the accession question for the foreseeable future. Many voters planning to back Yes say they support restarting talks precisely because the final decision remains down the line. “We have to know what’s in the package from the EU,” said Reykjavik resident Anna Ragnarsdottir. “If we say no, we won’t ever know.”

    The biggest sticking point, both when Iceland first began accession talks in 2010 and today, is fishing. Marine industries account for nearly 40% of Iceland’s total exports, and the country’s fishing waters are woven into its national identity and political culture. Opponents warn that joining the EU would force Iceland to share access to its waters under the bloc’s Common Fisheries Policy, eroding national sovereignty and threatening the core of the country’s economy. Opposition leader Guðrún Hafsteinsdóttir, who leads the No campaign, has vowed that Iceland’s waters will never be opened to foreign fleets. Prof Bergmann notes that no Icelandic politician could survive making such a concession: “Fishing is inseparable from Iceland’s culture and political identity, and no politician ever could make that concession. They’d be expelled from the country.”

    The No campaign’s slogan, “Iceland for sale? No thanks,” has resonated with voters who prioritize protecting national control over key industries. Margrét Ágústa Sigurðardóttir, head of the Icelandic Farmers’ Association, is skeptical of the government’s promise to secure a special exemption for Iceland’s fishing and agricultural sectors. “No member state has been granted a permanent opt-out,” she says, arguing that EU policy would always prioritize the interests of 450 million EU consumers over the unique needs of a small 400,000-person nation.

    Iceland’s government argues that a special arrangement is achievable, pointing to precedent: Norway secured favorable terms even before it abandoned its own accession bid, while existing EU members Finland and Sweden won carve-outs for northern agricultural sectors. But economic concerns remain top of mind for most voters, regardless of their position: Iceland ranks among the most expensive countries in the world, with recent analysis showing prices are 84% higher than the EU average, and interest rates have climbed to 8% to curb persistent inflation. “We get higher salaries, and it goes straight to the cost of everything,” said Snærós Sindradóttir, a leading Yes supporter with the European Movement in Iceland. “It’s like a dog chasing its own tail constantly.”

    Ironically, while the referendum was called largely because of shifting security concerns, geopolitics has barely featured in public debate. For Sindradóttir, that omission is deeply frustrating: the referendum is happening now “100% because of security matters,” she says. Recent events have heightened security anxieties: in June, Icelandic authorities tracked a Russian intelligence ship passing through the country’s exclusive economic zone, and Trump’s repeated gaffes — including mistaking Iceland for Greenland during a Davos speech, and a joke from his ambassador that Iceland could become the 51st U.S. state — have left many Icelanders questioning the long-term reliability of their security alliance with the U.S. While the “special relationship” remains formally unchanged, Kristófersson argues that EU membership adds a critical additional pillar of security, a position that led the government to sign a new defense partnership with the bloc in March.

    On the streets of downtown Reykjavik, voters are split between economic anxiety and concerns over sovereignty. “The biggest problem right now is for the generation who are trying to buy their own housing,” said 62-year-old Adolf Fridriksson. “The mortgage rates are terrifying.” For 22-year-old Helga, the cost of membership and loss of control are too great a risk: “The fishing industry, and everything else, should be in our control.”

    The result will be closely watched across Europe. When Iceland abandoned accession talks in 2013, 11 of the 35 negotiation chapters were already completed, meaning a Yes vote could restart talks in months rather than years. The outcome is also being closely monitored in neighboring Norway, another Eurosceptic EEA member where support for EU accession is growing. For Hallgrímur Oddsson, head of EU-Iceland think tank European Currents, a Yes vote would be a much-needed boost for the EU’s stalled enlargement agenda. “But a No vote could also be perceived as a loss,” he says.

  • Qantas profit slumps $330m as US-Iran war doubles fuel prices

    Qantas profit slumps $330m as US-Iran war doubles fuel prices

    The ongoing US-Iran conflict has sent global jet fuel prices skyrocketing, delivering a severe financial hit to Australia’s largest air carrier Qantas that has forced the company to trim domestic flight capacity and put a planned $150 million share buyback on hold, the airline confirmed in its latest market update.

    In the report released this week, Qantas detailed that its underlying annual profits have fallen 13.1% year-on-year to $2.06 billion, representing a $330 million drop from the same 12-month period last year. Statutory after-tax profits saw an even steeper decline, dropping 19.7% to $1.289 billion. The airline directly attributed much of this downturn to the market volatility triggered by the US-Iran conflict, noting that the conflict has pushed jet fuel prices to more than double their levels from February, adding more than $420 million in unplanned costs to the company’s balance sheet.

    Qantas executives note that the final $610 million in total cost impacts would have been realized without swift intervention. To offset these rising expenses, the carrier has already implemented a series of adjustments, including raising passenger fares, reallocating aircraft to high-demand international routes, and cutting underperforming domestic capacity to match shifting travel demand.

    Despite the major headwinds from fuel costs, the airline reported stronger-than-expected revenue growth across both its Qantas mainline and low-cost Jetstar brands, driven by resilient customer travel demand. Underlying earnings before interest and taxes rose to $1.44 billion in the reporting period, outperforming some analyst projections.

    Qantas Chief Executive Vanessa Hudson framed the company’s current operating landscape as split between two vastly different economic environments: the stable, high-demand period before the outbreak of the US-Iran conflict, and the uncertain climate that has followed. “The final four months of the year saw business and consumer confidence fall as the conflict and broader economic headwinds created widespread uncertainty,” Hudson explained in the update. “Some large corporates and government agencies responded by managing their costs more tightly, which directly reduced demand for premium business travel.”

    “In response to the surge in fuel prices, we quickly adjusted fares and capacity and redeployed aircraft to give customers more options to fly to Europe, where demand for leisure travel remains strong,” Hudson added.

    In addition to capacity cuts, Qantas confirmed it is pausing the $150 million share buyback program first announced in April, as the company prioritizes preserving cash to buffer ongoing fuel price volatility. The airline’s board has approved a final dividend of 19.8 cents per share for shareholders, a payout that reflects the company’s continued effort to balance investor returns with cost stability amid global uncertainty.

  • Meta’s $18bn settlement may hasten reckoning for social media on child safety

    Meta’s $18bn settlement may hasten reckoning for social media on child safety

    In a sudden development that cut short a high-stakes legal showdown, Meta Platforms has agreed to a $17 billion settlement with 29 U.S. states over allegations that it illegally collected and misused personal data from children under 13, violating the decades-old Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). The surprise conclusion came just five days into the trial, before Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was scheduled to testify, ending what many observers had expected to be weeks of tense courtroom proceedings that would put the social media giant’s child safety practices on public trial.

    The case, filed by nearly two-thirds of U.S. states, was never just a technical dispute over compliance with a 30-year-old privacy law written long before today’s largest social platforms even existed. For the global tech industry, 2026 has already emerged as a turning point: social media platforms across the board are facing mounting global scrutiny over their impact on young users, and this case represented one of the most significant coordinated challenges to Big Tech’s long-held approach to online safety.

    For months leading up to the trial, Meta had poured extensive resources into defending its track record, repeatedly highlighting the dozens of safety tools it has rolled out for young users over the years. Senior Meta executives have walked journalists through the company’s safety initiatives at private briefings, including a presentation at Meta’s London headquarters that detailed more than 60 separate safety tools for Instagram alone. Yet the company’s efforts to frame itself as a responsible steward of child safety have been undermined by the experiences of parents who say they have struggled to navigate the overwhelming number of opt-in tools that require ongoing parental oversight. During the trial, damaging testimony from former Meta insiders further eroded the company’s position.

    Whistleblower Arturo Bejar, a former Instagram engineer, told the court that he had alerted senior leadership to harmful content affecting young users on the platform years ago, but no meaningful action was taken. Another senior Meta executive acknowledged he could not recall denying that the company had sometimes chosen to pay regulatory fines instead of changing harmful business practices. Internal documents presented during the trial also revealed that Meta knew opt-in safety tools have far lower adoption rates than default-enabled features — yet still chose to roll out child protection measures that users had to actively turn on themselves.

    Legal analysts had warned that a guilty ruling could have resulted in staggering fines for Meta, with the worst-case scenario reaching $1.4 trillion — a sum equal to the company’s entire current market value — calculated by applying the maximum COPPA penalty for every underage user who accessed Meta platforms for more than 30 minutes a day over a 12-year period. While that extreme outcome was never considered likely, even more realistic estimates projected hundreds of billions of dollars in penalties. By comparison, the $17 billion settlement, paid out over 10 years, represents a far smaller financial hit for the company. Crucially, the settlement does not require Meta to admit any wrongdoing, a outcome that legal experts say protects Meta’s core social media advertising business, which still generates the vast majority of the company’s revenue even as it prioritizes artificial intelligence development.

    As a core condition of the settlement, Meta has agreed to implement sweeping new default safety rules for teen users on both Facebook and Instagram, changes that child safety advocates have called long overdue. The new rules include a default daily 2-hour time limit for teen users across both platforms (excluding direct messaging), automatic notification muting between midnight and 6 a.m. and between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m. on school days, and a full platform-wide hiding of post likes for all teen accounts. Most of these changes will be rolled out as default or optional settings for teen users within six months, though new systems to accurately identify underage users on the platforms will take up to a full year to deploy.

    Industry observers widely expect these new rules will not remain limited to the U.S. for long, as governments around the world facing similar pressure over child online safety will almost certainly move to adopt similar standards. Meta has argued that the new measures will only deliver meaningful protection if competing platforms also adopt similar rules, and analysts note that mounting global backlash against social media’s impact on children could force rivals like TikTok and Snapchat to follow Meta’s lead in tightening restrictions for teen users.

    The settlement has drawn mixed reactions from stakeholders. One parent of a child harmed by Meta platforms summed up the response as a long-overdue step forward, saying “Finally, something was done.” But Bejar, the former Meta whistleblower, emphasized that the real test will be whether the new measures actually improve outcomes for young users. “At the end of the day, Meta needs to be held accountable for results, not efforts,” he said. Looking ahead, the settlement raises bigger questions about the future of social media: if platforms deliberately tone down engaging, addictive content to protect teens, will young users continue to engage? Some analysts even speculate that the growing wave of regulation could bring the era of unregulated social media to a natural end, as older users gradually exit the space and young users lose interest in a more muted, less addictive experience.

  • The question dominating Indian politics: Is it worse when women swear?

    The question dominating Indian politics: Is it worse when women swear?

    A 35-day education reform protest led by the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) at Delhi’s iconic Jantar Mantar demonstration ground wrapped up on July 25, but a viral clip showing young female protesters using expletives has reignited a fierce national conversation about gender bias, double standards, and the state of India’s public discourse. Weeks after the protest concluded, opposition leader Rahul Gandhi has injected new energy into the debate by calling out Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s framing of the women’s language as a “culture shock” as a product of systemic patriarchy.

    The protest, which spread to multiple Indian cities, was organized in response to widespread public anger over repeated exam paper leaks, with demands for sweeping education policy changes. During the weeks of demonstrations, a number of young female participants used aggressive, foul language targeting Prime Minister Modi, sparking swift outrage from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s base. Even some Modi opponents argued the women had crossed acceptable lines of political speech. Viral clips and images of the exchanges quickly spread across social media, drawing national attention and putting a 15-year-old female participant at the center of the controversy. The teen received violent online harassment, including rape threats, ultimately forcing her to release a public apology and remove her original post. Her single mother later told local media the ongoing harassment had forced the family to relocate multiple times to escape abuse.

    After the protest ended, Modi addressed the incident in an Instagram selfie video, framing the young women’s language as a deeply upsetting “culture shock.” “Some naughty children used extremely abusive expletives which have no place in a civilised society,” he said, noting the language targeted him and even his late mother. While he extended forgiveness to the young protesters, saying childhood mistakes should be a learning opportunity rather than a cause for permanent condemnation, he did not address two key points: the violent police crackdown deployed against demonstrators, and the ongoing violent threats targeting women who participated in the protest.

    Weeks later, during a student gathering in the western city of Pune, Gandhi – leader of the opposition Congress party in India’s lower parliamentary house – pushed back directly against Modi’s framing. Pointing out that male protesters also used foul language during the demonstration, Gandhi questioned why Modi only called attention to the language used by women. “If boys swear, there is no problem and it is allowed. But if a girl swears, it is a cultural shock,” he said, arguing that this selective criticism grows out of patriarchal mindsets that restrict women’s public speech while granting men full freedom to express anger. “We have to smash this patriarchy,” he added.

    Leading gender journalists and activists have echoed Gandhi’s critique of double standards, pointing to longstanding cultural traditions that normalize women’s use of profanity in many parts of India. Namita Bhandare, a prominent gender columnist for the Hindustan Times, told the BBC that women using profanity is nothing new in Indian society: in many northern Indian rural communities, a traditional pre-wedding ritual sees women from the bride’s family sing songs full of expletives to welcome the groom’s party, a practice that is widely accepted and rarely considered offensive.

    Bhandare also highlighted the hypocrisy of political leaders calling out women’s profanity, noting that politicians across the ideological spectrum – including Modi and senior BJP leaders – have a long history of misogynistic slurs and offensive language targeting women. This contradiction, she pointed out, comes as Modi has positioned himself as a champion of women’s empowerment: in his 2022 Independence Day address, he called on Indians to combat misogyny, and his government runs multiple high-profile programs aimed at advancing women’s social and economic status, with Modi holding strong popularity among many female Indian voters. Still, he has faced repeated criticism for misogynistic language, including offensive remarks made at political rallies in 2004 and 2012. Criticism for misogynistic speech is not limited to the BJP: senior leaders from Gandhi’s own Congress party have also faced public outrage for offensive comments targeting women in recent months.

    “Women are treated so shabbily and it’s so easy to target them. And then when they use profanity, then everyone asks, how can our girls cuss and swear,” Bhandare said.

    Not all observers frame the debate solely around gender. Social activist Sunil Jalan, who has run the national Gali Bandh Abhiyan campaign to curb public use of profanity since 2014, argues that the focus should be on reducing harmful expletive language across the board, regardless of who uses it. “we must focus on swearing, not on the gender of who uses it,” he said. A 2025 survey conducted by Jalan’s NGO, which included more than 70,000 participants across 28 Indian states and 8 union territories, found that 55% of respondents admitted to regular use of foul language, with particularly high prevalence in northern Indian states: 80% in Delhi, 78% in Punjab, and 74% in both Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Rates were far lower in southern India, and between 15% and 18% in India’s northeast. Jalan noted that the current national conversation is the first widespread public dialogue about the normalization of profanity in Indian society, and he hopes it will lead to meaningful change, arguing that popular culture from comedy to films has normalized aggressive language that needs to be reined in.

    For India’s Gen Z and the CJP organizers, however, profanity has long been a core tool of grassroots protest. CJP spokesperson Sourav Das told the BBC that “Profanity and protest have gone hand in hand for ages. There’s a shock-and-awe factor to it, which is fundamental to protest. It may be distasteful to some people and not to others. But it absolutely can’t be criminal.”

    The incident also shines a light on a broader erosion of civility in India’s public discourse, where expletives and personal attacks have become increasingly common across every space, from street protests to television panels, courtrooms, and even parliament. Just this week, a viral video showed a public altercation on state-owned Doordarshan television, where a temple priest unleashed a volley of expletives at a Congress spokesperson, who retaliated with the same language. In 2023, sitting BJP MP Ramesh Bidhuri faced widespread national criticism after using Islamophobic slurs and threatening a Muslim opposition MP directly on the floor of parliament, only issuing an apology after sustained public outrage.

    Sociologist Shiv Vishwanathan argues that the growing normalization of profanity in all spaces of public life is a symptom of a far deeper breakdown in India’s democratic culture. “the use of expletives is the symptom of a deeper breakdown of democracy, it shows there’s end of discussion and a lack of respect,” he explained. When expletives become common in institutions designed for deliberation, like parliament and the courts, “it shows there’s a breakdown of language, there’s a decline of argument and decline of democracy.” For grassroots protesters, he added, the turn to aggressive language is a natural response when marginalized groups are denied respect and a platform to be heard: “when there’s a weaker sense of respect, expletives become a response.”

  • What scientists know so far about Nepal’s deadly floods

    What scientists know so far about Nepal’s deadly floods

    On Wednesday morning, a catastrophic disaster of flash floods and landslides struck the Nepal-Tibet border region, leaving at least 160 people dead and hundreds unaccounted for, as experts work to untangle the causes of the event and unpack what it signals about growing hazard risks in the Himalayan highlands.

    Footage captured from the Chinese side of the border captures the devastating force of the surge: a towering, churning wall of mud and debris slammed into a multi-story building, swallowing the structure whole and sweeping away buses and private vehicles as if they were lightweight children’s toys. In Nepal’s Nuwakot district, residents have been forced to navigate streets coated in thick, clinging mud in the disaster’s aftermath.

    Initial reports suggested a 4.4-magnitude earthquake had triggered a landslide that blocked a mountain river, with the flood unleashed when the natural dam eventually burst. That account was put forward by Nepal’s Foreign Minister Shishir Khanal, but new analysis from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) has revised that narrative. USGS experts found that the seismic activity initially recorded was not caused by an earthquake, but rather by the massive movement of the landslide itself.

    Preliminary findings from the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), an intergovernmental organization based in Kathmandu, have ruled out any unusual activity originating on the Chinese side of the border. According to Sarthak Shrestha, a remote sensing and geo-information analyst at ICIMOD, the most likely sequence is that a rock-ice avalanche occurred on Nepal’s side of the border, which blocked the Lhende River and set off the cascading flood that swept through downstream communities.

    One of the most alarming details experts have highlighted is that the disaster struck with almost no warning. Hatim Sharif, a hydrologist at the University of Texas San Antonio, noted that there was no heavy rainfall in the region ahead of the flood — a detail that renders most operational global early warning systems useless for this type of event.

    By the time a fast-moving mud surge like this is visible to people in its path, it is already too late to escape by running or even by car, Sharif explained. The mixture of water and rock debris moves at high speed and becomes dense enough to act like “liquid concrete,” making escape along flat ground impossible. Sharif’s guidance is that the only chance of survival is to immediately climb to high ground of at least six meters (20 feet) above the river level.

    Looking ahead, Sharif said that one viable long-term adaptation is to install real-time river level monitoring gauges across high-risk Himalayan river systems. While this would not prevent the disaster, it could give vulnerable communities 20 to 30 minutes of advance warning to evacuate to safe ground.

    Dorothy Heinrich, a climate and hazard researcher at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom, explained the unique geographic factors that make these blockage-induced floods so dangerous in mountain regions. “In these mountain environments, the rivers can be quite narrow in areas,” she noted. When any kind of landslide or avalanche blocks a narrow river channel, water rapidly accumulates behind the natural obstruction, and the eventual breach releases an incredibly fast, powerful surge downstream.

    ICIMOD head of climate and environmental risks Qianggong Zhang has warned that the risk is not yet over: an upstream blockage remains in place, raising the possibility of a second destructive flood in the coming days.

    While it is too early to draw a direct, definitive link between this disaster and human-caused climate change, scientists say well-documented environmental shifts across the Himalayas — often called the “Roof of the World” — have already increased the likelihood of similar events. Nepal is particularly vulnerable to glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs), catastrophic events that occur when glacial melt leads to a sudden breach of a natural glacial lake dam, releasing billions of liters of water downstream. A major GLOF event originating in China’s Gyirong County hit Nepal’s Rasuwa District just last July, though investigators have not yet confirmed a GLOF caused the latest disaster.

    In the coming weeks, climate scientists around the world will conduct event attribution studies to examine what role climate change may have played, comparing the probability of such an event occurring in today’s fossil fuel-warmed climate versus the climate of the pre-industrial era. Heinrich noted that researchers already have high confidence that climate change is driving major shifts across the Himalayas: rising temperatures, more frequent heatwaves, widespread glacial retreat, and permafrost thaw, all of which increase the frequency and severity of landslides, avalanches, and outburst floods. Still, she emphasized that a definitive connection to this specific disaster can only be confirmed through formal attribution analysis.

  • What to know: The 36 teams participating in the league phase of the Champions League

    What to know: The 36 teams participating in the league phase of the Champions League

    The landscape of European club soccer is shifting this season, as UEFA’s revamped Champions League introduces an expanded 36-team league phase – and the full list of participating clubs from across the continent is now finalized.

    English Premier League clubs have secured the largest representation in the expanded competition, with five teams earning their spots: Arsenal, Aston Villa, Liverpool, Manchester City and Manchester United. That five-club haul matches Spain’s La Liga, which will also send five contenders to the league phase: Atletico Madrid, Barcelona, Real Betis, 14-time Champions League winners Real Madrid, and Villarreal.

    Germany’s Bundesliga follows close behind, with four clubs qualifying for the expanded format: perennial contenders Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund, alongside Leipzig and newly-qualified Stuttgart. Italy’s Serie A also places four teams in the draw: Inter Milan, Napoli, Roma, and surprise qualifier Como, who earned their first-ever spot in the top tier of European competition.

    Two more top European leagues, France’s Ligue 1 and Portugal’s Primeira Liga, each contribute three and two teams respectively. Ligue 1 is represented by Paris Saint-Germain, Lens and Lille, while Porto and Sporting Lisbon will carry Portugal’s hopes in the tournament. The Netherlands sees both of its top clubs qualify: PSV Eindhoven and Feyenoord, while Turkey has two of its biggest clubs in the field – Galatasaray and Fenerbahçe.

    For the first time in the competition’s history, Norway will have two clubs competing in the league phase: Bodø/Glimt and Viking, marking a historic breakthrough for Nordic soccer. The remaining spots are spread across smaller European soccer associations: Club Brugge from Belgium, Slavia Prague from the Czech Republic, war-torn Ukraine’s Shakhtar Donetsk, Austria’s LASK, Azerbaijan’s Sabah, Greece’s AEK Athens, and Slovakia’s Slovan Bratislava.

    The expanded 36-team league phase marks the biggest overhaul of the Champions League in decades, replacing the previous 32-team group stage format with a new round-robin structure that guarantees each team more high-profile matches against elite European opposition. This historic change opens up opportunities for clubs from smaller federations to compete against the sport’s biggest names, bringing more diversity and drama to the world’s most prestigious club soccer competition.

    Full coverage of the 2024-25 Champions League season, including draw details, match previews and result updates, is available through Associated Press’s global sports reporting team.

  • Brazil sues online platform Discord over alleged failures in children protection

    Brazil sues online platform Discord over alleged failures in children protection

    SAO PAULO — In a high-stakes move that underscores growing global pressure on social and communication platforms to safeguard young users, Brazil’s federal government announced Wednesday it has filed a lawsuit against gaming communication giant Discord demanding 500 million reais (roughly $97 million) in damages over claims the company failed to enact robust protections for children and adolescents on its platform. The legal action comes directly in the aftermath of a July suicide case that authorities have linked to harmful activity on Discord, a development that has already sparked escalating tensions between the platform and Brazilian regulators. Earlier this month, Brazilian officials ordered Discord to suspend all live streaming features on its service in connection with the ongoing investigation into the incident.

    In an official statement released by the Solicitor-General’s office under President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the government argues the sought-after damages address alleged widespread collective psychological harm that Discord’s inadequate safety frameworks have enabled. The 25-page legal filing, obtained and verified by the Associated Press, details critical gaps in Discord’s age verification systems and core user safety protections, claiming the platform has directly violated multiple Brazilian legal provisions mandating special safeguards for vulnerable groups including children and teenagers.

    Beyond financial damages, Brazilian authorities are asking the federal court to issue a mandatory order requiring Discord to immediately implement enhanced parental control tools, deepen information-sharing and cooperation with local law enforcement agencies, and roll out advanced automated detection systems to quickly identify and remove harmful, dangerous content from the platform. The lawsuit also notes that Discord is already facing similar regulatory and legal scrutiny across the globe, with active legal challenges pending in several U.S. states including Texas, Nevada, and New Jersey.

    Discord’s Brazilian leadership pushed back immediately against the government’s action, releasing a statement calling the lawsuit “disproportionate” and arguing it does not accurately reflect the company’s existing commitments to user safety and compliance with Brazilian national legislation.

    The legal filing comes as the Lula administration prioritizes youth internet regulation ahead of October’s general election, where Lula is running for reelection. Brazil’s Supreme Court has also backed efforts to create stricter rules for minor online activity, though past attempts at meaningful regulation have delivered mixed results. Brazil is far from alone in this push: countries including Australia, Canada, and Indonesia have all recently advanced similar regulatory efforts to protect young people online.

    Brazil’s first lady Rosângela Lula da Silva, widely known by her nickname Janja, first publicly called for Discord to be fully taken offline in early August, directly referencing the July suicide case that triggered the current legal action. Brazil’s justice ministry has confirmed that five teenagers have been arrested thus far in connection with the death. Launched primarily as a communication hub for gaming communities, Discord now boasts more than 90 million active daily users across the globe, according to data published on the company’s official website.

  • US drug agency approves breakthrough treatment for pancreatic cancer

    US drug agency approves breakthrough treatment for pancreatic cancer

    In a landmark step forward for cancer care, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has greenlit a new targeted treatment for pancreatic cancer, one of the most lethal forms of the disease globally, after clinical data demonstrated it nearly doubles the average overall survival time for patients.

    Developed by biotech firm Revolution Medicines, the treatment, generically named daraxonrasib and sold under the brand name Rasonque, is being hailed as a long-awaited breakthrough for a cancer that has defied effective treatment for decades. Results from a late-stage clinical trial involving 500 pancreatic cancer patients revealed that participants who took the daily oral pill achieved a median overall survival of 13.2 months, compared to just 6.6 months for patients treated with standard chemotherapy.

    Unlike traditional chemotherapy that attacks both cancerous and healthy cells, daraxonrasib works through targeted precision: it binds to and inactivates the mutated KRAS gene, a genetic driver that fuels uncontrolled tumor growth. This specific mutation is present in more than 90% of all pancreatic tumors, making the treatment widely applicable for the most common form of the disease.

    Pancreatic cancer remains one of the deadliest major cancers, with grim statistics underscoring the urgent need for new treatment options. The American Cancer Society reports roughly 67,000 new cases are diagnosed in the U.S. each year, and the cancer carries the highest mortality rate among all common malignancies. Most cases are detected at an advanced stage after the cancer has already spread, and more than half of patients die within three months of receiving a diagnosis.

    The path to approval was accelerated due to the urgent unmet medical need for effective pancreatic cancer treatments. In 2025, the FDA awarded daraxonrasib a “Breakthrough Therapy” designation, a special status that streamlines review for treatments targeting serious, life-threatening conditions. The agency ultimately issued its approval six months ahead of its original regulatory deadline, a decision driven by the treatment’s unmatched trial results.

    Angelo de Claro, director of the FDA’s Oncology Center of Excellence, emphasized the transformative potential of the new approval, noting the drug “showed unprecedented results in an area of high unmet need.” The FDA itself described the treatment as a “critical new option for patients facing an extraordinarily difficult and historically hard-to-treat cancer.”

    Data on side effects also show the new treatment is better tolerated than traditional chemotherapy. While common adverse reactions include rash, diarrhea, nausea, fatigue and vomiting, the rate of severe side effects was 44% for patients taking daraxonrasib, compared to 57.5% for those on chemotherapy. High-profile patient outcomes have also highlighted the drug’s promise: former U.S. Senator Ben Sasse, who announced a Stage 4 pancreatic cancer diagnosis in December, is currently enrolled in the clinical trial and has confirmed the treatment has reduced the size of his tumors.

    This approval marks a turning point in pancreatic cancer care, opening a new door of hope for thousands of patients facing a diagnosis that has long carried very poor prognoses.

  • Reagan advisor Norman Bailey, a victor in the Cold War, dies at 95

    Reagan advisor Norman Bailey, a victor in the Cold War, dies at 95

    On August 18, Dr. Norman A. Bailey, a towering figure in 20th-century American statecraft and a core architect of the Ronald Reagan administration’s Cold War strategy that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union, passed away at 95 in Greensboro, North Carolina, following a prolonged battle with illness. A decorated public servant, educator, and scholar with wide-ranging intellectual pursuits, Bailey left an indelible mark on global history that standard academic accounts of the Cold War era have often overlooked.

    What made the small circle of Reagan administration visionaries that Bailey joined so extraordinary was their willingness to reject the dominant conventional wisdom of the early 1980s. At a time when the transatlantic political and policy elite universally accepted that the Soviet Union was a permanent, unbeatable geopolitical force—and even leading figures like former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger publicly predicted a Soviet victory in the Cold War—Bailey and his handful of colleagues committed to a goal that Washington’s establishment dismissed as impossible: forcing the collapse of Soviet communism.

    The author of this obituary, David P. Goldman, first encountered Bailey in 1981, six months after Reagan’s inauguration. In their first meeting, Bailey confidently laid out the administration’s two-pronged strategy: drive robust economic recovery at home while rapidly expanding U.S. military capabilities, a combination he predicted would bring down the Soviet bloc by 1987. He was off by just two years. Though Goldman initially thought Bailey’s claim was wildly optimistic, he immediately signed on to join his team. At the time, the entire National Security Council (NSC) staff numbered just 120 people, a small group operating against overwhelming institutional and ideological headwinds, where even within the Reagan administration, advocates for an aggressive Cold War strategy remained a distinct minority.

    At the heart of this strategy was the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), a proposed technology-driven missile defense program that most of Reagan’s own advisers dismissed as a fringe idea. Reagan’s trust in the project stemmed from his long-standing relationship with renowned physicist Edward Teller, the father of the hydrogen bomb, which began during Reagan’s tenure as governor of California when Teller led the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Bailey and NSC leadership under William Clark threw their full support behind SDI, and as a young staffer, Goldman drafted a memo at Bailey’s request arguing that civilian technological spillovers from the program would offset its full cost.

    While SDI was still years away from practical deployment when Reagan first announced it, its psychological and strategic impact on Soviet leadership was transformative. As Bailey wrote in his 1988 monograph, the program demonstrated to Moscow’s military and scientific establishment that the U.S. had both the economic resources and political will to invest in cutting-edge military technology that the Soviet Union simply could not match, even after pouring enormous resources into matching American air, sea, and space power. Beyond that, Reagan and his team framed SDI as a path to end the Cold War without direct military conflict, shifting the global nuclear agenda from offensive capabilities to defensive protection. Reagan’s offer to share SDI technology with the Soviet Union also paved the way for the historic 1987 arms reduction agreement.

    Beyond his work on Cold War strategy, Bailey played a critical role in navigating the 1982–1983 Latin American debt crisis. Fluent in Spanish, Portuguese, and French, Bailey recognized early that the economic upheaval caused by spiking U.S. interest rates posed a major strategic threat to American influence in the Western Hemisphere. His policy work laid the groundwork for the debt restructuring framework later implemented through the iconic Brady Bonds during Reagan’s second term.

    Remarkably, the core of the Reagan foreign policy revolution was planned and executed in just over two years. By 1983, the Soviet Union had been forced onto the defensive, the U.S. economy was booming after nearly half a decade of deep recession, and the traditional Washington establishment gradually reclaimed key positions within the administration. The small band of revolutionaries was soon scattered: William Clark left the NSC to lead the Interior Department in 1983, with Secretary of State George Shultz assuming de facto control of national security policy. CIA Director Bill Casey, who had overruled his own Russia chief Robert Gates to back the push for Soviet defeat, became incapacitated by illness in 1986. Bailey himself left the administration in 1983 following a high-stakes Oval Office standoff with Treasury Secretary Donald Regan over Latin American debt policy.

    After leaving government, Bailey founded a strategic consulting firm, and returned briefly to public service from 2006 to 2007 at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. He spent decades as an educator, teaching at the Institute of World Politics, a Washington-based graduate institution training national security professionals and diplomats, as well as at the University of Haifa in Israel. Until his final illness, he remained a sharp, insightful commentator on global affairs, publishing frequent analysis and contributing multiple books, including many pieces for Asia Times.

    Beyond his public service career, Bailey was a man of extraordinary intellectual breadth. He spoke five languages fluently, with deep expertise in both history and economics. He served as the authorized English translator for the plays of Nobel Prize-winning Italian dramatist Luigi Pirandello, and his translations are still regularly used in theatrical productions today. A passionate scholar of Byzantine history, he wrote and lectured widely on the topic. At the age of 80, he converted to Judaism and remained an observant member of the faith for the rest of his life.

    As this obituary notes, Reagan’s historic Cold War victory succeeded not only because Reagan’s intuitive grasp of global affairs outperformed the flawed prejudices of the Washington elite, but also because he was surrounded by dedicated, knowledgeable public servants like Bailey who combined high purpose with deep cultural and historical expertise. Bailey is survived by his wife of 25 years, attorney and epidemiologist Dr. Barbara Billauer, as well as four children and numerous grandchildren.

  • New agreement sees dissolution of Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces

    New agreement sees dissolution of Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces

    In a landmark step toward national unity after decades of conflict in Syria, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) has formally announced its dissolution, fulfilling a long-negotiated agreement with the country’s interim government. The announcement, delivered Tuesday in a televised public address, marked the conclusion of a journey that began a decade ago when the coalition of Kurdish and Arab factions formed in 2015 with a singular core mission: to defeat the expansion of the Islamic State (IS) group across northern Syria.

    Speaking after a high-level meeting with interim Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharra, SDF commander-in-chief Mazloum Abdi confirmed that the group has wrapped up its original mandate, and all its fighters and structures will be absorbed into Syria’s official national military institutions. “We want this day to mark a real transition: from the battlefield to the field of development, from the era of arms to the era of peace, and from defending Syria to building Syria,” Abdi said in his address.

    The path to this agreement has not been smooth. The two sides first reached a preliminary framework for force integration on January 29, but bitter disagreements over key terms derailed the process, sparking violent armed clashes that put the entire deal on hold for months. This week’s announcement comes after renewed negotiations that resolved outstanding sticking points, according to statements from both sides.

    On Wednesday, Syrian local publication Al-Majalla released what it reported to be the full text of the finalized agreement between Abdi and Sharra. Among the most notable concessions outlined in the document is a national commitment to recognize Kurdish as an official minority language, with provisions allowing “theoretical” coursework to be taught in Kurdish in public schools. The deal also specifies that the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ), the prominent all-female combat brigade that formed a core part of the SDF’s counter-IS campaign, will be transferred to the Syrian Ministry of Interior to serve as part of the country’s internal security and counterterrorism force. Middle East Eye attempted to confirm these details with the Syrian Ministry of Information ahead of publication, but received no official response by the time of reporting.

    The announcement has drawn largely positive reactions from key regional players, including two nations that have long held opposing views of the SDF: Saudi Arabia and Turkey. For decades, Turkey has classified the SDF as a terrorist organization due to its historical ties to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a group labelled terrorist by Ankara and much of the international community. Despite this historic tension, Turkish officials welcomed the dissolution as a critical step forward for Syria. Burhanettin Duran, communications director for the Turkish presidency, wrote on the social platform X that “At this stage, the dissolution of the SDF represents an important step forward in strengthening state authority across the country and uniting the various segments of society.” He added that continued inclusive governance from the interim Syrian administration would be essential to locking in lasting stability across the war-torn nation.

    This development comes against a fragile backdrop for Syria’s new leadership, which has faced immense challenges since the overthrow of former President Bashar al-Assad in December 2024. Ahmed al-Sharra’s interim government has struggled to reunify a country fractured by 13 years of civil war, which left deep divisions between armed factions and minority communities across the country. Thousands of people have been killed in renewed violence since Assad’s ouster, with clashes breaking out between armed groups and security forces, and between the state and minority populations including Alawis, Druze, and Kurds.

    At the height of its power, the SDF controlled vast stretches of territory across northern Syria, and was credited with driving IS out of almost all the territory the extremist group once held in the country, a campaign supported heavily by U.S. air power. But the geopolitical landscape shifted dramatically after Assad’s fall: the U.S. withdrew its military and political backing for the SDF to align with the new interim government in Damascus, which also seized control of most of the territory the SDF once administered, setting the stage for the negotiations that led to this week’s announcement.