Global Pulse

作者： admin

  • Children describe how Nigerian militants moving south are seizing more young captives

    Children describe how Nigerian militants moving south are seizing more young captives

    In the quiet agrarian community of Oriire, southwestern Nigeria’s Oyo state, a day of joyous feasting and interfaith prayer unfolded Friday as dozens of schoolchildren snatched from their classrooms by al-Qaida-linked militants returned to the embrace of their families. For Aliyu Saheed, a local farmer whose three young sons – the youngest just 5 years old – were among the captives, the news of their July 10 rescue marked the most euphoric moment of his life, ending two months of sleepless nights haunted by fear he would never see his boys again.

    The mass abduction carried out on May 15 marked a worrying new chapter for Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation. For years, large-scale school kidnappings by armed jihadist groups were concentrated in the conflict-battered northeast and northwest. But this attack, which targeted children as young as 3 in a region previously untouched by such violence, confirms what security analysts have warned about for months: armed factions are expanding southward, pushing beyond their traditional strongholds to seize new territory and control key natural resources.

    When the gunmen stormed three local schools, they abducted 39 children and three teachers, marching their captives into a sprawling nearby forest reserve that connects northward to Kwara State, a region already grappling with persistent militant abduction activity that often targets students for large ransom payments. The attack left one teacher dead during the abduction, with two more losing their lives while in captivity, local media reports confirm. Nigerian President Bola Tinubu has identified the perpetrators as Ansaru militants, a breakaway faction of the notorious Boko Haram group that has reemerged and grown more active across the country in recent years.

    Survivors of the two-month captivity have shared harrowing accounts of abuse and deprivation at the hands of their captors. Nine-year-old Shuaib, Saheed’s eldest son, recalled that the group was held in open ground without any shelter, left exposed to sweltering sun and heavy rain, fed only a meager diet of boiled rice and palm oil. “I could not say anything for fear of getting beaten,” Shuaib told the Associated Press. “They flogged us with a cane all over the body, and they hit me in the back with the butt of their gun.” Alamu Folawe, head of one of the targeted schools, added that the youngest children suffered the worst violence, with their mouths stuffed with cloth to muffle their cries and avoid drawing attention to the militants’ hideout.

    While the rescue operation – a joint effort by Nigeria’s military, intelligence services and police forces – resulted in eight kidnappers arrested and multiple other militants killed, many of the freed children carry lasting physical scars and deep psychological trauma. Eight-year-old Kehinde Kaosarat, one of the last children released from hospital, has not left her mother’s side since returning home, and multiple families report that their children now refuse to consider going back to school. For Saheed, this fear is shared: “Sending them back to the school does not sound meaningful to me right now,” he said. The trauma comes at a time when Nigeria already has one of the highest out-of-school child populations in the world, a crisis that deepens with every attack on educational institutions.

    The abduction has drawn urgent new attention to Nigeria’s under-patrolled forest reserves, which have increasingly become strategic corridors and hiding spots for expanding armed groups. “The thing to learn is that the forested areas of the country must be much better surveilled because that is where those armed groups operate and keep their victims,” explained Joachim MacEbong, senior analyst at global risk consultancy Control Risks.

    The militant expansion into the southwest has piled mounting pressure on President Tinubu, who was elected in 2023 on a campaign promise to end Nigeria’s persistent security crisis. While the U.S. military provides limited logistical and intelligence support to Nigerian forces focused on the northern insurgency, the country’s overstretched security apparatus remains largely absent from remote southern communities bordering forest zones. Though Tinubu announced that the Ansaru informant network was dismantled during the rescue, analysts note that the root drivers of insecurity – including systemic corruption and weak governance – remain unaddressed.

    James Barnett, an Africa security research fellow at the U.S.-based Hudson Institute, pointed out that Ansaru has spent years quietly building networks in southwestern Nigeria, and a high-profile attack like this could encourage further militant activity in the region. Even as the community came together Friday to celebrate the children’s safe return – with Christian and Muslim leaders joining in prayers of gratitude – many residents remain on edge. Hundreds fled the area after the abduction, and while some have begun to trickle back, farmers whose lands sit close to the forest reserve still hesitate to resume their daily work.

    “The rescue of the Oriire abductees is wonderful news and should inspire some confidence in Nigeria’s ability to better manage these threats,” Barnett said. “But it is not the end of insecurity in the southwest or Nigeria as a whole.”

  • Japanese beetle advances through northern Italy’s vineyards and orchards, frustrating farmers

    Japanese beetle advances through northern Italy’s vineyards and orchards, frustrating farmers

    In the terraced mountain vineyards of Donnas, a small Italian town nestled along the Alpine edge, a quiet but devastating invasion is unfolding. Iridescent green Japanese beetles, an invasive species with no natural enemies in Europe, are steadily climbing the slopes, leaving a trail of damaged crops and anxious producers in their wake. This destructive pest, which has plagued American agricultural landscapes for more than a century, is a relatively new threat to the continent, first spotted in 2014 near Milan’s bustling Malpensa Airport.

    Since that first detection, the species, formally named *Popillia japonica*, has spread rapidly across northern Italy. It has already established robust populations in the northeastern regions of Lombardy, Piedmont, and Valle d’Aosta, reaching Donnas’ historic terraced vineyards just last year. For local winemaker Luciano Zoppo Ronzero, who grows prized Nebbiolo grapes on these centuries-old mountain plots, the invasion is progressing at an alarming rate. “We’re seeing the popillia steadily advance from terrace to terrace across our historic vineyards,” he explained. “We’re now about the 10th terrace and can already see the popillia attacks. This means they’re consuming and gradually moving up the mountain.”

    What makes the Japanese beetle such an extraordinary threat to European agriculture is its insatiable appetite and ability to spread rapidly. The pest feeds on more than 300 different species of plants, trees, and grasses, and travels in massive swarms when foraging. Adult beetles easily hitchhike across long distances on passenger trains, private cars, and commercial airplanes, helping the species colonize new regions far from their original point of introduction. After feeding through the summer months, adult beetles mate and lay eggs that hatch into larvae, which live underground feeding on grass roots before maturing into adults and restarting the destructive annual cycle.

    Thanks to its rapid spread and wide-ranging damage potential, the Japanese beetle has been added to the European Union’s list of priority invasive pests, requiring member states to implement active measures to contain and eradicate confirmed outbreaks. As of 2024, the beetle has become permanently entrenched in Italy, Switzerland, and Germany, where management efforts now focus on slowing expansion rather than full eradication. By contrast, population levels in France and Spain remain low enough that experts still hold out hope for eliminating the pest entirely, according to Daniela Lupi, an entomologist at the University of Milan.

    Italy’s agricultural sector is particularly vulnerable, as the beetle advances through the Po River Valley — the country’s most productive agricultural heartland often called Italy’s breadbasket. The full economic damage of the invasion is still difficult to calculate: unlike pests that kill plants outright, Japanese beetles eat away the soft leaf pulp, leaving behind a telltale lacy skeleton that weakens plants and reduces yield without immediately killing healthy specimens. Even so, Coldiretti, Italy’s largest agricultural lobby, warns the pest poses an existential threat to the country’s iconic farm production.

    “In some areas, the beetle has destroyed the harvest,” said Lorenzo Bazzana, head of economic affairs at Coldiretti. Beyond commercial crops, the larvae, commonly called grubs, cause widespread damage to grassroots, ruining recreational turf including lawns, golf courses, and public playing fields. For viticulturists like Ronzero, the damage goes beyond just lost yield. By stripping vines of their leaves, the beetles not only cut the plants’ ability to photosynthesize but also expose developing grape clusters to dangerous excess sun exposure. “What scares me is the fact that in the end the grapes don’t ripen,” Ronzero said. “If the don’t ripen, it means we’re not bringing home a splendid harvest, as we had hoped, but something unusable.”

    Researchers and farmers are testing a range of control strategies to slow the beetle’s advance. Agricultural experts point to targeting larvae as the most promising path for long-term suppression. After the beetle was recently detected near Verona’s Valerio Catullo Airport, scientists began experimental releases of a microscopic parasite that targets beetle grubs in the surrounding area. Pheromone traps, which lure adult beetles to their capture, are also widely deployed across at-risk regions. In Donnas, wine producers have turned to pesticide treatments to protect their vines, though the benefits are short-lived, and applying chemicals on the region’s steep mountain terraces is extremely labor-intensive.

    Lupi emphasized that without coordinated, aggressive action, the beetle population will continue to grow, causing widespread harm to fruit crops, grasses, and ornamental plants across the continent. She noted that the pest poses no direct risk to human health, but the impact on agricultural production could be severe. “There are no problems for the human population, because they are not so dangerous, but the production is really, really lowered,” she said.

  • Rayann EL Houli: Woman accused of joining ISIS to be freed

    Rayann EL Houli: Woman accused of joining ISIS to be freed

    A 34-year-old Australian woman who stands accused of traveling to Syria to join the Islamic State (ISIS) terrorist group more than a decade ago is set to walk free on bail within hours, after a Melbourne magistrate ruled that exceptional circumstances justified her release ahead of trial.

    Rayann El Houli, a Melbourne native, was formally charged in May this year with two key offenses: being a member of a designated terrorist organization and illegally entering a declared conflict zone. The charges were laid eight months after she returned to Australia from Syria alongside her four children, ending a six-year detainment in a Kurdish-run internally displaced persons camp following the collapse of the ISIS caliphate.

    Court documents and prosecution allegations lay out a timeline of El Houli’s time in the Middle East: prosecutors claim she first traveled to Syria in 2014, when she was just 21 or 22 years old, alongside her first husband Allak Hamad, with the explicit intention of joining ISIS ranks. Hamad was killed fighting for the group by early 2015, and El Houli went on to marry two more ISIS-linked fighters, both of whom also died in conflict before she wed a third member in 2018, a marriage that ended in divorce within months.

    In 2019, after the territorial defeat of ISIS, El Houli was captured by Kurdish forces and held in Syria’s Al-Hawl camp, a sprawling facility notorious for housing thousands of former ISIS supporters and their families. She was smuggled out of the camp in June 2023 and eventually made her way back to Australia, where she was taken into custody to face terror-related charges.

    El Houli’s bail application was heard over a two-day hearing last week, with Melbourne Magistrate Brett Sonnet releasing his ruling on Monday afternoon. In his decision, Sonnet confirmed that he found clear exceptional circumstances to meet the requirements for bail, noting that the assessed risk El Houli poses to the Australian public is “relatively low”.

    “In my view the application for bail must be granted,” Sonnet told the court.

    Prosecutors had pushed back hard against bail, presenting disturbing evidence collected by Australian Federal Police that they argued demonstrated El Houli’s deep commitment to ISIS ideology during her time in Syria. Senior AFP Constable Paul Sherlock told the court that communications El Houli sent to family in Australia before 2019 clearly showed her active support for the terrorist group.

    This evidence included messages encouraging other Australians to travel to Syria to join ISIS, as well as multiple videos filmed by El Houli that show her exposing her young children to extremist propaganda. One of the most disturbing videos, dated March 2016, captures El Houli questioning her then two-year-old eldest child about the killing of non-believers by ISIS fighters. Prosecutors say the video shows her asking the toddler to describe how mujahideen slaughtered “kuffar” (infidels) and “apostates” with knives, prompting the child to mimic the actions. Additional evidence presented to the court includes a photo allegedly showing El Houli teaching her child how to hold a toy rifle.

    Despite the severity of the allegations and the disturbing nature of the evidence, the court heard arguments from El Houli’s defense that painted a picture of a young woman manipulated into joining the group, who has since renounced all ties to violent extremism. Her barrister, Peter Morrissey SC, told the court that El Houli was a naive young woman when she traveled to Syria, who “drank the Kool-Aid” and followed her husband into the conflict zone, without fully understanding the ideology she was aligning herself with.

    Morrissey added that in the months since her return to Australia, El Houli has worked diligently to rebuild her life, addressing ongoing physical and mental health trauma, enrolling her four children in local schools and community sports programs, and completely cutting all ties to extremist groups. “She renounces ISIS and violent jihad, wanting nothing to do with it,” Morrissey told the court.

    Magistrate Sonnet echoed many of these points in his ruling, noting that while the videos presented by prosecutors were unquestionably disturbing, he accepted the assessment of clinical psychologist Katie Seidler, who used standardized clinical assessment tools to evaluate El Houli and found her to be at low risk of reoffending or supporting extremism. Sonnet also highlighted a number of strong protective factors that support bail: El Houli has custody of her four minor children, has the consistent support of her extended family in Australia, has fully cooperated with federal law enforcement since her return, and has already accessed ongoing physical and mental health care to address the trauma she experienced during her time in Syria.

    El Houli is expected to be released from custody on Monday afternoon, with strict bail conditions yet to be publicly announced ahead of her upcoming trial.

  • Spanish and Argentinian fans react outside World Cup final

    Spanish and Argentinian fans react outside World Cup final

    Hours after the final whistle of Sunday’s highly anticipated World Cup final, crowds of football supporters gathered across public spaces in both Spain and Argentina, as well as in fan zones around the globe, to process the historic match’s outcome. When interviewed by BBC correspondents on location, supporters from both nations opened up about the intense emotional rollercoaster they had experienced over the course of the 90 minutes and beyond.

    For Spanish fans, the air was filled with unbridled joy and celebratory energy. Ecstatic crowds waved red and yellow flags, chanted team anthems, and embraced one another as they reflected on their team’s road to victory, calling the win a moment they would cherish for generations. Many supporters spoke of the years of rebuilding and hard work that had led the national squad to the final triumph, framing the result as a reward for both the players and the loyal fanbase that had stood by the team through every match.

    Meanwhile, just blocks away in fan zones hosting Argentine supporters, a far different mood hung over the crowd. Disappointment hung thick as dejected fans hugged one another in consolation, many still processing the narrow defeat that kept their team from lifting the coveted trophy. Many Argentine fans spoke of the high hopes they had carried into the match, and while heartbroken by the outcome, many still expressed pride in their team’s performance throughout the tournament, promising to support the squad when they return home for future competitions.

  • Scott Pape has compared switching super strategies to a married man on Tinder

    Scott Pape has compared switching super strategies to a married man on Tinder

    Well-known Australian finance commentator Scott Pape, popularly known as the Barefoot Investor, has issued a sharp warning to Australian superannuation holders against making impulsive portfolio changes in response to viral market crash warnings, using a striking analogy to drive his point home. Pape’s comments came after a 42-year-old superannuation member, identified only as James, reached out for guidance following a high-profile podcast appearance from veteran investor Jeremy Grantham.

    Grantham, the British billionaire co-founder of global asset management firm GMO who built his reputation for correctly predicting both the 2000 dot-com collapse and the 2008 global financial crisis, recently appeared on *The Diary of a CEO* podcast. In that episode, titled “Billionaire’s WARNING: I’m SELLING. The Crash Is Already Here!”, Grantham doubled down on his long-held claim that the U.S. stock market is currently the largest investment bubble in American history. He predicted a catastrophic 70% downturn, dismissed cryptocurrency as worthless, and drew parallels between the ongoing artificial intelligence boom and the unsustainable dot-com bubble of the late 1990s.

    Alarmed by Grantham’s warnings, James told Pape he planned to reallocate his superannuation and personal investment holdings away from U.S. and Australian equities over fears of an imminent market collapse. Pape responded by acknowledging that he does not fault James for feeling anxious, but made clear he found the podcast itself reckless. Pape compared the clickbait-driven warning to a married man mindlessly swiping through dating app Tinder: a provocative act designed to spark unnecessary dissatisfaction with a stable, long-term arrangement in favor of a riskier, more glamorous alternative.

    “That podcast felt like the financial version of a married bloke on Tinder,” Pape wrote in his latest advisory post. “The whole thing is designed to make you restless and think ‘Maybe I should ditch my boring old index funds for some sexy emerging markets.’” He went on to dismiss the strategy of timing the market based on crash predictions as a “rubbish way to invest your money.”

    Notably, Pape conceded that he actually agrees with much of Grantham’s core analysis: U.S. and Australian equities do show signs of significant overvaluation right now. Where he disagrees sharply is with the advice for ordinary retail investors to sell their holdings and exit the market in anticipation of a crash. Pape pointed out that profiting from a market crash requires being correct not once, but twice: an investor must sell before the downturn hits, then correctly time their re-entry to buy back in at the bottom. That kind of consistent market timing is notoriously difficult even for professional investors, he argued.

    As evidence, Pape noted that Grantham has been labeling the U.S. stock market a bubble since 2021. In the years since his first warning, the S&P 500 has still surged more than 100%, leaving investors who followed his early advice out of the market and missing out on massive gains.

    For ordinary long-term investors like James, who is 42 and has decades of contributing to and growing his superannuation before retirement, Pape advocated for a “married to your portfolio” approach. He explained that he committed to his own diversified holdings years ago, vowing to stick with them through both market booms and corrections. Historical data, he noted, consistently shows that equities deliver stronger long-term returns than any other major asset class, even with periodic steep crashes.

    “Every crash has eventually been followed by new highs,” Pape said. “So I keep a few months’ cash in the bank and accept that happily ever after only exists in fairy tales.” His advice to James and other anxious Australian superannuation holders is straightforward: stay committed to a diversified long-term equity portfolio, keep a cash buffer to avoid being forced to sell during a downturn, and avoid the hype-driven “spicy dating apps” of viral market crash predictions.

  • South Korea’s Kospi drops nearly 5% as some AI stocks swoon, while oil keeps climbing

    South Korea’s Kospi drops nearly 5% as some AI stocks swoon, while oil keeps climbing

    On a trading day marked by dual market shocks from geopolitical risk and profit-taking in the booming technology sector, most major Asian equity benchmarks booked modest gains on Monday, but South Korea’s benchmark Kospi index plummeted nearly 5% amid a widespread selloff of artificial intelligence-linked stocks.

    Japanese financial markets remained closed for a national holiday, leaving regional trading without one of its largest liquidity providers, while U.S. equity futures pointed to a mixed opening following last week’s broad downturn. The most dramatic market movement came outside of equities, however, as oil prices surged more than 2% following nine consecutive nights of U.S. military strikes in the Middle East, with escalating exchanges of attacks between Washington and Tehran pushing the two nations closer to full-scale open conflict.

    By early Monday trading, international benchmark Brent crude climbed 2.6% to settle at $90.40 per barrel, crossing the key $90 threshold that has not been hit in recent months. U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate crude rose 2.2% to reach $83.58 per barrel. Commodities strategists Warren Patterson and Ewa Manthey of ING warned in a client note on Monday that ongoing tit-for-tat strikes between the U.S. and Iran have already produced heavy casualties on both sides, and unconstrained escalation could trigger a wave of large-scale attacks across the Persian Gulf that would upend global energy supplies.

    The analysts added that commercial tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most critical chokepoint for global oil shipments that carries roughly a fifth of the world’s daily oil consumption, has already slowed to a near standstill, creating immediate upward pressure on energy prices across the board.

    The selloff in AI-linked equities hit South Korea particularly hard, as the Kospi has been one of the biggest beneficiaries of the multi-year global AI investment boom. The index sank 4.9% to close at 6,490.97, with two of its largest market capitalization stocks leading the downturn: Samsung Electronics dropped 4.4%, while major memory chip manufacturer SK Hynix declined 3.3%.

    In Taiwan, another market heavily weighted toward AI and semiconductor stocks, the Taiex index posted a marginal loss of less than 0.1% in a far milder downturn. A notable bright spot in the region was leading chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), which climbed 2% following a 7.3% drop on Friday. The Friday dip came after TSMC announced plans to invest an extra $100 billion to expand chip manufacturing capacity across the United States.

    Elsewhere in Asia, the picture was far more positive. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index gained 2.1% to close at 25,105.78, while mainland China’s Shanghai Composite Index rose 1.2% to 3,808.39. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 notched a small 0.2% gain to 8,815.30, while India’s Sensex bucked the regional upward trend to slip 0.9%.

    The current wave of AI stock selling originated on global markets last Friday, when chip and AI-related equities dropped sharply that pulled major global benchmarks lower. Investor jitters have grown in recent weeks as massive new capital expenditure pledges for AI expansion have fueled fears that the sector may be entering an asset price bubble, prompting many institutional and retail investors to sell positions to lock in profits after months of strong double-digit gains.

    Market sentiment was further shaken last week by the launch of a new high-powered Chinese AI model from Beijing-based technology firm Moonshot AI. The release of the Kimi K3 open-source AI model mirrored the market impact of the so-called “DeepSeek moment” that rattled global equity markets in early 2025. The new model is seen as further evidence that lower-cost, high-capability Chinese AI developers are increasingly gaining market share at the expense of Western rivals including Anthropic’s Claude and OpenAI’s GPT series.

    The downturn in AI equities spilled over into Wall Street at the end of last week, with the benchmark S&P 500 closing the week down 1% at 7,457.69. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 0.8% to end at 52,146.42, while the technology-heavy Nasdaq composite dropped 1.4% to 25,520.24. Leading U.S. chip stocks all posted losses: AI chip giant Nvidia fell 2.2%, while Broadcom and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) each dropped 1%.

    Separately, SpaceX, Elon Musk’s commercial rocket company, dropped 5.4% to fall below its $135 per share initial public offering price, hitting its lowest level since the stock began public trading on the Nasdaq last month.

    In currency markets, movements were relatively muted: the U.S. dollar edged slightly lower to 162.37 Japanese yen from 162.43 yen in prior trading, while the euro appreciated marginally to $1.1446, up from $1.1438.

  • Russian President Putin meets with North Korean foreign minister in latest high-level diplomacy

    Russian President Putin meets with North Korean foreign minister in latest high-level diplomacy

    High-stakes diplomatic engagement between Russia and North Korea has entered a new active phase, after Russian President Vladimir Putin held a closed-door meeting with North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui at the Kremlin, where he openly thanked Pyongyang for its backing of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russian state media has confirmed.

    Choe’s unannounced, unscheduled trip to Russia — extended at the formal invitation of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, with North Korean state media confirming her departure from Pyongyang over the weekend — has sparked widespread international speculation that the visit lays the groundwork for a new potential trip to Russia by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. To date, Pyongyang has not released any detailed statement on the core agenda of Choe’s meetings in Moscow beyond confirming the visit itself.

    South Korea’s Unification Ministry, the government body tasked with managing inter-Korean affairs, announced Monday that Seoul is maintaining close, real-time monitoring of the diplomatic exchanges between Moscow and Pyongyang. Spokesperson Yoon Min Ho declined to offer any on-the-record assessment of whether a new summit between Putin and Kim is currently under negotiation.

    According to Russia’s state-owned Tass news agency, Putin used Sunday’s meeting to reinforce his public praise for the steady deepening of bilateral ties between the two nations. He repeated explicit gratitude to “the North Korean leadership and people” for their consistent support of Russia’s military operations in Ukraine. In response, Tass reported, Choe conveyed to Putin that Kim remains fully committed to advancing the “comprehensive development” of the Russia-North Korea relationship.

    This latest meeting builds on a years-long trend of rapidly expanding strategic cooperation between the two authoritarian states. Kim has already traveled to Russia’s Far East for two separate summits with Putin, in 2019 and 2023. During a landmark June 2024 summit in Pyongyang, Putin extended a formal invitation for Kim to make a return visit to Russia, and the two leaders signed a sweeping new strategic partnership agreement that includes pledges of mutual military assistance if either nation faces an act of aggression.

    Over the past several years, Kim has prioritized alignment with Moscow as a core pillar of North Korea’s foreign policy. Independent defense analysts widely confirm that Pyongyang has supplied Russia with thousands of artillery rounds, millions of artillery shells, and short-range ballistic missiles to support its war effort in Ukraine, alongside deploying thousands of North Korean troops to frontline operations. In exchange, experts say North Korea has received badly needed economic aid and access to advanced Russian military and aerospace technology that has accelerated the development of Pyongyang’s domestic nuclear and intercontinental ballistic missile programs.

    Choe’s trip to Moscow comes on the heels of a flurry of high-level diplomatic exchanges between North Korea and China, another key partner for Pyongyang as it works to build a united bloc opposing U.S. influence in the Indo-Pacific. Earlier this month, North Korean Premier Pak Thae Song, Kim’s top economic advisor, traveled to Beijing to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping, and senior Chinese Politburo Standing Committee member Wang Huning traveled to Pyongyang for talks with Kim. Kim hosted Xi for a formal summit in Pyongyang earlier this summer, as part of Pyongyang’s strategy of positioning itself as a core member of a so-called “new Cold War” front against Washington.

    Since the 2019 collapse of nuclear disarmament talks with then-U.S. President Donald Trump, Kim has frozen all substantive diplomatic engagement with both the United States and South Korea. Analysts note that Kim has leveraged global attention focused on Russia’s war in Ukraine to speed up development of North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs, while repeatedly refusing to enter new talks with Washington unless the U.S. abandons its requirement that Pyongyang commit to nuclear disarmament as a precondition for any negotiation.

  • Andy Burnham becomes the UK’s seventh prime minister in a decade after Starmer resigns

    Andy Burnham becomes the UK’s seventh prime minister in a decade after Starmer resigns

    LONDON — In a carefully choreographed transfer of power that brought a temporary end to years of British political upheaval, Andy Burnham has been officially sworn in as the United Kingdom’s new prime minister, taking over from the resigning Keir Starmer in a historic transition that required no national general election.

    The formal handover unfolded Monday following constitutional tradition laid out over centuries. After Starmer traveled to Buckingham Palace to formally tender his resignation to King Charles III — an offer the monarch graciously accepted — Burnham met separately with the king for the traditional “kissing hands” ceremony. A newly released official photograph captures the moment the king and Burnham shook hands, with Buckingham Palace confirming in an official statement that the monarch “received in audience the Rt. Hon. Andrew Burnham MP and requested him to form a new Administration. The Rt. Hon Andrew Burnham MP accepted The King’s offer and kissed hands upon his appointment as Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury.”

    While the ceremony retains its historic roots, modern constitutional arrangements mean the king holds no formal political power; the invitation to form a government is automatically extended to the leader of the party that holds a majority in the House of Commons, and no actual hand-kissing is required today.

    Burnham’s ascent to the top job makes him the UK’s seventh prime minister since 2016, a streak of rapid leadership turnover that the new leader openly acknowledged in his first public remarks from outside 10 Downing Street. The former Greater Manchester mayor, who was confirmed as the new leader of the governing centre-left Labour Party last Friday after running unopposed and securing the nominations of 379 out of 403 sitting Labour MPs, said he is “acutely conscious” of the revolving door of leadership the country has navigated over the past decade.

    “This a moment for reflection and new resolution,” Burnham told assembled reporters and onlookers. “It requires my generation of politicians to raise our game and rise to the new challenge. Britain needs to show the world that we can regain our stability once again, and that is our challenge to make politics work, to make it work better.”

    In his opening policy pledges, Burnham committed to ending street homelessness across the UK, and promised to deliver a “circuit breaker” for a national governing system he argues has taken wrong turns since the 1980s. Beyond tangible policy goals, he has positioned himself as a leader committed to rebuilding trust in public life, pledging to deliver a “new politics” that is less divisive, lifts living standards for all regions of the country, and restores hope that has faded among much of the public.

    “I will work to build a new politics,” Burnham said after winning the Labour leadership last Friday. “The country is crying out for it.”

    His predecessor Keir Starmer, who left Downing Street alongside his wife Victoria after delivering a short farewell address, struck a gracious tone as he stepped down. Starmer, who was forced to resign after missteps and judgment calls eroded his support among both his party and the general public, took the opportunity to highlight his achievements in office.

    Starmer became Labour leader in 2020 in the wake of one of the party’s worst ever general election defeats, overhauled the party to make it electorally competitive, and led Labour to a landslide general election victory in 2024. In his two years as prime minister, he pointed to progress including strengthened protections for working people, reduced child poverty, new legislation banning official cover-ups following public tragedies, and increased defense spending, alongside steady support for Ukraine in its conflict against Russia.

    “I go with good grace, I go with a smile and I go proud of everything that we have achieved,” Starmer said. “Since then, it has been the privilege of my life to serve you and this great country as prime minister. I am confident that Britain is now stronger and fairer than it was two years ago.”

    Burnham has already said he will build on the policy foundation Starmer laid, but political observers across the UK are now waiting for details of how he will deliver his ambitious pledges. Joshi Herrmann, founder of Manchester-based news outlet The Mill who has followed Burnham’s political career for years, noted that all of the new prime minister’s goals depend on unlocking long-stagnant economic growth.

    “Fundamentally, it only will work if you can generate significant economic growth, because it’s the lack of growth that’s really holding the country back,” Herrmann said.

    All eyes are now on Burnham’s upcoming first cabinet appointments, where he is widely expected to shake up Starmer’s top team, with changes anticipated for three of the most senior roles: Chancellor of the Exchequer, Foreign Secretary, and Home Secretary. Under UK parliamentary rules, the governing party is able to replace its leader — and thus the prime minister — without holding a snap general election. The next mandatory national election is not scheduled until 2029, though Burnham retains the power to call an earlier vote if he chooses to do so.

  • India’s Cockroach movement supporters gather to attempt a march to Parliament

    India’s Cockroach movement supporters gather to attempt a march to Parliament

    NEW DELHI — On Monday, as India’s national Parliament prepared to open its annual monsoon session, thousands of demonstrators aligned with the youth-led “Cockroach Movement” defied a formal police protest ban to push forward with a planned march to the legislative building, stepping up their demands for the resignation of the country’s top education official amid growing public fury over systemic failures in India’s examination system.

    Delhi law enforcement had already rejected the organizers’ application to hold the march, citing needs to preserve public order in the vicinity of Parliament during the opening week of the session. Scores of police officers were deployed to the designated starting point of the demonstration at Jantar Mantar, a central New Delhi landmark long used for public protests, where barricades were erected to block demonstrators from moving toward the Parliament complex, located just a few kilometers away. Police repeatedly broadcast calls for the crowd to disperse over loudspeakers, raising widespread fears of potential violent confrontation if protesters pushed past the police cordon.

    The diverse crowd gathered for the demonstration included university students, working professionals, and even entire families with young children. Many participants came prepared for an extended day of action, carrying backpacks stocked with bottled water and non-perishable food, while others waved national Indian flags as they marched. demonstrators chanted coordinated slogans calling for the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan and targeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling government.

    The satirical yet rapidly growing movement, which formally calls itself the Cockroach Janta Party, has its origins in an offhand comment from India’s Supreme Court Chief Justice back in May. During an unrelated public hearing, the chief justice compared a group of unemployed young job seekers to “cockroaches” — a dismissive remark that supporters reclaimed intentionally, turning the pejorative label into the identity of a grassroots movement that has already amassed millions of followers across major Indian social media platforms.

    The movement has gathered explosive momentum in recent weeks amid a string of repeated high-profile leaks of competitive entrance exams for government jobs and medical college seats, scandals that have sparked widespread public anger. Many young people see these repeated leaks as evidence of deep-rooted corruption and systemic failure in India’s education and employment systems, which leave millions of graduates competing for a tiny pool of stable public sector positions.

    Protests gained even more national attention over the weekend, when Delhi police forcibly transferred prominent activist Sonam Wangchuk, who had been leading a hunger strike at Jantar Mantar, to a local hospital on Saturday. For the past month, self-identified “cockroach” protesters have maintained a continuous encampment at Jantar Mantar, with dozens of student groups across the country joining the action and joining Wangchuk’s hunger strike. Large solidarity rallies have also been held at major universities and urban centers across India, expanding the movement’s reach far beyond the national capital.

    Before the Monday march, Wangchuk set clear conditions for ending his 21-day hunger strike: either the central government must formally accept responsibility for the systemic failures that enabled the repeated exam leaks, or authorities must allow demonstrators to march unimpeded to Parliament, where lawmakers must pledge to debate the movement’s demands in both upper and lower houses of the legislature.

    Alongside demanding Pradhan’s resignation, the movement is calling for sweeping structural reforms to India’s national examination system, as well as financial compensation for the families of dozens of students who have died by suicide in the wake of the repeated exam leaks, which have derailed the academic and career prospects of hundreds of thousands of young people.

    The protest movement represents one of the most significant public challenges to Modi’s Hindu nationalist government since the prime minister won a third consecutive term in 2024 national elections. It has drawn cross-sector support from major national opposition parties, prominent human rights activists, and even well-known Bollywood celebrities. Protesters argue that space for public dissent has shrunk dramatically under Modi’s administration, which has faced repeated international criticism for jailing opposition activists, restricting peaceful protest, and in some cases ordering aggressive police crackdowns on dissenting gatherings.

    Senior leaders from Modi’s ruling party have taken a uniformly hard line against the movement. Pradhan has publicly accused protesters of acting against national interests, while other senior government ministers have acknowledged the widespread frustration among unemployed students but have refused to open any formal negotiations with movement organizers.

    Jyoti Rajput, a yoga teacher who joined the Monday demonstration, summed up the frustration shared by many participants. “This rotten system refuses to take action,” she said. “It cannot see the pain of students, and that’s why so many people have joined this movement.”

  • Food delivery rider wins China’s top literary prize

    Food delivery rider wins China’s top literary prize

    For years, 56-year-old Wang Jibing balanced long, chaotic shifts delivering food across Chinese cities with a quiet, lifelong passion: writing poetry. Many of his verses were scribbled in fragments on scrap paper, jotted down between waiting for restaurant orders and rushing to drop off meals to customers. Now, this body of work rooted in the everyday reality of gig work has earned him one of China’s most prestigious literary recognitions: the Lu Xun Literary Prize.

    Wang’s award-winning collection, *Low Flight*, draws its inspiration directly from the daily struggles and quiet resilience of fellow delivery riders. The title itself carries a profound, unassuming philosophy—one line from the collection reads, “Who says spreading your wings means flying high? Flying low is also flying.” It is a sentiment that mirrors Wang’s own life trajectory, shaped by decades of working odd, manual jobs to make ends meet.

    Born in eastern China’s Jiangsu province, Wang left school as a teenager after his family could no longer afford tuition. Over the following decades, he bounced between a wide range of blue-collar roles: he worked on construction sites, collected recyclable waste, ran a small street stall, and eventually took up food delivery in 2019. Through every unstable season of work, however, his love of reading and writing never faded. For more than a decade, he quietly shared his original poems and personal essays on Chinese social media platforms, building a small but loyal following long before he entered the national spotlight.

    Wang’s viral breakthrough came in 2022, when his poem *Man in a Hurry* spread rapidly across Chinese social media. The verse was inspired by a 2019 delivery mishap, where Wang spent hours stuck trying to find a customer who had entered an incorrect address—an experience familiar to millions of gig workers across the country. The relatable, raw emotion of the poem resonated with online audiences, turning Wang from a little-known amateur writer into a national literary curiosity. In 2023, he published his first full collection, *Man in a Hurry: Poems of a Food Delivery Rider*, cementing his reputation as a working-class voice in Chinese literature.

    When news of his Lu Xun Literary Prize win broke on July 15, Wang told Chinese state outlet the Global Times that he had held his breath in nervous anticipation ahead of the announcement. The sudden flood of media attention that followed the win has brought unexpected mental pressure, he added. Despite this new acclaim, Wang shows no signs of leaving his delivery route: he plans to keep working until he turns 60, he says. “Financially I don’t need this job to make a living, but I love the vibe of the work and it keeps me fit,” Wang told the Global Times. “I want a down-to-earth life and the award will never change who I am.”

    Unlike Wang’s first collection, which centered his own experiences, *Low Flight*—published in 2024—grew out of extensive interviews and surveys Wang conducted with roughly 200 fellow delivery riders. The collection offers an unfiltered, on-the-ground look at the pressures facing workers in China’s massive gig economy, a sector that employs tens of millions of people.

    Wang’s win is part of a growing, widely celebrated trend in Chinese literary culture: working-class and blue-collar writers gaining mainstream recognition for works that center their own lived experiences. In 2017, an autobiographical essay by migrant worker Fan Yusu titled *I am Fan Yusu* went viral across Chinese social media, drawing millions of readers with its unflinching account of personal struggle, and forcing Fan to temporarily leave her home to escape a deluge of media requests. More recently, former courier Hu Anyan’s 2023 memoir *I Deliver Parcels in Beijing* became a surprise national bestseller, attracting international attention and being published in English translation last year.

    The Lu Xun Literary Prize, named for the writer widely regarded as the father of modern Chinese literature, is one of the highest honors a Chinese writer can receive. While the exact monetary value of the award is not publicly disclosed, the prize was set at 100,000 Chinese yuan (around $14,800) as of 2014. Lu Xun, a towering figure of 20th-century Chinese literature, was known for his incisive, satirical works that critiqued social inequality and traditional power structures. His work has experienced a renewed cultural resonance among young Chinese people in recent years: a few years ago, Kong Yiji, an out-of-work scholar character from one of Lu Xun’s short stories, became a viral meme representing the disillusionment of young Chinese graduates struggling to find stable work.

    For Wang and a growing community of working-class writers, however, the recognition of their work marks a larger shift: a growing appetite for stories that center the lives of ordinary people working at every level of China’s economy, proving that literary inspiration can thrive even in the most fast-paced, unassuming of daily environments.