Global Pulse

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  • Top boss vows ‘no sitting still’ as rugby bids to conquer US

    Top boss vows ‘no sitting still’ as rugby bids to conquer US

    Against a backdrop of rising challenges in rugby’s long-established traditional markets, World Rugby chair Brett Robinson has reaffirmed the governing body’s commitment to aggressive global expansion, singling out the United States — the upcoming host of the 2031 men’s Rugby World Cup and 2033 women’s edition — as a critical priority for long-term growth.

    In an interview with AFP on the sidelines of the Hong Kong Sevens tournament, the former Australian international player pushed back against growing narratives that rugby is facing a period of broad decline, arguing that the sport’s global foundations are stronger than critics claim. Recent high-profile setbacks have fueled public debate about the sport’s standing in the global pecking order, from folding professional franchises in Super Rugby to slipping public interest in traditional heartlands. Last week, All Blacks legend Michael Jones warned that rugby union is losing the battle for fan attention to rugby league in New Zealand, a comment that came just days after Auckland-based Super Rugby side Moana Pasifika announced it would cease operations at the end of the current season, becoming the second Super Rugby franchise to collapse in three years due to crippling financial pressure. In Wales, another historic rugby stronghold, the men’s national team has suffered a dramatic slump in on-pitch form, while football has overtaken rugby as the primary focus of public sporting interest.

    Robinson pushed back on this narrative of decline, pointing to global participation data that shows 2 million women playing the sport worldwide, making rugby a truly global game rather than one confined to a handful of historical markets. “We have to protect our core markets, but we can’t sit still and believe that the game will thrive if we don’t continue exploring new pathways for growth,” he said.

    That search for growth leads directly to the United States, which is set to become the first North American nation to host the men’s Rugby World Cup in 2031, followed by the women’s tournament in 2033. The upcoming 2026 men’s FIFA World Cup, co-hosted by the US this summer, has already offered a preview of the logistical and commercial challenges awaiting rugby’s governing body, with soaring ticket and transportation costs drawing widespread criticism and raising questions about large-scale event delivery in the American market.

    Skepticism around the 2031 project has grown in recent months: Major League Rugby, the top domestic professional men’s competition, has shrunk to just six teams after four clubs exited the league in recent years, while the men’s national team has struggled with inconsistent performances. British media reports have also raised questions about the US’s ability to deliver a commercially successful 2031 World Cup.

    Robinson countered that World Rugby has laid out a long-term strategy to build fan momentum ahead of the 2031 tournament, rather than rushing to deliver a fully formed event overnight. “We have worked with top national unions to bring iconic, high-profile matches to the US over the coming years to build deeper connections with new fans,” he explained, noting that the governing body is currently evaluating 27 potential host cities, a list that will be narrowed to 12 to 14 ahead of a formal announcement following the 2027 World Cup.

    To build early excitement for the 2031 tournament, World Rugby has already arranged a blockbuster Test match between two-time world champions South Africa and three-time winners New Zealand in Baltimore this September, following on from a sell-out 2024 match between Ireland and the All Blacks in Chicago. “We’re working really hard to build a long-term play,” Robinson said. “We aren’t sitting still in terms of preparing, and we fully acknowledge that it’s a challenging market.”

    He added that the 2033 women’s Rugby World Cup will be a equally important milestone for the sport, noting that women’s rugby has seen rapid, sustained growth across North America in recent years.

    Looking ahead to the next major global rugby event, the 2025 men’s Rugby World Cup in Robinson’s native Australia, he shared that initial ticket sales have already “exceeded all expectations”, with more than 750,000 tickets sold for the expanded 24-team tournament, the largest edition of the competition in history. While Robinson acknowledged that global geopolitical uncertainty stemming from the ongoing conflict in the Middle East has created some headwinds for major international events, he said World Rugby remains optimistic about the tournament’s success. “It’s a really good signal about the World Cup,” he said. “We’re really optimistic and excited.”

  • Israel vows to level homes in Lebanon, counter threats with ‘full force’

    Israel vows to level homes in Lebanon, counter threats with ‘full force’

    A fragile 10-day truce between Israel and Hezbollah that halted weeks of deadly cross-border fighting has done little to ease tensions along the Lebanon-Israel border, after Israel announced Sunday it had ordered its military to operate with “full force” and demolish structures it claims are used by the militant group. The ceasefire, which went into effect Friday following the first high-level talks between Lebanese and Israeli officials in decades, has split displaced southern Lebanese residents: some have rushed home to retrieve belongings and rebuild, while others remain wary of the truce’s durability and have chosen to stay away.

    On the ground, Agence France-Presse correspondents across southern Lebanon have documented disparate scenes of returning life and lingering destruction. In the village of Dibbine, one resident inspected blast damage to his property, with rubble of already destroyed buildings lining nearby streets. In Srifa, returnees unloaded household goods including mattresses and a washing machine from vehicles as they moved back into their homes. In other border communities, however, some residents only returned to collect personal items before heading back to safer areas further north.

    Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz confirmed Sunday that he and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had issued explicit orders to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to maintain aggressive operations even during the ceasefire. “We have instructed the army to act with full force, both on the ground and from the air, including during the ceasefire, in order to protect our soldiers in Lebanon from any threat,” Katz said. He added that the military had been ordered to destroy any booby-trapped structures or roads, and raze border-area homes that Israel claims function as Hezbollah outposts.

    Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency (NNA) reported Sunday that Israeli forces were already carrying out these demolition orders across multiple hard-hit border towns. One day after carrying out initial demolitions in Bint Jbeil, a site of intense pre-ceasefire fighting between Israeli troops and Hezbollah, the NNA said Israel was “still destroying what remains of houses” in the town. Additional demolitions by detonation were reported in Mais al-Jabal and Deir Seryan, while the border town of Kunin came under Israeli artillery shelling Sunday.

    Last Saturday, the IDF announced it had established a “Yellow Line” security buffer in southern Lebanon, a framework identical to the barrier separating Israeli-held and Hamas-controlled territory in Gaza. On Sunday, the military released an official map marking this new “forward defence line” and a red-zoned area spanning the entire length of the border, where it says operations will continue to dismantle Hezbollah military infrastructure and eliminate threats to northern Israeli communities. Hours after publishing the map, the IDF confirmed it had killed an armed man it described as a terrorist who crossed the designated buffer line.

    The ongoing Israeli operations have drawn sharp international condemnation. Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan denounced the actions Sunday as an example of “Israeli expansionism” into Lebanese territory. Since the conflict erupted on March 2, it has killed nearly 2,300 people in Lebanon and displaced more than one million, making the fragile truce a much-watched development for regional stability.

    Diplomatic efforts to solidify the ceasefire and support Lebanese territorial integrity are moving forward this week. On Tuesday, French President Emmanuel Macron will host Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam in Paris, a meeting the Élysée Palace says is intended to demonstrate France’s commitment to Lebanon’s sovereignty. Macron will also push Lebanese authorities to hold accountable those responsible for a Saturday attack on UNIFIL peacekeepers that killed one French soldier, Florian Montorio, and wounded three others. Both France and UNIFIL have blamed Hezbollah for the attack, which the group has denied. Montorio was honored posthumously with UN and Lebanese Army medals at a memorial service held at Beirut’s international airport, in recognition of his service to peacekeeping in southern Lebanon.

    Following his Paris meeting, Salam will travel to Luxembourg on Tuesday to meet with European Union foreign policy chiefs. In a small sign of returning normalcy, Lebanon’s military announced Sunday it had reopened a key road connecting the city of Nabatiyeh to the Khardali region, and partially reopened the Burj Rahal-Tyre bridge in southern Lebanon. Access to much of the south has been severely constrained since the conflict began, after Israeli airstrikes destroyed multiple crossings over the Litani River, which sits roughly 30 kilometers from the Lebanese-Israeli border.

  • History haunts Arsenal as Man City take control of title race

    History haunts Arsenal as Man City take control of title race

    After a tense 2-1 defeat to Manchester City at the Etihad Stadium on Sunday, Arsenal’s 22-year wait for a first Premier League title has grown even more agonizing, as Pep Guardiola’s side took a decisive stranglehold on the 2025/26 season’s championship race. Mikel Arteta’s Gunners still cling to the top spot of the table for the moment, but their place at the summit is set to be taken as early as this Wednesday, when City travel to face relegation-bound Burnley with a game in hand on their title rivals.

    What has made this late-season slump so familiar to Arsenal’s long-suffering fanbase is the pattern that has repeated itself for four straight seasons. Before a League Cup defeat to City last month, Arteta’s side had dropped just three matches across 49 games in all competitions this term. But in the six outings that have followed, Arsenal have only managed a single win, including four straight losses across domestic competitions – a run that leaves them facing the prospect of another empty trophy season. This collapse mirrors the events of the 2022/23 and 2023/24 campaigns, where Guardiola’s relentless City side hunted down and overtook Arsenal in the final stretch, with the Gunners finishing outside the top spot once again last season behind a resurgent Liverpool side.

    A stark statistical contrast highlights the historic trend of late-season struggle for Arsenal and surge for City: across Guardiola’s 10-year tenure in Manchester, the City boss has claimed 31 wins from 39 Premier League games played in April, as he chases a seventh league title. By comparison, Arteta has only notched 11 April league victories from 27 matches across his six-and-a-half year spell in charge of the Gunners.

    Arteta argued after the match that fine margins and bad luck had cost his side, and the run of play backed up that claim. In contrast to their nervy home defeat to Bournemouth the previous weekend, Arsenal started strongly, fought back quickly after Rayan Cherki gave City an early opening goal. Kai Havertz charged down an attempted clearance from City keeper Gianluigi Donnarumma to equalize just minutes after falling behind, and the Gunners created a string of good chances to take all three points. A strike from Eberechi Eze bounced off the post and rolled along the goalline rather than crossing, while Gabriel Magalhaes saw a deflected late header also hit the woodwork in a frantic closing 10 minutes.

    But ultimately, Arsenal’s repeated failure to convert clear chances – a long-unresolved flaw in the side – proved their downfall. Havertz, who was handed a full 90 minutes by Arteta despite 18 months of injury struggles, missed two gilt-edged second-half chances: he failed to beat Donnarumma in a one-on-one situation, then nodded over the bar from an unmarked position deep into stoppage time, leaving Arteta collapsed to his knees in despair on the technical area. The German forward’s inclusion ahead of summer signing Viktor Gyokeres raised further questions; the Sweden international, signed last summer to solve Arsenal’s long-running search for a prolific starting striker, is the club’s top scorer this season with 18 goals across all competitions, but he was left on the bench until the final minutes, and has repeatedly struggled to deliver against top opposition.

    For City, the difference came down to the clinical finishing that Arsenal lacked, with world-class striker Erling Haaland delivering the decisive moment. Haaland was tightly marked for most of the match in a physical battle with Gabriel, but the Norwegian got ahead of his marker to slot home the 72nd-minute winner – his 47th goal for club and country across the 2025/26 season.

    Speaking to Sky Sports after the match, former Arsenal captain Patrick Vieira said the gap in quality between the two sides’ top talent decided the match. “You can see the difference today on the field and those top players made a difference today,” Vieira said. The ex-Gunner also questioned Arteta’s side’s mental fortitude following the defeat, adding: “They will feel the pressure more now. I always question the mental strength of the team and I will question it more now regarding the result today.”

    Arteta acknowledged after the game that City were simply more clinical in front of goal, admitting: “We proved that we are there, but the reality is that in the two boxes there was a difference. That’s what we think is the difference between the two sides, the finishing in the boxes. There is an element of luck, there is an element of timing, of execution. There are a lot of things that have to be your way. At the end, winning or not winning is going to come down to this moment. There are certain individual moments that you need in order to achieve what we want.”

  • AFL 2026: Collingwood captain Darcy Moore poised for return, Essendon defender Jordan Ridley sidelined

    AFL 2026: Collingwood captain Darcy Moore poised for return, Essendon defender Jordan Ridley sidelined

    The annual Anzac Day AFL blockbuster between Collingwood and Essendon is just days away, and two of the league’s key defenders are facing drastically different fitness outcomes as their clubs finalize round six lineups. For Collingwood captain and star backline leader Darcy Moore, the next week brings a make-or-break pair of training sessions that will determine whether he can take the MCG stage for one of the season’s most anticipated matches.

    Moore’s 2024 campaign has been plagued by a string of soft tissue injuries and setbacks, starting with pre-season niggles to his calf and hamstring, followed by an aggravated bursa injury that has disrupted his build-up. Despite the rocky start to the year, Moore says he has turned a corner in his recovery, posting a strong, full training session last Friday that has left him confident of meeting the fitness benchmark this week.

    Speaking to reporters Monday during a remembrance event at the Shrine of Remembrance, Moore outlined his path to selection: “In great news, I had a really good session last Friday. I made a couple of really big breakthroughs, so body feels awesome coming into this week. We’ve got two sessions before the game, Tuesday and Thursday. I am in a really great position to train fully this week and hopefully put my hand up. I’ve got to back up and be feeling good going into the weekend to be selected.”

    This isn’t the first time Moore has fought back from an early-season injury to push for selection: he returned to the field in round three against GWS Giants, but faced widespread criticism after he was seen grimacing through every kick across the entire match, prompting questions about whether he was rushed back too soon. He missed at least a month of game time following that outing, but Moore has rejected claims he was underprepared for that round three clash, saying he takes full accountability for the decision to play.

    “I put my hand up, I was ready to go and I am accountable for that decision. Absolutely was ready to go,” Moore said.

    Across town, the outlook is far less positive for Essendon counterpart Jordan Ridley, who is all but certain to miss the Anzac Day clash after picking up yet another calf injury during Saturday’s match against the Gold Coast Suns. Ridley has endured a brutal run of soft tissue injuries in recent seasons, and the latest setback comes just as he had worked his way back to full fitness after a previous layoff.

    Essendon captain Andy McGrath told reporters on Monday that the seven-day turnaround between Saturday’s match and this weekend’s blockbuster is far too quick for Ridley to recover, given his well-documented history of recurring calf issues. The club plans to take a cautious approach to avoid a longer-term injury.

    “I don’t think so at this stage, Jordan has got a little calf injury and with his history there, we’re just being cautious with his approach,” McGrath said. “We’ll see how he presents today and throughout the week, but I don’t think this weekend will be realistic. Obviously, Jordan is a really important member of our team, culturally and on the field. He’s a super player, we’ve loved having him back. We’ll see how the injury unfolds but I feel for Ridds at the moment. It’s been a tough run, but I am sure we’ll have him back soon.”

    With the Anzac Day clash drawing millions of viewers and drawing a capacity crowd to the MCG, both clubs will confirm their final lineups ahead of the iconic annual fixture, with Moore’s fitness progress set to be tracked closely by Collingwood fans through the week.

  • Hamas rebuffs ‘trap’ disarmament plan as Israeli violations stall ceasefire process

    Hamas rebuffs ‘trap’ disarmament plan as Israeli violations stall ceasefire process

    ### Hamas Rejects US-Backed Disarmament Plan Amid Unresolved Ceasefire Violations

    Palestinian militant group Hamas has flatly rejected a US-backed disarmament proposal put forward by the Board of Peace, framing the initiative as a deliberate trap designed to sow internal conflict and destabilize Palestinian governance in the Gaza Strip. Multiple Palestinian sources with direct knowledge of the closed-door Cairo talks shared details of the negotiations with Middle East Eye, outlining the group’s deep-seated opposition to the framework presented earlier this month.

    From Hamas’ perspective, the proposal would leave Gaza’s Palestinian population completely defenseless while enabling Israeli-aligned armed gangs to operate unimpeded across the enclave, creating widespread chaos and disorder. A senior Gaza-based source close to the group confirmed the outright rejection, noting that opposition runs particularly strong within Hamas’ military wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, which has labeled any disarmament agreement as nothing less than collective suicide. “They know that giving up their weapons is not an option and will not happen,” the source emphasized.

    The plan was formally delivered to Hamas delegates by Nickolay Mladenov, the Board of Peace’s High Representative for Gaza, who centered the entire proposal on coercing Hamas into relinquishing its weapons arsenal. Beyond the disarmament demand, Hamas has also decried a second unacceptable provision that would remove 20,000 sitting civil servants – nearly the entire administrative workforce that keeps basic services running across Gaza – from their positions. The source called the mass dismissal plan a catastrophic mistake, noting that these workers hold the cumulative expertise needed to address Gaza’s ongoing humanitarian and governance challenges, and replacing them en masse is fundamentally illogical.

    A core non-negotiable demand from Hamas is that Israel must first fully comply with all obligations laid out in the first phase of the October 2023 US-brokered ceasefire before any talks on further steps, including disarmament, can begin. That ceasefire was negotiated to end a two-year Israeli military campaign that has claimed the lives of roughly 72,000 Palestinians and pushed Gaza’s 2.3 million residents into widespread mass starvation. Under the terms of the truce, Israel was required to lift all restrictions on humanitarian aid entry, allowing up to 600 trucks of food, fuel, medical equipment, shelter materials and commercial goods to enter the enclave daily.

    To date, Israel has failed to meet these requirements, maintaining harsh limits on aid deliveries that have left Gaza’s catastrophic humanitarian situation largely unchanged. Even after the ceasefire took effect, Israeli forces have killed more than 700 Palestinians in ongoing incursions and attacks across the Strip. When Hamas presented these demands to Mladenov during negotiations, the envoy offered no substantive commitments or responses to address Palestinian concerns.

    Talks over the proposal have stretched on for two weeks, with multiple sessions marked by sharp tensions. Mladenov presented the plan as a non-negotiable take-it-or-leave-it offer to the Hamas delegation in Cairo, and at one point issued a 48-hour ultimatum: accept the terms or face a resumption of full-scale Israeli military operations. In a subsequent meeting, Mladenov was joined by unexpected high-level US officials, including Major General Jasper Jeffers, commander of the International Stabilisation Force, and senior US advisor Aryeh Lightstone. The unannounced addition of the US delegation was not coordinated in advance with Hamas, led by senior leader Khalil al-Hayya, and was viewed as an additional layer of pressure to force concessions, ultimately leading to a breakdown in talks with no agreement reached.

    Egypt, one of the key mediators in the process, has also pushed Hamas to accept the proposal, despite internal concerns that the plan does not align with either Palestinian or Egyptian national interests. Sources note that Egyptian leadership is reluctant to publicly oppose or upset the US administration. In recent days, external pressure has grown to convince Hamas to grant preliminary approval for the proposal before hashing out specific details later, according to reporting from Asharq Al-Awsat. A revised version of the plan has recently been circulated that proposes moving to second-phase talks – which include disarmament – once Israel begins implementing its first-phase ceasefire obligations.

    At present, it remains unclear whether Hamas will agree to the revised framework. Hamas continues to stand firm in its demand for legally binding, concrete guarantees that Israel will fully implement all first-phase ceasefire commitments before any discussions of further negotiations begin.

  • Hundreds pack Montevideo’s plaza as La Rueda de Candombe caps a breakout run

    Hundreds pack Montevideo’s plaza as La Rueda de Candombe caps a breakout run

    Every Monday evening as the sun sets over Montevideo, Uruguay’s coastal capital, hundreds of people stream into Plaza de España, gathering around a large wooden table to lose themselves in the rolling, centuries-old rhythms of candombe. What began as an informal jam session between a small group of friends has exploded from humble street-corner origins to one of Uruguay’s most celebrated cultural events, even earning an invitation to the world-famous Cannes Film Festival.

    “It started as something just for us, and we never set out to become this visible,” explained Caleb Amado, a Uruguayan producer and one of the co-founders of La Rueda de Candombe. The late-season closing performance held this Sunday marked the end of the group’s 2025 public gathering schedule, bringing together six core musicians to honor candombe — the dynamic, drum-driven musical tradition that sits at the core of Uruguayan national identity, and a practice officially named an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO.

    The story of La Rueda de Candombe begins in the fall of 2024, when Amado and his collaborator Rolo Fernández traveled to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Strolling through the city’s iconic bar districts under warm tropical nights, the pair encountered “rodas” — loose, informal circles of musicians who gather around a table to play and sing, with standing audiences milling close to join the energy. Inspired by the accessible, communal spirit of these gatherings, they returned to Montevideo and gathered four additional local musicians to launch their own version, rooted in Uruguay’s own iconic musical tradition.

    Like the Brazilian rodas that inspired it, La Rueda de Candombe centers its performance around a single table. But the sound it produces is unmistakeably Uruguayan: a driving blend of drums, acoustic guitar and accordion that brings new life to candombe, a genre with roots stretching back to the 18th century, when African traditions were brought to the region by enslaved people. Today, candombe is woven into the very fabric of Uruguayan national identity, a status formalized by its UNESCO designation in 2009.

    In the group’s early days, nearly 100 fans packed into a tiny neighborhood bar called Santa Catalina on a quiet Montevideo corner to listen. Within just a few months, the crowds grew too large for the small space, forcing the weekly gatherings to move out into the open expanse of nearby Plaza España. As word of the communal, energetic performances spread across social media, tourist vans began arriving weekly from across the country, and the event became a must-see stop for visitors to Montevideo.

    Unlike neighboring South American capitals such as Buenos Aires or Rio de Janeiro, spontaneous street performances are relatively rare across Montevideo, even with the city’s abundant public spaces, including a 22-kilometer waterfront promenade that stretches along the Atlantic coast. But social media buzz around La Rueda drew attention from across Uruguay’s creative scene, leading to high-profile collaborations: the group has shared the stage with Oscar-winning Uruguayan singer-songwriter Jorge Drexler at Montevideo’s legendary Centenario Stadium, and has recorded a full studio album of traditional and reimagined candombe tracks. By early 2025, the group’s rising profile earned them an invitation to represent Uruguayan culture at the Cannes Film Festival, which hosts dedicated global cultural showcases alongside its iconic film competition program.

    For Uruguay, candombe has never been just music — it is a living cultural and political tradition tied to the country’s African roots. The genre itself first emerged from the historic Plaza España, where enslaved Africans brought to Montevideo used drum beats to preserve their ancestral rituals at the site where they first disembarked. Traditional candombe is built around three distinct drum types: the small, high-pitched chico, the mid-range repique, and the low, booming piano drum. Every February, the tradition takes over the country during carnival, when dozens of community troupes called comparsas parade through Montevideo’s streets playing nonstop candombe rhythms.

    By the middle of the 20th century, candombe evolved to blend with jazz and mainstream popular music, giving rise to a new subgenre called “candombe canción.” It became a staple of informal community gatherings much like La Rueda, and during the political repression of the 1960s and 1970s, it emerged as a powerful form of cultural and political expression for Uruguayan communities demanding greater autonomy and recognition.

    As the Southern Hemisphere’s colder winter months approach, Amado and Fernández have no plans to pause the project. Instead of slowing down, the pair say La Rueda de Candombe is using the off-season to develop new programming, with plans to expand weekly gatherings to additional public squares across Montevideo in the 2026 season, bringing the centuries-old rhythm to new audiences across the capital.

  • India has splurged billions on metro trains. But where are the commuters?

    India has splurged billions on metro trains. But where are the commuters?

    Over the past decade, India has embarked on one of the world’s most ambitious urban transit expansion programs, pouring more than $26 billion into building metro networks across 22 major and mid-sized cities under the national government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. From 2014 to 2025, the total length of operational metro lines across the country surged fourfold, climbing from less than 300 kilometers to over 1,000 kilometers, with average daily ridership also jumping from 3 million to more than 11 million. But these impressive national aggregate figures hide a persistent, troubling trend: the vast majority of new metro corridors are failing to come even close to hitting the ridership projections that were used to justify their construction, according to multiple independent studies and transport experts.

    Take Mumbai’s new fully underground Aqua Line, for example. Opened in 2024, the 33.5-kilometer line connects the historic Cuffe Parade business district to the commercial hub of Bandra-Kurla Complex and the northern suburb’s airport terminals. Planners projected the corridor would ease chronic road congestion in India’s financial capital and carry roughly 1.5 million passengers every single day. But current estimates put actual daily ridership at just 10% of that target. On a recent weekday evening, the train nearly emptied out before its final stop, leaving the terminal looking more like a deserted, outdated Soviet-era infrastructure site than a bustling transit hub in one of the world’s most densely populated cities. “Not a lot of people are using the line. It’s too expensive,” a ticketing agent at the Cuffe Parade terminal told the BBC, summing up a common complaint across the country.

    A 2023 study from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi found that across all new Indian metro corridors, actual ridership hits only 25% to 35% of the original projected numbers. One of the study’s lead authors confirmed that these figures have not improved meaningfully in 2024 and 2025. Independent research from other organizations backs up these findings. The Observer Research Foundation (ORF), a New Delhi-based think tank, reports that ridership in the tier-3 city of Kanpur is just 2% of the original projection, while Chennai’s first phase of metro hit only 37% of its target. Data shared with the BBC by the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP) shows actual ridership falls between 20% and 50 of projections in western Indian cities Pune and Nagpur. Only Delhi, home to India’s largest and oldest metro network, has reported ridership that slightly exceeds initial projections—but experts note this is a statistical quirk: Delhi now counts interchanges between lines as separate trips, inflating the official total.

    Transport analysts have identified a web of interconnected factors driving the persistent underperformance, starting with flawed demand forecasting. Ashish Verma, a transport expert at the Indian Institute of Science’s Sustainable Transportation Lab in Bengaluru, explains that projecting transit demand is a complex task, and consultants often inflate projected ridership numbers to make new projects appear economically viable to secure approval. Many forecasts also rely on assumptions about service capacity—such as train frequency and total number of coaches—that are never delivered in practice. For example, on Bengaluru’s busiest metro line, peak-hour trains run only every five minutes or more, while a newer line sees trains just once every 25 minutes. By comparison, the world’s busiest metro systems typically run nine-car trains every 90 seconds during peak periods.

    Affordability is a second major barrier to higher ridership, particularly for low-income workers who make up a large share of potential urban commuters. On Mumbai’s Aqua Line, a single trip costs between 10 and 70 rupees ($0.10 to $0.70), while a three-month unlimited pass on the city’s established, overcrowded suburban railway costs just 590 rupees total—far less than the equivalent metro pass. Aditya Rane, senior transport specialist at ITDP, notes that for the lowest-income Indian commuters, the total cost of an integrated metro journey can consume up to 20% of their monthly income, well above the global affordability benchmark of 10% to 15%. In recent years, many Indian metro systems have cut government subsidies to cover construction costs, a move that has hit ridership hard: when Bengaluru raised metro fares in 2024, daily ridership dropped 13% in the following months, according to data collated by Greenpeace. “Even the London Tube, one of the world’s most expensive urban transit systems, still receives heavy government subsidies, because the core goal is to provide sustainable mobility and decongest cities,” Verma points out.

    Poor network planning and a lack of usable last-mile connectivity also keep ridership low. Nandan Dawda, an urban studies fellow at ORF, explains that commuters will only switch from private vehicles or informal transit to metro if waiting and access times are kept to a minimum. A major missing piece across most Indian cities is affordable, reliable feeder bus service that connects residential and employment hubs to metro stations. Transfer times between different metro lines within the same network are also often unacceptably long: at Delhi’s busy Hauz Khas interchange, transferring between two lines can take 15 to 20 minutes. Compounding this is what Dawda calls “institutional disaggregation”: even within a single city, metro lines and local bus networks are often run by separate, siloed agencies that do not coordinate on scheduling, ticketing, or route planning to create a seamless experience for commuters.

    Additional barriers include poorly maintained pedestrian walkways leading to stations and widespread safety concerns, particularly for women commuting after dark. For many residents, the end of a metro journey is only the start of a difficult, unsafe trip home. “If I am coming home after sunset, I cannot rely on the metro,” said Chetna Yadav, a 40-year-old resident of north Delhi. “The station is 15 kilometers from my house, and when I get off at night, it’s almost impossible to get a cab. I’ve been stuck there multiple times.” Even casual tourists struggle: “If I’m a tourist even in Delhi, I can’t drag my suitcase half a kilometer from the station to my hotel because the walkways are in such bad shape,” Verma says.

    Despite these systemic challenges, most transport experts expect Indian metro ridership to continue climbing incrementally in coming years. Chronic traffic gridlock, worsening air pollution, and soaring parking costs have already reached a breaking point in most major Indian cities, and pressure is growing to introduce congestion pricing for private vehicles, which would push more commuters to consider public transit. But experts agree that a dramatic, rapid increase in adoption is unlikely without major systemic reforms. “Metro systems will only see strong ridership growth if cities get three things right: integrated bus connectivity, safe, accessible station access, and unified, affordable ticketing,” Rane says. “Without those changes, India will keep building gleaming new metro lines that look impressive on paper, but continue to fall far short of their original goals.”

  • Robots outrun humans at marathon

    Robots outrun humans at marathon

    In a landmark demonstration of advancing robotics capability that stunned observers, a humanoid robot developed by Chinese consumer technology firm Honor has broken the half-marathon world record previously held by a human elite athlete, capping a dramatic year of progress in the sector at a landmark competition in Beijing on Sunday.

    Named Flash, the Honor-built humanoid crossed the 21-kilometer finish line of the 2026 Beijing E-Town Half Marathon and Humanoid Robot Half Marathon in a time of 50 minutes 26 seconds. That mark is nearly seven minutes faster than the existing human record of 57 minutes 20 seconds set by Ugandan distance star Jacob Kiplimo in Lisbon, Portugal just one month prior.

    The milestone comes just 12 months after the inaugural edition of the humanoid robot race, where the winning entry crossed the line more than two hours slower, at 2 hours 40 minutes 42 seconds, and only six out of nearly 20 competing teams managed to get their robots across the finish line at all. This year’s event tells a story of explosive growth in the sector: more than 100 teams from 13 Chinese provinces (up from just five in 2025) plus five international teams competed, with a record-high share of participants completing the full course. All three podium positions were claimed by humanoids built by Honor, a company that has pivoted from smartphone manufacturing into humanoid robotics development in only 12 months.

    Du Xiaodi, an Honor engineer who served as Flash’s team coach, noted after the race that the firm has not yet launched commercial humanoid robot sales, and still faces key technical hurdles to overcome, particularly in the development of fully independent high-performance electric motors for the devices. Honor was far from the only competitor: other participating entries came from established Chinese robotics firms including Unitree and Noetix.

    A year ago, one of the most memorable moments of the event came when human engineers ran alongside their robots the entire way, holding laptops to adjust performance and fix navigation errors mid-race. This year, more than 40 percent of competing robots operated fully autonomously. Using on-board sensors, cameras and embedded processing systems, the robots independently perceived their surrounding environment in real time, completing complex tasks including self-localization, course mapping, dynamic path adjustment and obstacle avoidance without any human intervention.

    Organizers also increased the difficulty of this year’s course to put robot adaptive capabilities to a stricter test, adding additional curves, varying elevation and multiple uphill and downhill segments that wind through scenic local landmarks including the E-Town milu deer park and tree-lined urban avenues. All three top-finishing robots successfully navigated the full challenging course entirely on their own.

    The breakthrough performance comes as Beijing positions humanoid robotics as a core strategic future industry, expected to follow the growth trajectories of smartphones and smart connected vehicles to become a key pillar of the city’s innovation economy. Beijing Municipal Bureau of Economy and Information Technology Party secretary and director Jiang Guangzhi explained that the city is actively developing real-world testing scenarios to accelerate the growth of this new economic engine.

    To support that goal, Beijing has already built more than 18,000 square meters of dedicated robot testing grounds and data collection centers across the E-Town development zone, Haidian District and Shijingshan District. These facilities generate hundreds of thousands of hours of high-quality performance data annually, providing critical support for technological innovation and iteration for both startups and established industry leaders.

    A city-wide action plan for embodied intelligent technology innovation and industry development sets clear targets for 2027: Beijing aims to build a fully domestic integrated upstream and downstream industry chain for embodied intelligence, achieve breakthroughs in more than 100 core technologies, and cultivate a humanoid and robotics industry cluster with an output value of hundreds of billions of yuan.

    Industry data underscores China’s leading position in the global humanoid robot market right now: global shipments of humanoid robots reached approximately 17,000 units in 2025, with Chinese manufacturers accounting for 14,000 of those units, more than 80 percent of total global supply. Looking ahead, the second World Robot Games is scheduled to open in Beijing this coming August, where the world will get another look at the cutting edge of robotic capability coming out of the country’s fast-growing innovation ecosystem.

  • ‘They told me he was dead’: Children born near army base learn truth about UK soldier dads

    ‘They told me he was dead’: Children born near army base learn truth about UK soldier dads

    For decades, hundreds of children born near the British Army Training Unit in Kenya (Batuk) have grown up without answers about their paternal heritage, many left in poverty, socially ostracized, and told their British military fathers were deceased. Now, an unprecedented cross-border legal and genetic initiative has identified 20 missing fathers, secured paternity confirmation for 12 cases through the UK’s highest Family Court, and unlocked life-changing access to British citizenship and child support for dozens of Kenyan people.

    One of the cases at the center of this breakthrough is nine-year-old Edward, a pseudonym to protect his identity. From early childhood, Edward has faced relentless bullying over his lighter skin tone, with peers taunting him as a “British coloniser” – a reference to the United Kingdom’s 68-year colonial rule of Kenya that ended in 1963. Edward’s mother, Nasibo, a Kenyan woman who entered a relationship with a British contractor stationed at Batuk, was cast out by her family after her partner left Kenya abruptly when she was four months pregnant. She says the man promised to return, gave her an engagement ring before leaving, and never contacted her again. For years, she and Edward have lived in extreme poverty, with no way to trace the man who fathered her son. Now that paternity has been confirmed, Edward is eligible for formal child support payments, though his father has refused to share contact information, forcing legal teams to pursue court action to secure maintenance payments.

    Another story that underscores the years of misinformation surrounding these cases is 18-year-old Yvonne. Orphaned as an infant after her mother’s death, Yvonne was raised by her grandparents and told by Batuk soldiers that her British military father had died. Through genetic matching with her father’s maternal cousin, who had uploaded their DNA to the commercial genealogy platform Ancestry.com, the legal team confirmed Yvonne’s father is alive and currently residing in the UK. After ignoring five court orders to appear for paternity proceedings, he finally attended his hearing, requested a DNA test, and the results confirmed he is Yvonne’s father. Like Edward’s father, he has declined any contact with Yvonne at this time, though extended family members have expressed interest in building a relationship with her.

    Not all outcomes have involved estrangement, however. Twenty-year-old Cathy grew up believing her father, a former British soldier named Phill stationed at Batuk in 2004, was dead. Her mother Maggie told her this after Phill lost contact when his phone was stolen following a deployment change. As a teenager, Cathy tracked Phill down on Facebook, but he did not recognize her name and blocked her messages. Struggling with the loneliness of growing up without a father and lacking answers about her mixed heritage, Cathy made a suicide attempt. Meanwhile, Phill had left the military, struggled with poor mental health, and experienced homelessness after transitioning to civilian life. When paternity was confirmed through the project, Phill called the discovery a “very happy surprise.” He has already begun providing financial support to Cathy and Maggie, and the two are rebuilding their relationship, with Cathy planning to visit the UK in the near future. To date, Phill is the only confirmed father who has voluntarily provided financial support to his Kenyan child.

    The project was launched in 2024 after UK-based solicitor James Netto was approached by families in Nanyuki, the Kenyan market town 185 kilometers north of Nairobi that has hosted Batuk since the base opened in 1964. More than 5,000 British military personnel pass through the training base each year, and the facility has long been mired in controversy over allegations of abuse and misconduct. In December 2024, a two-year Kenyan parliamentary inquiry concluded that British personnel at Batuk operated within a “culture of impunity,” resulting in sexual violence, two murder allegations, widespread environmental damage, and the systemic abandonment of children fathered with local women.

    To address the longstanding issue of unacknowledged paternity, Netto partnered with Kenyan lawyer Kelvin Kubai, who runs the charity Connecting Roots Kenya to support these children, and leading genetics professor Denise Syndercombe Court. The team traveled to Kenya with hundreds of DNA testing kits, collected samples from claimants ranging in age from three to 70 years old, and cross-referenced the results against the nearly 30 million genetic profiles available on commercial genealogy platforms – a large enough dataset to make familial matches even with distant relatives. Netto says the scale and methodology of this project are unprecedented in UK legal history, and the team was stunned by how successful the process was, with matches ranging from distant cousins all the way to direct identification of the fathers themselves. To secure official contact information, the courts ordered UK government agencies including the Ministry of Defence, Department for Work and Pensions, and HM Revenue and Customs to release the identified fathers’ names and addresses.

    Netto says his team has already documented nearly 100 active cases of children born to British soldiers and contractors near Batuk, and he estimates the true number is far higher. In the 12 cases that have received formal paternity confirmation from the UK Family Court, most claimants are now eligible to apply for British citizenship, and all minors and students are eligible for court-ordered child support.

    Rejecting calls for a ban on relationships between British soldiers and local Kenyan women as inherently racist, Kubai argues the only just solution is to hold men accountable when they father children during their deployment. Netto and Kubai plan to bring dozens more cases before the UK High Court over the coming months, continuing their work to connect claimants with their heritage and secure the financial and legal rights they are owed.

    In response to questions about the allegations and the paternity project, the UK Ministry of Defence stated it “deeply regrets those issues and challenges which have arisen in relation to the UK’s defence presence in Kenya” and said it continues to take action to address concerns where possible. It noted that consensual relationships between personnel and local women do not violate MoD policy, and that the ministry does not investigate cases where no criminal allegations have been filed by local authorities. Brigadier Simon Ridgway, commanding officer of the British Army’s Collective Training Group, added that the MoD works with Kenyan children’s services to address paternity claims as they are received. The December 2024 Kenyan parliamentary inquiry has called on the Kenyan government to create formal new systems to hold Batuk soldiers accountable for child support, including mandated DNA testing and long-term psychosocial support for affected children.

  • Why your recycled clothes could end up in this South American desert

    Why your recycled clothes could end up in this South American desert

    Every year, millions of discarded pre-owned garments collected from donation bins across Europe, North America and Asia make their final resting place in one of the harshest landscapes on Earth: Chile’s Atacama Desert. A stark environmental crisis has emerged from the global secondhand clothing trade, which has long benefited the northern Chilean economy but left the arid region choking on unsold textile waste – and now a new private sector initiative is stepping in to address the problem, spurred by landmark regulatory change.

    At the heart of the global secondhand clothing flow is Iquique’s Zona Franca del Iquique, known locally as Zofri. Established in 1975 to drive economic growth in northern Chile’s underdeveloped regions, this duty-free free trade zone allows businesses to import, store and re-export goods without paying customs duties or value-added tax. Over decades, used clothing became one of Zofri’s largest import sectors: official Chilean government data puts annual imports of pre-owned garments at roughly 123,000 tonnes, with shipments arriving in compressed bales via container from across the globe. Once imported, the clothing is sorted, sold locally at low-cost markets or re-exported to other Latin American markets.

    For the local community, the sector delivers tangible economic benefits. Felipe González, Zofri’s general manager, notes that roughly 10% of the region’s local workforce – most of whom are low-skilled women without formal advanced qualifications – find employment in the clothing trade, sorting garments by quality for resale. The lowest-quality unsold stock ends up at La Quebradilla, a sprawling open-air market just 30 minutes uphill from Iquique in Alto Hospicio, where stalls sell everything from t-shirts to dresses starting at just $0.54. Tourists and local residents flock to the market on weekends to hunt for bargains, cementing the trade’s role in the local economy.

    But the boom in secondhand clothing has come at a devastating environmental cost. Unsold garments cannot be deposited in local municipal landfills, which are only permitted to accept household waste rather than commercial import waste. Legitimate disposal options – including exporting the unsold stock, paying taxes to sell the garments outside the free trade zone, or contracting authorized waste management firms – all carry significant costs. For unethical traders, the far cheaper alternative is to illegally burn unsold clothing or dump it in the vast, unpatrolled expanses of the surrounding Atacama Desert. By the largest industry estimates, this illegal dumping totals 39,000 tonnes of textile waste every year.

    Local authorities have struggled to curb the practice. Miguel Painenahuel, who works in Alto Hospicio’s urban planning department, explains that the desert’s wide open terrain and countless accessible access points make it easy for trucks to sneak in and dump waste overnight. While the municipal government conducts patrols and operates surveillance cameras to issue fines to violators, limited resources mean enforcement efforts cannot keep pace with the steady flow of dumped clothing.

    Now, a public-private partnership spurred by new national regulation is working to turn the crisis into a circular economy opportunity. In Iquique, the non-profit CircularTec – the Centro Tecnológico de Economía Circular, which advances sustainable resource reuse – has partnered with veteran local textile importer Bekir Conkur to build Chile’s first large-scale textile recycling facility targeted at this unsold clothing waste.

    Conkur, a Turkish-born entrepreneur who has operated in Chile’s textile trade for more than 15 years and imports 50 containers of secondhand clothing monthly, has invested $7 million in the new facility, currently under construction 20 minutes outside Alto Hospicio. When fully operational in a few months, the water- and chemical-free plant will process unsold garments into raw fibers, which are then converted into felt for use in mattresses, furniture, automotive interior components and building insulation. Conkur projects the facility will have the capacity to process 20 tonnes of textile waste per day, handling a large share of the region’s annual unsold clothing stock.

    The initiative comes in response to a landmark update to Chile’s environmental regulation: last July, the national government added textiles to its existing Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) Law. The regulation shifts the financial and operational responsibility for end-of-life product management from local governments and the public sector to the brands, retailers and importers that put the clothing on the market. While the specific regulatory details for the textile sector are still being drafted by the government, the rule change has created a clear incentive for private companies to invest in recycling infrastructure, turning waste management into a viable business opportunity.

    Luis Martínez, executive director of CircularTec, emphasized that the goal of the project is far more than just compliance: “We don’t want the Atacama Desert to be famous as a tourist attraction where visitors can see mountains of clothes.” Looking forward, Conkur believes his facility will not only handle waste from across Chile, but could eventually process textile waste from other countries around the world, turning a growing global environmental problem into a sustainable, profitable circular business.