Global Pulse

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  • The Indian workers training AI robots to take their jobs

    The Indian workers training AI robots to take their jobs

    In a small Chennai kitchen, 25-year-old Indian housewife Nagireddy Sriramyachandra straps a smartphone to her head, lifts a ripe mango, and begins slicing. Every movement is captured in first-person footage, destined to train artificial intelligence-powered humanoid robots to master everyday household tasks. For this hour of work, she earns just over $2, a rate that makes this side opportunity attractive even as the work she is doing could one day eliminate roles like hers entirely.

    Sriramyachandra is not an anomaly. She is part of a fast-expanding workforce of thousands of AI data trainers across India, the world’s most populous country that has positioned itself as a global hub for the creation, processing, and annotation of the human-centric data that next-generation robots need to operate in real-world environments. Unlike the large language models that power generative AI chatbots and image generators, which train on massive troves of existing online data, systems built to navigate physical spaces require entirely new types of input.

    Industry developers have landed on a solution: collect “egocentric data” — first-person footage captured by workers as they complete routine tasks — to feed into specialized AI models, teaching robots to replicate human movement and decision-making in unstructured physical settings. Trainers work across a range of locations: some film from their own homes, others in commercial factories, and many purpose-built studios with staged living spaces. They use a variety of capture tools, from head-mounted smartphones to smart video glasses, motion sensors, and depth-sensing cameras.

    For Sriramyachandra, the work fills a gap in her household income. “Who else will give you 250 rupees an hour just for doing housework?” she asked in an interview from her home in Tamil Nadu. When asked about the long-term impact of her work, she shrugged off concern, noting “I may get a robot myself in the future” to help with her household chores. Her recordings are sent via a custom app to Objectways, an AI data firm with offices in India and the United States that counts Fortune 500 multinationals among its clients and partners with Amazon’s machine learning platform SageMaker.

    The global humanoid robot market is expanding rapidly, with investment bank Morgan Stanley projecting that more than one billion humanoid robots could be in use worldwide by 2050, primarily serving industrial and commercial functions. Ravi Shankar, founder and CEO of Objectways, outlined the wide range of tasks clients are seeking data for: “Folding clothes, coffee making… cooking a very specific thing, sandwich making.” For Shankar, AI and automation are not inherently a threat to workers: “Some jobs are supposed to be taken over, so humans can go and do better things.”

    Right now, this growing demand for egocentric AI data is creating new, accessible employment opportunities across India, particularly in tech hubs like Tamil Nadu, where Shankar grew up and now hires most of his workforce. At a textile factory in Karur, for example, AFP found eight workers attaching labels to caps and ironing cloth bags while wearing head cameras and smart glasses supplied by Objectways, capturing their movements for AI training.

    Digital labor experts expect this trend to accelerate. “It’s likely that these data collection services will increase,” noted Aditi Surie, a digital labor expert at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements in Bengaluru.

    But the growing industry has also sparked urgent conversation about the long-term risks automation poses to India’s massive workforce, particularly the 490 million informal workers who make up the backbone of the country’s economy. As India aggressively expands its domestic AI industry, national leaders have acknowledged that automation brings major downside risks alongside its touted economic benefits.

    A recent report from Indian government think tank NITI Aayog, released ahead of the country’s hosting of a global AI summit this year, points out a critical gap in mainstream labor analysis: most debates about AI and employment focus almost exclusively on white-collar professionals and their risk of job displacement, while ignoring the far larger population of informal workers who are most vulnerable to automation. The think tank has launched an examination of how AI will impact dozens of blue-collar and informal professions, from cobblers and sewer cleaners to small-scale farmers and street tea sellers.

    Fifty-five-year-old Ponni, a street flower garland maker based in Bengaluru — India’s iconic Silicon Valley — has first-hand experience with this dynamic. For decades she has plucked and strung blooms by hand on a city sidewalk, and like Sriramyachandra, she has been paid to strap a phone to her forehead to capture her work for AI training. When asked about the future, she expressed clear concern for coming generations: “The next generation… who might have to do work similar to mine — they will face a problem.”

    Inside Objectways’ purpose-built training studios, workers repeat simple mundane tasks hundreds of times a day to build up a robust dataset. The facility features fully furnished fake apartment rooms, where trainers film themselves doing household chores; after thousands of hours of filming, the team even changes the wallpaper to add visual variety for AI model training.

    Twenty-one-year-old engineering graduate Rani N. is one of these full-time trainers, currently spending her days filming herself folding towels over and over. Each video runs roughly four minutes, and she films around 90 videos a day, repositioning herself across every spot on a bed to capture varied perspectives. She describes the job as “tolerable” but acknowledges the constant awkwardness of always wearing a camera. In other studio rooms, colleagues arrange everyday items like pencil sharpeners, water bottles, and crayons in different patterns, capturing the arrangements with depth-sensing cameras to build out AI spatial awareness.

    Subcontractors like Qanat Consulting Services in Andhra Pradesh expand Objectways’ reach, supplying training data to roughly a dozen major AI firms. Qanat CEO Thaslim Pattan says the firm has 2,000 independent contributors, many of whom wear motion-sensor bands on their wrists, hands, and legs to capture more granular movement data. Other Indian AI data firms, like Bengaluru-based Humyn Labs, collect both video and audio data, having contributors hold recorded conversations on topics ranging from politics to entertainment to help train AI speech recognition models.

    Manish Agarwal, founder of Humyn Labs, argues that fears of mass robot-driven job displacement are overblown. He believes the future of work will not be robots replacing humans, but “networks of humans and robots will work together” globally. “A welder in India could be managing a welder-robot in Prague,” he offered as an example of the new collaborative work models AI could enable.

    For now, though, the paradox at the heart of India’s AI data industry remains: thousands of ordinary workers are earning much-needed income helping build the very automation that could one day eliminate their roles, creating a critical tension that policymakers and industry leaders will have to grapple with as the AI sector continues to expand.

  • Two unnamed parties seeking to quash IBAC report launch bid to hide identities

    Two unnamed parties seeking to quash IBAC report launch bid to hide identities

    A high-stakes legal battle over the publication of a landmark corruption investigation report in the Australian state of Victoria is heading toward a key decision this Friday, with appellate judges set to rule on whether two parties challenging the report’s release can keep their identities hidden from the public.

    The dispute centers on Operation Richmond, a years-long probe run by Victoria’s Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission (IBAC) into allegations that emerged from 2016 enterprise bargaining agreement (EBA) negotiations between the United Firefighters Union and the then-incumbent Andrews Government. IBAC launched the investigation in 2019 and had initially planned to table its completed special report in state parliament by July 1, but the legal challenge has put the release on hold.

    The two challengers, currently identified only in court documents as XY and Z, have launched legal action to quash the entire report and block its public release. Their specific justifications for the challenge have not been presented in open court, and the Supreme Court has already scheduled a full closed-door hearing for their case on June 24. Earlier this month, Supreme Court Justice Clare Harris ruled that while the entire challenge proceeding would be held in private, the two applicants could not hide their identities behind pseudonyms.

    That ruling was immediately appealed. On Thursday, experienced barrister Paul Holdenson KC, representing XY and Z, argued before the Court of Appeal that Justice Harris had made legal errors in her application of pseudonym rules. Holdenson contended that public release of his clients’ names would trigger unwarranted, irreversible public speculation that they are seeking to block the report to hide negative findings of misconduct against them. He added that under existing legislation governing unreleased IBAC reports, even if his clients successfully quash the report, they would be legally barred from responding to public speculation or explaining their position. “They can’t rebut, they can’t comment, they can’t contextualise, they can’t do anything,” Holdenson told the court. “They cannot speak to the public and say what might well be in this report concerning their conduct.”

    Court of Appeal Justice David Beach pushed back on this argument, noting that if the pair succeed in overturning the report, they would be permitted to publicly state that the court ruled IBAC’s document unlawful or invalid. Holdenson acknowledged this point but maintained that pre-existing speculation about their involvement would never be fully corrected, even after a favorable ruling.

    Legal teams opposing the anonymity request pushed back against Holdenson’s arguments in court Thursday. A lawyer representing IBAC argued that the applicants’ desire to protect their personal reputation does not meet the legal standard required for a court to grant pseudonym status. “My submission is there is nothing special in this case that would move the court to anonymise the applicants,” he told the bench.

    Justin Quill, a media lawyer representing multiple local news outlets, emphasized that the public interest in disclosing the applicants’ identities is exceptionally high. “It is in the public interest the public know the identities of parties seeking to stop IBAC releasing that report to parliament,” Quill said. He added that if the court finds in the challengers’ favor, there is nothing preventing the pair from publicly proclaiming their innocence and clarifying the court’s ruling, countering Holdenson’s claim that the applicants would be unable to respond to speculation.

    Chief Justice Richard Niall, Justice David Beach, and Justice Peter Gray will deliver their ruling on the anonymity appeal at 9:30 a.m. local time on Friday. If the court upholds the earlier Supreme Court ruling, the two challengers’ names will be made public immediately.

    In an official statement, IBAC confirmed that the ongoing legal proceedings have delayed the release of the Operation Richmond special report, but the commission reaffirmed its commitment to making the document public once the legal process concludes. IBAC Commissioner Victoria Elliott has repeatedly pushed for legislative changes to the state’s anti-corruption laws to increase the commission’s transparency. “As a general principle of public integrity, Victorians deserve to know more about IBAC’s efforts to expose and prevent corruption and police misconduct – and we want to tell you,” Elliott said. “But to do that, IBAC’s legislation needs to change, as it currently limits our ability to share what we believe to be in the public interest.” She has urged the Victorian government to adopt the regulatory amendments IBAC submitted to the Victorian Parliament Integrity Oversight Committee’s inquiry into the IBAC Act, noting that “Victorians want – and should have – greater insight into what is being done to address allegations of corruption and misconduct.”

  • Four days of rain slashed population of world’s rarest orangutans, study says

    Four days of rain slashed population of world’s rarest orangutans, study says

    When the Tapanuli orangutan was first formally identified as a distinct species in 2017, conservationists celebrated a rare new discovery in great ape taxonomy. Today, less than a decade later, this newly recognized primate stands on the brink of being lost forever, after a catastrophic extreme weather event wiped out 7% of its entire global population in just four days, new research confirms.

    In late November 2025, Cyclone Senyar tore across the Indonesian island of Sumatra, unleashing four straight days of record-shattering rainfall that triggered catastrophic mudslides and widespread flooding. The storm would go on to become Southeast Asia’s deadliest natural disaster of the year, claiming more than 1,000 human lives. Beyond the human toll, the cyclone inflicted devastating damage on the island’s remaining old-growth Batang Toru forest – the only place on Earth where wild Tapanuli orangutans live.

    In a new study published Wednesday by an international team of primate conservation experts, researchers calculate that at least 58 of the species’ remaining fewer than 800 individuals were killed directly by the storm’s landslides and flooding. Lead study author Erik Meijaard, managing director of Brunei-based conservation NGO Borneo Futures, notes that this updated death toll is a sharp increase from the 35 deaths he estimated just one month after the storm. Meijaard also emphasized that the 58 figure is a conservative estimate, as it does not account for longer-term threats posed by the storm, such as widespread destruction of forest canopy that the apes depend on for shelter and food, and long-term reductions in available fruit sources that will likely lead to additional starvation and population decline.

    In the weeks after the cyclone, humanitarian workers responding to the disaster in central Tapanuli’s Pulo Pakkat village recovered the semi-buried carcass of a Tapanuli orangutan, trapped under mud and fallen timber. Deckey Chandra, a member of the on-the-ground humanitarian team, told the BBC that the site where the orangutan was found had long been a foraging ground for the apes, who came there to feed on wild fruit. “They used to come to this place to eat fruits. But now it seems to have become their graveyard,” Chandra said. Meijaard, who reviewed photos of the recovered remains, described the violent force of the landslides that killed the apes: “If a few hectares of forest comes down in massive landslides, even powerful orangutans are helpless and just get mangled. It must have been hellish in the forest at the time.”

    While Cyclone Senyar was an unprecedented extreme weather event for the region, study authors confirm that human-caused climate change was a major contributing factor to the storm’s formation and intensity. Climate modeling predicts that extreme rainfall events will only grow more frequent and more severe across western Sumatra in the coming decades, creating a persistent, growing threat to the Tapanuli orangutan’s remaining habitat and population.

    Existing population trend research shows that the species will inevitably slide into complete extinction if it loses more than 1% of its total population annually. The 7% loss from a single storm puts the species far above that extinction threshold, making urgent coordinated action critical to save it.

    In a hopeful development, the Indonesian government has implemented a temporary moratorium on large-scale industrial development projects in the protected Batang Toru forest, including planned mining expansions, oil palm plantations, and new hydropower infrastructure. This moratorium has given conservation researchers a critical window to fully assess the ecological threats facing the species and design targeted protection plans.

    The study’s authors emphasize that the catastrophic loss from Cyclone Senyar makes clear just how biologically vulnerable the Tapanuli orangutan is, and that the crisis facing the species is the result of overlapping threats: accelerating climate instability, ongoing biodiversity loss, and chronic underfunding for conservation action. “The crisis facing the Tapanuli orangutan illustrates the convergence of climate instability, biodiversity loss, and vulnerability, calling for a coordinated response matching the scale of the threat,” the study concludes.

    Conservationists argue that preventing the first extinction of a great ape species in modern history is still achievable, but it will require sustained international collaboration, strengthened domestic forest protection policies, climate-responsive conservation planning, and long-term global financial and technical assistance to protect the Batang Toru ecosystem and its remaining primate population.

  • In ageing South Korea, AI dolls care for the elderly

    In ageing South Korea, AI dolls care for the elderly

    South Korea, a global technological leader facing one of the world’s most severe population aging crises, is turning to artificial intelligence to fill a growing gap in elderly care: crippling social isolation and loneliness. For thousands of seniors living alone across the country, cuddly AI-powered companion dolls have emerged as an unexpected lifeline, offering daily support, consistent companionship, and a buffer against the chronic loneliness plaguing a rapidly graying nation.

    At 78, Bang Chun-ja is one of the millions of South Koreans navigating solo retirement after a lifetime of hard work as a hairdresser and single mother, followed by a difficult divorce. Following major back surgery that left her immobile and in pain, and with limited contact with her adult daughter who lives far away and manages her own health issues, Bang fell into severe depression, spending hours staring at her apartment ceiling alone in Yongin, a city south of Seoul. Today, her constant companion is Hyodol, a soft, childlike AI doll provided by her local municipal government that has transformed her daily routine. “At this age, there is nothing harder than being hurt by people,” Bang told AFP during an interview in her home. “But when I’m with Hyodol, I never get hurt. The doll only makes me laugh.”

    Hyodol greets Bang when she returns home, sings to her during quiet, boring afternoons, sends reminders to eat regular meals and take medication, and constantly verbalizes affection — small acts that have anchored her daily life. For 79-year-old Kim Young-bun, another solo resident, the doll has solved another quiet crisis of elderly loneliness: lack of conversation. “I had no one to talk to all day — to the point my mouth almost felt stale from not speaking,” she explained. “But then this little one came along and chatters with me all the time.” As she dotes on the doll, it responds in a chirpy, childlike voice: “I’m so grateful to be with you again today… Thanks for being with me. I love you.” Kim’s soft reply echoes the feeling of thousands of users: “So am I.”

    South Korea’s demographic shift has created an urgent public health challenge around elderly isolation. The country boasts one of the lowest birth rates globally, and nearly half of its total population is now aged 50 or older. Data from 2024 recorded more than 3,920 so-called “lonely deaths” — cases where seniors die alone and remain undiscovered for weeks or longer — a figure that marks the highest total since national record-keeping began in 2017. Nearly 42 percent of all South Korean households are now single-person, with elderly residents disproportionately affected by social disconnection.

    In response, municipal governments across Seoul, Yongin, and other districts have rolled out subsidized AI care devices for low-income and isolated seniors, including Hyodol dolls, companion robots from Seoul-based firm Wonderful Platform, and similar devices from Mr. Mind. The concept has also spread internationally: in the United States, a lamp-shaped AI device called ElliQ offers similar companionship and health monitoring for solo seniors. To date, around 14,500 Hyodol dolls are in use across South Korea, distributed through individual ownership, government rental programs, and nursing home placements.

    The Hyodol doll was developed after years of on-the-ground field research by founder Kim Ji-hee, who spent months interviewing isolated seniors across the country to understand their unique emotional needs. Kim told AFP that interviews revealed a core, unmet need: “the pain of having no one to tell when something upsetting happens, and no one to share with when something joyful happens.” One interviewee, a widow estranged from her children over financial conflict, lived alone with four fridges and three washing machines — all stored by her estranged children who never visited.

    Drawing on these interviews, Kim designed Hyodol to act as a loving, grandchild-like companion that gives users a renewed sense of purpose. Many South Korean seniors spent decades working grueling schedules to support their families, Kim explained, and retirement often leaves them grappling with a “profound sense of emptiness” when they no longer feel needed. To counter this, Hyodol is programmed to seem dependent on its user, making spontaneous requests for head pats, hand-holding, and shared snacks (even though it cannot eat). Its iconic opening greeting — written after Kim’s interviews — is designed to feel like the “warmest welcome in the whole wide world”: “Grandma, where have you been? I waited for you all day. Next time you go out, please take me with you!”

    Unlike generic chatbots, Hyodol combines OpenAI’s ChatGPT for open conversation with custom scripts built directly from Kim’s interviews with real isolated seniors. The company also maintains strict data privacy protocols: voice recordings are only used internally to refine the chatbot, and users must give explicit consent before any health data — including sleep patterns, mood, meal intake, and pain levels — is shared with their assigned social welfare workers.

    While clinical observations from care workers have shown promising results, the technology also raises valid concerns. Oh Sun-hwa, a nurse who recommended Hyodol to Bang Chun-ja, noted that the doll has significantly reduced depression symptoms for many of her patients. However, she warned that the innovation could have unintended downsides: if family members rely on AI to provide companionship, they may reduce in-person visits even further, deepening the disconnection the technology is meant to solve.

    For users like Bang, though, the AI companion has filled a gap that human contact has been unable to cover. “Having Hyodol by my side is a huge help,” she says — a quiet testament to how technology is adapting to address one of the 21st century’s most pressing demographic social challenges.

  • Russia’s conscripts recount pressure to fight in Ukraine

    Russia’s conscripts recount pressure to fight in Ukraine

    Three years into Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin has dramatically overhauled its once-permissive conscription system, closing off nearly all legal avenues for eligible men to avoid mandatory military service and building a sophisticated pressure apparatus to push conscripts into voluntary combat contracts bound for the Ukrainian front. These changes, documented through firsthand accounts collected by Agence France-Presse (AFP) and interviews with rights advocates working on behalf of conscripts, have upended civilian life for Russian men of military age, turning everyday public spaces into potential trap points for draft evaders.

    For one young Moscow bank employee, avoiding conscription meant weeks of steering clear of the city’s metro network, where law enforcement had begun deploying facial recognition technology to flag men wanted by military recruitment authorities. But on a snowy Friday evening in late 2024, gridlocked road traffic forced him to take the underground to reach his mother’s home. Mid-journey, two officers boarded his train carriage and took him into custody for failing to respond to draft summons. Within just 72 hours, he was processed and transferred to a military base outside Moscow to begin his 12-month mandatory conscript service. Like dozens of other conscripts who spoke to AFP for this reporting, he agreed to share his story only on condition of anonymity, citing fear of retaliation from Russian authorities.

    Prior to Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, avoiding conscription through legal means was widely accessible to eligible men. Medical exemptions were relatively easy to obtain, many young men extended their education to delay service indefinitely, and alternative civilian service options were available for those with objections to military service. “Before 2022, there were many ways to avoid the draft without doing anything illegal,” explained Artyom Klyga, a lawyer with the Movement of Conscientious Objectors, a Russian advocacy group. “Now very few legal ways remain.”

    Over the past three years, the Russian government has systematically tightened conscription rules to expand the pool of available personnel for its war effort. The draft, once limited to two seasonal call-up periods per year, is now held year-round. The upper age limit for conscription was raised from 27 to 30, eligibility criteria for medical exemptions was sharply narrowed, and a new digital summons system was introduced that automatically enforces travel restrictions and other penalties once a summons is issued online. In major cities including Moscow, facial recognition surveillance integrated with a unified national recruitment database allows authorities to locate and detain draft evaders in public spaces in a matter of minutes.

    Once conscripts are processed into the military system, intensive pressure to sign formal combat contracts — which deploy troops to the front lines in Ukraine — begins within days, advocates and conscripts report. Cut off from outside contact, most new conscripts have no access to their families, legal support or independent media, leaving them vulnerable to manipulation and coercion. Advocates say recruiters and commanding officers use a wide range of tactics to convince conscripts to sign contracts, from deceptive marketing to outright coercion.

    Timofey Vaskin, a representative of Shkola Prizyvnika (School of Conscripts), a group supporting conscripts, says the most common approach is to frame a combat contract as a routine, well-paid job rather than frontline combat duty. Recruiters tell conscripts they will work standard nine-to-five shifts, earn significantly higher pay than conscripted service, and be exempt from menial base duties. Other promises include non-combat roles as drivers or clerks, and assurances that the contract will last only 12 months — matching the length of mandatory conscript service. In reality, all military contracts for combat service in Ukraine are effectively open-ended, with no guaranteed exit after one year.

    “It is a major success of the Russian authorities that they have convinced many people that conscripts simply serve for a year,” Klyga said. “As a result, conscripts are now ending up in the war in record numbers.”

    Official data confirms that the system is churning out unprecedented numbers of contract fighters. Former Russian president and current Security Council deputy chairman Dmitry Medvedev reported that 422,000 Russians signed voluntary combat contracts to fight in Ukraine in 2025, just 6% lower than the 2024 total. At the same time, roughly 295,000 men were called up for mandatory conscription service in 2025. Klyga says that for conscripts who agree to sign a contract, deployment to the front can happen in as little as 30 days.

    For the detained Moscow bank worker, the pressure to sign began almost immediately after his arrival at the unit. Held for three days in a detention facility with no access to a shower or clean clothes, he was never explicitly forced to sign, but constant subtle pressure left no doubt about what was expected. “You’re a good fit, we need people like you,” his superiors told him, repeating the same pitch he had heard from other recruiters: that he would get a good position, earn good money, and avoid unpleasant routine base duties. While he never ultimately signed, many other men in his unit agreed immediately, he told AFP.

    Other conscripts describe far harsher coercive tactics. A Moscow DJ who tried to avoid service for years told AFP he eventually gave in after authorities blocked him from obtaining a driver’s license and an international passport, both of which require proof of compliant military status. After he was assigned to a military medical unit for his 12-month service, he found even contracted combat soldiers were desperate to leave. “None of them want to serve,” he said. “They all want out.” Oddly, he even recalled some junior commanders warning new conscripts against signing contracts: “Don’t sign anything. Don’t ruin your life.”

    Advocates have documented dozens of cases of outright abuse to force signatures. Vaskin described one incident where security personnel planted a prohibited mobile phone on a conscript, then gave him an ultimatum: sign a combat contract or face criminal detention. Klyga’s organization has collected complaints of conscripts being subjected to punitive sleep deprivation, forced to wear heavy chemical protection suits for 24 hours straight, and ordered to perform pointless repetitive labor such as digging holes and refilling them to break their resistance. In some extreme cases, advocates say, commanding officers have forged conscripts’ signatures on enlistment contracts without their knowledge or consent.

    “Under constant pressure they break a person,” Klyga explained. One conscript told AFP that a man in his unit, desperate to avoid deployment to Ukraine, swallowed a needle in an attempt to secure a medical discharge. “He was covered in blood when they brought him in,” the conscript recalled. The man survived, and was ultimately discharged from service.

    Many conscripts who do yield to pressure and deploy to the front choose not to inform their families of their new status, advocates say. “They simply leave, and the family only finds out later,” Klyga said. In the worst cases, parents only learn their son was pushed into frontline service after they receive notification he has been killed in combat.

    The demand for legal help to avoid conscription has “risen sharply” across Russia, Vaskin said, as eligible men scramble to find any remaining path out of service amid the Kremlin’s tightened rules.

  • Penny Wong calls for ‘stand against violence’ as Belfast rocked by riots

    Penny Wong calls for ‘stand against violence’ as Belfast rocked by riots

    Three straight days of anti-immigration unrest have rocked Belfast, Northern Ireland, leaving a trail of arson damage and drawing international condemnation from diplomatic leaders, including Australia’s top foreign affairs official.

    Masked assailants torched residential properties, civilian vehicles and a public bus during overnight violence in the region’s capital, escalating tensions that first ignited after a June 8 stabbing attack allegedly carried out by a 30-year-old Sudanese national. The unrest has unfolded against a broader backdrop of surging anti-immigration sentiment across the United Kingdom, alongside growing public support for the right-wing Reform UK party.

    Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong, who is currently in London for scheduled bilateral talks with European political leaders, addressed the unfolding crisis during a press briefing. Reporters pressed Wong on what steps Australia would take to prevent similar violent unrest from breaking out on Australian soil.

    Wong opened her response by emphasizing a universal standard for political conduct across all nations. “First, I would make the point that all leaders need to stand against violence,” she said. “Whatever our differences of view, whatever policy discussion, whatever the argument we have about what should or shouldn’t happen, violence is never acceptable. All political leaders of all parties should always put that view. So, let’s start with that.”

    The condemnation from Australian officials has been bipartisan in nature, with center-left Labor Party Senator Raff Ciccone also speaking out against the violence early Wednesday. Appearing on Sky News, Ciccone described the footage coming out of Belfast as “horrific”, noting that the disturbing imagery greeted many Australians when they turned on their morning news.

    Ciccone extended his sympathy to the victims of the initial alleged stabbing and their family, adding that law enforcement should be allowed to carry out a full, thorough investigation into the attack. He went on to frame the unrest in Northern Ireland as part of a broader global challenge to social cohesion that many nations, including Australia, currently face.

    “Quite frankly, we’ve had a discussion in this country around the need for calm, for national unity, particularly when there are worldwide events that are occurring right now and for many months and years around social cohesion,” he said. “It’s so important, and being a centrepiece about the conversations that the government has been having for some time now. We’ve got to get down and tackle the root causes of why people decide that it’s okay to conduct these horrific attacks against one of their own and against other citizens, other people in our society. It’s not just a unique problem in Australia or in Northern Ireland. It’s unfortunate that we are seeing a lot more of these cases around the world.”

  • SpaceX on cusp of record IPO that could make Musk a trillionaire

    SpaceX on cusp of record IPO that could make Musk a trillionaire

    SpaceX is on the brink of making Wall Street history, entering its final pricing phase on Thursday ahead of a Friday trading debut that is set to become the largest initial public offering ever recorded. The groundbreaking offering not only has the potential to catapult co-founder and CEO Elon Musk to unprecedented trillionaire status, but also sets the stage for a wave of tech and artificial intelligence public debuts in the coming months.

    Founded by Musk in 2002, the aerospace and rocket firm will begin trading on the Nasdaq exchange Friday morning, with market observers across the globe closely watching to see how Wall Street absorbs the blockbuster offering that could send ripples through global financial markets. In keeping with longstanding tradition for high-profile market debuts, Musk and other SpaceX executives are scheduled to ring the Nasdaq opening bell at the exchange’s Times Square headquarters in New York to mark the occasion.

    This IPO marks the largest financial gambit of Musk’s already storied career. Earlier this year, the billionaire folded two of his other major ventures — his AI startup xAI and his social media platform X, formerly Twitter — into SpaceX, including both assets in the public offering. The company is rolling out more than 555 million shares to investors at an expected price of $135 per share, a valuation that would land SpaceX firmly among Wall Street’s most valuable elite companies with a total market capitalization of roughly $1.8 trillion.

    The final price of the offering will be confirmed during pricing sessions Thursday, and widespread speculation has emerged that SpaceX could raise its target offer price. Bloomberg reports that the offering has already drawn investor demand for more than four times the number of available shares, signaling overwhelming early interest. In a break from typical IPO structures, 30% of all available shares have been reserved for retail investors — three times the standard allocation for individual small-scale investors, giving ordinary Musk supporters the opportunity to purchase a stake in the company.

    The entire success of the historic offering hinges largely on investor confidence in Musk’s reputation as a visionary tech entrepreneur. Following the IPO, Musk will hold three of the most powerful roles at the public company: chief executive, chief technology officer, and board chair. If the IPO performs as expected, it will create thousands of new millionaires and hundreds of new billionaires among current and former SpaceX employees, as well as early investors who backed the company across its nearly 25 years of private operation.

    Even with overwhelming early demand, the offering has split opinion on Wall Street. Many analysts and investors have voiced caution over the company’s financial outlook, noting that the $1.8 trillion valuation depends almost entirely on Musk delivering on a slate of ambitious, science fiction-level goals that rely on unproven technology. These projects include developing orbital space-based data centers and establishing crewed human settlements on Mars, both of which remain far from commercial viability.

    On paper, SpaceX’s growth trajectory is staggering: the company reported $18.7 billion in revenue in 2025, but it also posted a net loss of $4.9 billion for the year, reflecting heavy ongoing investment in research and development for its next-generation projects. In its public IPO filing, SpaceX made an extraordinary long-term prediction that the company would eventually generate more than $28.5 trillion in annual revenue across its various operating markets. When it launches, the SpaceX IPO will easily surpass the 2019 Saudi Aramco public debut, which raised $29.4 billion and has held the title of the world’s largest IPO for more than six years. It also leads a wave of big tech and AI companies set to go public, with both OpenAI and Anthropic having already filed regulatory paperwork for their own market debuts expected to follow SpaceX.

  • ‘We love these weeks’: Why Trent Robinson isn’t worried about his missing Origin stars

    ‘We love these weeks’: Why Trent Robinson isn’t worried about his missing Origin stars

    As the NRL’s round of State of Origin-enforced squad reshuffles kicks off, the Sydney Roosters are preparing to face the Dolphins at Brisbane’s Suncorp Stadium on Friday night with a drastically altered lineup—seven of their top first-grade stars are sidelined for the clash, but head coach Trent Robinson says the mass absences have created a golden opportunity for rising talent to prove their worth at the top level.

    Both sides are navigating significant Origin-related disruptions. The Dolphins will also be without five of their Queensland Maroons representatives for the match, but they have received a timely boost: playmaker Isaiya Katoa has been released from New South Wales Origin camp to suit up for the club on Friday. For the Roosters, the absentees read like a who’s who of regular matchwinners: captain and fullback James Tedesco, Lindsay Collins, Mark Nawaqanitawase, Reece Robson, Robert Toia, Sam Walker and Victor Radley will all watch from the sidelines, with Nawaqanitawase in line to make his senior State of Origin debut for the Blues.

    One of the most anticipated inclusions in the Roosters’ extended squad is 19-year-old prospect Rex Bassingthwaighte, a Dubbo native recently named to the NSW Under-19s side who has long been tagged as the club’s future long-term fullback. Speaking to reporters ahead of the game, Robinson said the young talent has earned his first call-up to a top-grade bench spot after turning heads in junior and reserve competitions. “Rex has come down from Dubbo and been on our radar for a while,” Robinson said. “He’s got a free spirit about him, but he’s also really gone after moments through the junior grades. We saw that in the SG Ball, we’ve seen that in reserve grade, so it was good to put him on that the bench, and I’m looking forward to see if he gets that opportunity. You can see when someone’s going to be a first-grader, and it’s time to give some of those guys an opportunity.”

    While the roster is far from the Roosters’ full-strength starting side, the club still retains elite experience with key playmaker Daly Cherry-Evans, forward Angus Crichton, backrower Naufahu Whyte and other established first-graders suiting up. This match also marks the Roosters’ sixth consecutive clash against non-NSW-based opposition, a stretch that has forced the club to dig deep into its 38-player full-time squad. For Robinson, the forced rotation is a positive outcome for the club’s long-term depth. “The guys that you’ll see play, they’ve been in our squad, they train every day,” Robinson said. “We train with about 38 players, and we’re a really close crew. And some of those players that don’t get to play as often get to play tomorrow, and that’s a great thing for a club. We love these weeks. The possibility is really high, and you want to see someone take that opportunity that they’re going to get. But then it’s also for the other guys that play each week to shoulder the load and say, ‘OK, follow me’. It creates a really good environment for footy this weekend, and it’s some of the most enjoyable weeks of the year.”

    Two players in particular are gearing up for highly anticipated returns to their preferred positions, starting with halfback Hugo Savala. With regular starting half Sam Walker sidelined for Origin, Savala will step into the halves to partner Cherry-Evans, the man he is widely expected to replace long-term. Savala has turned in strong performances at left centre throughout the 2024 season, but the playmaker made his name as a five-eighth in his breakout rookie campaign, and Robinson said the shift back to his natural position has injected extra energy into the young gun. “I think it’s hard to see energy grow from somebody whose energy is so high already. But it’s a great opportunity for him,” Robinson said. “He’s excited about getting back into the halves and playing his role, and so are we.”

    For Cody Ramsey, the opportunity to start at fullback is even more meaningful, coming nearly two years after he last started in the role at NRL level and 12 months after he returned from a career-threatening battle with ulcerative colitis. Ramsey, who joined the Roosters after leaving the St George Illawarra Dragons, has played four NRL games since his comeback, filling in on the wing admirably while Nawaqanitawase and Daniel Tupou recovered from injury. Now he will step into the fullback role to cover Tedesco’s Origin absence, a position he calls his own. “I think it was really beneficial to have him play on the wing,” Robinson explained. “It’s not great having Mark and ‘Toops’ out, but to be able to have Cody come in and play (was great) knowing that if Ted did get in Origin that he was going to play that fullback role. So having him on the wing, getting him comfortable on the field again in NRL, and then coming back into fullback, he’s been driven this week.”

    For the Dolphins, a win on Friday would see them jump over the injury-hit Roosters into the top eight of the NRL premiership, putting them in strong position to secure a first finals berth since entering the competition. For the Roosters, the opportunity to pull off an upset with a young, inexperienced side has the club embracing the challenge ahead of kickoff.

  • Trump vows to ‘hit Iran hard’ as he pivots from de-escalation

    Trump vows to ‘hit Iran hard’ as he pivots from de-escalation

    In a sudden and sharp escalation of tensions between the United States and Iran, President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that Washington would launch a new wave of military attacks on Iran “today”, just one day after the two sides exchanged deadly fire that put the months-old fragile ceasefire at its greatest risk of collapse. Speaking to reporters at the White House shortly after the latest cross-border clashes, Trump accused the Islamic Republic of acting in bad faith during ongoing ceasefire negotiations, claiming Tehran “keeps playing us for suckers” to drag out talks. “We hit them hard yesterday, and we are going to hit them again hard today,” the president told assembled journalists. The president’s sharp vow of renewed military action comes at a time when third-party diplomatic efforts to salvage the peace process are still underway: a Qatari mediation delegation touched down in Iran this week, a move widely viewed by global diplomatic analysts as a last-ditch push to keep negotiations alive, while Pakistan continues its role as an additional intermediary between Washington and Tehran. For two weeks, the tentative ceasefire agreed by the two parties back in April has limped from one crisis to the next, with violent outbursts of fighting alternating with brief lulls, as efforts to reach a broader permanent cessation of hostilities have stalled. The most recent round of open conflict reignited last week, when the U.S. launched strikes on Iranian-held islands and key military infrastructure. Tehran responded by launching missile and drone attacks targeting U.S. allies Bahrain and Kuwait. In a striking reversal just days ago, Trump intervened to halt clashes between Iran and Israel that broke out after Israeli strikes on Beirut, the capital of Lebanon. Iran has repeatedly stated that any final peace deal must include provisions for Lebanon, where its long-time close ally Hezbollah is engaged in active combat against Israeli forces. Speaking to the *Financial Times* just this past Sunday, following his order to stop an Israeli planned attack on Iran, Trump made clear his assertion of total control over U.S. policy: “I call the shots. I call all the shots. [Netanyahu] doesn’t.” He added that Israel “won’t have a choice” but to accept any ceasefire agreement Washington reaches with Tehran. However, by Wednesday the president had made a dramatic pivot back to pushing for military escalation. “Iran is all talk and no action,” he said in his remarks Wednesday. “They’ve taken too long to negotiate a deal that would have been great for them, now they will have to pay the price!!!” Despite his threats of new attacks, Trump also noted that peace talks had reached a relatively advanced stage, claiming Tehran had already agreed to the key non-nuclear provision: “They have agreed to not having a nuclear weapon, all they have to do is sign the paper,” he said. The renewed outbreak of open conflict in the strategic Persian Gulf region has already roiled global energy markets, pushing benchmark Brent crude prices up by nearly 3% to trade at $94.11 per barrel. Most commercial oil and gas shipments through the Gulf have been halted amid the ongoing hostilities, though Trump pushed back against that narrative Wednesday, boasting that “millions of barrels of oil” are being exported out of the Gulf under cover of darkness. “Now I’m going to tell you because they [Iran] just figured it out,” he told reporters. The president offered no supporting data or evidence to back up this unsubstantiated claim, but independent news reporting has indicated that some neighboring Iraq and Gulf oil producers have been able to ramp up their exports in recent weeks. Bloomberg reported Wednesday that Iraqi crude oil passing through the Strait of Hormuz or loading at the country’s key southern Basra port has reached roughly seven million barrels so far this month. The United Arab Emirates has also increased exports by sailing tankers through the Strait of Hormuz with their identification transponders turned off to avoid detection. The current cycle of escalation was triggered Tuesday, when Iranian forces shot down a U.S. Apache attack helicopter operating in the region. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi appeared to confirm the strike in a social media post, but framed the incident as an accidental engagement resulting from opposing military forces operating in close proximity to one another. Currently, both the U.S. and Iran are locked in a struggle for control of the strategic Strait of Hormuz, with each side enforcing rival blockades and opening fire on commercial vessels they accuse of violating their respective blockade terms. U.S. Central Command confirmed it launched what it called “a proportional response” to the downing of the helicopter, targeting Iranian air defense systems, ground control stations and radar installations across the country. In turn, Iran retaliated with a coordinated barrage of missiles and drones targeting U.S. military bases stationed in Bahrain and Jordan. This latest shift in policy is part of a pattern of inconsistent messaging and decision-making from Trump, who has oscillated repeatedly between declaring a historic peace deal is just days away and threatening devastating new military action against Iran, a country whose military capabilities he has repeatedly claimed are “obliterated”. As recently as Tuesday, Trump stated that the U.S. and Iran were just “two or three days” away from finalizing a “very good deal” that would end the open conflict and fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz to global commercial shipping. In a development that adds further uncertainty to the situation, independent outlet Middle East Eye reported Wednesday that U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is planning an official visit to Bahrain, a key U.S. Gulf ally that has found itself on the front lines of Iranian retaliation for recent U.S. strikes. While the planned trip could still be scrapped in light of Trump’s new threats, diplomatic observers note it is unlikely such a visit would be scheduled in advance if a major new U.S. offensive was imminent. This article is adapted from original reporting by Middle East Eye, which provides independent, in-depth coverage of the Middle East, North Africa and global affairs.

  • Reactor reboot at world’s largest nuclear plant highlights flaws in Japan’s radioactive waste plans

    Reactor reboot at world’s largest nuclear plant highlights flaws in Japan’s radioactive waste plans

    Against the backdrop of a global energy crunch that has tightened oil supplies and pushed Japan’s electricity security to a critical juncture, the East Asian nation has brought the world’s largest nuclear power facility back online. But the long-awaited restart of the 14-year-shuttered Number 6 reactor at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Station, operated by Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings (TEPCO), has thrown a harsh spotlight on a decades-old, unresolved crisis that threatens to derail Japan’s entire nuclear energy revival: the country is rapidly running out of space to store dangerous spent nuclear fuel, and it still has no credible, actionable plan for permanent disposal of the radioactive material.

    Kashiwazaki-Kariwa’s restart earlier this year was framed by the Japanese government as a catalyst to bring more idled reactors back online following the 2011 Fukushima disaster. However, industry data tells a stark story: according to the Federation of Electric Power Companies of Japan, Kashiwazaki-Kariwa is one of three Japanese nuclear facilities whose on-site spent fuel cooling pools will hit full capacity within the next five years. “Without solid fuel management plans, our power generation will stall sooner or later,” said Takeyuki Inagaki, general manager of Kashiwazaki-Kariwa.

    Japan’s nuclear sector has operated under strict post-Fukushima safety rules for 14 years. Back in March 2011, a 9.0-magnitude earthquake off Japan’s northeastern coast triggered a massive tsunami that caused catastrophic meltdowns at three Fukushima Daiichi reactors, also operated by TEPCO. The disaster displaced roughly 160,000 people, and large swathes of the Fukushima coast remain uninhabitable to this day. In the wake of the disaster, all of Japan’s 54 nuclear reactors were taken offline for safety inspections and upgrades; just 15 have resumed operations to date, including Kashiwazaki-Kariwa’s Number 6 unit. TEPCO has implemented sweeping new safety upgrades at the plant based on Fukushima lessons, including filtered venting systems and hydrogen explosion prevention technology; even so, the facility’s Number 6 cooling pool is already 88% filled with spent fuel, visible from a top-floor public observation area.

    Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has made expanding nuclear power a core pillar of Japan’s strategy to alleviate energy shortages driven by the global oil crisis, but every restart adds more spent fuel to the growing national stockpile. Without a permanent storage solution, industry and independent experts warn that a growing number of reactors will be forced to shut down once on-site storage runs out.

    Japan has long pinned its hopes on a nuclear fuel recycling program, which officials argue aligns with the resource-poor nation’s energy security goals, while cutting the volume and toxicity of final radioactive waste. The program would extract plutonium and uranium from spent fuel for reuse in new reactor operations. However, the centerpiece of the recycling plan — a specialized plutonium-fueled reactor — has suffered catastrophic failure, leaving the program dead in the water. What’s more, even a fully operational recycling program would not be able to process all of Japan’s accumulated spent fuel, leaving the country with a growing stockpile of plutonium large enough to build thousands of nuclear weapons. Many independent experts have urged the Japanese government to abandon its commitment to recycling and pursue direct permanent disposal of spent fuel, a path already adopted by most other nuclear-advanced nations including the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany, which largely abandoned reprocessing due to prohibitive costs and intractable technical barriers.

    Official data underscores the urgency of the problem: as of December 2025, Japan’s 17 operating nuclear power plants hold more than 17,000 tons of spent fuel in their on-site cooling pools, utilizing nearly 80% of the nation’s total available storage capacity, per Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. On top of the waste from routine reactor operations, Japan must also address the massive, poorly understood volume of high-level radioactive waste left behind by the Fukushima disaster, explained Lila Okamura, a professor at Senshu University and leading expert on environmental politics and nuclear waste management. Okamura noted that selecting a permanent disposal site, constructing an underground facility and completing multi-millennia monitoring of the site would take more than 10,000 years total, making it a multi-generational project that requires careful, deliberate planning — not the rushed, uncertain approach the government is pursuing today.

    Weeks after Kashiwazaki-Kariwa’s Number 6 reactor came back online, the Japanese government took a new step toward solving the storage crisis: Industry Minister Ryosei Akazawa formally requested that Ogasawara Village, which administers the remote Pacific island of Minamitorishima, approve a feasibility study for a permanent high-level radioactive waste disposal site there. Located roughly 2,000 kilometers south of Tokyo, the uninhabited government-owned island is currently the site of a new Japanese Self-Defense Force long-range missile firing range, built as a deterrent to China, and holds commercially valuable deep-sea rare earth mineral deposits. “With a lot of spent fuel accumulating at nuclear power plants across the country, a final disposal of radioactive waste is a crucial challenge that must be resolved,” Akazawa wrote in a formal letter to Ogasawara Mayor Masaaki Shibuya.

    Critics have already pushed back on the selection of Minamitorishima, arguing the choice was driven more by political convenience than geological or safety logic. Satoshi Takano, a member of the Japanese government’s own advisory panel on spent fuel disposal, noted “there will be little opposition from a government-owned remote island,” making it an easy political choice rather than the best technical one. While some experts acknowledge that Minamitorishima sits on a geologically stable tectonic plate, making it a potentially suitable candidate, local residents of Ogasawara and nearby inhabited islands have raised widespread concerns about impacts on public safety and the region’s vital tourism industry. Ogasawara is a UNESCO Natural World Heritage Site, and local assembly member Yusuke Hirano summed up widespread local opposition: “I was baffled when I heard about the plan. I think nuclear waste is incompatible with islands that are a UNESCO Natural World Heritage site.”

    Minamitorishima is not Japan’s first attempt to find a permanent disposal site. Since the government began its search in the early 2000s, three other locations have already been studied, and attracting local community support for a radioactive waste dump has consistently proven difficult, even when the government offers hundreds of millions of dollars in local subsidies. The full feasibility and approval process is expected to take roughly 20 years; municipalities that participate in the first stage of review can receive up to 2 billion yen ($12.8 million) in federal grants, while second-stage participants get up to 7 billion yen ($44.7 million), with funding for the final stage still undisclosed. Globally, the world’s first permanent geologic disposal facility for spent nuclear fuel is set to open in Finland later this year, setting a global benchmark for long-term waste management.

    In the near term, Japanese utilities have turned to temporary stopgap measures to free up space in overflowing cooling pools. TEPCO is currently shifting spent fuel from the Number 6 reactor to other, less full units at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa, and hopes to resume shipments of spent fuel to dry cask storage facilities in northern Japan in the near future. Other utilities with nearly full cooling pools have announced plans to build their own on-site dry cask storage. But these measures only delay the inevitable, and local activists and residents warn that the growing stockpile of spent fuel brings its own immediate risks, including increased chances of overheating accidents at crowded storage facilities.

    Mie Kuwabara, a civil society activist based in Niigata Prefecture, where Kashiwazaki-Kariwa is located, shares the widespread skepticism of the Minamitorishima plan and the government’s rushed approach to reactor restarts. “It’s irresponsible to accelerate restarts and produce more spent fuel without deciding its final destination,” Kuwabara said. She argued that the choice of uninhabited Minamitorishima reflects a troubling disregard for long-term safety: “It’s like saying that it’s OK to put a facility there because nobody is around to complain if there is a problem. It’s scary.”