分类： politics

Pakistan’s federal government has introduced sweeping new regulations governing international media reporting across most of the country, triggering fierce condemnation from journalist groups and press freedom advocates who warn the rules will further erode independent coverage and create fertile ground for disinformation.

Announced on Sunday under the official title of the *Foreign Media Facilitation Guidelines, 2026*, the new requirements mandate that every individual working for international media outlets — including Pakistani citizens, freelance contributors and local fixers — must obtain a government-issued No Objection Certificate (NOC) to report from any location outside of Pakistan’s three largest cities: Islamabad, Karachi, and Lahore. The policy leaves all on-the-ground reporting outside these major urban centers completely at the discretion of federal authorities.

The move comes as Pakistan already ranks 153rd out of 180 countries in the 2025 World Press Freedom Index, reflecting long-standing challenges to open journalism in the nation of 240 million people. Critics note that while media restrictions have a long history in Pakistan, domestic outlets have traditionally faced greater pressure than their international counterparts, which many Pakistanis rely on for unfiltered reporting on sensitive issues.

“These guidelines are tantamount to choking international media in an increasingly shrinking space,” said Mustafa Nawaz Khokhar, a prominent Pakistani political commentator. “The public looks at the international media for independent reporting. Placing restrictions simply creates more room for disinformation and spread of fake news.”

The regulations do not include any clear timeline for processing NOC applications, a gap that mirrors existing approval processes for foreign journalists. Many international correspondents have previously reported waiting months for NOC approval, or receiving no response at all — a delay that effectively blocks coverage of breaking news events from outside the three permitted cities. To avoid these bottlenecks, international outlets have long relied on Pakistani contributors based in or able to travel freely to regions like Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and Pakistan-administered Kashmir; under the new rules, all of these contributors will now require official approval to work on stories.

Zaffar Abbas, veteran editor of Pakistan’s leading English-language newspaper *Dawn*, called the new rules “ridiculous restrictions and are totally unacceptable.” With more than four decades of journalistic experience in Pakistan spanning military dictatorships and authoritarian civilian governments, Abbas noted he has never encountered such sweeping limits on reporting. “To ask journalists to get an NOC for travelling outside the three major cities not just undermines freedom of movement but also freedom of the press,” he added.

In its official defense of the policy, the Pakistani government has rejected claims that the guidelines are intended to restrict reporting, framing the rules instead as a neutral “administrative mechanism” to verify media credentials, coordinate reporting requests, and facilitate access to restricted regions. Government officials further argue that any accreditation system must retain the authority to revoke credentials for journalists who engage in activity that threatens national security or public order.

The guidelines include a provision allowing authorities to revoke a journalist’s accreditation for “acts against ideology, sovereignty, security or public order of Pakistan” — a broadly worded clause that Khokhar has called “vague,” warning it opens the door to arbitrary enforcement against critical reporting.

Legal experts have also raised red flags about the policy’s legal foundation. Salhuddin Ahmed, a lawyer practicing before the Supreme Court of Pakistan, says the guidelines have no basis in statutory law. “These ‘guidelines’ are merely an executive order and lack any legal backing from statute,” Ahmed explained. “They refer to the rules of business; those rules are only meant to regulate the internal functioning of government, not create legal obligations on others. Quite clearly, these guidelines are a hastily and ill-thought-out attempt to further curb independent reporting in Pakistan.”
The government counters that the rules are a valid regulation of the Information Ministry’s External Publicity wing’s administrative relationship with foreign media, falling within the scope of existing government business rules.

Press freedom advocates, including a coalition of international journalists and the president of Pakistan’s Federal Union of Journalists, are currently working to arrange a meeting with Pakistan’s information minister to formally raise their objections to the new policy.

Observers have pointed to ongoing unrest in Pakistan-administered Kashmir (PAK) as a key trigger for the new restrictions. The region has seen two months of violent clashes between anti-government protesters and security forces that have left dozens dead, amid a local election boycott and sweeping internet shutdowns that have made independent verification of events extremely difficult.

Just one day after the new guidelines were announced, the External Publicity wing sent an urgent WhatsApp message to international media outlets ordering all journalists currently in PAK to “return back IMMEDIATELY” and apply for an NOC if they wish to report from the region. The message was sent after multiple major international outlets, including the BBC, published on-the-ground reports from the disputed territory.

Earlier this week, the Qatari news network Al Jazeera’s website became inaccessible to users within Pakistan after the Information Ministry labeled a correspondent’s report from PAK’s regional capital “yellow journalism” — a term referring to sensationalized, inaccurate reporting. No formal public ban on the outlet has been announced, however.

Kashmir is one of the world’s most long-standing disputed territories, with both India and Pakistan claiming full sovereignty over the region while each controls only a portion of it. Coverage of unrest in Pakistan-administered Kashmir has long been an extremely politically sensitive topic for the Pakistani government. Two local Pakistani journalists speaking to the BBC confirmed they had been explicitly warned by their editors to avoid covering the ongoing unrest.

BANGKOK, Associated Press – As diplomatic tensions simmer between the world’s two largest economies ahead of a planned high-level summit, China unveiled a suite of targeted countermeasures against the United States on Wednesday, responding directly to a series of recent restrictive actions rolled out by the Biden administration. The retaliatory package includes new export controls on drone technology and a formal trade ban targeting six U.S.-based entities, marking a sharp escalation in the ongoing bilateral economic and geopolitical standoff.

The rising friction comes even after earlier signs of detente: during Chinese President Xi Jinping’s May meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump in Beijing, the two leaders reached tentative consensus that was meant to ease strained ties, ahead of Xi’s expected official visit to the U.S. this September. Even so, recent unilateral actions from Washington have pushed Beijing to respond in kind, Chinese officials confirmed.

According to a statement released by China’s Ministry of Commerce, the latest countermeasures are a direct response to two recent U.S. actions: first, a ban on imports of Chinese drones issued by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, and second, the addition of 43 Chinese firms to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act Entity List by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, a move that blocks imports of goods produced by those companies into the U.S.

The Commerce Ministry emphasized in its statement that Washington’s recent steps “seriously violate the important consensus reached by the two heads of state and severely damage China’s legitimate rights and interests.” The statement added that “China has no choice but to take necessary countermeasures in response,” while noting that Beijing has exercised deliberate restraint throughout the escalation. Beijing has called on Washington to immediately reverse its restrictive measures against Chinese entities and abandon what it calls its “erroneous practices.” The ministry also issued a clear warning: further retaliatory steps will be implemented if the U.S. rolls out any new restrictive policies targeting China.

Under the new drone export rules, Beijing now requires case-by-case security reviews for all exports of unmanned aerial vehicles, their core components, and related dual-use technologies that can be adapted for both civilian and military applications.

Six U.S. entities are barred from all trade and commercial dealings with Chinese entities, including New York-based biotechnology firm Applied DNA Sciences, Inc. and the non-governmental organization Human Rights in China. A seventh U.S.-based firm, Compliance Testing LLC, was also banned from operating in China; the Commerce Ministry stated that the company collaborated with the FCC on actions that “harm China’s sovereignty and security.”

In a separate regulatory move, China’s State Administration for Market Regulation announced that U.S.-based firms that conduct on-site factory inspections for China’s mandatory CCC (China Compulsory Certificate) safety certification will no longer be authorized to provide these services. CCC certification is required for all electronic products sold in the Chinese market to confirm they meet national safety standards, meaning U.S. electronics manufacturers seeking access to the Chinese market will now be required to hire third-party auditors based outside the U.S., or work with non-U.S. designated certification bodies.

The Commerce Ministry also revealed it has launched a national security probe into imported printing software and office equipment, though it declined to name specific companies affected by the investigation.

The latest escalation follows a series of recent U.S. restrictions targeting Chinese tech imports: In December 2024, the U.S. FCC implemented a ban on new Chinese drone imports, later revising the rule to allow a small number of specific models to enter the country. Just last week, the FCC also issued new import bans on foreign-made humanoid robots and power inverters, citing unaddressed national security risks – a policy that is widely understood to primarily target Chinese manufacturing exports.

The report was contributed by Leung from Hong Kong.

TAIPEI, Taiwan — Against a backdrop of steadily mounting cross-Strait tensions, Taiwan launched its annual 10-day Han Kuang military exercises on Wednesday, a large-scale training series designed to prepare the self-governing island for a potential military incursion from China, which has long claimed Taiwan as part of its sovereign territory.

Unlike routine training maneuvers, this year’s drills are tailored to address the full spectrum of modern security threats Taiwan faces, from large-scale invasion scenarios to the incremental, below-war-threshold “gray-zone” pressure that China has regularly employed in recent years. A core operational objective of the exercises is to verify whether Taiwan’s standing military can maintain uninterrupted 24-hour defensive operations across multiple fronts, while building more flexible, autonomous response capabilities for frontline troops.

This iteration of the exercises introduces several key updates that reflect evolving defense priorities. Drawing on doctrinal guidance from the United States, Taiwan’s military is testing new communication protocols, including the backbrief system, through which lower-echelon commanders explicitly outline their mission execution plans to senior leaders. Defense analysts note this framework is intended to empower frontline fighters to make independent, effective decisions amid the chaos of combat, rather than relying solely on top-down orders.

Another notable expansion comes in reserve mobilization: this year’s drills will activate a record force of more than 5,000 reservists organized into two full brigades, marking a significant increase from 2023’s exercise, which mobilized just one 3,000-strong reserve brigade. The drill will assess how quickly reserve personnel can transition from peacetime standby status to fully operational active duty, a critical capability for reinforcing frontline defenses in the opening days of a conflict.

In line with Taiwan’s longstanding focus on integrating civilian defense into national security planning, urban resilience drills will be conducted across three major population centers: the capital Taipei, central Taiwan’s Taichung, and southern Taiwan’s Kaohsiung. To simulate the signal jamming and telecommunications disruption that would likely accompany a large-scale attack, organizers will intentionally slow mobile internet speeds for a 30-minute period during the drills, testing civilian response protocols and public adaptability to critical infrastructure outages.

The exercises also mark the first formal field testing of Taiwan’s newly delivered American-made M1A2T Abrams main battle tanks. Taipei signed a contract to purchase 108 of the advanced tanks from the U.S. in 2019, with the final shipment of the platform arriving on the island in April this year.

Taiwan relies on the U.S. for the vast majority of its advanced military hardware, and Washington remains Taipei’s most important informal security partner amid persistent Chinese territorial claims. Beijing views the democratically governed island as a separatist province that must be reunified with mainland China, by force if necessary, and has ramped up near-daily military coercion campaigns over the past five years, including regular incursions of military aircraft and naval vessels into Taiwan’s adjacent air and sea defense identification zones.

Just weeks before the launch of the Han Kuang exercises, Taiwan’s legislative body approved a $24.8 billion supplementary defense budget earmarked for U.S. arms purchases, a figure that fell short of the $40 billion proposal put forward by President Lai Ching-te. Currently, the Taiwanese government is awaiting approval for a long-delayed $14 billion arms sales package from Washington. While former U.S. President Donald Trump and Congress previously signed off on a separate record-breaking $11 billion arms package for Taiwan, Trump indicated after a May visit to China that arms sales to Taipei could serve as a “good negotiating chip” in talks with Beijing, and has so far declined to greenlight the new, pending $14 billion sales package.

KATHMANDU, Nepal — In a bold policy move that puts a regional administration at odds with federal legislation, one of Nepal’s seven provincial governments has enacted a law permitting regulated cultivation and medical use of cannabis, against the backdrop of a nationwide national ban on all production and consumption of the plant.

The new regulation officially entered into force on Monday, following formal approval from Gandaki Province’s chief executive, confirmed Prabin Poudyal, spokesperson for the provincial chief’s office. Under the framework of the new law, any farmer seeking to grow cannabis must first obtain an official license from provincial regulatory bodies, and all operations will remain under continuous close oversight to prevent diversion of the crop to unregulated recreational markets.

Gandaki Province, a scenic Himalayan region that draws millions of international tourists annually for its mountain peaks, iconic hiking trails and the popular resort city of Pokhara, has carved out an unexpected path on drug policy that defies national legislation currently in place. Under Nepal’s federal law, cultivation, possession and recreational use of marijuana are criminal offenses across the country. Anyone caught with small amounts of cannabis for personal use faces up to one month of prison time, while those convicted of trafficking or selling the drug can receive sentences as long as 10 years behind bars, with penalties scaled to the quantity of cannabis seized.

Cannabis is an indigenous plant to Nepal, with deep historical roots in the nation’s cultural and religious traditions. For centuries, the plant has been integrated into local ritual practices, and cannabis advocacy groups have pushed for decades to reverse the national ban and legalize regulated use. The push toward decriminalization gained further cultural context from long-standing annual traditions: each spring during the Hindu festival of Shivaratri, devotees openly smoke cannabis at temples dedicated to the god Shiva, a practice that local authorities have traditionally tolerated despite the nationwide ban.

The national ban on cannabis was implemented in the late 1970s, when Nepal aligned its drug policies with international efforts led by Western nations to crack down on recreational cannabis use. At that time, the government’s crackdown also pushed out the large community of international hippie travelers that had flocked to Nepal starting in the 1960s and 1970s, drawn by the country’s open cannabis culture and low cost of living.

A US-brokered Gaza ceasefire and disarmament agreement, hailed by former President Donald Trump just one week ago as a landmark diplomatic breakthrough, is now on the brink of collapse after the US-led Gaza Board of Peace reversed its core commitment to link parallel Israeli troop withdrawal and Hamas disarmament to align with Israeli demands.

The original roadmap, finalized last week following months of negotiations that built on an initial October 2025 ceasefire, established a clear sequence: Hamas would begin decommissioning its weapons, arms infrastructure and tunnel network at the same time that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) halted offensive operations and pulled its troops back to the pre-agreed “yellow line” ceasefire boundary. Trump publicly backed this framework, confirming that Israeli withdrawal would proceed step-by-step alongside disarmament.

But even before the reversal, Israel had violated the initial ceasefire terms over the 10-month period since the first truce took effect. Israeli forces have steadily advanced deeper into Gaza beyond the agreed ceasefire line, and now control between 60% and 70% of the enclave. More than 2 million Palestinian residents are confined to a shrinking portion of territory that has been reduced to widespread rubble by two years of sustained Israeli military operations.

While Trump claimed Israeli leaders were “very happy” with the new roadmap, Israeli officials immediately rejected the parallel withdrawal-disarmament framework, insisting they would only pull troops after Hamas had completed full disarmament. Hamas, in turn, has repeatedly stated it will only move forward with disarmament if Israel honors its commitment to withdraw troops in tandem. On Sunday, Israel launched new airstrikes and ground operations across Gaza that killed at least 18 Palestinians, marking the highest single-day death toll in weeks. Israeli Energy Minister Eli Cohen, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet, publicly confirmed there was no binding agreement to halt attacks on the enclave.
Netanyahu’s pressure campaign ultimately succeeded. After a meeting between Netanyahu and Gaza Board of Peace envoy Nickolay Mladenov on Monday, the mediation body issued a social media statement that rewrote the core terms of the agreement to match Israel’s position, falsely claiming the new wording had been part of the original deal. “Contrary to inaccurate reports, we note that the withdrawal of the IDF beyond the Yellow Line will take place only once decommissioning is complete, as Hamas committed to the mediators,” the statement read. “This applies to light weapons, heavy weapons, and the tunnels alike.”

This revised statement directly contradicts Mladenov’s own public comment just four days earlier, when he explicitly confirmed “withdrawal must move in lockstep with decommissioning.” The reversal also ignores a key detail of the original agreement: the roadmap distinguished between heavy weapons, production infrastructure and tunnels, which would be decommissioned, and light personal weapons, which Palestinian factions would be allowed to retain for internal security.

Hamas has pushed back against the reversal, reaffirming its commitment to the original second-phase ceasefire terms that all parties agreed to, and calling on Mladenov to issue an official clarification of the original agreement. Analysts based in the region and across the international Middle East policy community have condemned the mediation body’s reversal as a blatant betrayal of the negotiated deal that throws the entire ceasefire process into crisis.
Muhammad Shehada, a Gaza-based political analyst with the European Council on Foreign Relations, wrote on social media that the Gaza Board of Peace was “betraying the very agreement they just made” and “taking Netanyahu’s side fully.” Shehada noted that the inclusion of light weapons in the new full disarmament demand is a deliberate addition by Netanyahu to sabotage the entire agreement, which never required Palestinian factions to surrender all personal weapons.
Tariq Kenney-Shawa, associate director of editorial at the Institute for Middle East Understanding, said the abrupt reversal should not come as a surprise, arguing the mediation body exists primarily to advance Israeli interests. “The Board of Peace is just the administrative and fundraising arm of Israel’s occupation of Gaza,” he said. “It exists to facilitate Gaza’s ethnic cleansing and concentration camps in a way that is palatable and profitable for the international community.”
Since the initial October 2025 ceasefire took effect after two years of full-scale war, more than 1,200 additional Palestinians have been killed by Israeli attacks, bringing the official confirmed death toll from the conflict to more than 73,000. Independent experts have repeatedly warned the actual death toll is far higher, as thousands of bodies remain trapped under rubble of destroyed buildings. July 2026 was the deadliest month for Palestinians this year, with more than 150 killed, and senior Israeli leaders have publicly discussed plans to fully conquer the entire Gaza Strip, maintain permanent Israeli control, and resettle Israeli civilians in illegal settlements across the enclave.

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court dealt a major legal blow to the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), rejecting their request to pause a $656 million damages judgment that has wound its way through American courts for 22 years. The ruling, announced by liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor who oversees emergency judicial reviews, clears the way for immediate collection of the funds, closing a years-long legal saga that raises sharp questions about double standards in international accountability.

The case traces its origins to a 2003 lawsuit filed by American victims of Palestinian attacks carried out between 2002 and 2004 during the Second Intifada. Plaintiffs secured the original $656 million damages ruling in 2015, but the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the judgment a year later, holding that U.S. courts lack jurisdiction over foreign political groups when violence is not targeted at American citizens. The legal fight shifted dramatically last year, when the Supreme Court voted unanimously to revive the case, upholding the federal Promoting Security and Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act—a law that explicitly opened the door to such suits.
By March 2025, the Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated the original $656 million judgment, setting the stage for the PA and PLO’s latest emergency appeal, which the Supreme Court has now rejected.

Palestinian leaders and advocates warn the ruling will deliver catastrophic harm to ordinary Palestinians already grappling with a collapsing economy and ongoing Israeli occupation. The PA and PLO argue that a payout of this size would completely destabilize their ability to govern the occupied West Bank, where Israel already regularly withholds collected tax revenue that forms the bulk of the PA’s operating budget. Raed Jarrar, advocacy director for Democracy for the Arab World Now (Dawn), described the legal process as a fundamentally unprecedented overreach of U.S. power.
“Congress passed special laws to force the Palestinian Authority to submit to U.S. jurisdiction against its will, all over the PA’s policy of providing stipends to families of martyred Palestinians,” Jarrar told Middle East Eye. “It will be levied against ordinary public workers—doctors, engineers, civil servants. This is nothing short of collective punishment against the Palestinian people.”
To contextualize the case, the PA was established in 1994 under the Oslo Accords, the landmark peace agreement with Israel, to administer Palestinian-populated areas of the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. The PLO, a broad umbrella coalition of Palestinian political factions, is recognized internationally as the official representative of the Palestinian people, both in the occupied territories and across the global Palestinian diaspora.
The Second Intifada—the uprising at the center of the lawsuit—erupted in September 2000 after then-Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon, a hard-right nationalist, led a controversial incursion into Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, a site sacred to both Muslims and Jews that Palestinians view as part of their future capital. The visit was widely interpreted as a deliberate provocation, sparking mass Palestinian protests. Israeli security forces responded with lethal force, killing nearly 50 Palestinians in the first five days of unrest. The five-year uprising left an estimated 5,000 Palestinians and 1,000 Israelis dead, and became globally iconic for the televised killing of 12-year-old Palestinian child Mohammed al-Durrah, who was shot dead while hiding behind his father during an Israeli attack—one of the first instances of a deadly, civilian killing of a child broadcast live to global audiences. Mohammed remains a lasting symbol of Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation.
Monday’s Supreme Court ruling has thrown into stark relief a longstanding double standard in U.S. policy toward international law: while Washington now asserts broad authority to hold foreign political groups legally liable in U.S. courts, it has repeatedly rejected and undermined international judicial bodies created to hold perpetrators of mass atrocities accountable for crimes against humanity. Most recently, in July 2025, the U.S. imposed sanctions on unnamed senior PA and PLO officials after the groups pursued legal action against Israel at the International Criminal Court (ICC) and International Court of Justice (ICJ), the world’s highest permanent courts for war crimes and state aggression.
The U.S. State Department claimed the officials had “undermined prospects for peace” by pursuing legal action through international institutions, accusing them of violating two decades-old U.S. laws restricting PLO political activity: the 1989 PLO Commitments Compliance Act and the 2002 Middle East Peace Commitments Act. Just two months later, in September 2025, the second Trump administration announced it would revoke and deny visas to any individual affiliated with the PA and PLO, demanding the groups “consistently repudiate terrorism” and citing the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel.
The escalating U.S. pressure on the PA comes amid growing diplomatic isolation for Israel in the wake of its ongoing military assault on Gaza that began in October 2023, which has killed more than 74,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities. Deadly, escalating attacks by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem have further deepened global condemnation of Israel’s actions.