The Tasmanian branch of the Liberal Party has finalised its Senate election ticket for the upcoming 2028 federal poll, announcing a new leadership line-up following the abrupt departures of sitting senators Jonno Duniam and Wendy Askew, who both chose to step away from politics earlier this year. At a meeting of party pre-selectors held on Saturday, members voted to install Chris Gatenby, a long-serving senior political adviser to current Tasmanian Premier Jeremy Rockliff, as the lead candidate on the party’s Senate ticket. Taking the second position on the ticket is Sarah Courtney, a former high-ranking Tasmanian state government minister, who will fill the vacancy left by Askew’s planned exit. Latrobe City Councillor Jacki Martin will complete the three-person ticket as the third candidate. Both Duniam and Askew announced their decisions to forgo re-election pre-selection earlier in 2025, citing personal family commitments as the core motivation for their departures from federal parliamentary politics. In a public statement released in June, Duniam reflected on his 25-year career in Australian politics, noting that he had dedicated the vast majority of his time and energy to his political responsibilities, often prioritising work over time with his loved ones. “Twenty-five years is a long time in any vocation, and when you take your role seriously, it always comes first. It is time I reversed my priorities and I can’t do that if I am to stay in politics,” Duniam said. The outgoing senator acknowledged that his retirement comes at a challenging period for the federal Liberal-National Coalition, but expressed confidence in the party’s current direction. “But, I am confident that my friends across both the Liberal Party and the National Party are firmly on the right path,” he added. Askew echoed Duniam’s reasoning, pointing to family considerations as the driving force behind her choice to step down. When she first entered the Senate in April 2019 following a casual vacancy, Askew noted that no politician can predict how long their tenure in office will last, a observation she repeated when announcing her retirement. Gatenby, the new lead Senate candidate, has been a senior adviser to Premier Rockliff since August 2025, bringing with him decades of experience across federal and state political spheres. Before his role in Rockliff’s office, he held a series of senior political positions including electorate adviser, senior adviser, and chief of staff for former federal Sports Minister Richard Colbeck. A father of two, Gatenby previously contested the lower house seat of Bass at the 2025 federal election, ultimately falling short of victory against Labor candidate Jess Teesdale. For her part, Courtney brings extensive experience in Tasmanian state governance to the ticket. She held a seat in the Tasmanian House of Assembly from 2014 through 2022, when she resigned from parliament after contracting COVID-19 while on an overseas holiday in France. During her time in state cabinet, Courtney served as Tasmania’s Minister for Health, where she led the state government’s initial public health response to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, cementing her reputation as a senior and capable leader within the state Liberal Party.
分类： politics
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Colombia’s new president signals energy policy shift, backs oil and gas
On the day of his inauguration, Colombian President Abelardo de la Espriella laid out a bold new policy direction for the nation’s energy sector, marking a clear break from the environmental agenda of his predecessor Gustavo Petro. In his inaugural address, the new leader framed energy security as a non-negotiable cornerstone of his administration, with three core priorities: breathing new life into Colombia’s stagnant oil and gas industry, rehabilitating the majority state-owned energy giant Ecopetrol, and shoring up the nation’s strained electricity grid.
De la Espriella affirmed his support for a global transition toward cleaner renewable energy sources, including wind and solar power, but pushed back against the rapid fossil fuel phase-out pursued by the previous government. He argued that any responsible energy transition must be built on national economic strength and self-sufficiency, rather than forcing the sector into decline and leaving Colombia dependent on foreign energy imports. “I believe in the energy transition,” he stated. “But that transition must be built from strength, not from weakness, from self-sufficiency and not from dependence.”
This policy shift stands in stark contrast to the agenda of former President Petro, who paused the awarding of all new oil and gas exploration contracts, centered his environmental platform on Amazon rainforest protection, and positioned Colombia as a global leader in the push to phase out fossil fuels. Just four months before de la Espriella took office, Petro’s administration hosted a high-profile international climate summit in the Caribbean coastal city of Santa Marta, where it rallied global support for accelerated fossil fuel transition.
The new president’s pledges align directly with campaign promises that carried him to victory, where he repeatedly called for expanded oil and gas production and a rollback of Petro’s signature energy policies. Framing energy development as a core issue of national sovereignty, de la Espriella argued that Colombia cannot achieve long-term economic prosperity by leaving its abundant domestic fossil fuel reserves undeveloped.
Among his top priorities is the rehabilitation of Ecopetrol, Colombia’s majority state-owned oil firm and one of the single largest contributors to government revenue and national export earnings. De la Espriella accused the previous administration of systematically weakening the company, and pledged that rebuilding Ecopetrol would be a “definitive and absolute priority” for his government.
In addition to resuming exploration activities, the new president confirmed that his administration will authorize hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as fracking, a controversial extraction method that involves injecting high-pressure mixtures of water, sand and chemicals underground to break up rock formations and unlock trapped oil and gas reserves. He stressed that fracking operations would operate under “the strictest technical and environmental standards” to mitigate ecological risk.
De la Espriella warned that Colombia’s energy system is currently in a “critical situation,” citing a years-long decline in proven oil and gas reserves, repeated delays to critical energy infrastructure projects, and steadily rising domestic electricity demand that has stretched supply thin. He added that the approaching El Niño weather phenomenon, which typically brings prolonged drought conditions to Colombia that cut output from the nation’s hydroelectric power sector, leaves no room for delayed action. “The El Niño phenomenon won’t wait for us,” he said. “To overcome it, it is imperative to implement urgent solutions.”
This report from the Associated Press notes that the outlet’s climate and environmental coverage receives grant funding from multiple private philanthropic foundations, with the AP retaining full editorial control over all content.
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Conservative congressman David Brat appointed as US ambassador to Australia
After nearly two years of vacancy, the United States has formally confirmed former Republican Congressman David Brat as its next ambassador to Australia, filling a critical diplomatic post just weeks ahead of a major milestone in the Indo-Pacific alliance between the two nations.
The U.S. Senate confirmed Brat’s appointment on Friday U.S. time, which corresponds to Saturday Australian Eastern Standard Time, wrapping up the nomination process hours before the federal government entered a five-week summer recess. This appointment marks the first ambassadorial change for the U.S. in Canberra since former envoy Caroline Kennedy departed office in November 2024, shortly after Donald Trump’s inauguration for his second presidential term.
Brat first rose to national political prominence in 2014, when he pulled off one of the most shocking primary election upsets in modern U.S. history: as a little-known challenger backed by the conservative Tea Party movement, he defeated sitting House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in Virginia’s Republican primary. A staunch advocate for conservative fiscal and social values, Brat built his early political brand opposing the Obama administration’s 2009 intervention in the U.S. housing market, aligning closely with the Tea Party’s small-government platform. He served one full term in Congress before losing re-election in 2018 to Abigail Spanberger, who now holds office as Virginia’s governor. Since leaving Congress, Brat has worked as senior vice president for business relations at Liberty University, an evangelical Christian higher education institution based in Virginia.
The timing of Brat’s arrival in Australia will see him take up his post ahead of September 1, the 75th anniversary of the ANZUS security treaty that binds Australia, New Zealand, and the United States in a collective defense pact. Brat is one of 74 new presidential appointees confirmed by the Senate before the summer break, with new ambassadors also confirmed for postings to Cambodia, Cyprus, and Brazil.
The appointment comes at a period of documented friction between the longstanding allies, following new trade tariffs imposed by the Trump administration and public disagreements over the ongoing Middle East conflict. In July, Trump announced a 12.5% tariff on Australian goods as part of a broad overhaul of U.S. trade agreements, with similar tariff increases targeting other major trading partners including China, India, the United Kingdom, and Canada. On the diplomatic front, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has publicly pushed back against Trump’s rhetoric on the Middle East war, calling for de-escalation and adherence to international law to protect civilian lives.
Albanese has reaffirmed that his government will work cooperatively with whoever the U.S. selects to fill the ambassadorial role, respecting the sovereign right of the U.S. to appoint its own diplomatic representatives. “That is a decision for the United States. I understand that the president will put forward David Brat as ambassador, and there’s a process of confirmation that occurs through the U.S. processes,” Albanese told reporters in April, adding, “We respect the sovereignty of countries to put forward ambassadors, just like we expect our choices to be endorsed.”
Australia’s opposition leader Angus Taylor has welcomed Brat’s appointment, framing it as a reinforcement of the decades-long alliance between the two nations. In an April post on X, Taylor wrote: “I welcome U.S. President Donald Trump’s nomination of former congressman, David Brat, to serve as America’s next ambassador to Australia. The face of the ambassador may change but the role remains the same … to develop our collective military strength – especially through AUKUS – to deter those who neither value liberty nor respect sovereignty.”
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Anti-Muslim lawmaker Andy Ogles loses Republican primary
In a stunning political upset that has sent ripples across American conservative circles, two-term Tennessee Congressman Andy Ogles — a hard-right lawmaker infamous for his repeated anti-Muslim rhetoric — was defeated in a Republican primary election Thursday, even with a formal endorsement from former U.S. President Donald Trump. For most GOP candidates, Trump’s public backing is widely viewed as an almost unbeatable advantage in intraparty contests, but Ogles fell to Charlie Hatcher, a dairy farmer and sitting state agriculture official who also ran on an explicitly pro-Trump platform.
Hatcher built his campaign around the slogan “hire a farmer”, framing himself as a pragmatic conservative aligned with core Trump-era Republican priorities. His campaign website lists him as staunchly “pro-gun, pro-life, pro-Trump”, and he out-fundraised and outspent Ogles thanks to a major influx of financial support from outside interest groups that backed his policy focus on expanding domestic renewable energy production.
Political analysts point to multiple factors that led to Ogles’ defeat. First, the congressional district Ogles was running in underwent significant boundary redrawing, a process that opened the door to shifts in the electorate after a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling weakened key protections of the Voting Rights Act. But beyond structural changes to the district, Ogles’ long history of inflammatory targeting of marginalized groups also played a major role in his loss.
Ogles, a member of the hardline House Freedom Caucus and a vocal supporter of Israel, has spent months pushing extreme policy proposals targeting Muslim Americans. Just this year, he announced plans to introduce legislation that would ban immigration from multiple Muslim-majority countries. He went further in public posts on social media platform X, writing that “diversity is our weakness” and openly calling for the denaturalization and deportation of naturalized Muslim American citizens, including New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. In a June post that drew national outrage, Ogles wrote, “Zohran ‘little muhammad’ Mamdani is an antisemitic, socialist, communist who will destroy the great City of New York. He needs to be DEPORTED. Which is why I am calling for him to be subject to denaturalization proceedings.”
His most controversial remarks came earlier this year, when he wrote on X that “Pluralism is a lie” and “Muslims have no place in American society” — claims that sparked widespread national condemnation from civil rights groups and lawmakers across the political spectrum. The comments came amid a documented nationwide surge in anti-Muslim rhetoric online, which tracked closely with rising geopolitical tensions between the U.S., Israel and Iran. A report from the Washington D.C.-based Center for the Study of Organized Hate found that between January 1 and March 5, as Trump repeatedly threatened military action against Iran, the volume of social media posts that explicitly dehumanized, excluded, or incited violence against Muslims skyrocketed. On the day the U.S.-Israel joint military campaign against Iran launched February 28, daily anti-Muslim posts jumped from fewer than 2,000 to more than 6,000, the report found.
The Council on American–Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights organization, labeled Ogles “an anti-Muslim extremist” in a formal statement following his comments. The organization noted that Ogles is a member of the so-called “Sharia-Free America Caucus”, a congressional coalition that backs legislation that would effectively outlaw the practice of Islam in the U.S. “Islam is an American faith that has been present since the colonial-era when large numbers of Muslims were imported as slave labor, without any individual liberty or freedom of religion,” CAIR said.
Democratic lawmakers across the chamber united to condemn Ogles’ rhetoric, calling it openly Islamophobic. Representative Judy Chu described his comments as “abhorrent”, while Representative Lisa Blunt Rochester called on Republican House leadership to publicly disavow the Tennessee lawmaker. House Minority Whip Katherine Clark wrote on X, “This disgusting shit doesn’t belong in American society. And Republicans who support it don’t belong in Congress.”
Notably, Ogles faced no formal disciplinary consequences from the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, even after his most inflammatory remarks. This absence of action drew sharp criticism, particularly when contrasted with the 2023 censure of Palestinian-American Representative Rashida Tlaib over her comments supporting Palestinian statehood.
Ogles’ current term in office is set to expire in January 2027, and he will leave office at that time following his primary defeat, ending the political career of one of the most openly anti-Muslim members of Congress in recent decades.
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From autonomy to ‘settler colonialism’: How India redrew Kashmir’s demographic and political landscape
It has now been seven years since India revoked the special constitutional autonomy long granted to Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir. The rollback of these historic constitutional protections, followed by sweeping changes to residency rules, land ownership laws and regional governance, has systematically remade the region’s social, political and economic landscape. Critics across academic, political and local circles frame these changes as a deliberate multi-pronged strategy to alter Kashmir’s unique demographic character and erode native political power. The debate around the changes remains deeply divided, with competing narratives of integration versus disenfranchisement defining the region’s uncertain future seven years on.
On August 5, 2019, India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a right-wing nationalist administration led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, took the unilateral step of scrapping two core constitutional provisions: Article 370 and Article 35A. For seven decades, these clauses had anchored Kashmir’s relationship to the Indian Union, granting the Muslim-majority region limited self-governance and legal safeguards to protect its native population and resources. Article 370 originated from the 1949 accession agreement following the partition of India, while Article 35A empowered Jammu and Kashmir’s regional assembly to define permanent residents and bar non-locals from permanent settlement in the region. Prior to 2019, existing land laws capped individual land holdings at 12 acres, prohibited construction on agricultural land and barred non-Kashmiris from property ownership, frameworks designed to protect the region’s fragile ecology, preserve local access to resources and guarantee native access to employment.
Following the 2019 repeal, the Indian government unilaterally split the former state into two federally controlled Union Territories: Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh, placing the entire region directly under the administrative control of India’s central government in New Delhi. Modi’s administration framed the move as a long-overdue corrective to historical anomaly, arguing that integrating the region more tightly into India would attract new private investment, spur long-delayed development, and curb long-running separatist militancy.
But within months of the repeal, New Delhi introduced sweeping regulatory changes that opened the region to outside settlement and investment. In March 2020, the government implemented new domicile rules that granted resident status to any person who had lived in the region for 15 years, studied within its borders for seven years, or served in select central government posts in the region. A subsequent notification in October 2020 eliminated even the requirement of domicile status for purchasing most non-agricultural land, effectively removing all historic barriers to outside property ownership.
Official government data presented to the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly reveals that within just two years of the new rules going into effect, more than 1.25 million domicile certificates had been issued across the region. Of these, more than 83,000 went to individuals who did not previously qualify as permanent residents. Regional authorities have claimed that domicile certificates are only required to apply for government jobs and do not automatically confer land or voting rights, but concurrent changes to land law mean a domicile status is not required to purchase most property in the region anyway.
For native Kashmiris, these policy shifts have resulted in widespread systemic disenfranchisement, as outsiders gain open access to the region’s limited land and natural resources. Many residents describe growing economic inequality that has reshaped daily life over the past seven years. “I think what has changed in these seven years is the visible presence of inequality,” explained Jan, a 35-year-old resident who requested only her first name be published for safety. “I don’t recall Kashmir being so economically unequal before. When you see the much-hyped city centre of Lal Chowk, for example, you get a small glimpse of a colourful metropolis. But the moment you step into the next-door neighbourhood of Maisuma and walk into the lanes of the old city, you encounter real Kashmir: waterlogged roads, people driving rickshaws for a living, stray dogs outnumbering humans and more.”
Jan pointed to the elimination of historic land regulations as a core driver of displacement. “Before, we had laws that prevented a single person from acquiring land that was more than 12 acres. That kept Kashmir anchored into a socialist character. No one was allowed to build so much as a small hut in agricultural land. Now, it is free for all. Indian construction firms can tear past our rice fields and apple orchards to construct railway lines and expressways that are completely defacing the Kashmir that we knew as children. This infrastructure is meant to serve its military more than it serves us. The poorer lot are especially more defenceless against the onslaught of ‘new Kashmir’ and the sweeping changes it represents. We are simply getting estranged from our own land.”
The opening of land to outside investment has also triggered widespread evictions of long-term residents living near forested areas. Abu Bakr, a 42-year-old Srinagar business owner who closely follows regional politics, noted that new land policies reclassified many long-standing community land holdings as illegal encroachment. “To facilitate investment and improve the ease of doing business, the policy allowed investors greater access to land. Subsequently, the government introduced a series of policy changes affecting land, agriculture, and forest laws. In several cases, land occupied by such residents was classified as encroachment, leading to eviction drives. There are many examples of it.” Bakr added that government initiatives to distribute land to homeless families from outside the region have amplified long-standing native fears of deliberate demographic engineering, a concern that has been central to Kashmiri political discourse for decades.
Beyond land and residency changes, the Indian government also redrew Jammu and Kashmir’s electoral boundaries for the first time since 1995. The federal Delimitation Commission expanded the total number of regional assembly seats from 83 to 90, allocating five of the six new seats to the Hindu-majority Jammu region and only one to the Muslim-majority Kashmir Valley. The commission also merged geographically disconnected areas separated by mountain ranges into single parliamentary constituencies, a restructuring widely criticized as a deliberate maneuver to shift political power toward parties aligned with New Delhi. While regional elections were eventually held and an elected local government formed, the administration remains stripped of full statehood, with core legislative and administrative powers retained by the central government in New Delhi, leaving local leaders severely constrained in their ability to enact policy.
Seven years on, the promised economic boom and end to militancy that the BJP used to justify the 2019 changes have yet to materialize, and the region remains mired in volatility. In May 2025, suspected militants carried out a deadly attack on tourists in Pahalgam’s Baisaran Valley, killing 26 people in one of the deadliest civilian assaults on the region in recent years. Just last month, a police officer on security duty was shot and killed in Anantnag’s Lal Chowk; the killing triggered a massive government crackdown that resulted in the detention of more than 3,500 people across the region.
Local residents also highlight ongoing systemic economic and social crises. Unemployment among Kashmiris currently sits at roughly 6.7 percent, double the national average for India, and youth joblessness has fueled a growing drug crisis in the region. “We are plagued by high rates of unemployment among youth; they are going towards drugs,” said Muhammad Amin, a 55-year-old local resident. Critics also point to widespread government censorship, including revisions to school textbooks to erase dissenting perspectives and suppress native Kashmiri identity.
International and academic observers have echoed these criticisms, framing the 2019 changes and subsequent policy shifts as a deliberate project of political disempowerment. In 2021, a panel of United Nations special rapporteurs raised alarm that the revised residency rules were implemented without any consultation with the local Kashmiri population, warning that fast-tracking domicile status for outsiders risked severely deteriorating the human rights situation for native residents.
Scholars who study the region frame the cumulative changes through the lens of settler colonialism, arguing that incremental policy shifts over time have worked together to restructure control over land, political power and native sovereignty. Ather Zia, a political anthropologist, explained: “In my work, I describe this as the iterative temporal dynamic of settler colonialism, where successive changes over a period of time reinforce one another, and cumulatively they are focused on restructuring control over land, political representation, and Indigenous sovereignty, as we see that is what has unfolded. Settler colonialism as an analytical framework helps explain how changes in legal restructuring, policies of land expropriation, demographic engineering, increasing militarisation, and massive overhaul in how the region is governed illustrate an evolving structure rather than disconnected policies.” Zia added that the cumulative effect of these changes has fundamentally transformed everyday life for native Kashmiris: “There is heightened uncertainty and deep fear over land; political representation has diminished; journalism, activism, and civil society activity are curbed.”
Muhammad Junaid, a professor at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, told reporters that the entire post-2019 restructuring is designed to erase the historical political rights of the Kashmiri people. “The post-2019 changes were designed as a strategy aimed at the total political disempowerment of Kashmiris as a people. To bring Kashmir to a level where people of Kashmir would be compelled to demand (or not even demand at all) things that had already once existed rather than seek their historical political rights as a people. This disempowerment is part of the broader history of imperial control in Kashmir. The history of such a process in other places and times tells us that the situation in Kashmir resembles many aspects of settler colonialism. The impacts of the 2019 events are gradually unfolding… as people are being governed by imperial bureaucrats as imperial wards with no say in their own administration.”
While the Indian government continues to maintain that the 2019 constitutional changes have improved governance, attracted new investment and integrated Kashmir more closely into the Indian Union, critics argue the policies have fundamentally and permanently altered the region’s political, legal and demographic character. Seven years after the repeal of Article 370, these deeply opposing narratives continue to shape the bitter debate over Kashmir’s future.
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Hunter Biden tells BBC his pardon was ‘not good’ for America or his father’s legacy
In a candid, wide-ranging exclusive interview with the BBC’s *Newsnight*, Hunter Biden has opened up about one of the most controversial acts of his father’s presidency, the spread of Joe Biden’s cancer, and his own decades-long battle with addiction, offering unflinching insight into the personal and political turmoil that shaped the end of the 46th U.S. president’s term.
The interview, one of Hunter Biden’s most extensive public appearances since Joe Biden left office, addressed the full and unconditional presidential pardon Joe Biden granted him in December 2024 — a decision that broke the former president’s previous public pledge not to use executive power to interfere in his son’s federal legal cases.
Acknowledging the widespread bipartisan criticism the pardon sparked, Hunter Biden admitted the move was not beneficial for the American public, the U.S. Constitution, or his father’s political legacy. “It’s something that is easily criticised and for good reason,” he told the BBC. “It’s not fair… All I know is that I’m grateful that he did it for me.” While he accepted the legitimacy of public pushback, he pushed back against claims that the pardon demonstrated blatant nepotism, arguing that Joe Biden’s choice stemmed from a genuine, personal fear: that Hunter would become a political target of incoming President Donald Trump’s administration. He also emphasized that the pair never discussed the possibility of a pardon before it was issued, noting that any pre-pardon conversation would almost certainly have been leaked to the public. “I was the only one in the world that could have gotten what I got from the only person in the world who could give it, my father,” he said. The blanket pardon covered all federal offenses Hunter Biden committed between 2014 and 2024, including his prior federal gun conviction and the tax charges to which he had pleaded guilty. In justifying the pardon when it was announced, Joe Biden had argued his son had been the victim of selective, politically motivated prosecution.
The conversation turned deeply personal when Hunter Biden addressed his father’s ongoing battle with cancer, growing visibly emotional as he shared updates on the former president’s health. He confirmed that the cancer has metastasized, spreading to Joe Biden’s bones and other areas of the body, causing severe, constant pain and significant disability. “Cancer is really hard. It’s really sad to watch,” he said, pausing to clear his throat. Despite the grim diagnosis, Hunter Biden described his 82-year-old father as the unshakable center of their family, praising his stoicism through relentless pain: “My dad is, to this day, the centre of our family. He’s the best father, the best husband, the best grandfather. The only thing that I say about my dad, about his health right now, is I wish he would complain more.”
Hunter Biden also reflected on the June 2024 presidential debate that ultimately forced Joe Biden to end his re-election campaign, saying that watching the performance from his California home left him immediately alarmed. “I was shocked. I knew something was wrong,” he recalled. He previously attributed the poor performance to extreme physical fatigue from a grueling campaign travel schedule, but now he says the undiagnosed cancer likely already impacted his father’s performance that night. He added that despite his illness, Joe Biden remains actively engaged in political discourse and committed to speaking out on public issues.
Opening up about his own well-documented struggle with addiction, Hunter Biden described the darkest days of his substance abuse, recalling that at his worst, he drank nearly a full gallon of vodka daily and smoked crack cocaine every 15 minutes. “It was hell on earth. There’s nothing glamorous about it,” he said. Rejecting claims that his addiction stemmed from a sense of privileged invincibility as the son of a powerful politician, he explained he turned to drugs and alcohol to escape crippling feelings of anxiety and isolation. What began as a coping mechanism quickly became a fatal threat: “The drugs and alcohol initially felt like a solution before becoming ‘the thing that almost killed me,’” he said.
When asked about persistent speculation that he would pursue a career in elected politics, even a potential presidential run, Hunter Biden flatly ruled out any bid for public office. “I have no interest in elected politics,” he said, pushing back firmly on the rumors. Instead, he plans to dedicate his time to advocacy for addiction recovery, a cause he argues can transcend America’s toxic partisan divides. “I believe that addiction and the hope of recovery are something that connect us all,” he said.
When asked what trait of his father he is most proud of, Hunter Biden did not point to Joe Biden’s decades of public service, but to his relentless resilience in the face of repeated personal and political hardship. “I’m most proud of his resilience. He’s proven time and time again that when you get knocked down, you can get up. He’s the toughest man I know,” he said.
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Trump ally Abelardo de la Espriella sworn in as Colombia president
On Friday, Colombia swore in Abelardo de la Espriella as its new president, marking a sharp rightward turn for the Andean nation and ending four years of rule by the country’s first left-wing government. The 48-year-old former lawyer, who holds dual U.S.-Colombian citizenship, used his inauguration to lay out an aggressive security agenda centered on cracking down on drug-trafficking armed groups and forging close alignment with the United States, a stark departure from his predecessor’s tenure marked by repeated diplomatic tensions with Washington.
Breaking with decades of inauguration tradition that centered the ceremony in the formal capital of Bogota, de la Espriella hosted the event in Cali – the tropical southwestern city known globally as Colombia’s salsa capital. To secure the event, which unfolded in a city that has faced repeated guerrilla pipe bomb attacks in recent years, authorities deployed 11,000 security personnel and an advanced anti-drone system.
Immediately after taking their oaths of office, de la Espriella and Vice President Jose Manuel Restrepo embraced, cheered, and carried out the signature military salute that defined their campaign. In his policy pledges, the new president has promised a hardline approach: he says he will order airstrikes on jungle cocaine production labs, construct large-scale “mega-prisons” to hold detained offenders, and drastically downsize the size of Colombia’s federal government.
A long list of high-profile international guests attended the inauguration, signaling the new government’s ideological alignment. Attendees included Argentina’s right-wing President Javier Milei, FIFA President Gianni Infantino (who has faced widespread criticism over his now-shelved plan to allow private investment in major FIFA competitions), and Todd Blanche, former acting U.S. Attorney General and a key legal ally of former U.S. President Donald Trump, who led the official U.S. delegation. De la Espriella’s leftist predecessor, Gustavo Petro, boycotted the ceremony, having already vacated the presidential palace in Bogota earlier Friday, leaving with the farewell message “farewell, freedom and life.”
De la Espriella’s narrow election victory in June – he won by less than one percentage point against leftist candidate Ivan Cepeda – brings the latest win for right-wing movements across Latin America, where candidates running on tough-on-crime pledges have flipped control of governments from Chile to Costa Rica in recent years. The new president has dubbed his security strategy “Plan Colombia II,” a reference to the massive U.S.-funded anti-drug and counter-insurgency initiative of the 2000s. He has proposed a formal military alliance with the United States and Israel to advance his campaign against armed groups, and has already offered to allow joint military operations on Colombian soil and host U.S. military personnel – a major diplomatic shift after four years of public spats between Petro’s government and the Trump administration.
Colombia has faced years of instability following the breakdown of peace negotiations with disparate armed groups, which originally formed as ideological insurgencies but now largely profit from cocaine trafficking and other illicit criminal activity. Petro’s government attempted to negotiate a permanent truce with these groups, but the effort collapsed, and analysts report the gangs used the ceasefire period to expand their control and operations. Supporters of the new president say his hardline approach is exactly what Colombia needs to reverse rising crime and instability. “We have to support him so there won’t be so much crime. We need a complete change,” 63-year-old contractor German Angulo told AFP in Cali following the inauguration.
Not all observers are optimistic, however. De la Espriella enters office facing a divided Congress, where his coalition does not hold a legislative majority, limiting his ability to push through major policy changes. The original 2000s Plan Colombia, while successful in weakening major insurgent groups, also faced widespread international condemnation over documented serious human rights abuses. Petro, for his part, has not conceded defeat gracefully: he has called for mass anti-government protests across major Colombian cities on inauguration day, repeating unsubstantiated claims of widespread election fraud. For ordinary Colombians, the new government faces high expectations to deliver on its campaign promises, as many communities continue to grapple with persistent violence and organized crime. “This government has a lot to prove. A lot was said during the campaign,” 46-year-old Cali resident Marisol Peira told reporters.
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What is birthright citizenship and how prevalent is birth tourism in the US?
Four months after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down his first attempt to narrow access to U.S.-born citizenship, former President Donald Trump has rolled out a new pair of executive orders targeting what his administration calls “birth tourism” and expanding carve-outs to the longstanding principle of birthright citizenship. Signed during a formal White House ceremony on Thursday, the orders mark the latest high-profile push by the Trump administration to reshape U.S. immigration and nationality policy without congressional approval.
The first of the two orders expands the legal definition of non-citizen parents whose children born on U.S. soil are excluded from automatic birthright citizenship. Under the new framework, babies born in the U.S. to two non-citizen parents will be denied automatic citizenship if one parent falls into any of several specified categories: members of a designated foreign terrorist organization, foreign government officials, individuals who have previously sought U.S. immigration status through fraud, or residents of unincorporated U.S. territories where federal law does not grant birthright citizenship. While some of these categories were already excluded under longstanding rules, the new provision related to terrorist group membership has already sparked legal and policy ambiguity, according to Colleen Putzel-Kavanaugh, an associate policy analyst at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute (MPI). Putzel-Kavanaugh notes that the order fails to clarify critical procedural details: how terrorist affiliation will be verified, which government body will bear the responsibility of determination, and whether the burden of proof will rest with the government to confirm membership or the individual to disprove it.
The second executive order directly targets the practice of birth tourism — the process through which foreign nationals travel to the U.S. specifically to give birth, so their child can obtain U.S. citizenship by birth. The order directs the State Department and Department of Homeland Security to tighten existing regulations and ramp up enforcement efforts against the birth tourism industry, which the order argues relies on deceptive marketing to attract expecting parents. The order claims that industry operators frequently advertise guaranteed U.S. citizenship, access to public benefits, and specialized maternity accommodation, but often fail to deliver on these promised services. Notably, traveling to the U.S. for the explicit purpose of giving birth is already classified as a violation of immigration law.
Birthright citizenship, formally known as *jus soli* (the right of the soil), is codified in the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified in the aftermath of the American Civil War to guarantee citizenship to formerly enslaved people born in the U.S. Under current longstanding interpretation, almost all individuals born on U.S. soil receive automatic citizenship regardless of their parents’ own citizenship or immigration status, with only a handful of narrow exceptions. These existing exceptions include children born to foreign diplomats on official assignment, children born to enemy occupying forces, and children born in unincorporated U.S. territories where Congress has not extended birthright citizenship. For example, people born in Puerto Rico, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands receive automatic U.S. citizenship, while those born in American Samoa are classified as “non-citizen nationals” rather than full citizens.
In announcing the new orders, Trump claimed that “hundreds of thousands” of babies are born in the U.S. each year via birth tourism, offering no evidence to support the figure and no clarification on whether the number reflects an annual total or cumulative count. Official data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows that just over 9,500 babies were born in 2024 to women listing foreign residential addresses, accounting for roughly 0.25% of the 3.7 million total births recorded in the U.S. that year. However, MPI analysts argue that official CDC figures are almost certainly an undercount, as birth tourism participants often use a temporary U.S. address to register the birth rather than their permanent foreign address. After a broader analysis of U.S. Census data, MPI estimates that between 20,000 and 26,000 babies are born annually in the U.S. as a result of birth tourism, equal to between 0.5% and 0.7% of total annual U.S. births. Putzel-Kavanaugh emphasized that exact counts are inherently difficult to capture, because birth tourism is defined by the traveler’s private intent to give birth in the U.S. — a detail that is rarely recorded in official administrative data. Some unplanned births also occur when traveling pregnant people experience unexpected medical emergencies that require delivery in the U.S. even if they originally planned to give birth in their home country, she added.
The Trump administration’s legal challenge to broad birthright citizenship reached the Supreme Court earlier this year, with oral arguments held in April. The administration’s case centered heavily on the argument that unconstrained birthright citizenship has allowed the birth tourism industry to grow, creating a cohort of U.S. citizens with no meaningful connection to the country. Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued during arguments that the 14th Amendment’s framers never intended for the provision to enable mass birth tourism, arguing that modern air travel has created a situation where “eight billion people are one plane ride away from having a child who’s a U.S. citizen.” When Chief Justice John Roberts asked whether Sauer agreed that birth tourism’s existence has no bearing on the legal interpretation of the 14th Amendment, Sauer countered that the practice proves the amendment carries unforeseen consequences that its authors would never have endorsed. The Supreme Court’s majority rejected the administration’s interpretation in June, with the majority’s reasoning summed up by Roberts’ remark: “Well, it’s a new world. It’s the same Constitution.”
Trump has repeatedly claimed that the U.S. is nearly unique among major nations in granting unrestricted birthright citizenship. In reality, more than 30 countries around the world practice automatic unrestricted *jus soli*, including most nations in Central and South America such as Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico. The U.S. and Canada are the only two IMF-classified developed economies that grant nearly unrestricted birthright citizenship; other major countries such as the United Kingdom and Australia use a modified system that only grants automatic birthright citizenship if at least one parent is a citizen or permanent resident.
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Hunter Biden opens up to the BBC about father’s cancer battle, pardon and politics
In a rare, wide-ranging interview with BBC’s flagship current affairs program Newsnight, Hunter Biden, the son of former U.S. President Joe Biden, has opened up on a series of deeply personal and politically charged topics that have dominated headlines in recent months.
During the conversation, Hunter Biden pulled back the curtain on his father Joe Biden’s ongoing battle with cancer, offering unpublicized insights into how the former president has navigated his health struggle while remaining engaged in public life. He addressed widespread speculation about the former president’s well-being, speaking candidly about the challenges the Biden family has faced behind the scenes as Joe Biden undergoes treatment.
A central focus of the interview was the controversial pardon that Joe Biden granted to his son before leaving office in January 2025. Hunter Biden discussed his feelings about the decision, responding to critics who have labeled the pardon an abuse of presidential power, and explained how the action resolved years of legal investigations that hung over his personal and professional life.
Beyond personal matters, Hunter Biden also shared his thoughts on his own potential future in U.S. politics. When asked about whether he would seek elected office in the coming years, he offered clarity on his political ambitions, addressing ongoing rumors that have circulated in Washington political circles about his next career steps.
The interview marks one of the most extensive public comments Hunter Biden has made since his father left the presidency, giving voters and political observers a rare unfiltered look at the private dynamics of one of America’s most high-profile political families at a pivotal moment in U.S. politics.
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War on Iran: Saudi Arabia warns of imminent attacks by Iraqi groups and Yemen’s Houthis
As tensions across the Middle East surge to new heights, Saudi Arabia has issued a stark intelligence-backed warning that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is orchestrating coordinated cross-border attacks against the kingdom, carried out jointly by Iraqi armed factions and Yemen’s Houthi movement.
A senior anonymous Saudi official shared details of the intelligence assessment with Reuters Thursday evening, noting that the collaborative threat assessment was compiled by Saudi authorities, U.S. intelligence agencies, and regional partner nations. According to the official, the planned attacks are set to target high-value civilian and economic infrastructure across the kingdom, with critical energy facilities, commercial ports, and major airports listed as the primary potential targets.
Saudi security forces have already detected unusual movements of drone and missile systems consistent with pre-attack preparations, the official confirmed, adding that hostile forces are positioning to launch strikes from two directions: Iraq along the kingdom’s northern border and Yemen to the south. In a firm statement of intent, the official added that Riyadh has completed defensive preparations and is prepared to deploy all necessary measures to repel and respond to any act of aggression against its territory.
This latest warning comes against a backdrop of rapidly escalating regional confrontation tied to the expanding Israeli-U.S. campaign against Iran-aligned groups that launched in late February. Tensions spiked further late last month, on July 29, when joint Saudi-U.S. airstrikes hit positions held by Iran-backed armed groups in Iraq. The strikes targeted command headquarters operated by the Popular Mobilisation Forces, leaving more than 20 fighters dead and at least 30 others injured.
In the wake of the airstrikes, Iraqi aligned factions publicly vowed to carry out retaliatory attacks against Saudi and U.S. targets. However, Hadi al-Amiri, leader of the prominent Iraqi Badr Organisation, has called for a delay in any retaliatory action. In a televised address carried by Iraqi media outlets, Amiri urged fighters to hold off on responses to what he labeled “American-Saudi aggression” and set aside immediate grievances for the sake of Iraq’s national strategic interests.
Beyond the northern threat from Iraqi factions, Saudi Arabia has also faced a sharp uptick in cross-border attacks from Houthi forces based in Yemen. The Houthi movement confirmed it launched an assault on Saudi Arabia’s Najran airport earlier this week on Tuesday, part of its ongoing wider campaign targeting Saudi military positions, civilian infrastructure, and commercial shipping connected to the kingdom.
On Thursday alone, Houthi assaults on Saudi-backed Yemeni government deployments in Yemen’s Marib and Hadramout provinces left at least 17 government soldiers dead, according to Yemen’s internationally recognized government. Multiple independent regional sources have put the confirmed death toll as high as 58. The Houthi movement has also compounded pressure on Saudi Arabia by disrupting the kingdom’s crude oil exports through a de facto blockade of Red Sea shipping lanes, pulling Riyadh deeper into the broad regional confrontation with Iran-aligned groups.
In response to the growing array of threats, regional diplomatic sources familiar with defense planning confirm that Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Turkey are set to sign a new trilateral joint defense agreement during a meeting scheduled Friday in Mecca. As of Friday morning, neither the Houthi movement nor the Iranian government has issued an immediate public response to Saudi Arabia’s warning of planned coordinated attacks.