分类： politics

NEW DELHI – As thousands of demonstrators hold their ground at a central New Delhi protest site, an unexpected network of grassroots support has emerged to sustain their movement: a constant flow of food ordered via online delivery apps from backers across the country. This steady stream of donated sustenance has become one of the most visible markers of the rapidly expanding public backing for the ‘Cockroach’ movement, a youth-led uprising that has grown into one of the most significant political challenges faced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration in recent years.

What began as an outcry over repeated leaks of high-stakes entrance examinations for medical colleges and government jobs – a scandal that drove some impacted young people to suicide – the movement has evolved into a broader national call for greater government accountability. Thousands of protesters have set up a continuous sit-in at Jantar Mantar, New Delhi’s historic designated protest zone, which now serves as the epicenter of the movement. Even after a harsh police crackdown on Monday, when officers deployed tear gas and batons to block demonstrators from marching toward India’s Parliament, the remaining protesters refused to disperse. Instead, the violent response only amplified public anger, swelling the crowd beyond student circles to include young working professionals, parents and other community members sympathetic to the movement’s demands.

To sustain the growing encampment, supporters who cannot attend the protest in person have turned to a simple but effective act of solidarity: ordering meals directly to the demonstration site through popular online food delivery platforms. Every few minutes, motorbike-riding delivery riders pull up to Jantar Mantar with bags packed with everything from homemade-style Indian curries and rice to burgers, pizza, snacks and bottled water. Volunteers collect each delivery, stack the contributions alongside other donated supplies, and distribute the food and water to protesters on the ground. Many donors have never visited the protest site personally and do not know the demonstrators they are supporting; they simply instruct delivery riders to hand their order to any protester they encounter at the camp.

For Shakti Vashisth, a 24-year-old protester camped at Jantar Mantar, every incoming delivery is a powerful reminder that the movement’s support extends far beyond the boundaries of the protest site. “There are a lot of people that I can understand might not be able to come here, but they are sending their love,” she explained.

The outpouring of support has been so overwhelming that protest organizers have recently been forced to ask the public to pause new food orders, as incoming donations now far outnumber the daily needs of the demonstrators camped on site. “The amount of food coming in is overwhelming. It’s difficult to even keep count,” said Bhoomi Kapoor, a volunteer coordinating food distribution at the site.

Neg Singh, a motorbike delivery courier who has made 19 trips to the protest site, recalled one particularly massive order: 70 pizzas that required three separate riders to carry through the dense crowd, placed by a donor living in Noida, a city roughly 25 kilometers outside of New Delhi. For Singh, the constant trips to the camp have done more than add extra work to his schedule – they have pulled him into the movement as a supporter too. “We also feel deeply connected to this protest. We support it wholeheartedly,” he said.

In a high-profile ruling that has reignited national debate over South Korea’s unregulated abortion framework, an appellate court has overturned the murder conviction of a 20-something woman identified only by her surname Kwon, who was charged in connection with a 36-week pregnancy termination. The decision marks the latest dramatic turn in a case that has gripped the country and laid bare the dangerous legal vacuum that has existed for abortion access since the national ban was lifted five years ago.

The case first emerged into public view in 2024, when Kwon shared a YouTube video detailing her experience seeking a late-stage pregnancy termination. The video triggered immediate public outcry, prompting South Korea’s Ministry of Health to file a formal criminal complaint that launched a full police investigation into Kwon and the two medical providers who assisted her.

In the initial March 2025 trial, Kwon was convicted of murder and sentenced to a three-year suspended prison term. Both participating doctors also pleaded guilty to murder charges: the operating surgeon received an initial four-year sentence, while the hospital’s director was handed a six-year prison term. In Thursday’s appeal ruling, the court upheld the murder convictions for the two doctors but reduced their sentences: the surgeon’s term was cut to two-and-a-half years, and the director’s sentence was lowered to four years.

Prosecutors had argued throughout proceedings that the fetus was born alive via cesarean section, then placed in a freezer to die, after which medical staff falsified Kwon’s records to falsely register the pregnancy as a stillbirth. Kwon’s defense centered on the claim that she had no prior knowledge that the fetus would be delivered alive and killed, arguing that a broker connecting her to the clinic had explicitly told her the fetus would be stillborn. While the initial trial judge ruled Kwon was aware the fetus would be born alive, the appellate court overturned that finding, accepting her defense that she had no advance knowledge of the outcome.

During the trial, Kwon told the court she only discovered her pregnancy at seven months, and sought termination because she lacked stable financial support to raise a child. She also added that she had consumed alcohol and smoked throughout the unrecognized pregnancy, leading to fears that the fetus would be born with severe birth defects.

The case has thrown a harsh spotlight on the legal chaos surrounding abortion in South Korea that has persisted since the Constitutional Court struck down the country’s decades-old total abortion ban in 2019. At the time of the ruling, the court directed the national parliament to draft new legislation establishing a clear regulatory framework, with a recommendation to allow abortion access up to 22 weeks of gestation. However, successive government-drafted bills have been stalled in the legislature, blocked by conservative lawmakers who oppose expanded abortion access on religious grounds. When the formal ban officially expired in 2021, no replacement regulatory regime was in place, leaving the country with no clear legal guidelines for gestational limits or safe abortion provision.

Human rights and reproductive health advocates have welcomed Kwon’s acquittal, but warn that the unregulated legal landscape continues to put pregnant people at risk. Heekyoung Cho, executive director of Amnesty International Korea, emphasized in a post-ruling statement that the lack of clear abortion legislation “left pregnant people without clear legal protections and access to essential reproductive healthcare.” Cho called on the South Korean government to immediately enact regulatory reforms that remove barriers to safe abortion care and establish clear standards for abortion service provision. Even the initial trial court acknowledged the systemic gap in its 2025 sentencing, noting it had exercised leniency in Kwon’s case because she had no access to formal, legal support for her late-stage pregnancy.

A bombshell report from Reuters has triggered widespread condemnation and urgent warnings from global nonproliferation specialists and U.S. political leaders over a leaked proposal from former President Donald Trump’s administration that would greenlight a U.S.-Saudi Arabia nuclear cooperation agreement, raising severe risks of nuclear weapons proliferation across the Middle East.

According to reporting from anonymous sources familiar with the draft text, the framework crafted by the Trump administration would permit the transfer of sensitive U.S. nuclear power technology to Saudi Arabia, while omitting critical nonproliferation safeguards designed to prevent nuclear materials from being diverted to weapons development. Most notably, the proposal does not include the widely accepted “Gold Standard” provisions that would ban the kingdom from enriching uranium and reprocessing spent nuclear fuel — two core capabilities that can be directly repurposed to build nuclear weapons.

Kelsey Davenport, director of nonproliferation policy at the nonpartisan Arms Control Association, was among the first to publicly criticize the plan, issuing a warning in a Tuesday social media post that the draft agreement “sets a terrible precedent.” Davenport explained that the proposal breaks with decades of bipartisan U.S. policy that has required strict prohibitions on enrichment and reprocessing in all bilateral nuclear cooperation pacts. “If the deal is inadequate, which it seems to be, Congress should vote to disapprove it,” Davenport added.

Andrea Stricker, deputy director and research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Nonproliferation Program, echoed that call, urging Congress to immediately block the agreement. Stricker warned that the weak safeguards would not only put Saudi Arabia on a clear path to potential nuclear weapons development but could also trigger a regional nuclear arms race, prompting neighboring states to pursue their own nuclear weapons programs. If Congress fails to halt the deal, Stricker argued that any future U.S. administration should reverse the policy “before too much damage is done in terms of watering down safeguards, setting negative precedents for other states, and failing to contain the spread of enrichment and reprocessing.”

James Acton, co-director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Nuclear Policy Program, went even further, arguing that the reported deal is “tantamount to the United States giving up on nonproliferation.” Acton noted that Saudi officials have publicly acknowledged their potential interest in developing nuclear weapons, adding that “the United States should do nothing to facilitate enrichment or reprocessing in the Kingdom.”

Emma Ashford, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center, agreed that the agreement would effectively end decades of U.S. efforts to curb global nuclear proliferation, pointing to a striking policy contradiction at the heart of the Trump administration’s approach: the same administration pursued military pressure and airstrikes against Iran to block its nuclear enrichment program, while offering the same capability to Saudi Arabia.

Rosemary Kelanic, director of the Middle East Program at Defense Priorities, also labeled the proposal a “terrible idea” that breaks with 70 years of U.S. nonproliferation policy, which has never permitted the transfer of enrichment technology to a country that does not already possess the capability. Kelanic warned that the deal could create long-term national security risks for the United States, empowering Saudi Arabia to hold Washington hostage to its demands.

“Aside from the proliferation risks, uranium enrichment would give Saudi Arabia a potent source of leverage to extract future concessions from Washington, including new security guarantees, by threatening to weaponize its program unless the United States promises enhanced military protection,” Kelanic explained, noting that this dynamic played out previously with U.S. allies South Korea and West Germany, where the U.S. exchanged expanded security guarantees to convince the nations to abandon their indigenous nuclear programs.

Top congressional Democrats have also joined the chorus of criticism. Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, voiced “deep concerns” about the reported deal, saying it “would significantly erode existing nonproliferation standards.” Meeks emphasized that any valid U.S.-Saudi nuclear agreement must include strict limits on enrichment and reprocessing, as well as full compliance with the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Additional Protocol, which grants the global nuclear watchdog enhanced inspection powers.

On a Wednesday vote almost strictly split along partisan lines, the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives has advanced a landmark $1.15 trillion fiscal year 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), HR 8800, advancing a package that has sparked fierce backlash over a divisive provision deepening U.S.-Israeli military cooperation and a last-minute partisan maneuver attaching a contentious voting policy measure to the must-pass national security legislation.

The final vote tally settled at 219 in favor to 206 opposed. Republicans backed the measure by an overwhelming 213-1 margin, with only Kentucky Representative Thomas Massie breaking with his party to vote no. On the Democratic side, five members crossed party lines to support the bill: North Carolina’s Don Davis, Jared Golden of Maine, California’s Adam Gray, Vicente Gonzalez of Texas, and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington. Independent Representative Kevin Kiley of California also joined supporters of the legislation.

A core point of controversy centers on Section 219, a provision that formalizes deeper integration of U.S. and Israeli military research and development initiatives. Massie and Democratic Representative Ro Khanna of California introduced an amendment to remove the provision from the final bill, but the House Rules Committee blocked any debate on the change, leaving Section 219 intact in the legislation sent to the Senate.

A second contentious provision, Section 622, also remains in the bill: the measure would expand and strengthen intelligence sharing cooperation with Israel, while rolling back existing restrictions on that partnership.

Critics across the progressive wing of the Democratic Party have launched sharp attacks on the Israel-focused provisions, framing the deeper integration as a threat to U.S. national sovereignty and democratic governance. New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez labeled the full NDAA “an existential threat to American sovereignty and democracy” ahead of the vote. Massie, the lone Republican opponent, added that the nation’s founding fathers “would be appalled at what Congress is doing now.” Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar went further, describing Section 219 as “an outrageous threat to our country’s security and autonomy,” and arguing that “Americans want no part in Netanyahu’s genocidal regime. Congress cannot continue to bankroll Israel’s campaign of violence.”

Following the House Rules Committee’s decision to block debate on the amendment, Khanna said that opponents would shift their focus to removing the provision during the conference committee process, where House and Senate negotiators will reconcile differences between the two chambers’ versions of the NDAA. “We need to now fight to strip this amendment in the conference between the House and the Senate,” Khanna said.

Beyond the controversy over Israel policy, the main driver of unified Democratic opposition was a procedural move by Republican leadership to attach the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act to the defense spending bill. Championed by former President Donald Trump, the SAVE Act requires voters to provide formal proof of citizenship to register for federal elections. Democratic lawmakers universally condemned the decision to attach the hotly contested voting policy measure to a must-pass national security bill.

Another high-profile amendment, which would have permanently codified Trump’s prior executive order barring transgender people from serving openly in the U.S. military, was narrowly defeated after four Republican lawmakers broke ranks to vote against the provision: Pennsylvania’s Brian Fitzpatrick, Mike Lawler of New York, Northern Mariana Islands Delegate Kimberlyn Kay King-Hinds, and Guam Delegate James Moylan.

Now that the House has passed its version of the 2027 NDAA, the legislation moves to the U.S. Senate, where lawmakers will take up their own iteration of the defense spending package. Independent Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont reiterated widespread progressive opposition to the bill following the House vote, saying “Americans are saying loudly and clearly: No more US military support for the extremist Netanyahu government. That is why Congress must vote NO on the defense spending bill, which brings the US and Israeli militaries even closer together.”

For generations, the United States held an unrivaled global leadership position in public investment for agricultural research. But after reaching an inflation-adjusted peak in 2002, combined federal and state funding has plunged by more than 30%, a downward trajectory that carries major long-term risks for American agriculture, according to a new analysis from the American Enterprise Institute (AEI).

In a recent paper written by agricultural economists Philip Pardey and Vincent Smith, the pair argue that U.S. farmers and ranchers cannot afford to dismiss this decades-long funding slide, as its impacts are already being felt in on-farm output. Decades of empirical economic research confirm that sustained public agricultural R&D is the single largest driver of growth in farm productivity, and as public spending has declined, so too has the rate of productivity improvement across the U.S. agricultural sector.

Worse still, the paper warns, without an immediate, large-scale increase in public support for agricultural research, U.S. agricultural productivity could actually contract, meaning annual growth rates will turn negative. Evolving threats from pesticide-resistant crop pests and drug-resistant animal diseases mean that a baseline level of research investment is already required just to maintain current productivity levels. The authors note that current annual public R&D spending barely meets that threshold, and likely falls short of what is needed to address these ongoing sustainability challenges — let alone generate new gains in production efficiency.

Parallel to the U.S. funding decline, China’s public investment in agricultural research has expanded at a breakneck pace. By 2011, China overtook the United States to become the world’s largest public funder of agricultural R&D, and in some years its total public investment has reached double the U.S. level.

What does this shift in global research leadership mean for American agriculture? The implications are mixed. Chinese researchers are pursuing ambitious, cutting-edge work that could deliver groundbreaking new crop varieties, some of which could eventually benefit U.S. producers. But there are tangible geopolitical risks to allowing the world’s leading advances in disease-resistant and climate-resilient seed technology to fall under the control of a major geopolitical rival. Additionally, increased Chinese research investment will boost China’s domestic food security, reducing its reliance on agricultural imports from the U.S. and other global exporters.

It is important to contextualize this shift: China has 1 billion more people to feed than the United States, and only a few generations removed from widespread mass famine, so its rising investment in agricultural research is far from unexpected. The core problem for U.S. agriculture, the paper emphasizes, is not that China is investing more, but that the U.S. is investing less. Global leadership bragging rights carry little practical weight; if U.S. public R&D spending were growing steadily, falling to second place behind China would be far less concerning.

Critics of the idea that declining public funding is a crisis point to the rapid growth of private sector investment in agricultural R&D. A 2023 analysis from Iowa State University’s Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD) argues that fast-growing private spending has offset the retreat in public funding, and when private investment is included, the U.S. still retains its position as the world’s top total funder of agricultural R&D.

But the AEI authors push back on the claim that private R&D can fully replace public investment. They note that nearly all private agri-food innovation is built on the foundation of basic, high-risk, long-term research carried out by the public sector. The paper also finds that the overall share of U.S. agricultural research (combining both public and private spending) dedicated to improving farm productivity has declined steadily and irreversibly over recent decades.

While CARD differs on the substitution question, framing public and private investment as complementary rather than dependent, it still confirms alarming productivity trends. CARD cites U.S. Department of Agriculture data showing that U.S. farm productivity fell by 6% between 2009, when productivity growth hit its peak, and 2019. The center notes this decline could stem directly from falling public research funding, or from a broader shift in research priorities away from productivity enhancement.

Regardless of the root cause, both research institutions agree that U.S. farmers have a direct stake in reversing the funding slide. The AEI authors note that farmer advocacy groups have consistently prioritized immediate government farm payments over increased research investment, a choice they frame as deeply short-sighted. For farmers who argue that productivity gains only drive oversupply and lower crop prices, the authors counter that a far bigger risk of suppressed prices comes from other major agricultural exporters, such as Brazil, that are rapidly expanding both their productivity and total farmland under cultivation.

The need for sustained public investment was reinforced at a recent industry conference, where a speaker laid out the reality that transformative next-generation agricultural innovations require public backing. Private investors universally demand short timelines and guaranteed returns, requirements that are incompatible with the high-risk, long-horizon work that generates breakthrough agricultural advances. Speaking offstage after the presentation, both a startup ag tech CEO and a venture capitalist confirmed this assessment, adding further weight to the argument that expanded public agricultural R&D is an essential investment for the future of U.S. agriculture.