分类： politics

MANILA, Philippines — U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a stark warning during diplomatic gatherings in the Philippine capital on Wednesday, arguing that Iran’s recent claims to control traffic and impose tolls on the Strait of Hormuz pose a critical threat to global economic stability and the long-standing principle of free navigation — risks that would extend as far as Southeast Asia.

Rubio opened his annual meeting with foreign ministers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), a bloc whose member states have already raised growing alarm over the spillover effects of escalating conflict in the Middle East on their own economic and security interests. Addressing concerns that Washington’s focus on the Middle East war would divert attention from Indo-Pacific priorities, Rubio explicitly reassured ASEAN leaders of unwavering U.S. commitment to the region.

“If we allow a precedent to take hold in the Middle East where a sovereign nation can unilaterally seize control of an international waterway, demand tolls from passing vessels, and attack ships that refuse to comply, that dangerous pattern will be replicated in other regions across the globe, including right here in Southeast Asia,” Rubio told the assembled ministers.

Beyond the ASEAN meeting, Rubio also took part in a gathering of foreign ministers from the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad), the four-nation strategic partnership grouping the United States, Australia, India and Japan. During that meeting, the bloc aligned on core shared priorities including technological governance, humanitarian aid coordination, emergency disaster response, maritime security and countering transnational security threats.

Following closed-door discussions, the Quad issued a joint statement reaffirming their commitment to ongoing maritime security initiatives designed to counter China’s expanding geopolitical influence in the Indo-Pacific. “We are united in our conviction that peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific maritime domain underpin the security and prosperity of the region,” the statement read. Rubio later confirmed the bloc’s ongoing relevance in a post to the social platform X, writing “The Quad remains a priority, and we will meet again later this year.”

The Trump administration has consistently criticized what it frames as increasingly aggressive actions by China in the South China Sea, moves that disadvantage smaller territorial claimants including the Philippines — Washington’s longest-standing treaty ally in Asia. Territorial disputes in the waterway, which also involve Taiwan and ASEAN members Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei, are a central topic on the agenda for the three days of diplomatic talks that opened in Manila on Tuesday.

Rubio also held a bilateral meeting with Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, where the two diplomats reviewed regional developments, the ongoing conflict between the U.S. and Iran, and progress on a bilateral trade agreement that would roll back existing U.S. tariffs on Indian goods, according to State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott. “The Secretary and Minister Jaishankar agreed on the importance of finalizing the interim trade deal, which is almost complete,” Pigott told reporters.

As of Wednesday evening, Rubio was scheduled to hold a separate, closed-door meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on the sidelines of the talks, which are being hosted at a heavily secured convention center along Manila Bay.

Just six weeks after taking the helm of Indonesia’s signature multi-billion-dollar free meals initiative, the program’s top leader has stepped down, throwing the already troubled flagship policy of President Prabowo Subianto into fresh doubt.

Nanik S. Deyang, who was inaugurated as head of the National Nutrition Agency in early June, announced her resignation Wednesday, citing an urgent need for cardiac medical care overseas. Her departure comes only 45 days after she replaced Dadan Hindayana, who was removed from the post and arrested over corruption allegations tied directly to the program.

Launched to deliver on a core campaign pledge from President Prabowo, the ambitious initiative was designed to tackle widespread malnutrition across Indonesia by providing free daily meals to nearly 90 million children and pregnant women. From its early rollout, however, the program has been plagued by controversy: beyond the high-profile corruption scandal that took down its first leader, it has faced sharp public and policy criticism over its ballooning $15 billion annual price tag, and multiple reported outbreaks of food poisoning among participating schoolchildren.

In a public statement posted to her Facebook page Wednesday, Deyang confirmed her exit, noting that President Prabowo had accepted her resignation out of concern for her health. “I conveyed my deepest apologies to the president that I must step down as Head of the National Nutrition Agency for health reasons,” Deyang wrote. “The president was sympathetic and agreed to my request, though he asked that I continue to support the agency in an advisory capacity moving forward.”

During her short 45-day tenure, Deyang oversaw a notable adjustment to the program’s budget, cutting the annual allocation from 268 trillion rupiah (equivalent to roughly $15 billion) to 229 trillion rupiah, around $12 billion. Agency officials have framed the budget adjustment not just as a cost-cutting measure, but as part of a broader push to refine distribution systems. A spokesperson for the agency noted that teams have completed a full review of program beneficiaries, with the current priority being to make distribution of free meals more efficient, effective, and targeted to the communities that need the support most.

As of Thursday, the Indonesian government has not yet announced a replacement for Deyang, leaving the day-to-day leadership of the signature program in limbo as it works through its ongoing reforms. The repeated turnover at the top of the initiative has raised new questions among policy analysts about whether the government can deliver on Prabowo’s campaign promise while addressing the corruption, safety, and cost concerns that have dogged the program since its launch.

A sharp escalation in hostilities between the United States and Iran has left nearly 100 American service members with injuries and four confirmed dead, Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell confirmed Monday, ending hours of public denial and pushing back against accusations that the Defense Department intentionally hid casualty data from the public. The announcement comes amid a fifth consecutive week of cross-border strikes after the collapse of a 60-day ceasefire brokered by Pakistan in June, raising fears of a full-scale ground conflict in the Middle East.

The current cycle of violence began when Iran launched retaliatory drone and missile attacks against US military facilities across four Gulf nations — Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, and Kuwait — in response to nightly American airstrikes on Iranian targets. Hours before Parnell’s Monday confirmation of injuries, the Pentagon had publicly dismissed a bombshell New York Times report claiming the agency concealed dozens of troop casualties as “baseless” and “malicious” falsehoods.

“This is the most transparent Department of Defense in American history,” Parnell told reporters Monday. “We challenge the so-called journalists who wrote these lies — one of whom was recently subpoenaed for violating federal criminal law — to stop their smears against the finest fighting force on Earth.” Notably, the Pentagon’s official public casualty database still listed zero US troops killed or wounded in action for July as of Monday morning, before the department issued a corrected update.

The corrected disclosure reveals three US Army soldiers were killed over the weekend in a ballistic missile strike on Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan: 19-year-old Private Isabella Gonzales from Carrollton, Texas; 25-year-old Lieutenant Tyler James Feehan from Ewa Beach, Hawaii; and a third service member who remains provisionally listed as missing. Separately at Iraq’s Erbil Air Base, 30-year-old Sergeant Michael Emmanuel Swinton from Fayetteville, North Carolina, was killed while another was wounded during a controlled detonation of an incoming Iranian attack drone.

Parnell wrote in a post on X that future updates to casualty figures will be posted to the Defense Casualty Analysis System, the official platform that tracks service member deaths, wounds, illnesses, and injuries for Congress and the US president. He emphasized that the vast majority of the nearly 100 injured troops only suffered minor concussions, and 96 percent have already returned to active duty.

Accusations of casualty cover-ups by the Pentagon during the long-running conflict with Iran are not new, according to reporting from The Intercept, which has documented a pattern of underreporting of harm to US troops for years. The current escalation follows the collapse of the 60-day ceasefire that went into effect after the signing of the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding between the two sides in June.

Tehran has issued a stark warning to Washington, saying it is prepared to confront any American ground invasion, with Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei stating that the country’s leadership is “counting down the minutes to welcome” any invading US forces. Baghaei added that the terms of the Pakistan-brokered June interim deal are “completely clear,” leaving Washington with no excuse for its violation of the agreement. US Central Command confirmed Monday that it has carried out nine straight nights of airstrikes on Iranian targets following the weekend deaths of US troops.

In its early Monday post on X, the US military said the latest round of strikes targeted “Iranian military command centers, air defense and coastal surveillance sites, maritime capabilities, missile and drone launch sites and communications networks.” The statement added that the new wave of attacks is intended to “further diminish Iran’s ability to attack commercial vessels and civilian mariners transiting the Strait of Hormuz,” a critical global chokepoint for oil trade.

US President Donald Trump told reporters Monday that the “very hard” strikes were launched “in honor” of the four fallen American service members. “We hit them very hard again tonight, and we did that in honor of… three great patriots,” Trump said, referring to the three confirmed fatalities in Jordan. He claimed that Iran “has been very, very badly damaged. They’ve lost everything almost – militarily… They’ve got some missiles, some drones, some manufacturing ability, not much.” When asked about the fallen troops, Trump said “we feel very badly,” adding that the troops died fighting to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.

Also on Monday, Iranian state media reported that US strikes hit multiple sites in Bushehr, the southern port city that hosts Iran’s only operational civilian nuclear power plant. “A few minutes ago, several locations in Bushehr city were hit by [the] American enemy’s projectiles,” Bushehr Governor Mohammad Mozaffari confirmed, noting that authorities are still assessing the scope of damage from the attack. On Sunday, Tehran called on the International Atomic Energy Agency to condemn a separate US attack on the under-construction Darkhovin nuclear plant in southwestern Iran. Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation called the strike “a clear violation of international law.”

On Tuesday, a federal appeals court in the United States reversed a lower court’s 2025 order that had required the Trump administration to release Palestinian-American permanent resident Mohsen Mahdawi from immigration detention, delivering a significant blow to free speech advocates and supporters of Palestinian rights.

While the ruling does not explicitly mandate that law enforcement re-arrest Mahdawi, legal analysts warn it establishes a troubling precedent that will narrow pathways for Green Card holders to secure release from immigration detention when challenging their incarceration through claims of violated First Amendment rights.

Mahdawi, 35, was a graduate student pursuing a master’s degree at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs when he was taken into custody by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. His detention came directly after he joined campus protests condemning Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, which the original reporting describes as genocide. The activist, who holds U.S. permanent resident status, was apprehended by ICE in mid-April of last year, while he was attending a routine interview to process his application for U.S. citizenship in Vermont.

Following his detention, Vermont-based U.S. District Judge Geoffrey Crawford granted Mahdawi release on bond, ruling that as a permanent legal resident, he was entitled to the same First Amendment free speech protections extended to U.S. citizens. But the Manhattan-headquartered Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned that ruling this week, holding that Crawford lacked legal jurisdiction over the matter — arguing the case should have been adjudicated exclusively in immigration court.

A Palestinian born in a refugee camp in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Mahdawi relocated to the U.S. a decade ago. In 2023, he co-founded Columbia University’s Palestinian Student Union alongside Mahmoud Khalil, a high-profile leader in the national pro-Palestinian student movement who has also been targeted by the Trump administration. Tuesday’s appeals court decision aligns with a nearly identical ruling issued by another U.S. appeals court earlier this year, which also found the lower court judge that granted Khalil release from detention lacked jurisdiction to hear his case. Like Mahdawi, Khalil is also a Green Card holder.

Notably, neither case has resulted in a formal ruling on the substance of the two activists’ First Amendment claims. But taken together, the dual jurisdiction rulings create a new legal barrier that will make it far more difficult for non-citizens held in immigration detention to challenge their imprisonment on the grounds that their detention violates their constitutional free speech rights.

In July, Khalil filed a federal lawsuit against senior Trump administration officials, as well as conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation and pro-Israel advocacy groups Betar and Canary Mission. The suit seeks financial damages for what it alleges is an unlawful conspiracy targeting pro-Palestinian activists. It claims Khalil’s targeting was motivated by explicit anti-Palestinian bias, and that private anti-Palestinian organizations colluded with senior administration officials to target Khalil and other advocates for Palestinian human rights.

In an unprecedented development for the International Criminal Court (ICC), the court’s 123 member states will convene, The Assembly of States Parties (ASP), the court’s governing body, will hold a secret ballot on Friday at United Nations Headquarters in New York, to decide whether to remove Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan from office over unproven allegations of professional and sexual misconduct. This vote marks the first time in the ICC’s 24-year history that member states have been asked to remove a sitting chief prosecutor from their post, a moment that threatens to shake the foundation of the world’s preeminent international war crimes tribunal.

To pass the motion to dismiss Khan, an absolute majority of 63 votes is required. But even before ballots are cast, the process has been mired in controversy over procedural unfairness and widespread claims of political manipulation. Khan’s legal team has already sounded the alarm that they have been completely barred from participating in Friday’s session, denied the basic right to mount a formal defense of their client ahead of the vote. In a public statement released Tuesday, attorneys Tayab Ali and Sareta Ashraph condemned ASP President for shutting down every formal avenue through which they could address the full assembly, and for pressuring all member states to refuse informal meetings with the legal team.

“The right under the rules to address you on the substantive decision of misconduct has been flatly denied to us,” the statement read. “We know of no court or tribunal in any proper and fair legal system that bars a person facing the gravest professional sanction from being heard.” The result of the secret ballot is expected to be announced publicly by the end of Friday.

The vote centers on disputed findings released by the ASP Bureau last month, which concluded Khan engaged in an inappropriate sexual relationship with a female staff member in his office, identified by CNN as “Sarah”, citing an unacceptable power imbalance between the prosecutor and the complainant. But the Bureau’s findings directly contradict earlier legal and investigative conclusions, and they even diverge from the core of the complainant’s own account. Sarah has publicly stood by her allegation of non-consensual sexual conduct, while Khan has repeatedly and categorically denied any sexual relationship ever took place.

The allegations first triggered an external investigation conducted by the United Nations Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS), which also examined three separate claims that Khan retaliated against ICC staff who raised concerns. After the OIOS compiled its evidence, a three-judge independent panel was tasked with reviewing the probe’s findings to determine if misconduct had been proven under the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard required by court rules. In March, the panel delivered a unanimous ruling: the OIOS investigation failed to establish any misconduct or breach of duty by Khan. The ASP Bureau has also declined to uphold any misconduct findings related to the retaliation claims.

Despite this independent judicial clearing, a majority of ASP Bureau members voted to disregard the panel’s conclusion and move forward with dismissal proceedings, suspending Khan and referring the matter to the full membership for a final vote. Critics have widely panned this decision as proof the entire process has been politicized, a charge that has gained further traction after the Bureau altered long-standing voting rules specifically for this case.

Originally, removal proceedings required a two-stage vote: members would first vote on whether misconduct was proven, then vote separately on whether removal was justified. The Bureau changed the process to a single up-or-down vote on a combined motion that both accepts the Bureau’s finding of serious misconduct and approves Khan’s immediate dismissal. Khan’s legal team has decried this mid-process rule change as fundamentally unlawful and unfair, noting that altering procedures to the disadvantage of an individual facing professional ruin without advanced notice violates basic standards of due process.

Political context has only deepened concerns about the politicization of the process. The disciplinary proceedings against Khan were initiated shortly after he made the landmark decision two years ago to seek arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and three senior Hamas leaders, over alleged war crimes committed during the ongoing Gaza conflict that began in October 2023. Last month, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued extraordinary open threats to “dismantle the ICC brick by brick” if the court continued its work on the Palestine investigation, and the U.S. has already imposed sanctions on most ICC judges and prosecutors including Khan over the Palestine and Afghanistan investigations.

Over 160 Palestinian civil society and human rights organizations released a joint statement last week arguing that the disciplinary process against Khan “has been reduced to a political referendum following the national interests of individual States Parties.” Former European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has also openly criticized the ASP, saying the body is holding a “political vote” to oust Khan despite the judicial panel’s unanimous finding clearing him of all wrongdoing. Borrell emphasized that the campaign against Khan is part of a broader global offensive targeting the ICC’s independence, directly tied to U.S. and other powers’ opposition to the arrest warrants for Israeli and Hamas leaders.

A full timeline of the allegations also undermines claims that Khan rushed the arrest warrant application to distract from the misconduct claims. Multiple independent reports have confirmed that the decision to move forward with the warrants was made six weeks before the allegations against Khan were first made public in May 2024, and the official application was submitted after the first internal ICC investigation into the claims had already been opened and closed due to the complainant’s refusal to cooperate with the court’s own oversight body. The allegations resurfaced publicly in October 2024, leading to a second internal investigation that again closed when the complainant declined to participate, prompting the ASP to commission the external OIOS probe.

If the motion to dismiss Khan passes, the removal would take effect immediately, and new elections for chief prosecutor would be scheduled shortly after. Khan has already confirmed he will appeal any dismissal ruling to the International Labour Organization’s Administrative Tribunal, the independent body that handles employment appeals for ICC staff.

Elected as the third ICC chief prosecutor in the court’s history in February 2021, Khan has pursued an unusually broad agenda during his tenure, opening investigations and pursuing arrest warrants against sitting and former heads of state including Russia’s Vladimir Putin, former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, Myanmar’s junta leadership, and Taliban officials in Afghanistan, in addition to the warrants he is pursuing for Israeli and Hamas leaders. Now, both Khan’s personal future and the institutional independence of the ICC hang in the balance, as member nations prepare to cast a vote that could reshape the court’s legacy for decades to come.