分类： politics

The race to succeed António Guterres as United Nations Secretary-General entered a new phase Friday, as the 15-member UN Security Council gathered for a second informal straw poll to measure support for the expanding field of candidates. Guterres’ second five-year term is set to conclude on December 31, 2026, kicking off a months-long selection process that is being shaped heavily by the power of the Security Council’s five permanent veto-wielding members.

Last month’s first closed-door, secret ballot informal poll placed Costa Rica’s Rebeca Grynspan as the early front-runner among the existing field of contenders. The full roster of candidates already includes Rafael Grossi of Argentina, the current head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, former Chilean president Michelle Bachelet, Maria Fernanda Espinosa of Ecuador, Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett of Guyana, Olara Otunnu of Uganda, and former Senegalese president Macky Sall. Since the first straw poll, Ecuador’s Ivonne A-Baki has also entered the race, expanding the pool of hopefuls vying for the UN’s top leadership role.

Following Friday’s vote, Christina Lassen, Denmark’s UN ambassador and the current holder of the Security Council’s rotating presidency, confirmed that candidates would receive results through their nominating countries’ permanent representatives to the UN, and offered no further public comment on the internal proceedings. Lassen also noted that the council is still weighing when to schedule the next informal survey of support. Zenon Ngay Mukongo, ambassador from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a sitting Security Council member, echoed the widespread uncertainty, telling reporters that “it’s too early to have a consensus” on a leading contender.

The opaque selection process has long drawn criticism from member states that argue it lacks transparency, but the informal straw poll system has remained in place since its creation in the early 1980s, when it was introduced to break a selection deadlocked by multiple vetoes. Under the process rules, each Security Council member votes anonymously, labeling every candidate as either “encourage,” “discourage,” or “no opinion.” Analysts say the results often give low-support candidates clear signal to exit the race voluntarily, though no rule requires them to withdraw. Daniel Forti, an expert with the International Crisis Group, noted ahead of Friday’s vote that “there is a good chance that some nominees realize after (Friday’s) vote that their campaigns have reached the end of the road.”

Unlike in later rounds of voting, all ballots in the early polls share the same color, meaning that the veto power of permanent members (P5) — China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States — is not made visible in these early stages. After several rounds of polling, P5 ballots will switch to a different color, allowing delegates to identify if a candidate faces a veto from one or more permanent members, without revealing which specific power rejected the candidate. Even if a candidate hits the required threshold of nine out of 15 Security Council votes, they still need to avoid a veto from any of the five permanent powers, which are currently deeply divided on a range of global issues that could shape the selection.

Many diplomats have declined to predict a final outcome, citing the outsized influence of the P5 powers. Ahead of the vote, Forti noted that the five veto-wielding nations may hold off on announcing their preferences until later in the process, leaving the door open for additional candidates to join the race. Russia’s UN ambassador Vassily Nebenzia confirmed that possibility Thursday, telling reporters that if the current field deadlocks with no candidate emerging as a clear favorite, “we may see other candidates as well.”

Once a candidate successfully passes the Security Council’s voting and veto requirements, their nomination is sent to the full UN General Assembly for final confirmation. Longstanding UN tradition holds that the secretary-general role rotates between geographic regions, and under that norm, the 2026 selection should produce a leader from Latin America — a region that already accounts for most of the current candidates, though two hopefuls, Sall and Otunnu, hail from Africa.

In a landmark legal development that caps a high-profile privacy battle against one of Britain’s biggest tabloid publishers, the UK High Court has ordered Prince Harry and six other high-profile claimants to hand over an interim payment of £9.5 million ($13 million) to Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL), the publisher of the Daily Mail. The ruling came Friday, weeks after the court dismissed the group’s claims of unlawful information gathering and privacy violations.

The group of claimants, which includes music icon Elton John, his husband David Furnish, and well-known actors Elizabeth Hurley and Sadie Frost, brought forward serious allegations against ANL. They accused the tabloid publisher of orchestrating invasive privacy breaches, including bugging their private vehicles and homes, intercepting confidential phone calls, and gaining unauthorized access to sensitive personal data including bank statements and private medical records. ANL has repeatedly and firmly denied every single one of the allegations put forward by the claimants.

After an 11-week trial that dominated headlines and featured emotional testimony from Prince Harry, Justice Matthew Nicklin released his core ruling on July 7, siding entirely with the publisher. In that decision, Nicklin concluded that the claimants had failed to meet the legal standard to prove their pleaded allegations against ANL. Friday’s ruling addressed the contentious issue of trial costs, following a two-hour additional hearing focused on how much the losing claimants would be required to pay.

A formal summary published by the court confirmed that the interim payment of £9,544,355 must be completed by 4:00 pm BST (1500 GMT) on August 28. Court documents noted that ANL has claimed its total legal costs for defending the case reached approximately £34.5 million as of July 9, a figure Justice Nicklin described as “exceptionally high” and “unprecedented.” The judge also acknowledged that the requested £34.5 million total appeared excessive, raising legitimate concerns over whether all of the costs claimed by ANL were reasonably incurred as part of the defense.

Notably, Friday’s ruling does not set the final total amount of costs that the seven claimants will ultimately be required to pay. The court’s ruling clarified that the current hearing only addressed the framework for assessing costs, not the final recoverable amount. If the two sides cannot reach an agreement on the final total, the question will be decided separately by a specialized costs judge at a later date.

In a key decision that increases the financial liability for Prince Harry and the other claimants, Justice Nicklin rejected their request to assess costs on the more lenient standard basis. Instead, he granted ANL’s request for costs to be repaid on the stricter indemnity basis, a ruling that will significantly increase the share of total defense costs the seven claimants are legally required to cover.

The court also established a clear timeline for any potential next steps in the legal battle: claimants must file any request for permission to appeal the July 7 core ruling by October 2. Following the judge’s July decision dismissing their claims, Prince Harry and co-claimant Doreen Lawrence, a prominent anti-racism campaigner, released a joint statement calling the ruling “a complete and obvious whitewash.”

Six years after stepping down as working members of the British royal family and triggering a national media firestorm, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s reported plan to relocate back to the United Kingdom has thrown a new spotlight on the significant challenges waiting for the Duchess of Sussex.

Meghan, a 45-year-old former American actress who captured global attention with her 2018 fairytale wedding to King Charles III’s younger son, has never shied away from detailing the immense struggles she faced during her time as a working royal. Through high-profile explosive interviews and a tell-all Netflix documentary, she and Harry have repeatedly called out the hostile treatment she received from the British tabloid press — treatment Harry told a UK court earlier this year turned her life into “an absolute misery”.

While Harry has maintained strong ties to the UK, driven by his long-standing charitable commitments and his desire for his two young children to build connections with their British royal relatives, Meghan’s path back to British public life is far more complicated. After years based in the sunny, laid-back lifestyle of Montecito, California, where the couple built their post-royal life, experts say Meghan’s readjustment to UK life poses far more open questions than Harry’s.

“There’s more questions sort of over her and how she re-adapts to the life back in the United Kingdom than about Harry,” said royal historian Ed Owens. Owens added that predicting how she will navigate the transition remains unclear, as “she’s tried successively over the last six years to reinvent her public image to relaunch her brand” with mixed results.

Reports of the planned return first emerged from Australian news outlet news.com.au, and a spokesperson for the couple did not issue a denial when contacted by Agence France-Presse. Multiple sources indicate the move is partially tied to an acting role Meghan has been offered for a UK-based production, marking a potential return to her pre-royal career for the former star of hit US legal drama *Suits*. For Meghan, who saw her US-based career prospects stall after her lifestyle and cooking show *With Love, Meghan* was dropped by Netflix following the end of their content deal, the UK role could open a new professional chapter. Talent manager Jonathan Shalit, chairman of the InterTalent Rights Group, told the Press Association that if Meghan was serious about returning to acting full-time, industry leaders would be eager to meet her.

For the couple’s family, the transition appears to already be underway: their two children, seven-year-old Archie and five-year-old Lilibet, have already been enrolled in a British school, and the pair have reportedly selected a new permanent residence in the country. Experts widely expect Meghan will prioritize family life in her return, noting she has previously spoken publicly about finding joy in routine parenting moments like the daily school run.

Despite any personal or professional opportunities the move may bring, Meghan continues to face deep public unpopularity in the UK that complicates her return. A YouGov public opinion poll released in late July found that 65 percent of British adults hold an unfavorable view of the duchess. Her lifestyle and food brand As Ever remains a regular target of mockery in the British tabloid press, which initially framed her 2018 entry into the royal family as a breath of fresh air for the centuries-old institution before quickly turning on her, portraying her as demanding and unwilling to accept the strict constraints of royal life.

In her 2022 Netflix docuseries, Meghan summed up the hostility she said she faced, saying: “Truth be told, no matter how hard I tried, no matter how good I was, no matter what I did, they were still going to find a way to destroy me.”

Since the couple left the UK in 2018, Meghan has made only rare return visits: most notably for Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee in June 2022 and the late monarch’s state funeral later that same year. A short, private holiday last month that saw the couple meet with King Charles and Queen Camilla was widely interpreted as a sign that icy family relations may be starting to thaw. But Nathalie Weidhase, a media studies specialist at the University of Surrey, warned that Meghan’s permanent return risks reigniting long-simmering conflicts that first pushed the couple to leave, including explosive accusations of institutional racism within the royal household.

Tensions remain raw from Harry’s 2023 memoir *Spare*, in which he accused his older brother Prince William and sister-in-law Catherine, Princess of Wales, of being unwelcoming to Meghan and undermining her attempts to integrate into the family. In a 2021 interview with Oprah Winfrey, Meghan also alleged that an unnamed senior royal had raised repeated questions about the skin color of her unborn child before Archie’s birth.

Still, Owens argues that the couple’s return is not motivated by a desire to restart public conflict with the working royal family. “They are not coming back for another fight with the wider royal family, that’s not their purpose here,” he said. “They want stability for their family … stability for their children.”

Weeks after the deadly Bondi Beach terror attack sparked urgent calls for national gun control overhaul, the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) has become the second jurisdiction to sign on to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s federal gun buyback initiative, leaving the national reform effort fragmented as most state governments continue to reject the plan.

Previously, New South Wales (NSW) was the only region to commit to the scheme, which aims to remove excess and high-risk firearms from civilian circulation. The federal government has now agreed to cover 75% of the ACT’s compensation and administrative costs, alongside 100% of all firearm destruction expenses, to move the initiative forward in the territory.

Five other jurisdictions—Victoria, Queensland, the Northern Territory, and Tasmania—have so far refused to join the national scheme, while Western Australia has opted to proceed with an independent, state-run buyback program of its own. This fragmented participation leaves the Albanese government’s push for uniform national gun reform far from completion, months after the attack that prompted the policy push.

In an official statement announcing the ACT agreement, Albanese emphasized that strengthened national gun laws are a critical step to preventing acts of terror like the antisemitic attack at Bondi Beach from occurring again. “National gun reform is an important part of making sure an antisemitic terrorist attack like we saw at Bondi can’t happen again,” he said. “I thank the ACT government for their collaboration as we work to take unneeded guns off our streets in order to better protect Australians.”

Current data shows the ACT is home to more than 7,000 licensed firearm owners who collectively hold approximately 23,000 weapons. The reforms, which include a hard cap limiting most civilian owners to a maximum of 10 firearms, are projected to affect roughly 14% of the territory’s license holders. The ACT government first tabled the necessary gun control legislation back in February, with provisions that go beyond the ownership cap: the bill also reclassifies certain weapon categories, bans belt-fed firearms entirely, and creates a new criminal offense for possession of digital blueprints used to 3D-print firearms. A second separate piece of legislation will grant Australian police expanded authority to block high-risk individuals from obtaining gun licenses.

Both bills are scheduled for parliamentary debate later this year, and their structure largely aligns with the post-Bondi reforms already advanced in NSW, which adopted a Western Australia-style ownership cap model. ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr noted that the funding agreement with the federal government will boost community safety and support coordinated, cross-jurisdictional firearms reform.

“Reducing the number of high-risk firearms in circulation is a sensible and practical measure to help keep Canberrans safer,” Barr said. “Working with the commonwealth and NSW ensures a more co-ordinated approach to firearms safety. The ACT already has some of the strongest firearms laws in the country, and this agreement supports our ongoing efforts to further reduce the risk of firearms falling into the wrong hands.”
Barr added that the government recognizes the vast majority of local firearm license holders are responsible, law-abiding citizens, noting that the buyback will provide fair compensation to owners while delivering improved public safety outcomes.
ACT Police Minister Marisa Paterson said the territory government will engage closely with local communities as the reforms roll out. “Once we have finalised the agreement we will provide clear information to the community about the process of the buyback, including eligibility, compensation and the process for surrendering the firearms,” she said. “This will be a major undertaking for ACT Policing and the ACT government will continue to work to support them as they progress.”
The territory is also developing a fully digital firearms registry that will integrate with the national gun register, giving frontline police real-time access to up-to-date firearms ownership data across the country.
Across the border in NSW, the first phase of the state’s buyback launched last week with set compensation rates for surrendered weapons: handgun owners receive AU$1000 for a revolver and AU$850 for a semi-automatic pistol, while single-barrel shotguns pay out AU$650 and double-barrel models pay AU$850. Center-fire rifles can fetch up to AU$1000 in compensation. A second phase of the NSW scheme, launching in early 2027, will open a compensation pathway for eligible high-value firearms with market values above AU$3000, with a cap of AU$10,000 per weapon.

In a high-stakes national security operation that underscores growing concerns over foreign interference on Australian soil, federal law enforcement and intelligence officials have brought charges against a 27-year-old dual Russian-Australian citizen accused of plotting to pass sensitive Ukrainian military data to Russian intelligence agencies. The charges were officially filed on Friday, marking the eighth recent case of espionage or foreign interference-related prosecution in the country, and triggering a joint ongoing probe by the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), Australia’s domestic spy agency.

According to official allegations laid out by AFP Commissioner Krissy Barrett at a public press briefing, the accused followed a pre-planned trajectory that began with military-style training on Russian territory in October 2024. After completing the training, he returned to Australia, where he allegedly maintained regular communication with individuals he believed to be connected to Moscow’s intelligence network. In 2025, the man traveled to Ukraine and successfully enlisted in the Ukrainian armed forces, a move that granted him unauthorised access to sensitive details including Ukrainian military personnel rosters, unit deployments, and operational locations, Barrett said.

Investigators allege that once in possession of the classified information, the man made active attempts to transmit the data back to his alleged contacts working on behalf of Russian intelligence. Barrett emphasized that the alleged operation posed a direct, tangible threat to the safety and security of frontline Ukrainian service members, saying, “It is alleged this conduct created a risk to the safety and security of Ukrainian military personnel.” She added that Australian law enforcement has zero tolerance for covert foreign activity within the country’s borders, noting, “We don’t want Australia to become a safe haven for people who are undertaking foreign interference on behalf of other countries.”

Officials confirmed that the accused, who has not been publicly identified and is reported to be unemployed, received no military training within Australia. Law enforcement teams have already executed multiple search warrants as part of the investigation, and Barrett left open the possibility of additional arrests in connection with the case. The accused is scheduled to make his first court appearance at a Brisbane court on the same day charges were filed.

ASIO Deputy Director-General Claire McGuinness issued a sharp warning to foreign governments that engage in covert interference operations, stating, “This case should put regimes perpetrating foreign interference on notice: we have zero tolerance.”

When contacted by Agence France-Presse (AFP) for comment, Russia’s embassy in Canberra said it had only learned of the case through public media reports. The embassy confirmed that as of Friday, no official notification or request for assistance had been received from Australian law enforcement, nor from the accused himself. “We are currently using the available channels and resources to establish the circumstances of the case,” the embassy said in a written statement.

The case comes amid longstanding warnings from Australian security officials about aggressive Russian espionage activity targeting the country. Last year, ASIO Director-General Mike Burgess publicly identified Russia as one of the most aggressive espionage threats to Australian national security. In 2024, Australian federal police charged a married Russian-born couple with espionage on behalf of Moscow, accusing the pair of accessing classified national security material held by the Australian military. Kira Korolev, 40, and her 62-year-old husband Igor, who both hold Russian passports and had lived in Australia for more than a decade before their arrest, had obtained Australian citizenship prior to the charges being laid. Under Australian law, the offence of intentional foreign interference carries a maximum penalty of 20 years behind bars.