Global Pulse

分类： world

  • UN General Assembly endorses a new world map that shows more accurately Africa’s size

    UN General Assembly endorses a new world map that shows more accurately Africa’s size

    In a landmark vote Friday, the United Nations General Assembly gave formal backing to a new global map projection that correctly depicts Africa’s actual geographic size, capping off a years-long advocacy campaign spearheaded by African nations and international geographic justice groups.

    The non-binding resolution, put forward by Togo with unified support from the entire African Union bloc, passed with overwhelming global backing: 164 UN member states voted in favor of the measure, while only the United States cast a opposing vote. Six nations — Serbia, Estonia, Georgia, Lithuania, Moldova, and Ukraine — chose to abstain from the vote.

    The resolution calls on governments and multilateral institutions worldwide to phase out the centuries-old Mercator projection, a mapping standard that has dominated global cartography since the 16th century, in favor of the Equal Earth projection, a modern alternative that geographers and advocacy leaders confirm renders continental proportions with far greater geographic accuracy.

    First developed in 2018, the Equal Earth projection accounts for the Earth’s natural curvature to display all landmasses in their true relative sizes. By contrast, the Mercator projection, originally created by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator to aid 16th-century European maritime navigators, systematically distorts continental sizes: it inflates the apparent area of polar-adjacent landmasses including North America and Greenland, while drastically shrinking the size of equatorial regions including Africa and South America. One striking example of this distortion sees the Mercator projection depict Greenland as roughly the same size as Africa; in reality, Africa is 14 times larger than the Arctic island.

    UN officials emphasized that the resolution does not implement an outright ban on the Mercator projection, nor does it force any entity to adopt the Equal Earth model. Instead, it acts as a formal global endorsement encouraging voluntary adoption of the more accurate projection for general use, from education to public policy and digital mapping.

    Speaking ahead of the vote, Togo’s Foreign Minister Robert Dussey framed the shift as more than a technical cartographic adjustment. “Maps shape our understanding of the world,” Dussey told the assembly. “They guide education, nourish the imagination, and influence collective perceptions.”

    Advocacy groups that led the multi-year campaign to secure UN backing welcomed the resolution as a critical step toward correcting long-standing geographic bias. Africa No Filter, one of the leading organizations behind the push, noted in a statement that the group now aims to see the accurate projection integrated into everyday global systems: “We want to see accurate maps in schools, textbooks, newsrooms, businesses and on the digital platforms billions of people use every day.”

    International leaders also celebrated the vote as a small but meaningful step toward greater geographic and historical accuracy. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot wrote on social platform X following the vote: “Changing the map obviously doesn’t change the world. But correcting a representation that distorts it is already an act of truth.”

    Geographers have long backed the shift away from general use of the Mercator projection, noting that its only practical, valid application remains the original purpose for which it was designed: maritime navigation. Mark Monmonier, a veteran geography professor at Syracuse University, summed up the widespread academic consensus in comments on the resolution: “Outside of that very narrow navigation application, there is no point in using it.”

  • Hussam Abu Safiya: Abducted Palestinian doctor still subject to torture by Israel

    Hussam Abu Safiya: Abducted Palestinian doctor still subject to torture by Israel

    A prominent Palestinian paediatrician detained without charge by Israel since late 2024 has alleged he faces persistent physical abuse, threats, and cruel treatment at the hands of his Israeli custodians, according to accounts shared by his legal representative and human rights advocates.

    Hussam Abu Safiya, the former medical director of Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital, told his lawyer during a recent visit that Israeli guards have repeatedly beaten him across multiple areas of his body—including sensitive regions—using their hands, feet, and batons. The mistreatment does not end with physical violence: Abu Safiya also reported that guards deliberately disrupt his sleep overnight with constant noise and repeated public announcements, a deliberate tactic to inflict psychological distress. He added that the assault took place shortly before his lawyer’s most recent meeting, and that guards have explicitly threatened him against disclosing the horrific conditions of his detention to outside parties.

    Abu Safiya was taken by Israeli forces in December 2024 and has remained in custody without any formal charges or trial. He is being held under Israel’s Unlawful Combatants Law, a piece of legislation that independent United Nations human rights experts have long ruled violates core tenets of international humanitarian and human rights law.

    Back in July 2026, a group of UN special rapporteurs—including leading rights experts Francesca Albanese, Tlaleng Mofokeng, Morris Tidball-Binz, and Ben Saul—issued an urgent call demanding Israel immediately release Abu Safiya and all other healthcare workers being held in arbitrary detention. The experts argued that Abu Safiya’s ongoing detention without due process is not an isolated incident, but rather a reflection of a systematic Israeli campaign targeting Palestinian medical personnel and dismantling Gaza’s already fragile healthcare system. In their statement, they warned that this deliberate targeting is designed to impose conditions that would lead to the collective physical and mental destruction of the Palestinian people living in Gaza.

    The allegations of ongoing abuse have renewed international calls for action, with public health and human rights advocates adding their voices to the demand for Abu Safiya’s immediate release. Dr. James Smith, a lecturer in Humanitarian Policy & Practice at University College London and an emergency physician who completed volunteer deployments in Gaza in both 2023 and 2024, published an op-ed earlier this July repeating the urgent call for Abu Safiya’s liberation, a call shared publicly by independent outlet Middle East Eye on July 9, 2026.

    Physicians for Human Rights, the organization that confirmed the details of Abu Safiya’s account alongside his legal team, has echoed the UN experts’ demands, highlighting that the abuse of a detained healthcare worker represents a fundamental violation of international law that protects medical personnel and detainees in conflict zones. The case continues to draw international scrutiny over Israel’s treatment of Palestinian detainees and its targeting of Gaza’s health infrastructure amid the ongoing regional crisis.

  • Argentine court clears return of Nazi-looted portrait to Jewish dealer’s heir

    Argentine court clears return of Nazi-looted portrait to Jewish dealer’s heir

    BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — A decades-long battle for the restitution of a World War II-looted Italian portrait has reached a pivotal resolution, after an Argentine court greenlit a landmark agreement that will see the artwork returned to the sole surviving heir of its original Jewish owner. The deal comes after the daughter of a fugitive high-ranking Nazi official agreed to surrender all ownership claims to the piece in exchange for avoiding criminal prosecution.

    The 18th-century work, long known as *Portrait of a Lady*, was part of the massive, world-renowned collection assembled by Jacques Goudstikker, a leading Dutch-Jewish art dealer operating in pre-war Europe. When Nazi Germany invaded the Netherlands in 1940, Goudstikker fled Amsterdam with his family, but died in a shipwreck shortly after his escape. His entire collection — numbering more than 1,100 works by masters including Rembrandt and Vermeer — was seized and sold under extreme duress, with a large portion falling into the hands of Nazi leader Hermann Göring, Hitler’s infamous right-hand man who amassed one of the largest stolen art collections of the war.

    The portrait in question ended up in the hands of Friedrich Kadgien, a top Nazi financial official who served as Göring’s adviser on confiscated property sales, foreign currency, and precious metals. Kadgien evaded justice for his Nazi-era crimes after Germany’s defeat, fleeing first to Switzerland before settling in Argentina, where he died in 1978 without ever facing arrest or charges. The painting passed to his daughter, Patricia Kadgien, who lived with her husband Juan Carlos Cortegoso in the coastal Argentine city of Mar del Plata.

    The modern legal saga that led to the portrait’s recovery began in August 2025, when Dutch journalists investigating Kadgien’s post-war escape spotted the artwork hanging above a green velvet couch in an online real estate listing for the couple’s rustic Mar del Plata home. Within hours of the Rotterdam-based newspaper Algemeen Dagblad publishing its discovery, the listing was taken down. Argentine police launched multiple raids on Kadgien and her sister’s Mar del Plata properties, but failed to locate the painting. More than a week later, Kadgien’s legal team turned the artwork over to authorities. Last year, the couple was formally charged with aggravated cover-up, accused of deliberately hiding the looted painting while knowing Argentine and international investigators were actively searching for it.

    Under the terms of the court-approved deal, obtained by the Associated Press, Kadgien and Cortegoso have relinquished all legal claims to the portrait and consented to its transfer to Goudstikker’s heir, Marei von Saher, a Connecticut resident who has spent decades working to recover her family’s stolen art. In exchange, the pair avoid a public criminal trial, and will instead serve two years of court-supervised probation. As part of the agreement, they will also make charitable donations to a local Mar del Plata hospital, and are required to notify authorities of any changes to their residence during the supervision period.

    For decades prior to its recovery, the portrait was formally attributed to Italian Baroque painter Giuseppe Vittore Ghislandi, matching the attribution listed in Goudstikker’s original pre-war collection records; it was even exhibited under Ghislandi’s name in Amsterdam before the Nazi invasion. However, a court-ordered forensic analysis by Argentina’s National Academy of Fine Arts reattributed the work to another 18th-century Italian master, Giacomo Antonio Melchiorre Ceruti. Independent experts have since authenticated the piece as part of Goudstikker’s original collection, and valued it at approximately €250,000 (equivalent to $290,000 U.S.).

    In a nod to the years-long investigation in Argentina, von Saher has agreed to allow the portrait to be exhibited in the country before it is transferred to her custody. During the 2025 raids on Kadgien family properties, police also seized two additional 19th-century paintings, along with a collection of prints and engravings. Argentine authorities have confirmed they are still conducting provenance investigations into these additional works to determine if any were also looted during the Nazi era.

    Associated Press writer Isabel DeBre contributed reporting from Buenos Aires.

  • UAE-linked networks supplying weapons and fighters for Sudan atrocities, UN finds

    UAE-linked networks supplying weapons and fighters for Sudan atrocities, UN finds

    A United Nations-led independent international investigation has delivered a damning new assessment of Sudan’s 16-month-old civil conflict, concluding that cross-border flows of foreign weaponry, advanced military technology, and contracted mercenaries are prolonging the war and enabling widespread attacks on civilian targets that may rise to the level of war crimes. The long-awaited report from the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for Sudan, released publicly Thursday, confirmed there are reasonable grounds to believe a coordinated transnational network has provided the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), Sudan’s main paramilitary opposition group, with a steady stream of arms, logistical backing, combat training, and foreign personnel.

    Investigators traced the sprawling network, which includes private companies, middlemen, and individual actors, to operations based in or transiting through the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Colombia, Chad, Libya, and Somalia. While the UAE has repeatedly denied all accusations of supporting the RSF, extensive independent reporting from Middle East Eye and other open-source research has long linked the Gulf state to arms and supply shipments to the paramilitary group. In recent weeks, global human rights organizations have submitted two formal communications to the International Criminal Court, calling for investigations into the role of foreign actors—specifically senior UAE officials—in aiding and abetting alleged RSF atrocities.

    Beyond the RSF’s foreign support, the UN mission also uncovered preliminary evidence that foreign-provided drone technology has drastically expanded the long-range strike capacity of Sudan’s official Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), allowing the military to hit targets deep in territory held by the RSF. “The consequences of this external support are being felt most acutely by civilians,” said Mohamed Chande Othman, chair of the fact-finding mission. “This external support has not brought greater protection for civilians. Instead, civilians are paying the price through attacks on homes, hospitals, schools, markets and places of refuge.”

    The report’s casualty figures underscore the devastating human cost of these externally enabled attacks: between January and May 2026 alone, more than 1,000 civilians were killed in drone strikes across the country. Investigators documented deliberate strikes on protected civilian infrastructure by both warring parties, including an RSF attack on a kindergarten, displacement camp, and hospital in Kalogi, South Kordofan, in December 2025. Successive RSF drone strikes hit the Nabaa al-Hanan kindergarten, first responders who rushed to the scene, and a nearby rural hospital, killing 114 people—roughly 60 of whom were children—and wounding 35 more. The mission’s investigation found no evidence that either the kindergarten or the hospital was being used for military purposes, stripping the attack of any legal justification under international law. The RSF also carried out a lethal strike on a former International Organization for Migration building that sheltered displaced families in Kulba, killing at least five civilians including multiple children.

    On the SAF side, the mission confirmed the military carried out a major strike on Ad-Da’ein Teaching Hospital in East Darfur on the first day of Eid al-Fitr in March 2026. The attack killed at least 70 people, injured 146 more, and completely disabled the only major referral hospital serving more than two million people in the region. Even after investigating claims that wounded RSF fighters were receiving care at the facility, the mission emphasized that providing medical treatment to injured combatants does not revoke a hospital’s protected status under international humanitarian law. The report also attributed strikes on the Abu Zaima market in North Kordofan and the Yabus market in Blue Nile to the SAF, finding no identifiable military targets at either impact site. Investigators noted that deliberate attacks on clearly civilian sites meet the legal definition of potential war crimes.

    The report dedicated specific analysis to the RSF’s foreign supply lines for its operations in Darfur, where the mission previously found evidence of acts bearing the hallmarks of genocide against non-Arab communities. It traced weapons, personnel, and supplies through interconnected air, maritime, and land routes that pass through Bosaso in Somalia’s Puntland region, southeastern Libya, and Chad. Among the military equipment supplied to the RSF are Chinese-made NORINCO AH-4 howitzers, FK-2000 air defense systems, and CH-95 reconnaissance and strike drones. Investigators noted that much of this materiel matches specifications of equipment previously exported to the UAE, a finding that reinforces existing links between Emirati-linked entities and the RSF supply chain.

    Witness testimony collected by the mission documented repeated cargo flights departing from the UAE, transiting through Chad, before moving supplies and foreign contractors into RSF-controlled territory. While investigators stopped short of holding the Emirati state officially responsible for the network’s actions, they concluded that individuals and entities registered, based, or linked to the UAE play a “significant role” in recruiting, financing, and transporting military contractors and delivering other critical support to the RSF. In its response to investigators, the UAE rejected all allegations of arms supplies or mercenary facilitation, insisting it has remained neutral in the conflict and that internal inquiries found no evidence linking entities under its jurisdiction to mercenary activity in Sudan. Even so, the fact-finding mission urged Emirati authorities to launch more robust investigations and take enforcement action against companies and individuals operating from its territory that support the RSF.

    Colombian contractors emerged as a particularly critical component of the RSF’s advanced weapons operations, the report found. Investigators estimate that as many as 2,000 former Colombian military personnel have been recruited to support the RSF since August 2024. Multiple witnesses confirmed that some of these contractors received combat training at a military-style facility in Ghayathi, UAE, before traveling to Sudan via Somalia, Libya, or Chad. Contractors belonging to a unit calling itself the “Desert Wolves” were present in el-Fasher before, during, and after the RSF’s seizure of the city, operating drones, artillery, and other advanced weapons systems.

    “This support fed into RSF operations in Zamzam camp and later during the takeover of el-Fasher, where the mission documented grave violations and international crimes, including conduct displaying hallmarks of genocide,” said Mona Rishmawi, a member of the fact-finding mission. The mission has previously confirmed that RSF forces and their allied militias committed war crimes and crimes against humanity during the el-Fasher campaign, and that their systematic targeting of non-Arab communities meets the criteria for potential acts of genocide.

    While investigators identified multiple unpublicized foreign individuals and entities linked to the support network, the report only publicly names individuals already sanctioned by the UN Security Council’s Sudan sanctions committee. That list includes retired Colombian colonel Alvaro Andres Quijano Becerra, founder of one of the main recruitment firms in the network, who was based in Abu Dhabi. His wife, Claudia Viviana Oliveros Forero, is accused of coordinating recruitment activities inside Colombia. Both were sanctioned by the Security Council in April for their role in recruiting and deploying former Colombian soldiers to Sudan. The mission confirmed it maintains confidential dossiers on other unnamed suspects, which it will share with international judicial and accountability bodies as needed.

    Colombian authorities have acknowledged that Colombian companies and individuals have recruited contractors for deployment to Sudan, but the state has denied directing or supporting these activities, and the fact-finding mission made no finding of official Colombian state responsibility for the network. Under international criminal law, any individual who knowingly provides practical assistance that substantially contributes to the commission of international crimes can be held liable for aiding and abetting, even if their support was not strictly indispensable to the crime.

    “Accountability cannot stop with those who carry out the attacks,” said mission member Joy Ngozi Ezeilo. Investigators are calling for full inquiries that trace accountability through the entire chain of command, including individuals who order, finance, supply, or otherwise facilitate international crimes in Sudan.

    To curb the ongoing flow of weapons fueling the conflict, the mission urged the UN Security Council to expand the existing partial arms embargo covering only Darfur to the entire territory of Sudan. It also called on all UN member states to halt all transfers of weapons, drones, and military technology to any Sudanese party when there is a substantial risk the equipment will be used to facilitate serious violations of international humanitarian and human rights law.

    Sudan’s ongoing civil war erupted in April 2023, triggered by a bitter power struggle between SAF chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, widely known as Hemedti. The conflict has killed at least tens of thousands of people, displaced more than 13 million from their homes, and pushed more than 19.5 million Sudanese to the brink of famine. The UN and European Union have both described the crisis as the world’s largest humanitarian and displacement emergency currently unfolding. Both warring parties have faced widespread accusations of systematic atrocities, and repeated international diplomatic efforts to negotiate a lasting ceasefire have all collapsed to date.

  • UAE president pardons Egyptian poet Abdul Rahman Yusuf al-Qaradawi

    UAE president pardons Egyptian poet Abdul Rahman Yusuf al-Qaradawi

    In a move that follows widespread international pressure from human rights organizations and United Nations experts, the United Arab Emirates’ president Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan has granted a pardon to Egyptian dissident poet and activist Abdul Rahman Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who had been sentenced to a decade in prison in the Gulf state, Emirati state media has confirmed.

    The pardon, issued Friday, comes less than three months after Qaradawi’s conviction on August 27 by the Cybercrime Circuit of the Abu Dhabi Federal Court of Appeal, which handed down the 10-year custodial sentence alongside a fine of 200,000 Emirati dirhams (equivalent to roughly $54,450).

    A dual Egyptian-Turkish national, Qaradawi was first apprehended by Lebanese security officials in January this year, before being extradited to the UAE to face charges of spreading “fake news” and “disturbing public security”. The charges stem from a social media video he recorded during a visit to Syria, in which he publicly criticized the governments of Egypt, the UAE and Saudi Arabia. Both Cairo and Abu Dhabi submitted formal extradition requests for the activist, and Lebanese authorities ultimately moved to enforce the UAE’s warrant on January 8.

    In the more than 200 days that followed his extradition to the UAE, Qaradawi was held in what human rights outlet Middle East Eye described as “forced disappearance”, with no public confirmation of charges or official indictment. The unacknowledged detention sparked fierce international pushback, with leading rights groups and UN experts repeatedly calling for his immediate release.

    London-based Amnesty International, one of the most vocal organizations calling for Qaradawi’s freedom, warned early in the case that his extradition represented a “flagrant violation of due process guarantees and other international human rights obligations, notably the principle of non-refoulement”. By March, a coalition of UN independent human rights experts issued a public statement raising alarm over Qaradawi’s ongoing unacknowledged detention, calling on UAE authorities to immediately disclose his location and ensure fair legal process.

    The experts also raised pointed concerns over the unusual legal mechanism that enabled the extradition: an arrest warrant issued through the Arab Interior Ministers’ Council (AIMC), a relatively obscure regional security body. The coalition argued the entire process was politically motivated rather than rooted in neutral legal criteria, warning that the AIMC’s cross-border arrest framework “is being abused by some states to silence criticism, shut down dissent, and pursue activists beyond their borders”.

    Amnesty International further confirmed that during Qaradawi’s initial detention in Lebanon, he was interrogated over two separate cases: a 2017 in-absentia verdict from an Egyptian court that convicted him of spreading false information in a widely condemned politically motivated case, and the separate extradition request from the UAE. The 2017 verdict added a five-year prison sentence to Qaradawi’s record in Egypt.

    Reaction to the news of the pardon has been largely positive among human rights advocates, though many have called for urgent action to complete Qaradawi’s release and allow him to reunite with his family. Samar Elhussieny, executive director of the Egyptian Human Rights Forum, welcomed the pardon in comments to Middle East Eye, urging Emirati officials to speed up final administrative procedures. “I hope the procedures will be finalised as soon as possible for him to be reunited with his family,” Elhussieny said. “Then he can live his life with his daughters in peace and safety, and heal from this traumatic experience.”

    Qaradawi, a well-known figure in Arab political and cultural circles, was a prominent public supporter of the 2011 Egyptian revolution that ousted long-time authoritarian president Hosni Mubarak. He also worked on the presidential campaign of former International Atomic Energy Agency head Mohammed el-Baradei, who ran for Egypt’s highest office following Mubarak’s resignation.

    In the years after 2011, Qaradawi was banned from publishing work and appearing on media outlets in Egypt, and joined hundreds of other Egyptian dissidents in self-imposed exile in Turkey. His family has also faced repeated pressure from Egyptian authorities: his sister Ola has been arbitrarily detained in Egypt for four years on unsubstantiated terrorism-related charges, widely seen as retaliation for the activist’s work. Qaradawi’s father, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, one of the most prominent and widely published Islamic scholars in the modern Arab world, died in Qatar in 2022.

  • ‘There was blood everywhere’: Survivors recount US strike on wedding in Iran

    ‘There was blood everywhere’: Survivors recount US strike on wedding in Iran

    What was supposed to be the most joyful milestone in the lives of young Iranian couple Maryam Mallahi and Ziaeddin became one of the deadliest civilian tragedies of the latest round of US military strikes across Iran, leaving five people dead and dozens injured, many of them children.

    On the evening of September 1, around 350 guests gathered in the small coastal community of Kuhestak, located in Sirik County along Iran’s Hormozgan province eastern shore, to mark the couple’s marriage. Following long-held local custom, the celebration was split across two separate venues: male guests assembled at a relative’s residence, while women and children waited for the newlyweds at the bride’s family home. Strings of colored lights were strung across the property, guests dressed in vibrant traditional attire, and anticipation built as the crowd waited for Maryam and Ziaeddin to make their entrance.

    The idyllic scene shattered at approximately 9 p.m., as the United States launched a sweeping new wave of air attacks across southern Iran. Multiple explosions echoed across Kuhestak, a small settlement where the wedding venue sat just 200 meters from a telecommunications tower that was among the initial targets hit. Moments after the first blasts, a projectile tore through the roof of the bride’s single-story home, where dozens of women and children had gathered.

    Majid, a 41-year-old guest at the nearby men’s gathering whose wife and five-year-old child were both wounded in the strike, described the chaos that unfolded in the attack’s immediate aftermath. “We were talking to other guests when suddenly we heard a terrifying sound. At first we thought it was an earthquake. We panicked and ran outside,” he recounted to Middle East Eye. “We rushed toward the bride’s house and saw smoke and fire everywhere. I pulled my wife and my child out from under the rubble. Screams came from every direction, there was blood everywhere, and everyone was scrambling to pull the wounded to safety.”

    Ali Mallahi, the bride’s father and owner of the destroyed home, told reporters he heard a second and third blast, and immediately realized the explosions were centered on his property. “The first explosion completely destroyed the single-story house and left it uninhabitable. The second struck the courtyard, damaging a car and other parts of the property. The house is not a home any more. It is gone,” he said.

    One projectile left a 1.5-meter-deep crater in the floor of one of the home’s main rooms, according to local on-site reporting.

    Mina, a female guest who was trapped under rubble before being rescued and transported to Abolfazl Hospital in nearby Minab, described the casual horror of the moment the attack hit. “We were eating ice cream – the weather is still very hot in Hormozgan this time of year, you know – and we were waiting for the bride and groom to arrive when suddenly we heard this terrifying explosion nearby,” she said. “A second blast hit the house almost immediately and tore a hole through the roof. Bricks and chunks of ceiling and walls came crashing down on us. Everyone was screaming, everyone was calling for help, nobody knew what had happened. I was trapped under the rubble. I was just lucky to get out alive.”

    Nineteen-year-old Zahra, another wounded guest, recalled the gruesome scene inside the home that had been decorated just hours earlier for a celebration. “Every carpet in the house was stained with blood. The shoes, the serving dishes, the lights they had put up for the wedding all had blood on them,” she said.

    Local residents launched a frantic search for survivors before formal emergency response teams could reach the remote site. A Red Crescent rescuer who arrived moments after the strike, who requested anonymity for security reasons, said that uninjured guests and nearby neighbors had already begun pulling survivors from the rubble by the time his team arrived. “People who had escaped the building and others who saw the attack from outside were already trying to pull the wounded and survivors out from under the rubble,” he said. “They were so terrified that we had to spend a large part of our time just calming them down. Of course they were terrified. This was a real tragedy. It took only a few moments for their wedding to turn into mourning.”

    Fifteen ambulances were deployed to the area, with most casualties transported to hospitals in Sirik and Minab, and the most severely injured admitted directly to intensive care units. Iranian officials initially recorded two deaths and 50 injuries, but the toll climbed steadily in the days after the attack. The final confirmed death toll stands at five: 50-year-old Zarkhatoun Taheri, 43-year-old Kolsoum Mallahi-Nezhadnia, 16-year-old Mohammad Mallahi, four-year-old Amir Mohammad Karimi, and 22-year-old Asieh Molaeinejad, who succumbed to her injuries in hospital on Thursday.

    Provincial authorities confirm 68 people were wounded in total, 19 of whom are children under the age of 10. Fatemeh, a lightly injured guest who knew Amir Mohammad and his family, shared the devastating heartbreak of the young boy’s death: “Amir Mohammad was supposed to start preschool in just a few days, when the new school year began. Now his parents have to attend his funeral. The grief is unbearable.”

    To date, no official Iranian or US statement has confirmed exactly what type of weapon struck the wedding venue. Witnesses interviewed by Middle East Eye gave conflicting accounts, with some identifying the projectile as a missile and others saying it came from a drone. Razieh Alishvandi, deputy for international and humanitarian affairs at the Iranian Red Crescent, has officially characterized the incident as a projectile strike on a private residential home during a civilian wedding. All residents and witnesses interviewed confirmed the home was purely residential, with no military, security, or intelligence infrastructure located nearby.

    The Kuhestak strike was part of a broader wave of US attacks across Hormozgan and other regions of southern Iran that night. Iranian officials confirmed additional strikes and explosions in Bandar Abbas, Qeshm, Jask, Konarak, and Chabahar. In Kuhestak, the strike also damaged the local telecommunications tower, portions of the town pier, and critical electricity and communications infrastructure, cutting mobile phone and internet service for Kuhestak and the nearby village of Mishi for several hours.

    For local residents, the attack immediately stirred traumatic memories of a February strike on the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ school in Minab that killed 156 people, most of them children, on the first day of US-Israeli strikes against Iran earlier this year.

    US officials have not publicly confirmed what the intended target in Kuhestak was. US Central Command said in a statement that the night’s strikes targeted Iranian radar, communications, and maritime capabilities, adding that the US military does not intentionally target civilians. US Vice President JD Vance later stated that Washington was launching an investigation into the incident.

    Maryam and Ziaeddin survived the attack only by chance: neither had arrived at the bride’s home when the projectile struck. While the couple escaped physical harm, all of the dead and injured are close relatives, friends, and guests they had invited to celebrate their marriage. A close friend of the bride, who requested anonymity, said Maryam remains in deep shock and fragile mental health. “Maryam is in a very bad state – very, very bad,” she said. “She had dreamed about this night for so long. She wanted to celebrate the beginning of her married life with her family and friends. Now her mental state is so fragile that we honestly do not know how she will cope with this tragedy.”

  • UN votes to adopt new world map showing Africa’s true size

    UN votes to adopt new world map showing Africa’s true size

    In a landmark vote that addresses centuries of geographic bias in global mapping, the United Nations General Assembly has backed a plan to replace the ubiquitous but deeply flawed Mercator projection with a more geographically accurate map that properly reflects Africa’s true scale. The initiative, dubbed the “Correct the Map” resolution, was introduced by the West African nation of Togo and earned unified support from the 55-member African Union ahead of the vote. When the final tally was counted, 164 member states had thrown their support behind the measure, with major European powers France and the United Kingdom among the backers. The United States stood alone as the only country to vote against the resolution, while six other nations abstained from the vote.

    For more than 450 years, the Mercator projection has dominated classroom walls, atlases, and popular world maps across the globe. Created in 1569 by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator, the projection was originally designed to aid European mariners in navigating transoceanic trade routes and exploration voyages. Its enduring popularity stems from its unique ability to preserve straight lines of constant compass bearing, a feature that made it invaluable for 16th-century navigation. However, the projection carries a well-documented flaw: an unavoidable distortion inherent to flattening a three-dimensional spherical globe onto a two-dimensional plane. To preserve the straight-line navigation property, Mercator’s design systematically inflates the size of landmasses near the poles while drastically shrinking the apparent area of continents and countries near the equator.

    The most striking distortion of the projection shrinks Africa to such an extent that it appears roughly the same size as Greenland on most Mercator maps, even though Africa’s actual land area is 14 times larger than the Arctic island. Proponents of the change have long argued that this persistent misrepresentation is not just a trivial geographic error, but a distortion of global perceptions that undermines recognition of Africa’s geopolitical importance, economic potential, and development needs. By systematically minimizing the continent’s size on maps, critics argue, the Mercator projection has contributed to a longstanding underappreciation of Africa’s role in global affairs and the scale of challenges and opportunities it faces.

    The solution adopted by the UN and African Union is the Equal Earth projection, a modern equal-area map created by a team of independent cartographers in 2018. Unlike the Mercator projection, which prioritizes navigation shape over area accuracy, the Equal Earth projection preserves the proportional size of all landmasses across the globe, ensuring that Africa, South America, and other equatorial regions appear at their true size relative to northern landmasses such as Europe and North America. In February of this year, all 54 African Union member states formally adopted the Equal Earth projection, citing its ability to fairly represent all continents while retaining the visual clarity needed for general use.

    Speaking ahead of Friday’s General Assembly vote, Togolese Foreign Minister Robert Dussey framed the initiative as a matter of global equity. “A fair world begins with a fair map,” Dussey told Reuters news agency. In an earlier briefing to UN delegates, he expanded on this reasoning, noting that maps are never neutral political or cultural objects. “A map is never neutral. It shapes perceptions, influences how the place of peoples and continents in the world is understood,” Dussey explained.

    While the non-binding resolution does not legally require all UN member states to alter their official maps, policy analysts and cartographers expect it to drive widespread changes to mapping standards across international institutions, educational systems, and global publications in the coming years. The vote marks a historic step toward addressing long-standing geographic bias that has shaped popular understanding of the world for centuries.

  • Argentine couple to return Nazi-looted painting to rightful owner

    Argentine couple to return Nazi-looted painting to rightful owner

    Eighty years after it was looted by Nazi forces from a Jewish art collector’s collection, a long-missing late-baroque masterpiece has been ordered returned to its rightful lineage following a surprising discovery hidden in plain sight in coastal Argentina.

    The artwork, *Portrait of a Lady* (also referred to as *Contessa Colleoni*), was first spotted by pure chance in August 2025: a Dutch newspaper, Algemeen Dagblad, identified the painting in public listing photos posted by an estate agent advertising a home for sale in Mar del Plata, a popular coastal town just outside Buenos Aires. The canvas was hanging unassumingly above a green sofa in the living room of Patricia Kadgien, daughter of former Nazi fugitive Friedrich Kadgien.

    Friedrich Kadgien, who fled to Argentina after World War II, was a senior adviser to Hermann Göring—Adolf Hitler’s second-in-command, who oversaw the mass plunder of thousands of artworks across occupied Europe. The portrait was one of more than 1,000 pieces stolen from the collection of Jacques Goudstikker, a prominent Jewish Dutch art dealer, following the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands in 1940.

    After the painting was identified, authorities launched a search of Kadgien’s property in September 2025 that failed to turn up the artwork. Kadgien and her husband Juan Carlos Cortegoso were subsequently charged with concealment of stolen property and placed under house arrest. On Friday, however, a court in Mar del Plata reached a negotiated resolution: all criminal proceedings against the couple have been suspended in exchange for their full cooperation to return the painting and a financial settlement.

    Under the terms of the agreement between Kadgien’s family, prosecutors, and Goudstikker’s heirs, Kadgien and Cortegoso will surrender all legal claims to the artwork. They have also agreed to donate 4.8 million Argentine pesos (equivalent to approximately £2,356 or $3,185) to local public hospitals in exchange for avoiding prosecution for concealing the stolen piece.

    The sole surviving heir to Goudstikker’s collection is Marei von Saher, Goudstikker’s daughter-in-law. Per reporting from Argentine newspaper *Clarin*, von Saher plans to place the portrait on temporary loan to Buenos Aires’ Holocaust Museum, where it will be displayed to raise public awareness of Nazi-looted art and the ongoing work to return stolen cultural property to its rightful owners. Von Saher has long reaffirmed her family’s commitment to the recovery effort, stating previously that the goal remains “to bring back every single artwork robbed from Jacques’ collection, and to restore his legacy.”

    Art historical scholarship on the portrait has been divided since its recovery. The work is broadly attributed to late-baroque Italian artist Giuseppe Ghislandi, though some experts have argued it may instead be the work of Giacomo Ceruti, another prominent Italian painter from the same historical period.

  • Russia hits Ukrainian security headquarters in drone attack, Zelensky says

    Russia hits Ukrainian security headquarters in drone attack, Zelensky says

    In a targeted strike that has raised tensions ahead of planned US-mediated peace negotiations this weekend, a Russian drone struck the central Kyiv headquarters of Ukraine’s top domestic security agency, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has confirmed. The attack took place on Friday afternoon, with the unmanned aerial vehicle striking directly at a room assigned to Oleksandr Poklad, head of the SBU’s operations in the building. As of Friday evening, it remained unclear whether Poklad was present in the facility at the time of the impact, but Zelensky said he had already spoken with the security chief to order a proportional, measurable response to the assault.

    Zelensky confirmed in a Telegram statement that the drone was intentionally aimed at the senior SBU official’s office, a development that military analysts say points to improving accuracy in Russia’s latest generation of attack drones. The strike also fuels speculation that Moscow is ramping up offensive operations ahead of the scheduled diplomatic talks, in a bid to strengthen its negotiating position. “All emergency services are on the scene. Everyone affected will receive the necessary assistance,” Zelensky wrote in his public update. He added: “I instructed Poklad to deliver an appropriate, tangible response and, where possible, one that mirrors this strike, to the Russians once everything is ready. Our military will support this response.”

    Visual footage of the attack circulated widely across social media and news platforms, showing thick black smoke billowing from two upper-floor windows on the building’s facade. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko confirmed that five people were injured in the strike, though he did not specify whether the casualties were SBU staff inside the building. A nearby café, part of a popular local chain, suffered significant structural damage, and one civilian customer was transported to a local hospital for treatment. Stanislav Zavertaylo, co-owner of the damaged café, told the BBC that this was the third location of his chain to be destroyed or damaged since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022. “Now I’m in shock because there’s a lot of damage. All the windows are broken, there’s a lot of glass, garbage,” he said.

    In a separate announcement released Friday, Russia’s defense ministry confirmed it had also targeted a cargo vessel in the Ukrainian port of Chornomorsk and a commercial tanker near Odesa in coordinated strikes overnight. Over the past several weeks, Moscow has significantly escalated its daytime airstrike campaign against key Ukrainian infrastructure and government targets, increasingly deploying faster, jet-powered drones that are far more difficult for Ukrainian air defense systems to intercept. It has not yet been confirmed what type of drone was used in the SBU headquarters attack.

    This successful strike on a high-profile central Kyiv government building marks a rare breakthrough for Russian offensive operations. Prior to this attack, key Ukrainian government facilities in the capital had remained largely unharmed despite repeated Russian attempts to target administrative and security infrastructure amid the Kremlin’s ongoing military campaign. The SBU headquarters is located just a short distance from Kyiv’s iconic St Sophia Cathedral, the oldest standing building in the capital, and the agency plays a central role in Ukraine’s war effort, leading deep cross-border strikes against Russian military and infrastructure targets.

    Witnesses in the area described the attack unfolding during a routine air raid alert, with a brief high-pitched whine of the incoming drone followed by a deafening explosion that sent shockwaves across nearby neighborhoods and sent plumes of smoke rising over the city skyline. Ukrainian Foreign Ministry representative Andriy Sybiha condemned the attack as a deliberate act of escalation timed to undermine ongoing diplomatic efforts. “Moscow launched this strike during a renewed push for peace – laying bare its true rejection of diplomacy,” Sybiha said, adding that the assault “is a major escalation that demands resolute responses.”

    The strike comes just days ahead of a planned visit by US mediators Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, who are set to travel to both Moscow and Kyiv this weekend as part of the Trump administration’s ongoing efforts to broker a ceasefire and end the 3-year-old full-scale war. According to Axios, which cited anonymous senior US officials, the envoys will first meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Saturday, before traveling to Kyiv for talks with Zelensky on Sunday. Witkoff and Kushner have spearheaded President Donald Trump’s peace initiative since he took office, though the pair have yet to secure a breakthrough on a lasting settlement.

  • At least 37 killed by toxic fumes during alleged petrol theft in Nigeria, reports say

    At least 37 killed by toxic fumes during alleged petrol theft in Nigeria, reports say

    A deadly incident in Nigeria’s oil-rich southern region has left at least 37 people dead after they inhaled toxic fumes while siphoning fuel from an illegal pipeline tapping operation in Rivers State, according to the Youths and Environmental Advocacy Centre (YEAC), a local environmental and community advocacy group.

    YEAC reports that more than 100 people arrived at Okari Jetty in Okrika under the cover of darkness aboard small vessels to collect the stolen refined fuel, and dozens remain unaccounted for following the disaster. Local eyewitness accounts confirm that many victims collapsed after exposure to the toxic fumes, with some falling into the adjacent Bonny River and others rushed to nearby medical facilities for emergency care. Nigeria’s police force confirmed to the BBC that a formal investigation is currently underway to confirm the exact number of casualties and establish a full timeline of the incident.

    Illegal oil theft and pipeline tapping have plagued the Niger Delta, Nigeria’s core oil production hub, for decades. Rivers State is one of several key producing states that make up the vast coastal Niger Delta region, a landscape of mangrove swamps and wetlands that holds the bulk of Nigeria’s massive oil and natural gas reserves. For generations, criminal networks have illegally tapped into operational pipelines to siphon crude oil and refined petroleum products, which are then either sold directly on the black market or processed at unregulated illegal refineries across the region.

    YEAC confirmed that the fatal incident involved exposure to what local communities call “Indorama fuel”, a grade of refined Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), the standard gasoline used for road vehicles across Nigeria. Nigeria’s Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) has issued a public statement urging both media outlets and local residents to only rely on officially verified information as security agencies work to piece together the details of the early Thursday morning incident. The NSCDC also reiterated its longstanding condemnation of illegal pipeline tapping and oil siphoning, warning that these criminal activities pose severe, ongoing threats to human life, local ecosystems, and Nigeria’s already fragile national economy. Environmental campaigners have long echoed this warning, noting that rampant oil theft and illegal refining are responsible for widespread, long-lasting ecological damage across the Niger Delta, destroying fishing grounds and contaminating drinking water supplies for local communities.

    In recent years, Nigeria’s federal government has ramped up security operations targeting illegal oil theft networks across the region. Speaking on Thursday to Nigerian broadcaster Channels TV, Captain Abiodun Folorunsho, director of naval information, issued a stark warning to oil thieves: that there is no safe hiding place for criminal actors across the Niger Delta’s waterways and coastal areas, which are continuously patrolled by the Nigerian Navy. “Their days are numbered, and if we catch you, of course, we’ll ensure that you face the law,” Folorunsho said.

    Alongside expanded Nigerian Navy maritime patrols, the Nigerian military and other security agencies have carried out repeated raids on illegal oil theft operations and refineries, where criminal groups often exploit the region’s dense, remote mangrove forests to avoid detection.

    The crackdown on oil theft comes as Nigeria works to reverse years of declining production caused by rampant theft, widespread insecurity, and chronic underinvestment in the country’s oil sector. The government has set an ambitious target to boost national oil production to roughly three million barrels per day by 2030, a goal that relies heavily on improved security in the Niger Delta and broad regulatory reforms to attract much-needed foreign direct investment to the sector.