Global Pulse

分类： world

  • Leaders keep a wary eye on Belarus after Russia’s biggest missile attack of the year on Ukraine

    Leaders keep a wary eye on Belarus after Russia’s biggest missile attack of the year on Ukraine

    KYIV, Ukraine – As recovery crews swept shattered glass from Kyiv’s sidewalks and assessed damage to residential blocks, public infrastructure and government compounds Monday, two overlapping diplomatic and military developments shifted global attention to the northern flank of the Russia-Ukraine war: Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, Belarus’ exiled opposition leader, made her first ever visit to the Ukrainian capital, while world powers raced to dissuade Belarus’ authoritarian leadership from formally joining Moscow’s full-scale invasion.

    Monday’s visit marked a landmark moment for Tsikhanouskaya, who fled Belarus in 2020 after disputing the contested re-election of longtime strongman Alexander Lukashenko, who has held unchecked power in the country for over 30 years. Her arrival by train came just 24 hours after French President Emmanuel Macron held a landmark phone call with Lukashenko – their first direct conversation since early 2022, just after Russia launched its large-scale invasion of Ukraine.

    According to a senior anonymous French presidential aide, Macron used the call to underscore the severe strategic risks Belarus would face if it allowed itself to be pulled deeper into Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. The call came at Paris’ initiative, per a brief official statement from Lukashenko’s press office, which only noted that the two leaders discussed regional security dynamics and Belarus’ bilateral ties with the European Union and France.

    Tsikhanouskaya told the Associated Press that France’s core goal in outreach to Lukashenko is clear: to prevent Belarus from being dragged into open participation in the conflict. “The main goal — to warn Lukashenko that dragging Belarus into the war would be unacceptable,” she said. She added that Lukashenko’s regime has long been aware of the steps required to normalize relations with the EU, but instead has continued to back Russia’s campaign with hybrid attacks, nuclear posturing, and threats to the broader Eastern European region.

    Macron also held a separate call Sunday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who has issued increasingly urgent warnings in recent days that Russia could use Belarusian territory as a launchpad to open a new northern front against Ukraine. Belarus already allowed Russian forces to use its territory to launch the initial incursion into northern Ukraine in 2022, and Lukashenko relies heavily on the Kremlin for economic support including cheap energy supplies, financial loans, and political backing. Just last week, Moscow and Minsk held joint nuclear military drills, amplifying regional anxiety over deeper Belarusian involvement.

    The diplomatic maneuvering comes as Ukraine reels from Sunday’s massive Russian missile barrage – the largest single air attack on the country this year. The strike included the first widely confirmed use of Russia’s new Oreshnik hypersonic ballistic missile, a weapons system President Vladimir Putin has publicly touted for its ability to reach targets at speeds of up to Mach 10, far faster than most conventional air defense systems can intercept, and its capacity to carry multiple independent warheads.

    Zelenskyy confirmed Monday that Ukrainian intelligence received advance warning from U.S. and European partners that Russia planned to deploy the Oreshnik in an upcoming strike. Even with advance notice, the attack left a wide trail of damage and casualties across Kyiv: at least 87 people were wounded, including three children, with 21 people admitted to hospitals for ongoing care. Structures across the capital, including residential buildings, schools, a busy local market, and facilities near government administrative centers, suffered significant damage. By Monday, shattered glass and debris still littered sidewalks across the city as clean-up crews worked to restore normal operations.

    More than two and a half years into Russia’s full-scale invasion, Russian forces are engaged in a grueling, costly attritional campaign along the 1,000-mile front line that stretches primarily across eastern and southern Ukraine. Compounding Ukraine’s defense challenges, stockpiles of U.S.-origin air defense interceptors have been depleted amid rising American military commitments to other conflict zones including the Iran-linked Israel-Hamas war, leaving Ukrainian air defenses stretched thinner and less able to intercept every incoming Russian missile and drone.

    Diplomatic efforts led by the U.S. to de-escalate the conflict and reach a ceasefire have also hit a stalemate, with little meaningful progress toward peace talks in recent months. The international community now maintains a close watch on Belarus, as leaders weigh the risk that the country could open a new front that would force Ukraine to divert critical military resources from its current front lines.

  • Pope urges ‘disarming’ of artificial intelligence in major manifesto

    Pope urges ‘disarming’ of artificial intelligence in major manifesto

    In a landmark, long-awaited address on the accelerating growth of artificial intelligence, Pope Leo XIV, the first American pontiff to lead the global Catholic Church, released his first-ever encyclical Monday at the Vatican, using the authoritative Church teaching document to issue a urgent call for the full “disarming” of AI and warn of hidden systemic harms that threaten human dignity.

    Joined on stage by top AI ethics leaders, including a co-founder of major U.S. AI developer Anthropic, the pontiff used the text *Magnifica Humanitas* (translated Magnificent Humanity) to reject modern arguments for military use of AI, declaring that the long-held concept of “just war”—recently cited by the Trump administration to justify conflict—has become entirely outdated. Pope Leo, who has already publicly clashed with the White House over the Iran war and the use of religious doctrine to legitimize armed conflict, drew a clear line on lethal AI systems, stressing that it can never be morally acceptable to hand life-or-death lethal decisions over to algorithmic systems.

    The pope’s stance aligns with the public position of Anthropic, which has framed itself as an industry leader in ethical AI development. The firm is currently locked in a legal dispute with the U.S. military over its refusal to allow its technology to be repurposed for lethal autonomous weapons or mass surveillance programs. While Pope Leo did not name U.S. President Donald Trump directly in the text, he left no ambiguity about his position: “It is important to reaffirm that the ‘just war’ theory, which has all too often been used to justify any kind of war, is now outdated. No algorithm can make war morally acceptable.”

    Beyond military risks, the pontiff unpacked the broader social and economic inequities amplified by the AI boom. Citing United Nations projections that the total value of the global AI economy could reach $4.8 trillion by 2030—a 25-fold increase over a decade—he noted that almost all of this wealth is concentrated in the hands of a tiny elite. Defining what “disarming AI” actually means, he wrote: “Disarming AI means freeing it from the mentality of ‘armed’ competition. It does not mean rejecting technology, but preventing it from dominating humanity.” He condemned the global mad dash for more powerful algorithms and larger proprietary datasets, driven exclusively by the pursuit of geopolitical advantage and commercial monopoly, and argued that AI must be redesigned to be human-centered, universally accessible, and open to ongoing public debate.

    Making AI ethics a defining cornerstone of his early papacy, Pope Leo wove references to global cultural touchstones throughout the 70-page text, drawing comparisons to the thoughts of Greek philosopher Plato, thematic elements of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, and even narrative insights from a character in J.R.R. Tolkien’s *The Lord of the Rings*. The encyclical was signed on May 15, the 135th anniversary of Pope Leo XIII’s groundbreaking 1891 encyclical that established the Catholic Church’s modern social doctrine amid the upheaval of the first Industrial Revolution— a deliberate parallel drawn to frame AI as the defining ethical challenge of the current industrial age.

    In one of the text’s most striking passages, Pope Leo warned that the AI revolution is already creating insidious “new forms of slavery” that are hidden from public view. “Nothing in the world of AI is immaterial or magical,” he wrote. Every seamless, instant response that users interact with relies on the unseen, exploitative labor of millions of people around the world: from content moderators forced to consume violent and traumatic material on a daily basis, to child laborers mining the rare earth minerals that power AI data centers. These workers, he noted, are left “scarred, injured and worn down so that computational flow may continue uninterruptedly.”

    The pontiff added that greater technological efficiency and commercial innovation can never justify a deliberately hidden global chain of exploitation, and called for urgent action to cut AI’s large carbon footprint and protect the planet, which he described as humanity’s “common home.” The release of *Magnifica Humanitas* follows years of careful study and consultation by the Vatican on AI ethics; as early as 2020, the Holy See launched the Rome Appeal for an AI Ethic, which laid out early principles requiring new technologies to uphold fundamental human dignity. AI and ethics experts now widely predict the encyclical will carry global influence comparable to Pope Francis’s 2015 *Laudato Si*—the landmark climate manifesto that reshaped global political and public discourse around climate action.

  • Pope calls for robust regulation of AI in manifesto that ponders the future of humanity

    Pope calls for robust regulation of AI in manifesto that ponders the future of humanity

    On Monday, Pope Leo XIV, the first American-born pontiff in history, released a groundbreaking encyclical *Magnifica Humanitas* (Magnificent Humanity) that outlines sweeping calls for robust, enforceable regulation of artificial intelligence, demanding the technology’s developers prioritize the global common good over private profit amid growing anxiety over AI’s expanding impact on labor, warfare and human dignity.

    This first major teaching document of Leo’s pontificate has been highly anticipated since his election, when he immediately identified unregulated AI development as the single greatest contemporary challenge facing humanity. Tying his argument to the Catholic Church’s long tradition of social teaching, Leo frames the AI revolution as a defining modern test comparable to the Industrial Revolution that prompted Pope Leo XIII’s landmark 1889 encyclical *Rerum Novarum* — a text that laid the foundation for modern Catholic thought on workers’ rights and the limits of unregulated capitalism. The new encyclical was intentionally signed on May 15, the 135th anniversary of his namesake’s groundbreaking work, positioning it as the latest update of that teaching to address 21st-century technological change.

    At its core, the document denounces what Leo calls the “culture of power” driving the global AI race, calling out particular risks from the concentration of AI development and vast troves of user data in the hands of a tiny cohort of private tech firms. Leading AI developers OpenAI and Anthropic rank as the second and third most valuable private companies in the U.S., with valuations in the hundreds of billions of dollars that exceed the total GDP of many sovereign nations. Leo argues that this concentration of power poses unique harm to children and the world’s most vulnerable populations, writing that abstract ethical commitments from tech firms are insufficient: “It is not enough to invoke ethics in the abstract; robust legal frameworks, independent oversight, informed users and a political system that does not abdicate its responsibility are required. A more moral AI is not enough if that morality is determined by a few.”

    One of the encyclical’s most provocative stances comes on the use of AI in military affairs, where Leo declares it “not permissible” to cede irreversible, lethal decision-making authority to AI systems. He argues that AI-driven remote warfare has accelerated the “normalization of war” by desensitizing global publics to the human cost of conflict, and notes that the Church’s centuries-old “just war” framework, which outlines when the use of force is morally justified, is now outdated in the face of modern AI-enabled weapons technology. Leo demands full transparency and accountability from developers, requiring that the full chain of command for any AI-assisted strike remain traceable to human decision-makers. This position puts the pontiff in direct conflict with the Trump administration, which has aggressively pushed to deregulate AI development and expand military use of the technology.

    The encyclical also addresses growing public anxiety over AI’s impact on the global workforce, arguing that the pursuit of corporate profit can never justify mass displacement of human workers. “The pursuit of greater profits cannot justify choices that systematically sacrifice jobs, because the human person is an end, not a means, and the economic order must remain subordinate to human dignity and the common good,” Leo wrote. In an unexpected add-on to the document, the pontiff issued the first ever papal apology for the institutional role past popes played in legitimizing chattel slavery, acknowledging that previous popes explicitly granted European monarchs authority to subjugate and enslave non-Christian peoples — a step no prior pontiff has ever publicly taken.

    The encyclical’s official launch event at the Vatican included a appearance from Anthropic co-founder Christopher Olah, a choice that drew scrutiny given the firm’s ongoing high-profile legal battle with the Trump administration. In February, the administration banned all U.S. federal agencies from using Anthropic’s technology after the company refused to grant the U.S. military unrestricted access to its AI systems, and Anthropic has since sued the administration over the order. While critics have framed the invitation as an implicit papal endorsement of the firm, Vatican observers note it aligns with a 10-year Vatican effort to engage Silicon Valley stakeholders in dialogue about AI’s human impact. Brian Boyd, U.S. faith liaison for the nonprofit Future of Life Institute, characterized the invitation not as an endorsement, but as a recognition of Anthropic’s outsize role in the global AI race, noting the company has centered safety and risk mitigation in its public messaging and has demonstrated a willingness to engage with ethical questions.

    Across academia, tech and Catholic ethics circles, experts broadly agree that *Magnifica Humanitas* is poised to become a defining benchmark for the global AI policy debate, offering a framework that will guide policymakers, researchers and the general public as the technology continues to evolve at a breakneck pace. Paolo Carozza, a Notre Dame Law School professor and chair of Meta’s independent oversight board, called the document “a defining document for our era, a profound and prophetic document.” He added, “Pope Leo is offering a clear, comprehensive, and coherent voice urging us to take responsibility for constructing a world in which technology will serve humans rather than degrade them.” Taylor Black, a Microsoft AI executive and director of the Catholic University of America’s AI institute, noted the text pushes even AI insiders to confront fundamental questions about humanity’s role in an increasingly AI-driven world: “It lends itself to people who are at the forefront of these tools and able to see the incredible things that they’re able to do, to have questions about their own ‘What does it mean to be human?’”

    The release comes amid a period of intensifying global debate over AI’s future, with the technology sparking both utopian hopes for transformative human progress and deep existential fears that it will erase millions of high-wage jobs, erode human cognition and concentrate unprecedented power in the hands of a small elite. Pope Leo closes the encyclical with a direct appeal to AI developers and global policymakers: hit pause on the breakneck AI race, reflect on the long-term impacts of the technology, and commit to building AI that serves all of humanity, not just private profit and state power.

  • Gunman shot dead near White House

    Gunman shot dead near White House

    On a Saturday evening in downtown Washington D.C., a violent shooting incident unfolded just blocks from the White House, triggering an immediate security lockdown and leaving one assailant dead and an uninvolved civilian fighting for life, according to statements from United States law enforcement authorities.

    The chaos began when 21-year-old suspect Nasire Best positioned himself at the intersection of 17th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue — a high-traffic area steps from the secure White House complex — before pulling a firearm from his carry bag and opening fire, the U.S. Secret Service confirmed in an official post on the social platform X. In response, on-site Secret Service agents returned fire, striking the suspect. He was rushed to a nearby medical facility where he was later pronounced dead.

    A bystander was also hit by gunfire during the exchange and remained in critical condition as of the latest updates. Law enforcement officials noted that investigators have not yet determined whether the civilian was struck by bullets fired by Best or by the returning rounds from Secret Service agents. The agency confirmed no officers were harmed in the incident, and that former President Donald Trump, who was staying at the White House at the time, was never in danger and his schedule was unaffected. Trump had originally planned to spend the weekend at his golf club in New Jersey, but altered his plans a day prior to remain in Washington.

    Details released publicly later confirmed Best had a documented prior encounter with law enforcement near the White House. Court records from the District of Columbia show Best was arrested in July 2025 after he attempted to enter an unauthorized White House checkpoint, ignored repeated orders from officers to stop, claimed he was Jesus Christ, and explicitly stated he wanted to be taken into custody. Following an initial court hearing, a Pretrial Stay Away Order was issued — a standard protective measure that barred Best from entering the White House perimeter before his trial. When Best failed to appear for a scheduled follow-up hearing in August 2025, a bench warrant was issued for his arrest over documented noncompliance with court terms.

    In the hours after the shooting, evidence of the confrontation remained visible to onlookers outside the White House complex: yellow crime scene tape stretched across the sidewalk, investigators placed dozens of orange evidence markers to catalog bullet casings and other evidence, and discarded emergency medical supplies including purple surgical gloves and first aid kits were left at the scene. Journalists covering the White House who were on the North Lawn when shots rang out described a sudden, chaotic evacuation: multiple reporters said they heard what sounded like dozens of gunshots before being ordered to run to the secured press briefing room for shelter.

    “I was in the middle of taping a social media video from the White House North Lawn when we heard the shots,” ABC News White House correspondent Selina Wang told media outlets after the lockdown. “It sounded like dozens of gunshots. We were told to sprint to the press briefing room where we are holding now.”

    The incident marks the third shooting-related security scare near the U.S. president within a single month. Prior incidents included a weapons-related event at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in April and another shooting near the Washington Monument earlier in May.

    Federal law enforcement teams have led the investigation into the attack. FBI Director Kash Patel confirmed in a social media statement that FBI personnel were deployed to the scene immediately and that the agency would release new public updates as more information becomes available.

  • Iranians find ‘peace and safety’ in Mecca during hajj

    Iranians find ‘peace and safety’ in Mecca during hajj

    For thousands of Iranian pilgrims gathering in Mecca for this year’s annual hajj, the sacred Islamic journey has offered a rare, precious escape from the chaos of devastating conflict unfolding back home.

  • In Sudan’s war economy, gold keeps flowing as miners risk mercury and collapse

    In Sudan’s war economy, gold keeps flowing as miners risk mercury and collapse

    Perched across the arid, mountainous terrain of northern Sudan’s Dalgo Mahas, a small crew of artisanal gold miners moves slowly across the landscape. Each man carries a handheld metal detector, sweeping the dry earth for traces of the precious metal that has come to define their nation’s tragedy. One kneels, driving a simple digging tool into the dirt, working without hard hats, respiratory protection, or any of the most basic safety protocols that govern formal mining operations around the globe.

    These unregulated small-scale miners are just a tiny fraction of the tens of thousands of Sudanese who have turned to informal gold extraction in recent years, a sector that has become both a lifeline for desperate families and the core driver of the devastating civil war that has pushed millions to the brink of famine.

    Sudan’s reliance on gold traces back to 2011, when the secession of South Sudan stripped the country of more than two-thirds of its historic oil revenues. Overnight, the nation’s economy was left reeling, and gold quickly emerged as the replacement backbone of government finances. In the years following South Sudan’s independence, gold exports accounted for 70% of Sudan’s total national revenue, supplying the cash-strapped state with critical foreign currency to keep basic operations running.

    But today, that same gold wealth is funding the brutal ongoing conflict between Sudan’s regular military and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), according to independent United Nations expert investigators commissioned to track war financing. The RSF, which maintains tight control over major gold-producing regions across Darfur and Kordofan, has overseen the smuggling of massive volumes of unregulated gold out of Sudan to fund its military operations, the experts confirm.

    The human cost of the conflict has already been catastrophic. U.S.-based conflict monitoring organization the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project estimates that at least 59,000 people have been killed since the war began, though the group stresses this count is almost certainly a major undercount, given widespread restrictions on on-the-ground reporting and access to conflict zones. The war has also spawned the world’s largest humanitarian disaster, forcing more than 10 million Sudanese to flee their homes to escape violence. For many of these displaced people, artisanal gold mining has become the only viable way to put food on the table for their families.

    “Gold mining is the only thing I can rely on,” explained 28-year-old Atta al-Khazin, who abandoned his career as a small-scale farmer when rising global oil prices made agricultural inputs too expensive to turn a profit.

    Zahir Adam, a 35-year-old father from el-Fasher in Darfur who has worked in gold mining for more than a decade, said the sector has seen a massive influx of new workers since the war erupted three years ago. “They had no other option,” he said. “Many young people, and many families, depend on mining.”

    Official industry figures confirm Sudan’s gold production is growing, even as its war rages. The country produced 70 tons of gold in 2025, up from 64 tons in 2024, cementing its position as one of the top gold-producing nations in Africa. State-run Sudanese Mineral Resources Company data shows the sector generated roughly $1.8 billion in revenue for 2025.

    More than half of this production comes from informal, artisanal small-scale mines that operate almost entirely outside government oversight, with almost no adherence to global safety or environmental standards. The extraction process used by most informal miners carries major health risks for workers and nearby communities: after digging ore from the ground, miners crush the rock, then mix it with toxic mercury to bind gold particles into an amalgam. The mixture is then heated over an open stove to evaporate the mercury, leaving pure gold behind. The process releases dangerous mercury vapor into the air and leaches toxic waste into local water supplies, creating long-term public health risks that extend far beyond the mines themselves.

    The U.N. expert panel’s 2024 report found that more than 50% of all gold mined in Sudan never enters formal, regulated trade channels, and is instead smuggled across borders to illicit markets in neighboring countries.

    Lethal safety failures are also routine in the unregulated sector. Just last month, a mine collapse in Sudan’s Red Sea Province killed at least seven miners. Another collapse in South Kordofan Province in January claimed 13 lives.

    Efforts to bring the critical sector under government oversight have repeatedly fallen apart amid political upheaval. After the military ousted longtime dictator Omar al-Bashir in April 2019, a civilian-led transitional government that ruled for more than a year launched an initiative to regulate informal gold mining and crack down on smuggling. Those reform efforts were cut short by a military coup in October 2021, which paved the way for the full-scale civil war that broke out in 2023, leaving the gold sector more unregulated and conflict-fueled than ever before.

  • With ice cream and giant fans, hajj pilgrims battle searing heat

    With ice cream and giant fans, hajj pilgrims battle searing heat

    As one of the world’s largest annual religious gatherings gets underway in Saudi Arabia’s holy city of Mecca, extreme soaring heat has emerged as the most severe test for more than a million Muslim pilgrims arriving from across the globe, forcing worshippers to adapt their rituals and pushing authorities to deploy massive emergency response resources.

  • Deadly Israeli strikes pound south, east Lebanon

    Deadly Israeli strikes pound south, east Lebanon

    Fresh waves of deadly Israeli airstrikes have hammered swathes of southern and eastern Lebanon on Sunday, shattering the relative calm of a weeks-old ceasefire and pushing already soaring casualty numbers higher even as Hezbollah’s leader voiced cautious optimism that a forthcoming US-Iran agreement could end the broader regional conflict engulfing the country.

    Lebanon’s Ministry of Public Health announced Sunday that the cumulative death toll from hostilities in the country since March 2 has climbed to 3,123. According to official updates, two people – including a paramedic with the Hezbollah-affiliated Islamic Health Committee – lost their lives in Sunday’s raids. The ministry also confirmed that a single Israeli strike on the southern Lebanese village of Sir al-Gharbiyeh a day earlier killed 11 people, among them six women and one young child, an incident officials have decried as a deliberate massacre.

    The ongoing military operations mark a clear continuation of Israeli hostilities despite a ceasefire that first took effect across Lebanon on April 17 and was recently extended for an additional several weeks. Israeli military officials maintain that all strikes target legitimate Hezbollah positions aligned against the country. The Iran-backed armed group, for its part, has not ceased its own cross-border and frontline attacks: it claimed more than 20 separate assaults against invading Israeli troops in southern Lebanon and other targets inside Israeli territory on Sunday alone, ranging from rocket barrages and drone attacks to artillery shelling.

    While Tehran has signaled that any framework for a de-escalation understanding with Washington to end the broader regional war would explicitly include Lebanon, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that US President Donald Trump had reaffirmed unwavering support for Israel’s inherent right “to defend itself against threats on all fronts, including in Lebanon.” In an official statement, Israeli military Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir emphasized that “we continue to strike Hezbollah across all dimensions… the security of civilians and the safety of our forces remain paramount.”

    Lebanon’s official National News Agency documented Israeli airstrikes hitting more than 30 separate locations across southern and eastern Lebanon on Sunday, with multiple strikes resulting in casualties. Agence France-Presse correspondents on the ground reported large plumes of black smoke rising from impacted areas across the region. The Israeli military has issued mandatory evacuation orders for more than a dozen villages in southern Lebanon and the eastern Bekaa Valley, a move that has displaced hundreds of additional civilian residents.

    Lebanon’s civil defense agency confirmed that its regional headquarters in the key southern city of Nabatieh was completely destroyed in an overnight Israeli strike. An AFP photographer witnessed civil defense teams sifting through rubble to recover usable equipment, and as of Sunday afternoon, the Israeli military had not responded to repeated requests for comment from AFP’s Jerusalem bureau on the attack on the facility.

    Speaking amid the renewed violence, Hezbollah Secretary General Naim Qassem expressed hope that a prospective agreement between the United States and Iran would be finalized “God willing” and that Lebanon and Hezbollah would be included in any full cessation of hostilities. However, Qassem doubled down on the group’s longstanding rejection of direct bilateral negotiations between the Lebanese government and Israel, a landmark process that launched recently under US mediation. The talks are scheduled to hold their fourth round in early June, with a preparatory meeting between military delegations set to take place at the Pentagon on May 29.

    “Abandon the direct negotiations… Don’t be with them and stab us in the back,” Qassem warned Lebanese authorities. He also ruled out any discussion of Hezbollah disarmament, stating bluntly that “disarmament is annihilation and we cannot accept it.” Adding that “we and our people face an existential threat,” Qassem stressed that “we will not bow, even if the whole world turns against us.”

    In response to Qassem’s remarks, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio accused Hezbollah of actively seeking to drag Lebanon “back into chaos.” The current cycle of regional violence was triggered in early March, when Hezbollah opened fire on Israel with a massive rocket barrage in retaliation for the US-Israeli airstrike that killed Iran’s supreme leader.

    Under the terms of the ceasefire published by the White House, Israel retains the right to carry out military operations against what it defines as “planned, imminent or ongoing attacks” originating from Lebanese territory. Israeli forces that have invaded southern Lebanon also continue to operate within an Israeli-declared “yellow line” that extends roughly 10 kilometers, or six miles, deep into Lebanese territory along the border.

  • Morocco wants tourists to visit Western Sahara. Some say it’s tightening its control

    Morocco wants tourists to visit Western Sahara. Some say it’s tightening its control

    A low-cost promotional email from Irish carrier Ryanair, advertising cheap €30 return flights from Madrid to the coastal Saharan city of Dakhla as a “Moroccan adventure”, has pulled back the curtain on a growing controversy at the intersection of global tourism and a 50-year-old unresolved territorial dispute. As the $35 ticket price and a flood of new accommodation options from budget hostels to luxury retreats draw growing numbers of international tourists to the region, the labeling of Dakhla and other Western Sahara destinations as part of Morocco has ignited fierce debate over international law, corporate responsibility, and the sovereignty of the Sahrawi people.

    Western Sahara, classified by the United Nations as a non-self-governing territory, has been mired in conflict since Spanish colonial withdrawal in 1976. Morocco promptly claimed the resource-rich territory as its own “southern provinces”, launching an armed conflict against the indigenous Sahrawi independence movement, the Polisario Front. A 1991 UN-brokered ceasefire established a framework for a binding referendum on self-determination, but the vote has never been held. Today, Morocco occupies and administers roughly 80% of the territory, while the Polisario Front controls a small eastern sliver and continues to advocate for full independence.

    Tourism to the Morocco-controlled portion of Western Sahara has surged in recent years, official data from Morocco’s Ministry of Tourism shows. Visitor numbers have jumped more than 50% over the past seven years, rising from 490,297 in 2019 to 743,133 in 2025. This rapid growth has been driven heavily by expanded air access: alongside Morocco’s national carrier Royal Air Maroc, major European airlines including Ryanair, Transavia France, and Binter Canarias now operate direct routes to the territory from European hubs. Most of these carriers, including Ryanair and Transavia France, explicitly list Western Sahara destinations as part of Morocco in their marketing and booking platforms. Only Binter Canarias breaks from this approach, correctly labeling the territory as Western Sahara. Transavia France has stated it only operates routes in line with official authorizations it has received, while Ryanair has declined to comment on the controversy.

    Tourists who have traveled to the region note the tourism sector is still in its early stages. Tom Ruck, a 29-year-old British traveler who flew to Dakhla with Ryanair, reported that dozens of new resort developments remain largely empty, with only a small trickle of family holidaymakers visiting so far. Ruck added that he received a Moroccan entry stamp in his passport, and Moroccan flags are displayed universally across the city, reflecting Rabat’s de facto control of the area.

    The practice of labeling Western Sahara as part of Morocco has drawn sharp criticism from human rights campaigners, legal experts, and the Polisario Front, who argue that it normalizes and legitimizes what they view as Morocco’s illegal occupation in violation of international law. Erik Hagen, a spokesperson for advocacy group Western Sahara Resource Watch, warned that mislabeling the territory distorts public understanding of its status and raises critical questions about corporate due diligence in occupied, politically sensitive regions. Major international travel booking platforms, including Expedia, Booking.com, and Trivago, have also been drawn into the row: all three currently list hotels in Western Sahara as located in Morocco. Booking.com says it adds general disclaimers for disputed regions and advises travelers to check official government travel advisories, while Expedia has declined to comment and Trivago has not yet issued a statement.

    Andrea Maria Pelliconi, an expert in international human rights law at the University of Southampton, argues that airlines and booking platforms have a clear legal obligation to distinguish Western Sahara’s disputed status from sovereign Moroccan territory. She warns that companies that fail to make this distinction could face potential litigation on multiple fronts, including violations of international law and the Sahrawi people’s inherent right to self-determination, as well as breaches of EU consumer protection and fair competition rules.

    Pressure from advocacy groups has already yielded some shifts in industry practice: last year, home-sharing platform Airbnb changed its policy and stopped labeling Western Sahara listings as part of Morocco.

    For the Polisario Front, the growing tourism push is a deliberate strategy by Morocco to cement its claim to the territory through a fait accompli, while leaving most tourists uninformed of the underlying dispute. Sidi Breika, the Polisario Front’s representative to the UK and Ireland, emphasized that all economic and tourism projects in the illegally occupied territory violate the Sahrawi people’s inalienable right to self-determination, a right explicitly recognized by the United Nations. Breika added that the movement is monitoring Ryanair’s activities closely and is actively considering legal action against the carrier.

    Recent diplomatic developments have tilted in Morocco’s favor: in October 2024, the UN Security Council voted to prioritize Morocco’s proposal for an autonomous status for Western Sahara as a path forward, while extending the mandate of the UN peacekeeping mission in the region for another year. The push for the resolution was led by the United States, which first formally recognized Morocco’s claim to Western Sahara in 2020 under the Trump administration, as part of a deal that saw Morocco normalize relations with Israel. Despite this shift, the formal international legal position still requires a mutually agreed political solution to the dispute under UN supervision, and the Polisario Front has repeatedly rejected Morocco’s autonomy proposal.

    Breika stressed that the Sahrawi people’s position remains unwavering: investments in tourism and other economic projects can never replace the Sahrawi people’s right to freely determine their own future.

  • Young men storm a Congo hospital treating Ebola patients to demand bodies of their kin

    Young men storm a Congo hospital treating Ebola patients to demand bodies of their kin

    On Sunday evening, violent unrest disrupted the frontline of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s fight against a rapidly expanding Ebola outbreak, when a group of angry young men breached the compound of Mongbwalu General Hospital — a key facility treating Ebola patients in the heart of the epidemic zone in eastern Congo. As gunfire echoed through the surrounding area, medical personnel were forced to make a frantic, rushed evacuation of all patients receiving care at the site.

    Dr. Richard Lokudu, the hospital’s medical director, confirmed to the Associated Press in a phone interview that the attackers’ core demand was the handover of two bodies of their relatives held at the facility. In the chaos of the incursion, no immediate information on injuries or casualties was available. Lokudu noted that the entire hospital had been placed on full alert amid the unfolding situation, and he was unable to provide additional details as events continued to develop.

    This attack marks the third act of violence targeting Ebola healthcare infrastructure in just seven days, laying bare the deep, multi-layered challenges facing public health workers as they attempt to contain an outbreak the World Health Organization has already designated a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. Local resistance to Congolese public health rules has been driven by cultural traditions around burial, which conflict with mandatory safety protocols designed to stop Ebola transmission.

    Bodies of Ebola victims carry extremely high levels of the virus, and traditional funeral practices — including close contact during preparation for burial and large community gatherings — are major drivers of further spread. To curb this risk, Congolese authorities have issued a mandate requiring that all burials of suspected Ebola victims be overseen by trained official personnel wherever possible. This policy has sparked repeated backlash from local communities, who often reject restrictions on accessing their loved ones’ remains. Just two days before the hospital attack, the government announced a ban on funeral wakes and any gatherings of more than 50 people in the affected northeastern region to slow transmission.

    The string of attacks began on Thursday, when a separate treatment center in the nearby town of Rwampara was burned to the ground by community members after officials blocked family members from retrieving the body of a local man who had died from suspected Ebola. Two days later, on Saturday, residents of Mongbwalu attacked and set fire to an isolation tent set up by the international humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders for suspected and confirmed Ebola cases. In that incident, 18 patients with suspected Ebola infections fled the facility and remain unaccounted for, a development that poses major new transmission risks, according to Lokudu.

    As violence against health workers has escalated, official case counts have shown a sharp jump in the scope of the outbreak. Earlier on Sunday, the Congolese Ministry of Communication announced via the social platform X that the country had recorded 904 suspected Ebola cases, most concentrated in northeastern Ituri Province. That number marks a significant increase from the previous count of just over 700 cases shared just days prior. The ministry also reported a total of 119 suspected deaths from the virus, though a breakdown of regional figures it released added up to 220 fatalities. Officials could not be reached immediately to clarify the discrepancy in the death toll.

    This outbreak is caused by the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola, a rare variant for which no targeted vaccine is currently available. The virus spread undetected through Ituri for weeks after the first reported death in late April in Bunia, the provincial capital, because authorities initially tested for a more common Ebola strain and returned negative results, delaying detection and response.

    New developments have also called into question the timeline of the outbreak’s origins. On Saturday, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies announced that three of its volunteer workers had died from Ebola in Mongbwalu. The agency reported that the three workers believe the volunteers contracted the virus on March 27, while handling dead bodies during a humanitarian mission unrelated to the Ebola response. If this infection date is confirmed, it would push the start of the outbreak back by nearly a month, explaining how the virus was able to spread widely before being detected. The WHO has assessed that the outbreak poses a “very high” risk to Congo — an upgrade from its previous “high” rating — while noting that the risk of global spread remains low.