Global Pulse

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  • Iran says US must accept peace plan or face ‘failure’

    Iran says US must accept peace plan or face ‘failure’

    Tensions in the Middle East have reached a new boiling point this week, as Iran’s top negotiator issued a stark ultimatum to the United States: accept Tehran’s updated 14-point peace proposal, or prepare for continued failure to resolve the two-month-old conflict that has upended global energy markets and destabilized the entire region. The warning comes just days after former U.S. President Donald Trump declared the existing month-long ceasefire on the brink of total collapse, calling Iran’s counterproposal to an earlier U.S. framework “totally unacceptable.”

    The conflict, which erupted in early March when joint U.S.-Israeli strikes targeted Iranian positions, has expanded across multiple fronts in the region despite the ceasefire that took effect mid-April. Millions of people across the Middle East and hundreds of millions globally have felt its ripple effects, from spiking energy prices to widespread economic disruption. While both Washington and Tehran have dug in their heels and refused to make key concessions, neither side has moved to resume full-scale all-out war – a tense stalemate that has left communities on edge and global markets jittery.

    “There is no alternative but to accept the rights of the Iranian people as laid out in the 14-point proposal. Any other approach will be completely inconclusive; nothing but one failure after another,” Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s chief negotiator, wrote in a public post on X Tuesday. He added that prolonged delays in reaching a deal would only add to the financial burden borne by American taxpayers, a claim that is backed by new Pentagon data showing the cumulative cost of the conflict for the U.S. has now climbed to nearly $29 billion – a $4 billion increase from just two weeks prior.

    Iran’s latest proposal was delivered in response to a draft framework shared by U.S. negotiators earlier, details of which remain largely under wraps. Media reports indicate the U.S. plan centered on a one-page memorandum of understanding that would end active fighting and set up a long-term negotiation framework for addressing concerns over Iran’s nuclear program. In its counteroffer, Iran has laid out its own non-negotiable demands: an end to hostilities across all fronts, including Lebanon; a lifting of the ongoing U.S. naval blockade on Iranian ports; and the release of billions of dollars in Iranian assets that have been frozen abroad under decades of U.S. sanctions.

    Trump has already rejected Tehran’s counteroffer out of hand, claiming the U.S. is positioned to secure “complete victory” over Iran and warning the ceasefire – which has held for more than a month – is in its final days. In a show of military defiance, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards conducted new combat readiness drills in Tehran Tuesday, state media reported, with exercises framed as enhancing the country’s ability to confront “any movement of the American-Zionist enemy.” Reza Talaei-Nik, spokesman for Iran’s Ministry of Defence, doubled down on the country’s stance Tuesday, saying if Washington refuses to meet Iran’s “rightful and definitive demands” through diplomacy, it should prepare to suffer repeated defeats on the battlefield just as it has in past conflicts.

    For ordinary Iranian citizens, the escalating war of words has only deepened the pervasive uncertainty that has shaped daily life since the conflict began. “We are just trying to dig our nails into anything that could help us survive. The future is so uncertain and we are just living day to day,” Maryam, a 43-year-old painter based in Tehran, told reporters from AFP Tuesday. “We are trying to find a way to continue. Keeping hope is very difficult right now.”

    Trump’s sharp rejection of Iran’s proposal triggered an immediate spike in global crude oil prices this week, dashing fragile hopes that a quick diplomatic deal could reopen the Strait of Hormuz to unimpeded commercial shipping. Iran has restricted maritime traffic through the strategic waterway – which normally carries roughly one-fifth of the world’s total oil and natural gas supplies – and has implemented a new toll system for transiting ships. The move has sparked what the CEO of Saudi oil giant Aramco has called the most severe energy supply shock “the world has ever experienced.” U.S. officials have repeatedly called Iran’s control over traffic through the strait unacceptable, and other regional leaders echoed that pushback Tuesday. “Iran should not use this strait as a weapon to pressure or to blackmail the Gulf countries,” Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said.

    Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at London-based think tank Chatham House, says Iran’s leadership is betting it can outlast Trump in negotiations. “Tehran is committed to negotiations, but wanted to extract concessions because of their improved hand” on the battlefield, Vakil explained.

    The stalemate has also kept violence active on the Lebanese front of the conflict, where Israeli strikes continued to claim lives in southern Lebanon Tuesday even in spite of the ceasefire agreement. Israel has ramped up attacks against Iran-backed Hezbollah in southern Lebanon since the April 17 truce, with frequent exchanges of fire keeping the border region in chaos. Lebanon’s health ministry reports more than 2,880 people have been killed in the country since it was drawn into the wider conflict on March 2 – 380 of those deaths have occurred since the ceasefire took effect. Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem reaffirmed the group’s stance Tuesday, saying the group’s arsenal would not be on the negotiating table when Lebanese and Israeli representatives meet for a third round of talks this week. Vowing not to surrender regardless of the cost, Qassem said: “We will not abandon the battlefield and we will turn it into hell for Israel.”

  • On the Greek island of Rhodes, I skipped the beach to visit a pasha’s library

    On the Greek island of Rhodes, I skipped the beach to visit a pasha’s library

    On a muted, drizzly early spring morning on the Greek island of Rhodes, Tarik Tuten, a local resident with a soft Turkish lilt, wanders the quiet sea-pebble alleys of the island’s Old Town – a ritual he has followed for decades, regardless of company. As the island has not yet been flooded by the annual summer tourist rush, only stray cats share these winding lanes with us, and the overcast sky casts a soft, melancholic haze over the faded Levantine architecture around us.

    This quiet melancholy, known in Turkish as *huzun*, is a rare feeling in the modern eastern Mediterranean, where coastlines are either torn by conflict or transformed into exclusive playgrounds for the global wealthy. Neither war nor what Tuten calls “Dubaisation” leaves room for this quiet, layered sense of history – but it lingers on every corner of Rhodes’ back streets, where Tuten has spent his whole life navigating forgotten landmarks: overgrown gardens in the old Jewish quarter, a hidden Byzantine church tucked behind oleander and cypress groves.

    But this walk is not just a casual ramble. I have come to Rhodes to visit one of the Mediterranean’s most extraordinary hidden cultural treasures: the Hafiz Ahmed Agha Library, a 1793 Ottoman institution that Tuten’s family has stewarded continuously for seven generations – a near-unique survival of a centuries-old *waqf* (pious charitable endowment) still under the care of its founding family.

    Nestled unassumingly opposite the 16th-century Suleymaniye Mosque, tucked between a row of tourist-facing jewellery shops, the library is easy for casual summer visitors to miss. Step past its plain exterior wall, however, and you enter a treasure trove of 828 handwritten manuscripts spanning astrology, philosophy, medicine, Islamic law, and economics, penned in Ottoman Turkish, Arabic, and Persian. What makes the institution even rarer than its collection is its unbroken lineage: founded as part of a waqf by Tuten’s seventh-generation ancestor, it has never been seized by the state or broken from its founding family’s stewardship – a miracle of survival, Tuten says, that few other endowments across the former Ottoman Empire can match.

    The library’s story begins with a pilgrimage. Tuten’s ancestor, Ahmed Aga of Rhodes, was an Ottoman official and wealthy merchant leading a camel caravan bound for Mecca and Medina on behalf of Sultan Selim III when he was assassinated under unclear circumstances somewhere between modern-day Syria and Saudi Arabia. Aga built a diversified fortune: he held tax farms in the Balkans, owned a soap factory in Izmir, and had stakes in shipping and salt mining, making powerful enemies amid shifting Ottoman political tides. When a new grand vizier took power, Aga was eliminated – a common practice in the era, Tuten explains, though the full story remains untold.

    Rather than being dissolved after Aga’s death, his waqf flourished under his son, Ahmed Fethi Pasha, who rose to become one of the Ottoman Empire’s most prominent 19th-century statesmen. Born in the early 1800s, Fethi Pasha climbed the ranks of the Ottoman imperial establishment, distinguishing himself in the 1828–1829 Russo-Turkish War, where his bravery on the battlefield earned him the honorific *fethi*. He went on to serve as the Ottoman ambassador to Russia, Austria, and France, becoming a leading figure of the Tanzimat era – a period of sweeping Western-inspired reform to modernize the Ottoman state. A lover of European technology and design, he founded Istanbul’s Beykoz porcelain factory to satisfy the growing Ottoman bourgeoisie’s appetite for Western-style luxury goods, and oversaw a boom in clock tower construction across the empire that still shapes skylines from the Greek islands to Lebanese mountain villages. His 1852 clock tower, built to honor Sultan Abdulmecid I’s visit to Rhodes, still dominates the Old Town’s skyline as a marker of his forward-thinking vision.

    When the library’s long-serving groundskeeper Yusuf pulls open the heavy wooden double gates to the compound, visitors step into a quiet oasis frozen in time. The courtyard, paved in alternating bands of white and black pebbles in the traditional Rhodian *krokalia* mosaic style, is fragrant with orange blossom, lined with rows of potted geraniums and basil, and shaded by loquat trees heavy with fruit. Tuten explains that Yusuf’s wife tends the garden, and the family has intentionally kept its relaxed, unmanicured form – a choice that feels like a quiet rejection of the slick, disposable modern development that has spread across much of the Mediterranean.

    The library itself is a study in understated durability, built from Rhodes’ distinctive porous sand-colored limestone, with solemn wooden windows framed by delicate carved lintels and a red-tiled roof bound with Khorasani, an ancient mortar that has held together Byzantine, Ottoman, and Persian architectural masterpieces for centuries. It was built to outlast generations, a stark contrast to the temporary, tourist-focused developments that line much of the island’s coast today. The waqf’s original charter allocated a portion of its rental property income to support a full-time groundskeeper, a role Yusuf has held for 40 years. Tuten notes that Yusuf has rarely traveled more than two hours from the library in his four decades on the job, calling the role a sacred duty rather than just a paycheck.

    Once inside, the library’s resident researcher Aydin Bostanci, a specialist in Islamic manuscripts and Ottoman calligraphy from Greece’s Western Thrace region, leads the tour. Bostanci’s home region is one of the few places that retained its Muslim population after the 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey mandated by the Treaty of Lausanne, and Rhodes itself has a similar layered history: around 2,000 descendants of Ottoman Muslims remained on the island after 1923, thanks to the Dodecanese being under Italian occupation from 1912 to 1947, exempting it from the population exchange.

    In the high-ceilinged, whitewashed reading room with deep arched windows, Bostanci explains that the library’s rules have never allowed its manuscripts to leave the premises – for centuries, scholars would travel to Rhodes to request volumes, which the librarian would bring to them to read on site. Originally, the waqf also included a *medrese* (religious school) that taught young boys Arabic and Quranic studies, since literacy in Ottoman, Arabic, and Persian was limited to a small class of transitory religious and state officials.

    When Bostanci opens the door to the secured book room, the quiet weight of history hits immediately. A central cherry wood cabinet with glass panes holds the library’s collection, where the scent of aged wood mixes with oud – the fragrant resin placed between shelves to repel insects and preserve the fragile pages. Laid out for viewing are the collection’s rarest pieces: a 1735 copy of Ibn Khaldun’s 14th-century *Muqaddimah* (Prolegomena to History), a Mamluk-era Quran, texts on Hadith and astronomy, and an exquisitely illustrated 16th-century Safavid Quran.

    Rhodes itself has always been a crossroads of empires, a place where layers of history overlap rather than erase one another. After the Knights Hospitaller were expelled from Jerusalem by Saladin’s armies, they captured Rhodes from the Byzantines in 1309 and built massive fortifications, churches, and a castle that still define the Old Town’s skyline. It took Suleiman the Magnificent six months of siege to oust the knights in 1522 – 70 years after the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople – transforming the island from a crusader fortress into a thriving trading entrepot and the Ottomans’ most important Eastern Mediterranean naval base. Commerce flourished, linking North Africa to the Black Sea and drawing multiethnic communities of Orthodox Christians and Jews to the island.

    Today, Rhodes draws millions of tourists a year, drawn by its beaches and crowded waterfront cafes serving everything from overpriced sushi to traditional Greek fare. But the island has been a destination for curious travelers for centuries: French writer François-René de Chateaubriand wrote in 1812 that he found Rhodes more welcoming than any other Levantine destination, calling it “a little France in the midst of Greece” thanks to the Knights Hospitaller’s legacy. Even Egypt’s Khedival royal family vacationed here to escape the summer heat, and many elite members who died during their stays are buried at the Murad Reis Mosque near the port – the same cemetery where British writer Lawrence Durrell lived in a small cottage he named Villa Cleobolus for two years after World War II, before he found fame with *The Alexandria Quartet*. Durrell’s 1940s writings on Rhodes helped lay the groundwork for the Greek tourism boom of the 1960s, describing a poor island in flux, no longer Ottoman or Italian, not yet fully Greek.

    On my final night, Tuten hosts a dinner for a diverse group of guests at a restaurant in Rhodes’ new city: a mix of people from Greece, Turkey, Istanbul, and Saudi Arabia, bound together by shared connection to the island’s layered history. A Greek writer friend from Istanbul whispers that the scene feels straight out of a Durrell novel: it is the Levant at its best, a messy, convivial mixing of cultures where conversations shift seamlessly between English, Greek, Turkish, and Arabic over wine and pizza.

    Local researcher Savvas Pavlidis, whose great-grandfather was Rhodes’ last Ottoman-era mayor, explains that the island’s overreliance on tourism is no accident: after the 1923 population exchange and the severing of historic economic ties between the Dodecanese and the Anatolian mainland, Italian occupiers first turned to tourism to prop up the island’s economy, a path successive Greek governments continued. But while mass tourism shapes much of modern Rhodes, the Hafiz Ahmed Agha Library stands as a testament to the island’s natural connection to its eastern neighbors.

    Today, Tuten hosts regular researchers and academics who come to study the library’s manuscripts and learn preservation techniques, but his core goal for the institution is far simpler. Drawing on the shared Greek-Turkish word *muhabbet*, meaning a warm, friendly exchange between people, Tuten says he wants the library to be more than an archive: it is meant to be a meeting place, a convivial space that unites communities across the borders and divisions that have reshaped the eastern Mediterranean over the past two centuries.

  • Armed conflict last year in Colombia hit civilians the hardest in a decade, Red Cross says

    Armed conflict last year in Colombia hit civilians the hardest in a decade, Red Cross says

    BOGOTA, COLOMBIA – A new annual report published Tuesday by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has delivered a stark assessment of Colombia’s deepening security crisis, finding that harm to civilian communities from ongoing armed violence reached its highest level in 10 years in 2025.

    The humanitarian organization’s findings paint a grim picture of widespread displacement and restriction across rural and regional parts of the country: the total number of people forced to flee their homes amid clashes between criminal gangs, rebel factions, and state forces doubled over 2024, hitting 235,000. Concurrently, the number of civilians trapped in forced lockdowns imposed by armed groups on small towns and villages jumped by 99% compared to the prior year.

    Colombia’s internal conflict has stretched across decades, with rebel factions and drug trafficking organizations long battling government forces for control of strategic rural territories, including key smuggling corridors central to the global cocaine trade. A landmark 2016 peace accord between the Colombian government and the country’s largest insurgent group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), delivered a notable reduction in rural violence for years after the agreement was signed. But in the wake of FARC’s demobilization, fragmented smaller armed groups have moved to seize the power vacuum left behind, extorting local businesses through illegal taxes and terrorizing civilian residents who resist their control, driving a steady erosion of security across much of the countryside.

    Olivier Dubois, the ICRC’s head of mission in Colombia, emphasized that the catastrophic humanitarian conditions recorded in 2025 are the outcome of a gradual decline that the organization has flagged to stakeholders since 2018.

    Over the past four years, the administration of Colombian President Gustavo Petro has pursued a strategy of de-escalating rural violence, launching formal peace negotiations with the country’s remaining active insurgent groups and reaching bilateral ceasefire agreements with several factions. But critics of this approach warn that armed groups have exploited the ceasefire periods to reorganize, rearm, and consolidate their control over civilian communities. These groups have also ramped up the forced recruitment of children into their criminal and armed ranks, the criticism notes.

    Political violence has also accelerated sharply across the country. Last year, a presidential candidate was shot in the head during a public campaign rally in Bogota and later succumbed to his injuries; Colombian authorities have attributed the attack to one of the nation’s active rebel groups.

    Earlier this year, the United Nations Human Rights Office in Colombia also sounded the alarm, describing the country’s security trajectory as “backsliding” and confirming that targeted killings of human rights defenders rose by 9% in 2025. The ICRC’s report adds further data to this assessment, noting that casualties from explosive devices – including landmines and drone-deployed ordnance – rose 33% year-over-year to 965 people killed or injured in 2025.

    In its concluding appeal, the ICRC called on all parties involved in Colombia’s internal armed conflict to uphold fundamental protections for civilian populations, and to safeguard the rights of people who wish to exit hostilities. The organization stressed that adherence to international humanitarian law is a non-negotiable obligation, not an optional standard.

    Coverage of Latin American and Caribbean affairs from the Associated Press can be found at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america

  • Albrecht Weinberg, a Holocaust survivor who returned to Germany in his 80s, dies at 101

    Albrecht Weinberg, a Holocaust survivor who returned to Germany in his 80s, dies at 101

    LEER, GERMANY — Local municipal authorities confirmed this Tuesday the passing of Albrecht Weinberg, a 101-year-old Holocaust survivor who endured some of the Nazi regime’s most brutal concentration and death camps, lost nearly his entire family to the genocide, and returned to his native Germany in his 80s to spend his final decades educating new generations about the atrocities he survived.

    Weinberg died at his home in Leer, a city in Lower Saxony in northwestern Germany, just a few weeks after celebrating his 101st birthday and attending the premiere of a documentary chronicling his life. Titled *Es ist immer in meinem Kopf* (translated “It is always in my head”), the event drew hundreds of attendees who gathered to honor his decades of work as a witness to history.

    Born in 1925 in Rhauderfehn, a small community just outside Leer, Weinberg was a young Jewish man when the Nazi regime rose to power. He was deported and imprisoned in three of the Third Reich’s most infamous death and concentration camps: Auschwitz, Mittelbau-Dora, and Bergen-Belsen. He also survived three deadly forced death marches in the final chaotic weeks of World War II, as Nazi officials emptied camps ahead of advancing Allied forces. Most of his family was murdered in the Holocaust, leaving him as one of the only surviving members of his immediate family.

    After decades living in New York, Weinberg made the decision to return to his East Frisian homeland 14 years ago, a choice that surprised many given the trauma he had suffered at the hands of the Nazi German state. From that point forward, local mayor Claus-Peter Horst recalled, Weinberg dedicated himself tirelessly to sharing his experiences with incredible energy, repeatedly warning German communities against the danger of forgetting the horrors of the Nazi era. For years, he spoke regularly to high school groups, community organizations, and public audiences, turning his personal trauma into a warning against rising extremism.

    Even in his final years, the memories of his wartime suffering never faded. Speaking to reporters last year, Weinberg acknowledged that the trauma of his camp experiences remained a constant part of his daily life. “I sleep with it, I wake up with it, I sweat, I have nightmares; that is my present,” he said. He also voiced a persistent worry that when the last generation of Holocaust survivors passed away, the collective memory of the atrocities would fade, leaving future generations only with written accounts rather than the personal, human testimony that carried far greater weight.

    Weinberg’s legacy also included a powerful act of political protest that drew national attention last year. In 2017, he had been awarded Germany’s prestigious Order of Merit in recognition of his educational work. But he chose to return the honor in 2024 to protest a parliamentary motion that passed with the support of a far-right political party. The motion, put forward by Friedrich Merz — who became Germany’s chancellor in late 2024 — called for significantly stricter border policies that would turn away most irregular migrants arriving at Germany’s borders. Weinberg’s protest highlighted his lifelong commitment to speaking out against far-right extremism, decades after he survived it.

    Following the announcement of his death, tributes poured in from across Germany and the global Jewish community. Ron Prosor, Israel’s ambassador to Germany, wrote on the social platform X that he had gotten to know Weinberg well over the years, praising him as a unique “bridge — between past and present, between pain and hope, between the dead he could never forget and the young people whom he encouraged to seek the truth.”

  • South Africa’s top court bars repeat asylum applications

    South Africa’s top court bars repeat asylum applications

    In a landmark final ruling that has reshaped South Africa’s asylum framework, the country’s Constitutional Court has moved to block foreign nationals from submitting repeated asylum claims after an initial application has been rejected. The judgment, which upends a prior ruling from the Supreme Court of Appeal, addresses longstanding administrative and policy concerns over the nation’s overstretched refugee processing system.

    The court’s majority opinion emphasized that without explicit governing legislation, allowing endless cycles of repeat asylum applications would create a permanent logjam: a “never-ending cycle” of processing that would block ordered deportations and overwhelm government administrative capacity. The case that led to the ruling originated with two Burundian nationals who first had their asylum claims rejected in 2014, then submitted a new application in 2018. The pair argued that renewed political violence that erupted in Burundi following the 2015 controversial presidential election, which left at least 70 people dead amid widespread unrest after then-President Pierre Nkurunziza’s bid for a third term, justified a reevaluation of their claim.

    Lower courts sided with the two claimants, but the Constitutional Court, South Africa’s final court of appeal, overturned that decision. The ruling has been celebrated by the nation’s current coalition government as a critical check on systemic abuse. Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber, a member of the Democratic Alliance – the second-largest party in President Cyril Ramaphosa’s ANC-led unity government – called the outcome a “major victory” over misuse of the refugee system. In remarks to local broadcaster Newzroom Afrika, Schreiber explained his department had spearheaded the legal challenge to the Supreme Court of Appeal’s ruling, warning that upholding the lower court’s decision would have opened the door to “multiple bites at the cherry” for rejected claimants, enabling ongoing abuse of the asylum process.

    Schreiber added that the judgment is a key step toward the government’s broader goal of building a more “effective and fair system to manage refugees and asylum seekers.” As of 2025, UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) data shows South Africa hosts more than 167,000 registered refugees and asylum seekers, the vast majority originating from neighboring and conflict-affected African states including Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, South Sudan, Rwanda and Zimbabwe. Official census figures estimate South Africa is home to roughly 2.4 million documented migrants, accounting for just under 4% of the total population, though observers believe a large additional number of undocumented migrants reside in the country without formal status. As Africa’s most industrialized economy, South Africa has long drawn migrant workers from across the continent seeking better economic opportunity.

    The ruling comes at a moment of heightened domestic tension over immigration, with South Africa recently swept by a wave of large-scale protests targeting undocumented migrants. Thousands of demonstrators have marched in major urban centers to demand mass deportations of foreign nationals, and the unrest has included targeted attacks on migrant-owned businesses and communities. Several African governments have formally raised concerns through the African Union and have issued travel advisories warning their citizens residing in South Africa of potential targeting. Earlier this week, President Ramaphosa issued a public statement blaming “opportunists” for orchestrating the violent anti-immigrant attacks, stressing that the unrest does not reflect the will of the South African public or official government policy. “The recent violent protests and criminal acts directed at foreign nationals in parts of our country do not represent the views of South Africa’s people nor reflect our government’s policy,” Ramaphosa said in an open letter.

    The judgment marks a significant shift in South Africa’s asylum policy, and comes as the government faces growing pressure from domestic political factions to crack down on unauthorized migration while navigating criticism from human rights groups and neighboring nations over the treatment of foreign residents.

  • Zelensky’s ex-chief of staff in court as Ukraine corruption probe escalates

    Zelensky’s ex-chief of staff in court as Ukraine corruption probe escalates

    Two major overlapping developments have rocked the ongoing conflict in Ukraine this week: a high-stakes corruption probe targeting one of Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s closest former aides has unfolded in Kyiv, even as Russia resumed large-scale drone strikes after a three-day Victory Day ceasefire and announced plans to deploy a cutting-edge intercontinental nuclear missile by the end of 2026.

    On Tuesday, Andriy Yermak, who once served as head of Ukraine’s presidential office and Zelenskyy’s most senior advisor through the opening years of Russia’s full-scale invasion, appeared before a Kyiv court following formal designation as a suspect in a multi-million dollar money laundering scheme. Yermak, who stepped down from his post last November after anti-corruption agents raided his apartment, has forcefully pushed back against the claims. Speaking to reporters hours ahead of his scheduled court appearance, Yermak stated, “I do not have any house, I only have one flat and one car.” His defense attorney, Ihor Fomin, has repeatedly described the allegations against his client as “baseless”, telling Ukraine’s public broadcaster Suspilne that the unsubstantiated charges were driven by unprecedented public pressure, rather than evidence of wrongdoing.

    The suspicions against Yermak center on two separate alleged corruption schemes. The first is an elite luxury housing development named “Dynasty” outside Kyiv, where investigators claim roughly $10.5 million in construction funds were laundered through illegal channels. The case is also tied to a broader ongoing inquiry into an alleged $100 million embezzlement ring within Ukraine’s state-owned nuclear energy sector. Nabu, Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau, and SAPO, the Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office, the two agencies leading the investigation, have confirmed that six additional people have been named as suspects alongside Yermak, and have released partial transcripts of wiretapped conversations as part of their evidence. Prosecutors are requesting that the Kyiv court impose either pre-trial detention or set bail at approximately $4 million. In a key clarification for national politics, Nabu’s leadership stressed that President Zelenskyy himself is not part of the ongoing pre-trial investigation.

    Yermak was once one of the most powerful figures in Zelenskyy’s government, leading Ukraine’s diplomatic negotiations with the United States and serving as the president’s closest confidant throughout the first phase of the full-scale invasion. This corruption case is the latest high-profile fallout from Operation Midas, a sweeping anti-corruption probe that has already ensnared multiple other former senior officials and members of Zelenskyy’s old inner circle. Former Deputy Prime Minister Oleksiy Chernyshov has been charged with abuse of office, former Energy Minister Herman Haluschenko was detained while attempting to cross the Ukrainian border, and businessman Timur Mindich, a one-time business partner of Zelenskyy who co-owned his former production studio Kvartal 95, has fled Ukraine after being named a suspect. All individuals named in the probe deny any criminal wrongdoing.

    The unfolding corruption scandal carries significant geopolitical weight for Ukraine, as it comes as the country pursues formal accession to the European Union. Brussels has repeatedly made clean governance and robust independent anti-corruption efforts a core requirement for Ukraine’s membership bid. Last year, Zelenskyy was forced to reverse a controversial law that would have weakened the operational independence of Nabu and SAPO after widespread domestic protests and sharp criticism from EU officials.

    Simultaneously, military tensions have spiked across the region following the end of Russia’s three-day Victory Day ceasefire, marking the 80th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany in World War II. Overnight, Russia launched a massive drone assault targeting multiple regions across Ukraine, with more than 200 drones launched. Ukrainian authorities confirmed that the attacks left at least one civilian dead. Kyiv, which had seen a period of relative calm in the days leading up to the strikes, faced new air raid alerts across the capital overnight. For its part, the Russian Ministry of Defense claimed it had shot down more than 100 Ukrainian drones launched into Russian territory over the preceding 24 hours.

    Military and diplomatic positioning has shifted in recent days following conflicting statements from Russian and Ukrainian leaders over the prospects of peace talks. At the weekend, Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested that the war was “coming to an end”, but Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov clarified on Tuesday that “a lot of homework is still to be done”, indicating that a planned meeting between Putin and Zelenskyy is unlikely to happen in the near future. Zelenskyy has repeatedly rejected Russian overtures, stating earlier that Moscow has “no intention of ending this war” and is actively preparing for new offensive operations.

    In one of the most provocative announcements of the week, Putin confirmed on Tuesday that Russia will deploy the new Sarmat intercontinental ballistic nuclear missile by the end of 2026. The missile has an advertised maximum range of 35,000 kilometers, putting any target on the globe within striking distance. The Russian Ministry of Defense released newly published footage of a Sarmat test launch this week, with Putin describing the system as “the most powerful missile system in the world”. Putin added that development work on three other next-generation strategic nuclear weapons — the Burevestnik nuclear-powered cruise missile and a nuclear-powered torpedo — is in its final stages of completion.

  • Dali ship operator charged over deadly Baltimore bridge collapse

    Dali ship operator charged over deadly Baltimore bridge collapse

    It has been two years since the cargo ship Dali crashed into Baltimore’s iconic Francis Scott Key Bridge, triggering a catastrophic collapse that claimed six lives and upended regional commerce. Now, federal prosecutors have brought formal criminal charges against the vessel’s operator and a senior company employee over the disaster.

    Synergy Marine, the Singapore- and India-based firm that managed the Dali’s operations, and Radhakrishnan Karthik Nair, the ship’s technical supervisor, face a slate of charges including conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and misconduct leading to death, according to the recently unsealed indictment. Prosecutors allege the company and its staff intentionally misled federal investigators and hid critical safety hazards from the U.S. Coast Guard in the wake of the March 26, 2024 collision.

    In court documents, prosecutors laid out a detailed timeline of preventable failures that led to the crash. They say the Dali lost electrical power twice in just four minutes before striking the bridge. The first outage stemmed from a loose wire in the ship’s switchboard, while the second was caused by the crew’s reliance on an unapproved flushing pump to supply fuel to the vessel’s generators. Unlike purpose-built fuel pumps, this flushing pump was not designed to automatically restart after an outage, meaning the crew could not restore power in time to avoid the collision. Prosecutors argue that with a properly configured fuel system, the ship would have regained power before hitting the bridge.

    The indictment further alleges that Synergy employees were fully aware of the improper use of the flushing pump not only on the Dali but across other vessels in the company’s fleet, and actively took steps to cover up the noncompliant practice. Prosecutors also accuse the firm of falsifying official safety records to hide the violations from regulators.

    Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche framed the charges as a long-awaited step toward accountability in a tragedy he called entirely preventable. “This indictment is a critical step toward holding accountable those whose reckless disregard for maritime safety regulations caused this disaster,” Blanche said in a public statement released Tuesday.

    In response to the charges, a Synergy Marine spokesperson told The New York Times that the company “will defend against these allegations with vigor.” The BBC has also reached out to the firm for additional comment, and no further response has been issued as of publication.

    The disaster itself unfolded in the early hours of that March morning, when the powerless Dali drifted into the bridge, collapsing the entire span within minutes. Six construction workers who were conducting maintenance on the bridge were killed when their work vehicles plunged into the Patapsco River below. The collapse shut down the Port of Baltimore for weeks, triggering massive shipping disruptions that rippled through regional and national supply chains, costing billions of dollars in lost economic activity.

    Reconstruction of the Key Bridge is still ongoing, with officials projecting the project will take several years and cost billions of dollars to complete. Prior investigations by the National Transportation Safety Board identified multiple contributing factors to the disaster, beyond the ship’s mechanical and operational failures, including a lack of protective design measures to reduce the bridge’s vulnerability to ship strikes.

    This is not the first legal action stemming from the collapse. The Dali’s owner has already paid more than $100 million to the U.S. Department of Justice to settle a civil claim for bridge damage, plus an additional $350 million to Maryland’s state insurance agency. Another separate civil trial against Synergy Marine is scheduled to begin next month.

  • South Africa declares natural disaster as flooding kills at least 10

    South Africa declares natural disaster as flooding kills at least 10

    JOHANNESBURG – A catastrophic weather system bringing record-breaking torrential rainfall has unleashed devastating flooding across six of South Africa’s provinces, leaving at least 10 people dead and destroying hundreds of vulnerable residential structures, with low-income informal communities bearing the brunt of the destruction. Since May 4, extreme weather spanning flooding, severe thunderstorms, powerful high winds, and unseasonal snowfall has impacted regions including Western Cape, North West, Free State, Eastern Cape, Northern Cape, and Mpumalanga, prompting national authorities to issue an official natural disaster designation. This official declaration unlocks immediate access to emergency government funding and priority deployment of response resources, allowing rapid relief action to reach affected communities. The coastal hub of Cape Town, located in Western Cape, has emerged as one of the hardest-hit urban centers. In response to rapidly deteriorating conditions, the Western Cape provincial government has ordered temporary closures for all public and private schools across high-risk flood zones, as well as restricted access to portions of the iconic Table Mountain, one of the city’s most popular global tourist attractions. Local officials confirmed Tuesday that at least 26 informal settlements on the outskirts of Cape Town have been inundated by floodwaters, damaging more than 10,000 informal residential structures that largely lack engineered flood-resilient infrastructure. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, speaking Monday as winter officially gets underway across the Southern Hemisphere, voiced deep sorrow over the lives lost to the extreme weather event. “We grieve with the families who have lost their loved ones, and we are standing with all those who have lost their homes and livelihoods to this disaster,” Ramaphosa stated, adding that national disaster management authorities are leveraging modern meteorological science to improve early warning for future extreme weather events and streamline response efforts in the wake of disasters. The current disaster marks the second major flooding crisis to hit South Africa in 2024, underscoring a growing regional trend of intensifying extreme weather linked to shifting global climate patterns. Climate researchers have repeatedly warned that severe flood events across Southern Africa are growing more frequent and more destructive, driven by rising global temperatures that amplify extreme rainfall patterns. In recent months, neighboring Mozambique and Zimbabwe have also experienced unusually high rainfall and the worst regional flooding in decades. Back in January, South Africa was forced to declare a separate national disaster after torrential rains and flooding in the country’s northern regions killed at least 30 people, destroyed thousands of homes, and washed out critical road and bridge infrastructure connecting rural and urban communities.

  • Nigerian military airstrike kills 100 civilians at a market, rights group claims

    Nigerian military airstrike kills 100 civilians at a market, rights group claims

    ABUJA, Nigeria — A fresh public dispute has emerged over civilian casualties in Nigeria’s long-running counter-insurgency campaign in the country’s restive northern region, after the nation’s military rejected a prominent human rights group’s allegation that a weekend airstrike killed 100 civilian people at a local market.

  • Ship operator and employee are charged in crash that caused the deadly collapse of Baltimore bridge

    Ship operator and employee are charged in crash that caused the deadly collapse of Baltimore bridge

    BALTIMORE — Nearly eight months after the catastrophic collapse of Baltimore’s iconic Francis Scott Key Bridge claimed six lives, U.S. federal prosecutors have unveiled criminal charges against two ship management firms and a senior maritime employee, alleging the preventable disaster stemmed from reckless decision-making and systemic failures on the part of the accused.

    Announced Tuesday, the indictment names two entities: Singapore-based Synergy Marine Pte Ltd. and Chennai, India-headquartered Synergy Maritime Pte Ltd. Also charged is 47-year-old Indian national Radhakrishnan Karthik Nair, who served as the technical superintendent overseeing the container ship Dali, the vessel that struck the bridge in March 2024.

    On the early morning of March 26, the Dali was outbound from the Port of Baltimore en route to Colombo, Sri Lanka, when a sequence of power failures left the massive cargo ship adrift. Investigations from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) later confirmed two overlapping electrical blackouts — one triggered by a faulty loose wire onboard the vessel, and a second caused by unaddressed fuel pump malfunctions — completely disabled the Dali’s steering and propulsion systems. At roughly 1:30 a.m., the uncontrolled vessel crashed into a key support pylon of the 1.6-mile steel bridge, causing the entire span to collapse within minutes.

    At the time of the crash, six construction workers were on the bridge completing routine pothole patching work; all six were killed in the disaster. Beyond the tragic loss of life, the collapse triggered widespread economic disruption across Maryland and the broader mid-Atlantic region. The Port of Baltimore, one of the busiest East Coast cargo hubs, was shut down for weeks, disrupting supply chains and costing thousands of maritime and logistics workers their livelihoods. Road traffic that previously used the bridge was rerouted through already congested local communities, placing unplanned strain on regional infrastructure. Maryland officials estimate total replacement costs for the bridge will fall between $4.3 billion and $5.2 billion, with the new span not projected to reopen to traffic until late 2030.

    Built over five years and opened in 1977, the Francis Scott Key Bridge was long a critical piece of regional transportation infrastructure, allowing through traffic to bypass downtown Baltimore and cutting commute times for hundreds of thousands of drivers annually. It also held status as a beloved local landmark for the Baltimore region.

    “The collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge was a preventable tragedy of enormous consequence,” Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche stated in announcing the charges. The accused face four counts total: conspiracy, willful failure to immediately alert the U.S. Coast Guard of a known hazardous condition on the vessel, obstruction of a federal agency investigation, and making false statements to investigating authorities. The FBI’s probe into the crash centered specifically on whether vessel management and the crew were aware of critical systemic flaws before the Dali departed Baltimore’s port.

    The announcement of criminal charges follows a settlement in principle reached in April between the State of Maryland, Synergy Marine, and Grace Ocean Private Limited — the Singapore-based owner of the Dali. The state’s civil lawsuit alleged the crash was the result of negligence, mismanagement, and reckless operation of a vessel that was not seaworthy and should never have been cleared to depart port. Parties to the civil claim include the families of the six killed workers, cargo owners whose freight was lost or damaged in the disaster, and local governments seeking compensation for widespread economic losses. Full details of the April settlement have not been made public, and portions of the civil litigation remain ongoing. The settlement also does not resolve any claims the state has filed against Hyundai, the shipbuilder that constructed the Dali.

    The state’s civil claim seeks compensation for bridge destruction, environmental harm to the Patapsco River and surrounding ecosystem, lost tax and operational revenues, and widespread economic harm inflicted on Maryland and its residents.