Global Pulse

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  • Three dead after volcano erupts on Indonesian island

    Three dead after volcano erupts on Indonesian island

    On a Friday morning in Indonesia, a sudden eruption of the active Mount Dukono volcano claimed three lives, turning a routine early morning hike into a fatal tragedy that has sparked new debates about public risk perception and enforcement of volcanic safety regulations.

    The 1,335-meter volcano, located on Indonesia’s North Maluku island, erupted at 07:41 local time, sending a towering column of volcanic ash 10 kilometers into the sky. Footage captured from the scene shows thick plumes of ash and rocky debris continuing to spew from the volcano’s crater long after the initial blast. Among the hikers on the mountain that morning were 20 people who had ignored repeated official warnings against climbing the volcano: 18 Singaporean and Indonesian hikers, and two local porters. Three members of that group — two Singaporean citizens and one local resident from nearby Ternate — were killed by the eruption.

    Search and rescue teams were deployed immediately to extract the remaining hikers. Most of the surviving group members were safely evacuated and transported to local hospitals to receive treatment for eruption-related injuries. The two porters from the original group stayed behind on the mountain to help rescuers navigate the terrain and locate the victims’ remains, which are trapped at higher elevations. As of Friday afternoon, body recovery efforts have been blocked by ongoing volcanic activity, rough, uneven terrain, and repeated explosive blasts from the crater. Aldy Salabia, a local resident assisting with rescue operations, told BBC Indonesian that from the team’s staging shelter, continuous ejection of ash and rock material was clearly visible.

    Eyewitness accounts from other hikers on the mountain that morning have added context to the tragedy. A local guide who escaped unscathed with his two clients told reporters he had detected warning signs of an impending eruption days earlier. “When Dukono hasn’t erupted for a few days, you have to be careful,” he explained, noting that he spotted deep tremors just before the blast and immediately fled downslope with his guests. As he descended, he said, he saw dozens of other hikers still lingering at the summit — including one group at the edge of the crater itself, and another 50 meters away filming footage with a drone.

    Mount Dukono has had more than 200 recorded eruptive events since March 2025, and has maintained a Level 2 alert status on Indonesia’s four-tier volcanic warning system for an extended period, a classification that signals elevated activity and requires strict caution. Since December 2024, Indonesian volcanic authorities have officially banned all tourism and climbing activity within a 4-kilometer radius of the main crater, citing constant risks of flying rock, ash fall, lava flows and sudden explosive eruptions. Officials say these warnings were widely shared across social media platforms and posted on large banners at all trail entrances, but many climbers continue to disregard the restrictions.

    Indonesia’s national search and rescue agency, Barsanas, has launched an investigation into the incident, noting that initial reviews suggest possible negligence by tourism operators or individual guides who led groups up the mountain despite the known risks. “The government is continuing to gather information to establish a complete account of the incident,” a Barsanas spokesperson said.

    Disaster experts say the tragedy exposes a growing, dangerous misperception of volcanic risk among tourists fueled by social media content. Dr Daryono, a member of the Indonesian Association of Disaster Experts, told the BBC that active volcanoes should never be treated as routine tourist destinations. “Dukono is a mountain with almost continuous eruptive activity, so any violation of the danger zone carries a fatal risk,” he said. He added that social media has warped public understanding of the danger: users only see content from influencers and climbers who successfully summit and return unharmed, while the constant, lethal risks of volcanic activity are pushed out of public view. “The real danger remains and could emerge at any time in the form of ejections of incandescent material, thick ashfall, volcanic gas, or sudden explosive eruptions,” he warned.

  • Islamic militants attack Congo villages near Uganda, killing 40 people, local group says

    Islamic militants attack Congo villages near Uganda, killing 40 people, local group says

    KINSHASA, DRC – A series of coordinated overnight attacks carried out by the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), an insurgent group with ties to the Islamic State, has left at least 40 civilians dead in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo’s border region adjacent to Uganda, local civil society representatives confirmed Friday. The violent incursion unfolded between Wednesday night and Thursday afternoon, striking multiple rural communities across two of eastern Congo’s conflict-torn provinces. According to Charité Banza, head of the Ituri civil society collective, and Kinos Katua, an on-the-ground group member, 25 civilians were killed in border villages within Beni territory, North Kivu, while an additional 15 fatalities were recorded in neighboring Ituri province. Local activists warn the final death toll is expected to climb, as dozens of residents remain unaccounted for following the attacks, which also saw insurgents burn down residential structures and loot civilian property. The ADF, a rebel movement originally formed in Uganda that pledged formal allegiance to the Islamic State network in 2019, has waged a low-intensity insurgency in the shared border region of the two countries for decades, with frequent attacks targeting unarmed civilian populations. The latest bloodshed comes just weeks after Amnesty International released a damning report this week accusing the ADF of systematic war crimes and crimes against humanity against civilian communities in eastern DRC. This attack is one of the deadliest claimed by the group since July 2025, when an ADF assault left 66 civilians dead in eastern Congo—a massacre the United Nations labeled a deliberate “bloodbath.” The DRC is already grappling with one of Africa’s most complex and protracted conflict crises, with roughly 120 active rebel and insurgent groups operating across its eastern territory. The most significant threat to state control currently comes from the M23 rebel movement, which is backed by Rwanda and has seized control of multiple major strategic cities and large swathes of territory in North Kivu over the past two years, forcing hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes.

  • Dozens killed in jihadist attacks on villages in central Mali

    Dozens killed in jihadist attacks on villages in central Mali

    More than a decade of rolling insurgency has reached a new brutal peak in central Mali, after coordinated simultaneous attacks on two rural villages left dozens of civilians and militiamen dead this week — marking the deadliest single assault since jihadist and separatist groups launched a nationwide coordinated offensive last month.

    The al-Qaeda-affiliated militant group Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) has officially claimed responsibility for the Wednesday night raids on the villages of Korikori and Gomossogou, located in Mali’s volatile central Mopti Region. Initial casualty counts from sources quoted by Agence France-Presse (AFP) put the death toll at 30, but separate accounts from diplomatic and humanitarian sources speaking to Reuters and regional security journalism collective West African Network for Peace and Security (WAMAPS) have revised the provisional number of fatalities to at least 50. Multiple residents and local sources confirm that while most victims were members of local self-defense militias, the death toll also includes teenage civilians and young children, with an unknown number of residents still unaccounted for in the wake of the assault.

    Local witnesses describe attackers entering the villages under cover of night, opening indiscriminate fire on residents, ransacking and looting residential and community structures, and setting multiple properties ablaze. A security source told AFP the attacks were carried out in retaliation for recent operations by Dan Na Ambassagou, a community-organized self-defense militia formed to counter years of persistent militant violence in central Mali.

    Mali’s military junta, led by General Assimi Goïta — who seized power in a 2020 coup — has responded to the assault with immediate counteroperations. Military officials confirmed that a “targeted strike” was launched in the attack area, with roughly a dozen jihadist fighters “neutralized” in the operation. Bandiagara Region Governor condemned the violence in an official Thursday statement, labeling the coordinated assaults “despicable and inhumane acts.” A subsequent military update clarified that nearly 10 additional “terrorist” fighters were killed and an insurgent logistical base was destroyed during further counteroffensive actions.

    The latest attack comes against a backdrop of rapidly escalating instability that has gripped Mali since April, when an alliance of jihadist militants and separatist rebels from the Azawad Liberation Front (FLA) launched a coordinated nationwide offensive aimed at ousting Goïta’s military regime. That opening wave of attacks included a suicide truck bombing targeting the residence of Malian Defense Minister Sadio Camara near the capital Bamako that killed the top security official. Just this week, Goïta announced he would fill the vacant defense minister post, with support from army chief of staff General Oumar Diarra.

    Speaking at a Wednesday press briefing in the capital, Malian army commander Djibrilla Maiga acknowledged that insurgent groups have been working to regroup and rearm in the weeks following the April offensive, warning that “the threat is still present” and confirming that military forces are working to disrupt further militant advances.

    Unlike previous deployments, when Mali relied on United Nations peacekeepers and French counterinsurgency forces, Goïta’s junta has partnered with the Russia-linked Africa Corps, a paramilitary force that grew out of the now-fractured Wagner Group, to combat the insurgency. Even with this support, the FLA-led offensive has forced Russian fighters to withdraw from the key northern city of Kidal, which is now fully under separatist control. The FLA has since announced plans to advance on other northern population centers and issued an explicit demand for the full withdrawal of Africa Corps forces from all Malian territory. Beyond territorial gains, insurgents have also tightened a blockade on Bamako, establishing a network of checkpoints on all major road arteries leading into the capital to cut off supply lines.

    Mali’s ongoing crisis traces its roots back to 2012, when a Tuareg separatist rebellion in northern Mali evolved into a full-scale Islamist insurgency that has since spread to central and eastern regions of the country. Today, large swathes of northern and eastern Mali remain completely outside of government control. When Goïta’s junta first seized power, it held broad popular support on a promise to end the decade-long security crisis. Following the coup, however, the new regime expelled UN peacekeeping forces and French counterinsurgency troops that had been deployed to stem the insurgency, clearing the way for the current surge in violence that has pushed the country to the brink of state collapse.

  • Inside the jails where Russia breaks Ukraine prisoners ‘like dogs’

    Inside the jails where Russia breaks Ukraine prisoners ‘like dogs’

    A bombshell investigation by Agence France-Presse (AFP), built on first-hand testimonies from three former Russian prison staff, surviving Ukrainian detainees and family members of the missing, has pulled back the curtain on a widespread, state-backed system of brutality inflicted on thousands of Ukrainian prisoners of war and civilian detainees held in Russian-controlled detention facilities.

    The harrowing accounts paint a picture of routine, unpunished abuse that senior Russian leadership explicitly authorized, with detainees describing even the most physically and psychologically resilient men being “broken like dogs” under relentless violence and dehumanization. AFP has verified the identities of the former prison officers, who have all fled Russia since speaking out, and changed their names in reporting to protect their safety.

    Multiple sources confirm that the scale of abuse exploded after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, following years of mistreatment that began when conflict broke out in eastern Ukraine in 2014. As of early 2024, Ukrainian data puts the number of Ukrainian prisoners of war held by Russia at roughly 7,000, with an additional 15,378 civilians illegally detained across Russian territory and occupied Ukrainian lands. The Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office has recorded at least 143 Ukrainian detainee deaths in Russian custody over the past four years.

    One anonymous former Russian special forces prison officer, Sergei, who resigned and left Russia after refusing to participate in the violence, told AFP that senior commanders explicitly stripped away all operational rules for guards interacting with Ukrainian detainees ahead of the invasion. “Before the first mission, the head of our territorial group gathered the staff and said that the existing rules would no longer apply when dealing with prisoners of war,” he recalled. “In other words, he gave us carte blanche to use physical force without restriction. And no one would be held responsible. The boss told us: ‘Be severe, fear nothing anymore.’” Sergei added that many of his colleagues embraced the open permission for brutality, acting on unchecked sadistic impulses without any documentation of violence. To hide the abuse, unit members did not wear identification tags or use body cameras when interacting with Ukrainian detainees, and no incident reports were ever filed after violent crackdowns.

    Alexei, a former medic at a Russian prison infirmary, described one particularly horrific case: a young Ukrainian lieutenant who was beaten nearly to death for talking back to his captors, left with extensive festering bruises across his lower body, and denied any meaningful medical care. He died of gangrene in October 2022, likely buried in an unmarked grave, and Alexei never even learned his name. Alexei confirmed that Ukrainian prisoners who resisted breaking under abuse were regularly beaten with rigid polypropylene heating pipes, and even medical staff were complicit in the mistreatment. Survivors are only given superficial wound care after beatings, and are required to publicly thank the Russian Federation for the treatment, he said. Independent investigations have documented even more extreme medical complicity: during a surgery on a Ukrainian prisoner, Russian medical staff carved the slogan “Glory to Russia” into his abdomen; the text had to be surgically removed after he was released in a prisoner exchange.

    Surviving detainee Yaroslav Rumyantsev, a 30-year-old former Ukrainian marine who surrendered at the besieged Azovstal plant in Mariupol in May 2022, shared his own first-hand experience of the systematic campaign to break detainees. After surviving a deadly explosion at Olenivka prison that killed at least 50 Ukrainian detainees, Rumyantsev was transferred to Remand Centre Number 2 in Taganrog, southwestern Russia, widely known as one of the harshest torture facilities for Ukrainian prisoners. Upon arrival, he and 250 other new detainees were bound and blindfolded, then beaten on all sides by a “reception committee” of guards with batons — a brutal tactic first used in Chechnya’s filtration camps during the Second Chechen War.

    Abuse was constant, Rumyantsev said, leaving even the strongest men cowering like beaten animals. “Men who defended their land, who went to the gym — strong men — were broken like dogs. They destroy them,” he explained. Brutal torture methods documented by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) include rape, mock executions, simulated hangings, electric shocks (including to genitalia), forced prolonged standing in painful positions, and punitive group torture: Rumyantsev described being forced to hold hands with other prisoners while guards ran electricity through the line to test how many people would feel the pain.

    Food deprivation is used as a tool of dehumanization. Rumyantsev said he was often given just two minutes to eat a meal under threat of additional beating, and other former detainees told rights groups that extreme hunger forced them to eat caught cockroaches and raw mice found in their cells. Additional arbitrary rules strip away any remaining dignity: prisoners are banned from looking guards in the eye, and Rumyantsev recalled being forced to stand in a group for 16 consecutive hours without access to a toilet, leaving many detainees to urinate on themselves.

    Beyond physical violence, the system is designed to psychologically break detainees through forced re-education and total isolation from the outside world. Detainees are regularly forced to sing Soviet songs, with punishment for singing too softly or off-key. Most are cut off from all contact with family, mirroring the isolation of Stalin-era gulags. Rumyantsev received only one letter from home shortly before his 2024 release, and said it was the only time he allowed himself to cry in captivity. “I saw those first warm words… and my eyes filled with tears. I was shaking and my friend put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘That means you’re still a human being,’” he recalled.

    Vladimir Osechkin, director of the Russian rights group Gulagu.net (which documents abuse in Russia’s prison system and helped share two of the former officers’ testimonies with AFP), explained that the torture regime is jointly run by Russia’s FSB security service and federal prison authorities, with the complicity of the Russian judicial system. To hide the abuse, Osechkin said, Ukrainian detainees are deliberately made “invisible” within the penal system: their names are sometimes changed, they are held in segregated facilities — including entire prisons emptied of other inmates to eliminate witnesses — and their whereabouts are kept hidden from international monitors and family members.

    This isolation leaves thousands of families in agonizing limbo, waiting for any word of missing loved ones. Natalia Kravtsova’s son Artem, an Azov brigade fighter captured in Mariupol in 2022, was confirmed to be in Russian custody by the Red Cross a year after his capture, but she has had no contact with him since. She is not even sure he is still alive, and every prisoner exchange announcement brings a burst of hope that quickly shatters. “Even if you’re calm on the outside, inside you’re burning,” she said.

    Civilians are not spared the systematic brutality. In occupied Melitopol, 62-year-old schoolteacher Olga Baranevska was abducted in May 2024 for refusing to cooperate with Russian occupation authorities, and sentenced to six years in prison on fabricated explosives charges that her family calls completely baseless. Her daughter Aksinia Bobruiko, a refugee in Germany, only learned two months after her arrest that she was alive, and has almost no additional information. Bobruiko now works with the grassroots NGO “Numo, Sestry!” (“Come on, my sisters!”) founded by former detainee Liudmyla Guseynova, who spent three years in pro-Russian detention after being arrested for supporting Ukraine in 2019. Guseynova described being held in 50 days of isolated confinement in a dungeon, forced to stand all day with a bag over her head, and held in a cramped, filthy cell shared with 20 other detainees that had only a hole in the floor for a toilet and insect-infested mattresses. She recalled investigators refusing to approach her because of the stench and bedbugs covering her body.

    Official data from an October 2023 OSCE report, drawing on Ukrainian official records, found that 9 out of 10 Ukrainian detainees report being ill-treated, with 42% reporting sexual violence. Most released detainees are severely emaciated after months or years of mistreatment. Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly claimed that Russia treats detainees humanely, and Russia’s federal prison administration did not respond to AFP’s requests for comment on the investigation.

    Rights campaigners are calling for all those responsible for the systematic abuse to be held accountable before an international court. “We will find them and punish them all,” vowed Sergei, the former Russian prison special forces officer who blew the whistle on the system.

  • Indonesia volcanic eruption kills three hikers: officials

    Indonesia volcanic eruption kills three hikers: officials

    A devastating volcanic eruption on Indonesia’s Halmahera Island has claimed three lives and left 10 hikers unaccounted for, local authorities confirmed Friday. Mount Dukono, one of the Southeast Asian nation’s nearly 130 active volcanoes, burst into activity early Friday, blasting a dense column of ash 10 kilometers into the sky.

    Among the three fatalities are two foreign hikers and one local resident from the nearby island of Ternate, North Halmahera Police Chief Erlichson Pasaribu told Indonesia’s Kompas TV. Seven hikers managed to descend the mountain safely, while five others suffered injuries in the blast, according to Indonesia’s National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB).

    What makes this incident particularly sobering is that the entire area surrounding the volcano was officially designated off-limits to visitors last month, after vulcanologists detected a sharp uptick in volcanic activity. Pasaribu confirmed that the group of hikers deliberately ignored multiple warnings, including public appeals on social media and physical barricades posted at the trailhead. “Local residents understand the risk and avoid climbing,” he said. “Many of these hikers are foreign tourists looking to create social media content.”

    Joint rescue teams from the regional disaster management agency BPBD and the National Search and Rescue Agency Basarnas have been deployed to conduct search operations and evacuate stranded climbers, but the mission has faced significant challenges. The mountain’s rugged terrain is only accessible by vehicle for the lower portion of the climb, forcing rescuers to carry stretchers the rest of the way. Persistent volcanic rumbling and ongoing unstable activity have further slowed progress, Pasaribu added.

    Lana Saria, head of Indonesia’s government Geology Agency, noted that the early-morning eruption was accompanied by loud booming explosions, with ash drifting predominantly northward. She warned that nearby residential areas and the city of Tobelo must remain on high alert for falling volcanic ash, which poses risks to public health and can disrupt local air and ground transportation.

    Indonesia, an archipelagic nation spanning thousands of islands across Southeast Asia, sits on the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, a geologically active zone where frequent collisions between tectonic plates create regular seismic and volcanic activity. Mount Dukono currently stands at level two on Indonesia’s four-tiered volcanic alert system. Since December, the Center for Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation (PVMBG) has maintained a mandatory exclusion zone banning all visitors within four kilometers of the volcano’s active Malupang Warirang Crater.

  • Sudan was already at war and hungry. Now its farmers are hit by another conflict

    Sudan was already at war and hungry. Now its farmers are hit by another conflict

    Two years after Sudan’s brutal civil war drove him from his small family farm, Omer al-Hassan finally made the journey back to his land in Omdurman, clearing weeds, plowing dry soil, and preparing to plant for the first time since he fled. But a new wave of unrest sweeping the Middle East has now derailed his hopes, sending critical agricultural input prices soaring and pushing him and millions of other Sudanese farmers further into financial ruin and food insecurity.

    Al-Hassan and thousands of small-scale producers across Sudan are now bracing for one of the costliest planting seasons in recent memory. Many have already announced deep cuts to planned production, while some vulnerable smallholders have opted to skip planting entirely—a devastating development for a nation already grappling with three straight years of armed conflict that has left more than half its population facing acute hunger.

    “The conflict linked to Iran has upended every part of our agricultural work,” al-Hassan told the Associated Press during an interview as he and his crew harvested onions from his recently cleared plot. After two months of backbreaking work to restore the overgrown land, he said, “We put our faith in God, but even after all that struggle, we still go without meals some days. We simply can’t keep up with the costs.”

    Along with the 10 seasonal workers who help tend his farm, which also produces potatoes and tomatoes, al-Hassan says the group cannot cover operating costs without government financial support. That has already forced them to slash planted acreage and ration fertilizer use across the property. Another local farmer, Mohammed al-Badri, confirmed he can only afford to plant half of his arable land this season, leaving the rest uncultivated: “The other half is just wasted. We can’t do anything with it.”

    The root of this new crisis lies in disruptions to global trade chokepoints tied to Middle East tensions. More than half of Sudan’s imported fertilizer arrives by sea through the Gulf region, where hundreds of commercial vessels have been stranded for weeks amid heightened tensions around the Strait of Hormuz. The resulting supply crunch has pushed up domestic fuel prices by roughly 30% nationwide, with fertilizer costs skyrocketing even faster.

    Those increases have in turn driven sharp spikes in retail food prices across Sudan, hitting already cash-strapped households the hardest. The nation’s core staple crops—sorghum, millet, and sesame—are now at severe risk of production shortfalls this growing season. Farmers already reeling from the ongoing internal conflict between Sudan’s military and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces now face cascading cost increases for fertilizer, gasoline for farm tractors, and diesel to power irrigation pumps.

    Abdoun Berqawi, a farmer in Gezira, Sudan’s most productive agricultural heartland, described the situation as a “dangerous reality” that will collapse small-scale farming without urgent government intervention. He shared data showing the cost of a 50-kilogram bag of urea fertilizer has jumped from $11 a year ago to roughly $50 today, while tractor fuel has surged from $2.50 to $8 per gallon over the same period. Officials from Sudan’s Ministry of Agriculture have not yet responded to requests for comment on what steps the government is taking to address the emergency.

    Melaku Yirga, regional vice president for the international aid organization Mercy Corps, who recently traveled to Sudan’s key agricultural states of Kassala and Gedaref, warned the timing of the crisis could not be worse. The Middle East tensions have triggered a “dangerous chain reaction” just as farmers begin preparing for planting, he explained. “People are already buying less food, cutting or skipping meals entirely, selling off critical household assets, and taking dangerous risks just to put food on the table,” Yirga said. “Mothers are forced to make impossible choices about which of their children get to eat the little food available, and some families are even eating wild leaves or animal feed to stay alive.”

    For farmers who borrowed money from banks to cover planting costs, poor harvests this year could lead not just to bankruptcy but jail time for unpaid debts, said Merghany Omar, a farmer based in al-Matammah, River Nile province. He added that even onion farming, a reliable cash staple for smallholders in the area, no longer generates enough revenue to cover basic input costs.

    Samy Guessabi, country director for Action Against Hunger in Sudan, noted this new crisis is layered on top of pre-existing systemic vulnerabilities, including dramatic currency depreciation that has already eroded purchasing power across the country. The hardest-hit communities are in remote agricultural regions including Kordofan, White Nile, Darfur, and Blue Nile, Guessabi said, where “farm zones are cut off from major markets and have very poor transport connections.”

    Even in Sudan’s urban centers, retail prices for fresh vegetables and dairy products have risen by roughly 40% in recent weeks, driven directly by fuel price increases. Before the latest crisis sparked by Middle East tensions, the ongoing civil war had already pushed millions of Sudanese into hunger. The United Nations World Food Program currently estimates 19 million Sudanese face acute food insecurity, with millions more on the edge of famine. Famine was officially declared in two major regions, Darfur and Kordofan, last year.

    The emergency has also severely disrupted international humanitarian aid efforts already stretched thin by the conflict. WFP says food assistance shipments bound for Sudan are now forced to travel more than 5,500 additional miles to reach their destinations, adding massive extra costs and weeks of delays. That diversion is largely a result of commercial vessels avoiding the Bab el-Mandeb Strait at the southern end of the Red Sea, another critical global shipping chokepoint, where Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen have threatened commercial traffic.

    Mubarak al-Nour, a veteran farmer and former parliamentarian in Gedaref, said even when farmers do manage to secure fertilizer, ongoing shipping delays mean many will miss the critical June-to-November planting window entirely. In response, some producers have already shifted away from high-value, fertilizer-intensive crops like corn and sesame, switching to lower-yield crops that require little to no chemical fertilizer.

    Even if agricultural supplies do reach Sudan in time for planting, the challenges do not end there. Mathilde Vu, advocacy manager with the Norwegian Refugee Council, explained that fuel shortages in many parts of the country are also worsened by warring factions blocking supply routes, while local fuel markets have been heavily damaged by bombing in recent months amid a sharp escalation of drone attacks across the nation.

    Reporting for this story was contributed by Khaled from Cairo. The Associated Press receives financial support for global health and development coverage in Africa from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The AP maintains full editorial independence over all content.

  • Alarmed ASEAN leaders discuss crisis plan to mitigate backlash from Middle East war

    Alarmed ASEAN leaders discuss crisis plan to mitigate backlash from Middle East war

    Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) leaders gathered Friday for their annual summit in Cebu, the central island province of the Philippines, facing mounting urgency to shield the bloc’s 600+ million people and interconnected economies from cascading spillover risks stemming from the ongoing conflict between the U.S.-Israel coalition and Iran. From the opening of the gathering, the shadow of the Middle East hostilities dominated the agenda, with top officials openly voicing deep alarm over the conflict that one senior minister says should never have been initiated.

    Ahead of the summit, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. made the unusual decision to scrap the traditional ceremonial fanfare and lavish pageantry that typically mark the annual gathering, a choice aligned with growing global economic headwinds that have squeezed budgets and raised cost-of-living pressures across the region. The shift in tone reflects the gravity of the challenges that leaders have gathered to address.

    Unlike past summits that balance multiple regional priorities, this year’s meeting is anchored by urgent contingency planning tailored to the bloc’s unique vulnerabilities. ASEAN’s fast-growing economies rely heavily on imported oil and natural gas from the Middle East, with nearly all seaborne energy shipments passing through the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic chokepoint where sporadic hostilities have continued even after a ceasefire took hold a month ago. Existing related coverage has already documented regional market volatility: Asian stocks have dropped while global oil prices climbed following recent attacks that threatened to collapse the ceasefire, just one example of the immediate economic spillover the bloc is working to mitigate.

    One of the most pressing humanitarian dilemmas facing ASEAN leaders is mapping out protocols for large-scale evacuation of ASEAN citizens from the Middle East, where more than one million Southeast Asian nationals reside and work. Already, multiple Southeast Asian citizens have been killed in military strikes launched by the U.S. and Israel starting February 28, and widespread escalation of hostilities would put the entire community at severe risk.

    A draft joint declaration obtained by the Associated Press outlines a coordinated regional response framework, calling on all 11 ASEAN member states to share real-time information and strengthen collaborative ties with global multilateral organizations to protect the safety and well-being of ASEAN nationals in conflict-affected zones. The contingency plan also lays out a suite of long-term and immediate energy security measures, including potential ratification this year of a cross-regional emergency fuel-sharing agreement, development of an integrated regional power grid, diversification of crude oil import sources, expanded adoption of electric vehicles, and exploratory research into emerging energy technologies including civilian nuclear power.

    While most senior ASEAN delegates stuck to the bloc’s characteristic cautious, restrained rhetoric in public remarks, Thailand’s Foreign Minister Sihasak Phuangketkeow broke ranks to issue a blunt call for action, demanding that the current ceasefire be extended indefinitely and that unimpeded safe passage for commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz be guaranteed. “This war should not have occurred in the first place,” Sihasak told the AP in an interview, noting that all ASEAN member states share deep alarm over the conflict. “We don’t know what the objectives are right? The peace talks seem to be moving but we want the war to end.”

    Even with the Iran conflict dominating the summit’s urgent priorities, leaders still scheduled time to address long-simmering regional flashpoints that have destabilized Southeast Asia for years. These include the ongoing territorial disputes in the South China Sea involving China, the five-year-long civil conflict in Myanmar, and the recent cross-border armed clash between Thailand and Cambodia.

    In a forthcoming separate statement on maritime issues set to be released after the summit concludes, leaders have pledged to work toward finalizing negotiations for an effective and substantive Code of Conduct (CoC) for the South China Sea. Negotiations for the proposed non-aggression agreement between ASEAN and China have dragged on for more than a decade, and tensions have escalated sharply in recent years, particularly between Chinese and Philippine maritime forces in contested waters.

    The slow progress on the CoC has fueled longstanding criticism that ASEAN functions as little more than an ineffective “talk shop,” where leaders gather annually for photo opportunities and symbolic displays of unity despite deep internal divisions over core geopolitical issues. Four ASEAN member states — Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam, and the Philippines — are directly involved in the decades-long territorial standoffs in the South China Sea, alongside China. The bloc’s other members include Cambodia, East Timor, Indonesia, Laos, Myanmar, Singapore, and Thailand.

  • 3 Australian women back from Syria face slavery and terrorism charges over alleged IS links

    3 Australian women back from Syria face slavery and terrorism charges over alleged IS links

    On a Thursday late last week, four Australian women and nine children touched down in Melbourne on two Qatar Airways flights originating from Doha, capping years of detention in the squalid, desert-side Roj Camp in northern Syria. What made their homecoming extraordinary was the fact it came despite explicit warnings from the Australian federal government that any citizens linked to the Islamic State (IS) group returning from the former IS caliphate would face immediate prosecution. By the following day, three of those four women had been arrested and slapped with serious slavery, terrorism and crimes against humanity charges that carry decades of potential prison time.

    The most severe allegations center on 53-year-old Kawsar Abbas and her 31-year-old daughter Zeinab Ahmed, who appeared in a Melbourne Magistrates Court on Friday following their arrival. According to official statements released by Australian police, the entire Abbas family migrated from Australia to Syria in 2014, when IS declared its self-styled caliphate centered on the northern Syrian city of Raqqa. Investigators allege the family purchased a young Yazidi woman as a slave for $10,000 USD, and held the captive in their family home while they resided in IS-controlled territory. Kawsar Abbas is accused of being an active accomplice in the purchase and unlawful detention of the enslaved woman.

    As a result of the allegations, Abbas faces four separate counts of crimes against humanity under Australian federal law, while Ahmed faces two counts of slavery offenses. Each individual charge carries a maximum penalty of 25 years behind bars, meaning both women could face life sentences if convicted. Their legal representation confirmed the pair will submit formal bail applications at a scheduled hearing on the following Monday.

    The third woman charged, a 32-year-old who was taken into custody at Sydney Airport after the group’s arrival, faces a separate set of terrorism-related charges. Police allege she traveled to Syria to join her partner, who was an active IS fighter. Under Australian law in place between 2014 and 2017, travel to Raqqa – the former IS stronghold – without a valid official reason was a criminal offense. She is charged with being a member of a designated terrorist organization and knowingly entering and remaining in territory controlled by the group. Each of those charges carries a 10-year maximum prison sentence, and she is scheduled to appear in a Sydney court for a bail hearing later the same day.

    The three women had been held in Kurdish custody since 2019, when IS’s territorial rule collapsed across northern Syria and Iraq, and had remained detained at Roj Camp ever since. The Australian government has repeatedly condemned citizens who traveled to Syria to support IS, and it refused to provide any official assistance to facilitate the group’s repatriation. Still, this arrival marks only the latest in a series of returns of Australian citizens held in Syrian detention camps: the federal government has organized two formal repatriation operations in recent years, and other citizens have made their own way back to Australia without state support.

    Currently, 21 more Australian citizens – 11 women and 10 children – remain detained in Roj Camp, located in northeast Syria just kilometers from the Iraqi border. Advocacy groups supporting the detainees have confirmed they are working to secure the repatriation of this remaining group within the next several weeks. Among those still held is one woman who is currently blocked from returning to Australia under a temporary exclusion order, a legal tool introduced in 2019 legislation designed to bar high-risk former IS affiliates from re-entering the country. The order allows the government to bar eligible citizens from returning for up to two years, and this marks one of the first times the power has been used since it was enacted. Temporary exclusion orders cannot be applied to children under the age of 14, and Australian officials have ruled out separating children from their mothers to enforce the orders, leaving the government with little option but to allow the entire family unit to remain detained if the mother is barred.

  • EU monitor says sea temperatures near all-time highs as El Nino looms

    EU monitor says sea temperatures near all-time highs as El Nino looms

    Against a backdrop of accelerating long-term human-caused global warming, the European Union’s official climate monitoring body has warned that global sea surface temperatures are on the cusp of hitting unprecedented all-time highs, as the planet moves toward the formation of a potentially powerful El Nino weather event.

  • Russia says intercepted drones as its unilateral truce begins

    Russia says intercepted drones as its unilateral truce begins

    Just hours after Russia launched its unilateral two-day ceasefire to coincide with its annual World War II Victory Day holiday celebrations, Russian authorities announced they had intercepted multiple drones targeting the capital Moscow on Friday, while escalating threats of retaliatory strikes against Kyiv that have drawn sharp international backlash.

    The temporary ceasefire has been dismissed by Ukrainian leadership as nothing more than a propaganda tactic designed to secure Russia’s iconic May 9 Red Square military parade – one of the most symbolically charged patriotic events in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s 25-year tenure in power. Putin has anchored much of his political narrative to the memory of the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany, even invoking that legacy to justify his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

    In remarks ahead of the ceasefire taking effect, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky issued a stark warning to allied nations considering sending representatives to attend the Moscow parade. “We have also received messages from some states close to Russia, saying that their representatives plan to be in Moscow… A strange desire… in these days. We do not recommend it,” Zelensky stated. He went on to accuse Russia of seeking a temporary pause in fighting only to protect its ceremonial event before resuming military aggression: “They want from Ukraine a permit to hold their parade so that they can go out onto the square safely for one hour once a year, and then go on killing.”

    Zelensky’s own earlier proposal for a reciprocal Ukrainian ceasefire starting May 6 has gone unanswered by the Kremlin. In the final days leading up to the unilateral truce, Russian forces intensified their attacks on Ukrainian positions, with Ukraine launching counterstrikes of its own. On Thursday, Russia’s defense ministry claimed its forces had destroyed nearly 350 Ukrainian drones in overnight operations. Per updates posted by Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin on Russian social platform Max, an additional 20 drones were intercepted in the first two hours after Russia’s ceasefire went into effect.

    In the lead-up to the holiday, the Russian defense ministry issued an urgent formal call for Kyiv residents and foreign diplomatic personnel to evacuate the Ukrainian capital, warning of impending retaliatory strikes should Ukraine continue offensive operations during the truce. “We remind the civilian population of Kyiv and staff at foreign diplomatic missions once again of the need to leave the city in good time,” the ministry said, echoing a similar evacuation warning for diplomats issued by the Russian foreign ministry late Wednesday.

    International reaction to the Russian threats was swift and critical. The United Kingdom’s foreign office called Moscow’s warnings “unwarranted, irresponsible and completely unjustified,” noting that any attack on foreign diplomatic premises would represent a dangerous new escalation of the ongoing conflict. German Foreign Ministry official Johann Wadephul confirmed to Bloomberg TV that Berlin has no plans to withdraw its embassy staff from Kyiv, while a senior anonymous source close to Zelensky told Agence France-Presse that the Ukrainian president would remain in Kyiv through the weekend.

    Under the terms of Russia’s unilateral ceasefire, the defense ministry pledged a “complete” halt to offensive fire along the entire front line and an end to long-range strikes on Ukrainian military infrastructure, while warning that any failure by Ukraine to match the pause would prompt a proportional Russian response. In a reflection of growing security unease ahead of this year’s event, Moscow has announced multiple unusual changes to the annual parade: for the first time in nearly two decades, no heavy military hardware such as tanks and ballistic missiles will be displayed along Red Square, a shift that comes as Ukraine has expanded its long-range drone strike capacity and stepped up attacks on Russian territory far from the front lines in recent weeks.

    Attendance from foreign leaders has also plummeted. According to the Kremlin, only the heads of state of Belarus, Malaysia, and Laos will attend the event, alongside leaders of two Russia-backed breakaway Georgian regions that lack United Nations recognition. Moscow has also implemented intermittent city-wide internet shutdowns that will remain in place through Saturday, further signaling heightened security concerns.

    The conflict, which has grown into the most devastating armed confrontation in Europe since World War II, remains at a stalemate, with diplomatic negotiations to end the hostilities making little to no progress and largely overshadowed by rising tensions in the Middle East tied to the Iran conflict. Moscow’s core peace demand – that Ukraine withdraw its forces from four eastern and southern regions Russia claims as its own – remains completely unacceptable to the Kyiv government.