分类： world

Tightened Israeli security rules for flight crew, implemented after a foiled alleged hijacking plot targeting Ben Gurion Airport earlier this month, have triggered a high-profile disruption involving Ethiopian Airlines, forcing a cargo flight bound for Tel Aviv to turn back to its origin in Addis Ababa mid-journey. The root cause of the diversion? One of the flight’s pilots held Indonesian citizenship, a nationality barred under Israel’s new restrictions that ban crew from countries with no formal diplomatic relations with Israel or classified as hostile from landing in Israeli territory or transiting its airspace. According to Israeli news outlet Ynet, after the aircraft returned to Addis Ababa, the Indonesian pilot was replaced with a crew member from a country whose citizens are eligible to operate flights to Israel. Once the crew swap was completed, the cargo flight resumed its journey and landed safely at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport without further incident. TAL Aviation, the official representative of Ethiopian Airlines in Israel, moved quickly to reassure passengers that the single incident would not impact the carrier’s regularly scheduled passenger services between Addis Ababa and Tel Aviv. Notably, Ethiopian Airlines, a major state-owned African air carrier, has maintained its flight operations to Israel throughout the country’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza, which has been widely described as genocidal, as well as recent Israeli strikes targeting Lebanon and Iran. Just ahead of this incident, the airline confirmed plans to ramp up service between its Addis Ababa hub and Tel Aviv to 26 weekly flights. This latest disruption comes less than two weeks after a major security scare involving a Flydubai flight heading to Ben Gurion Airport. In that earlier incident, an Omani co-pilot allegedly attempted to hijack the aircraft and crash it into Israel’s primary international airport. Reports from the incident detail that the plane plummeted 16,000 feet in just 30 seconds after the co-pilot attacked the lead pilot, before a group of Israeli passengers on board intervened and subdued the suspect. The aircraft ultimately diverted and landed safely in Saudi Arabia. Last Friday, United Arab Emirates Attorney General Hamad Saif al-Shamsi publicly confirmed that the Omani co-pilot had pre-planned a suicide attack targeting Ben Gurion Airport. Reuters reported that al-Shamsi added that routine pre-flight security screenings had failed to uncover any signs of extremist beliefs or the pilot’s planned terrorist act. In the wake of that attempted attack, Israeli officials implemented the new sweeping restrictions on foreign crew, rolling out a list of 31 countries whose nationals are barred from operating flights to Israel or crossing Israeli airspace. The rules also extend to crew holding dual nationality that includes any of the listed countries. Since the new policy was announced, Israel’s Transport Ministry has faced growing public criticism over claims it failed to uphold its responsibility to conduct consistent, thorough security checks on incoming flights. The tightened restrictions have also stoked widespread public anxiety across Israel about the nationalities of crew members working on flights entering the country. A recent poll published by Israeli news outlet Mako following the Flydubai incident found that more than 40 percent of Israeli respondents said they prefer to travel exclusively on Israeli airlines, or plan to avoid airlines based in Arab and Muslim-majority countries moving forward.

As top global financial leaders gathered this week in Bangkok for annual international economic meetings, the International Monetary Fund issued a stark warning on Tuesday: ongoing conflicts across the Middle East are rapidly widening the economic gap between wealthy and poor nations worldwide, deepening systemic global inequality.

In its newly released World Economic Outlook report, the IMF outlined that multiple concurrent regional tensions — including escalated conflict around the Gulf, open hostilities with Iran, and Israel’s military campaign in Gaza — are key drivers behind the growing divide between economic winners and vulnerable, disadvantaged economies. These conflicts are not the only sources of rising global instability, the organization noted: climate change-related shocks, persistently high global energy prices, and rapid disruptive technological change, most notably the exponential rise of artificial intelligence, are also amplifying systemic economic risk.

IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva cautioned that current projections suggest over the long term, AI could reshape the global labor market dramatically, with up to 40 percent of all existing jobs facing modification, downgraded responsibilities, or full elimination. Developing and low-income nations, Georgieva emphasized, will bear the brunt of all these overlapping crises, as they lack the financial and institutional resources to compete with wealthy countries for limited global supplies of critical goods, from energy to food to advanced technology.

World Bank President Ajay Banga echoed these concerns during his remarks in Bangkok, noting a major global shift in how nations frame their economic priorities: “What’s happening is that every country has now suddenly figured out that energy security is national security.”

The IMF’s data confirms the immediate economic damage of Middle East conflicts: Bahrain, Iraq, Kuwait and Qatar have all seen major disruptions to their oil and gas exports amid tensions with Iran, with the IMF forecasting double-digit contractions in total annual economic output for these states this year. For Saudi Arabia, whose more diversified economy was projected to shrink by 3.3 percent this year before returning to 7.9 percent growth in 2027, that forecast was finalized before recent attacks targeting Riyadh’s international airport and other key infrastructure. Ongoing Houthi attacks across the region have upended this projection, putting the kingdom’s fast-growing tourism sector — a core pillar of its long-term economic diversification plan — at severe risk. Multiple expatriate residents of Riyadh have told Middle East Eye that a growing number of foreign workers no longer feel safe living in the kingdom, threatening a key source of labor for the expanding tourism and service sectors.

Beyond Middle East conflicts, the IMF also cited Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine and the large-scale trade tariffs first implemented by former U.S. President Donald Trump as additional core contributors to global economic fragmentation and instability. Banga told Reuters that while global growth performed better than initially expected after Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz — a strategic chokepoint through which roughly 20 percent of the world’s global oil supplies pass — new economic pressures are already building rapidly.

Multiple overlapping crises are hitting vulnerable economies simultaneously: skyrocketing diesel prices, surging costs for agricultural fertilizer that drive up global food prices, and the looming threat of a powerful “super” El Niño event that climate experts project could cause up to 450,000 heat-related deaths globally.

IMF Chief Economist Silvana Tenreyro warned that a prolonged period of conflict in the Middle East would only add more upward pressure on already high global inflation and slow already muted growth. “The economy has been resilient, but that resilience is reaching its limits,” Tenreyro said.

The IMF’s baseline forecast projects global growth will hit 3.1 percent this year and edge up slightly to 3.4 percent in 2027, but the organization stressed that this headline figure “masks a reallocation of growth across economies”. Low-income countries that rely on oil imports and lack competitive advanced technology sectors face a sharply elevated risk that recent overlapping shocks will widen income gaps between and within national economies.

Global inflation is projected to rise to 4.7 percent this year before easing slightly to 4.1 percent in 2026, the IMF reported, with growing numbers of households across the world already struggling to cover skyrocketing energy and basic living costs.

Long-simmering regional tensions have taken a new turn following a deadly attack on Saudi Arabia’s capital that has upended tentative efforts toward Israeli-Saudi diplomatic normalization, Israeli and regional media reports confirm.

According to reporting from Israeli outlet Haaretz, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu worked through United States mediation to extend a formal offer of military support to Saudi Arabia against the Houthi movement in Yemen. For Israeli leadership, the proposal was framed as a strategic opportunity: not only would it allow the country to directly strike at a proxy of its top regional rival Iran, but it could also rebuild momentum for normalization talks that had stalled after the outbreak of the Gaza war in October 2023. Prior to the Gaza conflict, former U.S. President Donald Trump and Netanyahu had heavily promoted plans for normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia, following the 2020 Abraham Accords that saw the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Morocco establish formal ties with Israel.

However, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman rejected the Israeli offer outright. Senior diplomatic sources cited by Haaretz note the crown prince’s decision was driven by fears of widespread public backlash across Saudi Arabia, where popular opposition to normalization with Israel has surged amid the ongoing military campaign in Gaza that has been widely described as a genocide by international observers.

The catalyst for Israel’s overture came after a devastating attack on Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport that left at least 13 people dead and more than 300 injured. The attack, which dramatically escalated tensions between the Houthi movement and the Saudi-backed Yemeni government, prompted immediate condemnation from Netanyahu, who released a public statement of condolence on the social platform X. “I condemn in the strongest possible terms the horrific terrorist attack … which claimed the lives of 12 innocent people and injured hundreds more,” Netanyahu wrote. “On behalf of the people of Israel, I extend our deepest condolences to the families of those murdered and our wishes for a full recovery to the injured.”

Just days after the airport attack, Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Saree announced the group had shot down a Saudi Wing Loong II armed reconnaissance drone in northern Yemen’s Saada province. Saree claimed the aircraft was conducting hostile operations over the region when it was targeted by Houthi forces.

Meanwhile, Iran, which has long been linked to the Houthi movement and is a major diplomatic rival of Israel, has stepped in to urge a diplomatic resolution to the escalating crisis. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi extended a formal offer of dialogue facilitation during a Sunday telephone call with his Saudi counterpart Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, a move confirmed by both Saudi state media and Iranian outlets.

Araghchi emphasized that clinging to a military-only strategy would only deepen regional instability, telling the Saudi foreign minister: “Insisting on a military approach and disregarding a political solution would only further complicate the situation. All crises in the region have no military solutions.” He added that Tehran stood ready to support negotiations between Saudi Arabia and the Houthi movement to reach a lasting political settlement.

After 30 days of mass open-ended hunger strike that left at least seven participants dead and dozens more in critical condition, hundreds of incarcerated people in Lebanon announced an end to their protest on Monday, following a negotiated settlement over a divisive general amnesty bill.

The legislation, originally approved by Lebanon’s parliament in August, was designed to tackle the country’s long-running severe prison overcrowding crisis by shortening sentences for thousands of inmates. The crisis is most acute at Roumieh, Lebanon’s largest prison, which holds more than 4,000 people in a facility built for just 1,000 — operating at 300% of its intended capacity. Systemic delays in judicial processing have worsened the crisis, with hundreds of detainees held for years without ever going to trial.

However, the bill immediately faced opposition after a parliamentary bloc filed a legal appeal challenging its legality. Critics raised two major red flags: first, that the legislation’s vague original text would allow the release of Islamist detainees accused of carrying out deadly attacks against Lebanese military personnel, and second, that the broad amnesty amounted to a “trojan horse” that would pardon financial crimes, corruption offenses tied to Lebanon’s 2019 catastrophic economic collapse, and even grave violations including war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Lebanese lawyer and researcher Nizar Saghieh compared the original draft to the 1991 general amnesty law passed at the end of the country’s 15-year civil war, which cleared most militia fighters and leaders of wrongdoing. “This law took the form of a self-amnesty, a blanket amnesty really, because it is unconditional, just like the general amnesty of the 90s,” he explained.

The country’s Constitutional Council ultimately rejected the legal appeal, but ordered sweeping changes to the text: removing some controversial clauses and amending others to narrow the scope of who qualifies for reduced sentences. The revisions added new restrictions that exclude many inmates serving life sentences from benefiting from the legislation.

More than 600 prisoners launched their hunger strike to protest the months-long suspension of the original bill, which they saw as their only path to early release after years of prolonged detention. The protest took a devastating toll: 72 strikers became critically ill and required emergency hospitalization, and the Prisoners’ Families Committee confirmed at least seven participants died due to medical neglect or complications from pre-existing conditions aggravated by the hunger strike.

Even with the end of the protest and the revised bill moving forward, many families of incarcerated people remain ambivalent about the outcome. Hamza, a resident of Tripoli whose brother Omar has been detained without trial on terrorism charges for 14 years since he was 18, welcomed the ruling that will allow Omar to benefit from the shortened sentence. But he expressed sorrow for other inmates who were excluded from the amnesty by the Constitutional Council’s amendments. “Our joy is incomplete, to be honest,” he said. Names have been changed to protect Hamza and Omar’s identities at their request.

The resolution of the hunger strike brings a temporary end to a standoff that exposed deep rifts in Lebanon over judicial reform, prison conditions, and accountability for past crimes and political and economic wrongdoing.

In a sudden move that has cut off millions of Afghans from a key source of independent information, Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban administration has halted all BBC transmissions on FM radio networks throughout the country. Taliban spokesperson Khubaib Ghufran, speaking for the Ministry of Information and Culture, confirmed the suspension to local Afghan media, citing unspecified “repeated violations” by the international broadcaster, but offered no further details on what those violations entailed.

Prior to this suspension, the BBC held the distinction of being the last remaining major international news organization still permitted to operate inside Afghanistan’s borders. Two United States-based media outlets were already banned from conducting on-the-ground work in the country in 2022. For millions of Afghans, the BBC’s service has long been the primary source of reliable, unfiltered news and information. Beyond straight news reporting, the broadcaster also produces educational content specifically for girls who have been barred from attending secondary education by the Taliban government. Each week, the BBC’s programming reaches more than one in five adult Afghans across the country through its multi-platform distribution.

In an official statement released after the suspension was announced, the BBC said it is currently engaging with Taliban authorities to resolve the issue. While FM transmissions are now offline, the broadcaster emphasized that it remains committed to serving Afghan audiences. It continues to deliver news and content in three languages — Pashto, Dari, and English — via alternative distribution channels, including shortwave and medium wave radio, online digital platforms, and satellite television.

This latest action is part of a broader pattern of tight media control imposed by the Taliban since it retook full control of Afghanistan in 2021. Under current regulations, all music broadcasts are banned, and strict gender rules have drastically reduced the visibility of women in local media. Women are no longer allowed to appear on air alongside male colleagues, a marked shift from the period before the Taliban’s return to power. While some social media platforms remain accessible to Afghan users, widespread power outages across much of the country, prohibitively high internet costs, and low national literacy rates create major barriers that prevent many people from accessing alternative sources of information. The BBC’s Afghan service has a long history in the region, having operated continuously since 1981 through decades of political upheaval and regime change.

On Tuesday afternoon, a violent stabbing incident unfolded at a Homeplus discount supermarket in Incheon, South Korea, leaving eight people injured and prompting swift action from bystanders and law enforcement. The 59-year-old attacker, who authorities have since taken into custody, launched the assault at approximately 1:40 p.m. local time while riding an escalator, according to Incheon Namdong Police Station. Reports confirm he strapped knives to both hands during the attack, and investigators later recovered 10 additional knives stored in his backpack.

Quick-thinking bystanders intervened before police arrived, blocking the suspect’s path with chairs and subduing him to prevent further harm. Once officers detained the attacker, they cordoned off the section of the supermarket where the attack occurred to process the crime scene. Of the eight victims — six women and two men — all were transported to local medical facilities. One victim was reported to be in cardiac arrest, while the others sustained non-life-threatening injuries to their backs and shoulders. In response to the mass casualty event, emergency officials set up a on-site medical response center on the supermarket’s first floor to coordinate care.

Investigations into the attacker’s motives are currently ongoing, and details emerging about his criminal history have raised additional questions. The suspect was already wearing an court-ordered electronic ankle monitoring bracelet at the time of the attack. He has a prior conviction for attempted murder for stabbing his ex-wife, a crime that resulted in a four-year prison sentence. Just one month prior to the supermarket attack, he was also questioned by police after being caught carrying a knife during a solo protest outside an Incheon hospital, where he was airing grievances over medical treatment he had received.

This stabbing stands out as a rare act of mass public violence in South Korea, a nation widely recognized for its exceptionally high levels of public safety. Data from Statistics Korea shows the country recorded just 0.5 homicides per 100,000 residents in 2024, roughly one-tenth of the global average homicide rate. However, the incident adds to a growing pattern of unprompted, random violence that has sparked public anxiety across the country in recent years. Beginning in 2023, a string of unprovoked attacks targeting unrelated strangers emerged in the country, dubbed “Mudjima” or “Don’t Ask Why” crimes, referring to violent acts committed by people with no clear motive or connection to their victims. Most recently, in April 2025, a similar random stabbing at a South Korean supermarket left a 60-year-old woman dead.