分类： world

In a diplomatic and social controversy that has sparked international debate over free expression versus domestic social cohesion, Singapore has permanently barred two founding members of the iconic British trip-hop group Massive Attack from reentering the country, following an on-stage pro-Palestine demonstration during a late July concert in the city-state.

Singaporean police announced in an official statement that the two musicians were investigated over actions that took place during their sold-out July 29 performance, which included unfurling a Palestinian flag on stage and one member chanting the slogan “Free Palestine” for the crowd to hear. After completing their inquiry, law enforcement officials issued the pair formal stern warnings and added them to the country’s entry blacklist.

Singaporean police emphasized that authorities view any action that could threaten the nation’s carefully maintained racial and religious harmony with severe seriousness. The statement called on all visitors and local residents, including foreign nationals performing in the country, to avoid bringing divisive foreign political conflicts into Singapore’s public sphere, noting that such actions can erode national social cohesion and violate the country’s commitment to the rule of law.

While police declined to publicly name the two banned individuals, video footage shared by local Singaporean media outlets confirms the pair are the band’s two core founders: Robert “3D” Del Naja and Grant “Daddy G” Marshall.

In an official response posted to the band’s Instagram account shortly after the ban was announced, Massive Attack representatives said the group was caught off guard and deeply disappointed by the Singaporean government’s decision.

The band explained that long before their formal set began and after the performance concluded, large portions of the concert audience chanted “Free Palestine” spontaneously. The group said they had no prior expectation that displaying the flag in solidarity with fans would run afoul of any Singaporean regulations, but added that they remain proud of the impromptu collective expression of solidarity with the Palestinian cause alongside the audience.

Massive Attack concluded its statement by calling on the Singaporean government to respect its own citizens’ right to express their conscientious beliefs without the threat of state enforcement.

One week after a powerful magnitude 7.1 earthquake shook Japan’s southwestern Kumamoto Prefecture on the island of Kyushu, the disaster-battered region is facing a cascading series of new crises: sweltering near-40°C heat, critical shortages of basic supplies, and growing public anger over missteps from both political leaders and a local business.

As of Monday, prefectural officials confirmed the earthquake’s death toll has reached 38. Among those fatalities is one resident who died of apparent heat stroke while sheltering in a vehicle amid the ongoing high temperatures, and another victim whose cause of death is still undergoing official investigation. An additional 114 people across the prefecture have been confirmed injured, with infrastructure damage widespread: official data shows 700 residential properties have been completely destroyed, and more than 11,300 other buildings have sustained varying degrees of damage.

In communities across the quake zone, residents have begun the slow first steps of recovery: stacking mounds of splintered debris, broken household furniture and water- or impact-damaged appliances on curbs for municipal collection crews. In the smaller towns of Uki and Hikawa, construction crews have broken ground on the first batches of temporary housing for residents left homeless by the disaster.

But recovery efforts are being severely hampered by extreme weather and crippling supply shortages. The Japan Meteorological Agency forecast that temperatures would climb as high as 35°C to 40°C (104°F) across the region on Monday, and more than 46,000 households remain cut off from running water. Shortages of fuel for generators and vehicles have also been widely reported, leaving communities without reliable power for cooling. As of Monday, more than 8,500 displaced people are still staying in overcrowded emergency shelters converted from public facilities including community centers, school gymnasiums and classrooms, and the vast majority of these shelters lack working air conditioning. Other displaced residents have been forced to sleep in uncooled vehicles in public parking lots and parks, or camp outside the ruins of their damaged homes.

Disaster experts have long warned that this combination of overcrowding, insufficient cooling, poor sanitation and limited privacy creates deadly health risks for displaced populations following major natural disasters. The death of a heat stroke victim in a shelter vehicle has already amplified fears that more lives could be lost to heat-related illness, compounding the earthquake’s initial death toll.

On Monday, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi made her first visit to the quake-hit region since the disaster struck. However, the trip quickly sparked public backlash: Takaichi toured one of the area’s best-resourced shelters, which offers residents cardboard beds, privacy partitions and full air conditioning. Critics on Japanese social media quickly argued that the carefully selected visit did not reflect the grim reality facing most displaced people in the prefecture, and that the prime minister’s trip amounted to performative politics that ignored the scale of the crisis.

A separate controversy has also emerged surrounding the deaths of two employees at a local general store inside the collapsed Aeon Mall in Kashima. Officials confirmed that an explosion, believed to be caused by a gas leak that followed the initial earthquake, killed the pair after roughly 3,000 shoppers had already been evacuated to a nearby parking lot. Seven total deaths were reported at the mall, with rescuers recovering seven bodies and pulling five survivors from the rubble.

The store’s operator, local firm Habita, has confirmed that it instructed the two employees to re-enter the damaged shopping mall after the initial quake to retrieve sales proceeds and lock them in a safe. On Sunday, two Habita executives attended the wake of 22-year-old Kurumi Otake, one of the two dead employees, to offer a formal apology to her family. “I wish someone had stopped her,” Otake’s mother told reporters through tears, after meeting with the executives. “My daughter is not coming back.”

At a regional security conference hosted in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia by U.S. Pacific Command on Monday, the leader of the U.S. military’s Indo-Pacific command delivered a stark warning that coercive behavior from Beijing and other global actors poses growing threats to Indo-Pacific stability, stressing that Washington will never permit a single power to seize control of the strategic region.

Admiral Samuel Paparo, commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, spoke via video link to the assembled delegates, arguing that some actors are leveraging manufactured claims of legitimacy to enable intimidation and pressure against neighboring states. He drew a sharp conceptual distinction for the current geopolitical moment: “That’s not the rule of law. That’s the rule by law. That distinction between law as a tool of order versus law as a weapon of raw power, is the defining fault line of our time.”

Paparo’s comments arrive against a backdrop of sustained heightened tensions in the South China Sea, where China’s expansive territorial and maritime claims overlap with competing claims from multiple Southeast Asian coastal nations. The Philippines has emerged as the primary site of recent standoffs between Beijing and a regional claimant, with repeated confrontations between Chinese and Philippine maritime vessels centered on a contested shoal. Manila has formally accused Chinese crews of carrying out dangerous navigation maneuvers, deploying water cannons against Philippine vessels, and repeatedly attempting to block government resupply missions to Filipino personnel in the disputed area. China has outright rejected all these accusations, and continues to assert its full territorial sovereignty over the contested waterway.

The United States has repeatedly maintained that it does not take formal sides in the overlapping sovereignty claims in the South China Sea, but affirms its unwavering support for freedom of navigation, adherence to international law, and the right of all nations to operate in accordance with their recognized legal rights. Paparo underlined that open sea access, collective maritime security, and unobstructed global commerce form the foundation of lasting regional stability. He added that peaceful negotiation of disputes and universal respect for national sovereignty are non-negotiable requirements to protect the existing rules-based order in the Indo-Pacific.

“The United States is clear-eyed about the complex security environment in this region. Our posture and our intent are well defined. The United States is deterring China through strength, not through confrontation,” Paparo stated. “We will not let any nation dominate this region or sweep away the hard-fought sovereign rights of independent states.”

The U.S. commander further noted that the Indo-Pacific remains the central global hub of geopolitical and economic activity, but rising instability and evolving security challenges have made closer coordination between U.S. allies and regional partners more critical than ever before.

Opening remarks earlier in the conference came from Philippine Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro, who pledged that Manila would continue to resist and push back against what he framed as Chinese aggression in the region. Speaking to reporters after his address, Teodoro expanded on his concerns, noting that Philippine anxiety over China’s actions extends far beyond its activities in the South China Sea. He pointed to Beijing’s recent test of a ballistic missile launched into the Pacific Ocean as clear evidence of China’s expanding regional reach and growing military footprint. “China is everywhere … this is a matter of concern,” he added.

On the sidelines of the security gathering, Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Secretary-General Kao Kim Hourn offered a more optimistic update on long-running negotiations between ASEAN member states and China over a binding code of conduct to govern interactions in the South China Sea and de-escalate long-running tensions. According to Kao, talks have advanced dramatically in recent months, with negotiators now far closer to finalizing the text than ever before. “The pace has picked up dramatically and I think we are much closer to finalizing the code of conduct,” Kao said. “I have full confidence that we will get it done within this year.”

WELLINGTON, New Zealand — In a landmark step toward reclaiming its Indigenous cultural heritage and distancing itself from colonial-era naming conventions, the small South Pacific island nation previously known internationally as Nauru has formally adopted the traditional name Republic of Naoero, the country’s president has confirmed. The change aligns the nation’s international title with the spelling and pronunciation used in its Indigenous language, bringing a years-long effort to correct a colonial naming compromise to a successful close.

Per the new designation, the country’s two-letter international code will shift from NRU to NRO, while its citizens will be identified as dei-Naoero, replacing the previous colonial-era term Nauruan. Phonetically, the previous international pronunciation was commonly rendered as “Now-roo” by global audiences, while the traditional Naoero is pronounced “Now-ero.”

In an official statement published to the government’s Facebook page Thursday, administration officials explained the change returns the remote atoll nation to its original, pre-colonial identity. From the early 20th century, the country was labeled Nauru for international use not as a reflection of local preference, but because colonizers found the traditional Indigenous name too difficult to pronounce, a choice made purely for foreign convenience rather than respect for local culture. President David Adeang first laid out the proposal to parliament in January, framing the amendment as a long-overdue act of respect for the nation’s roots.

“This proposed change seeks to more faithfully honor our nation’s heritage, our language, and our identity,” Adeang said in his January address to lawmakers. The constitutional amendment required two rounds of parliamentary approval, both of which it has now secured, though formal official updating of the national constitution has not yet been publicly confirmed.

Naoero, home to roughly 12,000 residents, ranks as the world’s third least populous sovereign state, trailing only Vatican City and neighboring Tuvalu. The tiny coral limestone atoll has a long history of foreign domination: it was first colonized by Germany in the late 19th century, then placed under Australian administration after World War I, before finally gaining full independence as a republic in 1968.

In the decades following independence, the nation faced severe economic instability after decades of intensive phosphate mining generated extreme wealth for the small state in the 1970s, before the industry collapsed entirely in the 1990s, pushing the country to the edge of economic collapse. Today, Naoero faces an even larger existential threat: it ranks among the nations most vulnerable to sea level rise driven by anthropogenic climate change, prompting its government to launch a paid citizenship-by-investment program to raise funds required to relocate communities and infrastructure inland as ocean waters encroach on coastal areas.

Adeang described the name change as “the beginning of renewed national pride” in his recent public announcement of the change. When parliament initially approved the shift in May, the president had initially scheduled a public referendum to confirm the change. But the government announced last week that after “extensive discussions” across communities and political bodies, lawmakers concluded a public vote was unnecessary. The administration noted in its statement that the traditional name Naoero has never been absent from national life, and the change simply formalizes what already exists for the country’s people.

“While a referendum is intended to determine the will of the people, the name Naoero has never been lost, but rather waiting to be fully embraced,” the statement read. “The designation is already the identity of the people, is on the national coat of arms, and spoken in the community; and importantly is allowed by the Constitution.”

Naoero’s decision to revert to its traditional name makes it the latest sovereign state to distance itself from colonial naming practices in recent years. In 2018, the southern African nation formerly known as Swaziland similarly reverted to its pre-colonial title Eswatini. In 2022, Turkey formally requested the United Nations and global bodies recognize its domestic name Türkiye as the country’s official international title, a shift also rooted in reclaiming national identity.

The change will require updating the naming of Naoero’s registered national aircraft and civilian ships, and the government has already begun outreach to secure formal recognition from foreign governments and international institutions. Remarkably, the United Nations officially updated its records to reflect the new name in June, shortly after the government submitted the formal request. As of this report, the foreign ministries of Australia and New Zealand, as well as the U.S. and Chinese embassies accredited to the Pacific region, have already updated their official websites to use the new title Republic of Naoero.