As autonomous vehicle (AV) technology becomes an increasingly common sight on streets across California, a longstanding regulatory gap has finally been closed: starting this July, law enforcement will for the first time be able to hold driverless car manufacturers accountable when their vehicles break traffic laws.
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Germany focuses on shared interests after US announces troop drawdown
BERLIN – The Pentagon’s recent announcement that it will withdraw roughly 5,000 U.S. troops from Germany over the next 6 to 12 months has been met with measured calm from German defense leadership, even as the move signals a fresh erosion of trust between Washington and its key European allies amid a series of escalating tensions under the second Trump administration.
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius framed the drawdown as a long-expected development, echoing years of warnings from the White House that it would reduce U.S. military commitments in Europe. In comments Saturday to Germany’s national news agency dpa, Pistorius emphasized that the decades-long U.S. military presence on German soil has long served mutual strategic interests for both nations. “The presence of American soldiers in Europe, and especially in Germany, is in our interest and in the interest of the U.S.,” Pistorius said. He added that European NATO members have already acknowledged and acted on the need to take greater ownership of regional collective defense, with Germany ramping up military spending, accelerating weapons procurement, and expanding defense infrastructure in recent years to meet shifting security demands.
The 5,000-troop pullout accounts for approximately 14% — or one-seventh — of the 36,000 U.S. service members currently stationed in Germany. While the drawdown is sizable enough to shift the trans-Atlantic security dynamic, it is not viewed as a critical cut to U.S. force posture. Pentagon officials have so far released no detailed information about which units, facilities, or operations will be affected by the withdrawal. Across the entire European theater, the U.S. normally maintains between 80,000 and 100,000 military personnel, a number that rose after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. European allies have anticipated a post-escalation drawdown of this temporary reinforcement for more than a year.
Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said in an official statement that the decision came after a comprehensive review of U.S. force positioning across Europe, and was made to align with current theater requirements and on-the-ground security conditions. Germany hosts some of the most critical U.S. military infrastructure outside of North America, including the joint headquarters for U.S. European Command and U.S. Africa Command, Ramstein Air Base — a key logistics and command hub for operations across the Middle East and Africa — the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center that treated thousands of casualties from the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, and deployed U.S. nuclear weapons.
NATO spokesperson Allison Hart noted Saturday in a post on X that the alliance is collaborating with U.S. officials to work through the details of the force posture adjustment. “This adjustment underscores the need for Europe to continue to invest more in defense and take on a greater share of the responsibility for our shared security,” Hart said, adding that allies have made steady progress toward the alliance’s new target of each member devoting 5% of gross domestic product to defense spending.
Despite the measured official response from Berlin and NATO, the withdrawal marks a clear new low in U.S.-German relations and ties between Washington and European allies more broadly. For years, Trump has publicly floated the idea of cutting U.S. troop numbers in Germany, and has repeatedly attacked NATO for refusing to back U.S. policy in the conflict with Iran that began with U.S.-Israeli strikes on the country in late February. The president has also openly expressed frustration that NATO allies have declined to join his anti-Iran campaign, and has launched verbal attacks on multiple top European leaders, including German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
Just last week, Merz publicly criticized U.S. strategy in Iran, saying Washington is being “humiliated” by the Iranian leadership and has no clear policy for the region. The trans-Atlantic rift has spilled over into trade as well: Trump recently accused the European Union of failing to comply with its existing trade agreement with the U.S., and announced plans next week to raise tariffs on all EU-produced cars and trucks to 25%. The new tariffs would hit Germany particularly hard, as the country’s economy relies heavily on automotive exports to the U.S. At least one senior EU lawmaker has already labeled the planned tariff hike “unacceptable,” accusing Trump of breaking yet another major U.S. trade commitment.
NATO allies have been preparing for a U.S. troop drawdown in Europe since Trump began his second term, after repeated warnings from Washington that Europe will need to take full responsibility for its own security in the coming years — including security support for Ukraine. The reporting for this article was contributed by Sarah Burrows from London, with additional reporting from Jamey Keaten in Lyon, France.
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Rights summit in Zambia is canceled after Chinese pressure to exclude Taiwanese activists
Just days before RightsCon 2026, a major annual international human rights and digital freedom summit, was set to open its doors in Lusaka, Zambia, U.S.-based organizers announced the full cancellation of the event, citing foreign interference and pressure from Beijing that forced Zambian officials to bar Taiwanese civil society delegates from participating.
Access Now, the New York-headquartered digital rights advocacy group that hosts the yearly summit, confirmed the cancellation late Friday, reversing months of planning that was expected to draw more than 3,700 in-person and online attendees from over 150 countries around the globe. The organization said the cancellation followed a last-minute announcement from the Zambian government that the summit would be postponed, with informal communications later revealing the condition for lifting the postponement: Access Now would have to censor specific discussion topics and bar at-risk communities, including Taiwanese participants, from joining both in-person and virtually.
“We believe foreign interference is the reason RightsCon 2026 won’t proceed in Zambia,” Access Now said in its official statement. The group added that it repeatedly rejected any demands to exclude delegates based on political pressure, making the summit unable to move forward.
Initially, the Zambian government framed its move as a routine check to ensure the summit’s themes aligned with the country’s “national values, policy priorities and broader public interest considerations.” But the context of Zambia’s deep political and economic ties to China, rooted in large-scale Chinese investment in the country’s lucrative mining sector, makes the reported pressure consistent with Beijing’s long-standing diplomatic position on Taiwan.
China adheres to the one-China principle, which claims the self-governing island of Taiwan as an inalienable part of its territory, and requires all countries that maintain formal diplomatic relations with Beijing to cut off official and formal engagements with Taipei. China has built extensive economic and diplomatic influence across the African continent over the past two decades, giving it significant leverage over policy decisions in many African nations.
The cancellation of RightsCon marks the second high-profile incident involving Chinese diplomatic pressure on Taiwan in southern Africa in less than two weeks. Just one week prior, Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te’s planned official visit to Eswatini — the only African country that maintains formal diplomatic relations with Taipei — was derailed after China pressured Madagascar, Mauritius and Seychelles to withdraw overflight clearance for Lai’s aircraft. After that initial setback, Lai announced a surprise, unannounced arrival in Eswatini on Saturday, posting on social media platform X that “Taiwan will never be deterred by external pressures.”
Taiwan’s Digital Minister Lin Yi-jing linked the two incidents, saying in a Facebook statement Saturday that the cancellation of RightsCon, which was hosted last year in Taipei, exposes Beijing’s discomfort with the values of freedom, democracy and rule of law that both Taiwan and the summit represent. RightsCon has built a reputation over its years of operation as a leading global forum to discuss pressing digital rights issues including internet censorship, electronic mass surveillance, the global rise of cyberwarfare, and digital exclusion of marginalized communities.
Human Rights Watch, the leading global non-profit human rights organization, has called on Zambian authorities to issue a full public explanation for their decision to postpone and ultimately scuttle the summit. As of Sunday, the Zambian government has not issued any further comment responding to the allegations of pressure from China.
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Old and new Gulf faultlines exposed by Iran war
On April 28, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) made a landmark announcement that it would withdraw from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), a move that lays bare how ongoing Middle East conflict has not only deepened hostilities between Iran and its Gulf neighbors, but also fractured unity within the Gulf Cooperation Council itself.
Founded in 1960, OPEC stands out as one of the few enduringly successful multilateral bodies in the Middle East. For decades, its coordinated pricing and production policies enabled Gulf oil-producing states to accumulate the capital needed to renationalize their energy resources and fund the rapid, transformative development that turned small desert nations into global economic players. The bloc has weathered nearly every regional upheaval, revolution and war in its 65-year history, even after Qatar departed in 2019 amid a regional blockade led by its Gulf neighbors.
For years, tension has simmered between the UAE and Saudi Arabia, OPEC’s largest producer and de facto leader, which holds outsized influence over the bloc’s policy decisions. The UAE has long pushed to raise its own production quota, leveraging its untapped spare oil capacity, but repeated attempts have failed to yield changes that align with its economic goals. Yet industry friction alone does not explain the UAE’s decision to exit the organization entirely.
Though the two Gulf powers maintained close alignment through the mid-2010s, the UAE and Saudi Arabia have drifted steadily apart in recent years, driven by sharp divergences on key regional priorities. Their strategies for ongoing conflicts in Yemen and Sudan differ dramatically, as do their approaches to normalization with Israel: the UAE established full formal relations with Israel in 2020, while Saudi Arabia has pledged it will only normalize ties once an independent Palestinian state is established. Beyond geopolitics, the two nations have emerged as fierce economic competitors, and the ongoing regional war connected to Iran has only accelerated their rivalry.
After Iran responded to U.S.-Israeli attacks in February with strikes across Gulf states and a blockade of the strategic Strait of Hormuz, the conflict has laid bare the flaws in existing regional strategies. For Saudi Arabia, the war has exposed the limits of its gradual outreach to Iran and its reliance on the U.S., which is firmly aligned with Israel. In response, Riyadh has deepened defense cooperation with nuclear-armed Pakistan, a shift that has caused significant friction with the UAE, which maintains close strategic ties with Pakistan’s regional rival India. The UAE has publicly pushed Pakistan to issue a stronger condemnation of Iran during the current conflict, a demand Islamabad cannot meet due to its role as a neutral mediator in regional peace talks. Frustrated by Pakistan’s position, the UAE recently demanded Islamabad repay a $3.5 billion loan, only for Saudi Arabia to immediately step in with emergency financial support for Pakistan.
Notably, the UAE’s OPEC withdrawal announcement was timed to coincide with a Gulf Cooperation Council summit in Riyadh, where leaders gathered to try to find common ground on the ongoing Iran conflict. The timing was widely interpreted as a deliberate public snub to Saudi leadership.
The regional war has reignited a host of long-simmering disputes across the Gulf, including the decades-long sovereignty conflict between the UAE and Iran over three strategic islands: Abu Musa, Greater Tunb, and Lesser Tunb. Iran seized control of the islands in 1971, the same year the UAE gained independence from Britain, and the islands give Iran unrivaled strategic control over Gulf shipping lanes. The UAE has never relinquished its claim to the territory, while Iran maintains the islands have always been part of its sovereign territory. Historians believe the handover of the islands was part of a secret deal between Britain and the Shah of Iran in the early 1970s, in which the Shah agreed to abandon Iran’s long-held claim to Bahrain in exchange for control of the three islands. Access to historical records of these negotiations remains restricted, with multiple freedom of information requests for 1960s-era UK Foreign Office documents denied on national security grounds.
Beyond the UAE-Saudi and UAE-Iran rifts, the conflict has hit other Gulf states hard. Kuwait, a small northern Gulf state, has faced repeated attacks from Iran-aligned Shia militias based in Iraq, a wave of violence that has revived traumatic memories of Iran-linked political unrest in the 1980s and Saddam Hussein’s 1990 invasion that left much of the country, including coastal Failaka Island, damaged and abandoned.
Economically, the war has hit Gulf states unevenly. Nations that lack alternative shipping routes to bypass the blockaded Strait of Hormuz – including Bahrain, Kuwait, and Qatar – have suffered the worst economic damage. Bahrain, which already runs persistent budget deficits, relies on aid from wealthier Gulf neighbors to keep its economy afloat. By contrast, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Oman all have geographic access to alternative shipping routes that allow them to bypass Hormuz entirely. In fact, Oman, which controls one bank of the strait, could emerge as a long-term beneficiary of the disruption: it could earn revenue by charging tolls for alternative shipping routes under a new agreement with Iran, or see its Arabian Sea ports grow in global significance, potentially reviving its historical status as a major regional trading power. That outcome, however, is unwelcome to both the UAE and Saudi Arabia, which prefer to maintain their dominance of Gulf energy shipping.
In sum, the U.S.-Israeli strike on Iran that triggered the current crisis has reactivated long-buried fault lines across the Gulf and created new divisions between regional states. It has also undermined the few remaining channels for multilateral regional cooperation, turning an already fragmented and volatile region even more unstable. This analysis is by Toby Matthiesen, Senior Lecturer in Global Religious Studies at the University of Bristol, republished with permission from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.
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‘Looks like he’ll have an op’: Cruel blow for Blues hopeful as coaches reveal full extent of carnage out of wild clash
An NRL round clash between the Sydney Roosters and Brisbane Broncos at Allianz Stadium ended not just with a 38-24 Roosters victory, but with a wave of high-profile injuries that has shaken up State of Origin selections and left Brisbane bracing for a challenging upcoming fixture against Manly. The most devastating blow landed on rising star Mark Nawaqanitawase, a NSW Blues State of Origin hopeful whose dream series debut is now all but off the table after he sustained a serious syndesmosis injury that requires urgent surgery.
Roosters head coach Trent Robinson confirmed the devastating news in his post-match press conference, confirming that the dynamic winger, a former Wallaby set to return to rugby union in 2027, will miss 6-8 weeks on the sidelines. The injury occurred in the first half of Saturday night’s game when Nawaqanitawase’s foot became trapped under teammate Robert Toia during a collision. Though he initially tried to push through the pain, he was forced off the field just 15 minutes after the incident. NRL physiotherapy experts later confirmed the injury mechanism was typical for a high ankle syndesmosis sprain, occurring when the foot is caught under contact and forced to rotate outward.
Just 24 hours before the match, Nawaqanitawase had opened up about his long-held dream of representing the Blues in the upcoming State of Origin series, which kicks off with its opening clash on May 27. NSW coach Laurie Daley had previously named the in-form winger as one of the top contenders for a starting wing spot alongside Brian To’o, in a three-way race with Campbell Graham and Josh Addo-Carr. A 6-8 week recovery period from surgery rules Nawaqanitawase out of the series opener entirely, ending his campaign before it could officially begin.
Nawaqanitawase was far from the only star forced to exit the game early with injury. Brisbane Broncos captain Adam Reynolds was already officially ruled out of the club’s next fixture against Manly next week after a brutal head knock sustained while attempting a tackle. Queensland Origin enforcer Lindsay Collins also failed his first-half head injury assessment, ruling him out of Brisbane’s upcoming trip to Gosford next Friday. Roosters and Blues veteran Angus Crichton was also forced off midway through the second half with a suspected medial knee injury, and he is currently awaiting scan results to confirm the severity of the damage.
Robinson noted after the match that Crichton could have stayed on the field, but the injury required repeated attention throughout the first half, prompting the coaching staff to pull him early as a precaution. On Collins’ exit, Robinson added that the Brisbane forward was lucid and alert in the sheds after the incident, but did not meet concussion protocol requirements to return to play.
For Brisbane, young halfback Tom Duffy is set to step into Reynolds’ starting spot against Manly. Broncos coach Michael Maguire praised Duffy’s recent performances, noting he has already proven his ability to lead the team around the park when given the opportunity. The injury crisis extends far beyond Reynolds and Collins for Brisbane: star front-rower Payne Haas and halfback Ben Hunt are already ruled out of next week’s fixture, while wingers Josiah Karapani (ankle) and Deine Mariner (cork) are serious doubts to take the field. Mariner was forced off in the first half after sustaining his cork, but returned to the game shortly after when Karapani exited with his ankle injury. Maguire said Mariner should not have returned to action, but praised the young winger’s commitment to his teammates, noting that the moment reflected the tight team culture that saw Brisbane claw back from a 30-0 deficit to come within six points of a stunning upset.
“Deine probably shouldn’t have gone back out, but that’s what they’re doing for each other,” Maguire said. “I could talk about many other players, but that’s what the competition is demanding of you at the moment. Deine, straight away he jumped up and out he went. So they’re competing really hard for each other. We just needed to be smarter.”
Beyond the injury toll, Brisbane is also waiting anxiously on the outcome of potential match review committee charges, after star centre Kotoni Staggs was sent to the sin bin late in the game for an elbow to the back of Roosters winger Hugo Savala’s head. The sin bin timing proved critical for Brisbane’s comeback: with Staggs off the field, the Roosters scored eight unanswered points in the final eight minutes to seal the win. Brisbane lock Patrick Carrigan took responsibility for the team’s late collapse, admitting a loose carry that turned over possession had shifted momentum back to the Roosters just before Staggs’ sin bin.
“To be honest, that was my fault,” Carrigan said. “I made an error down in the good ball set, just a loose carry and I turned over the ball and put us on the back foot and released pressure of the game. I know ‘Tones’ (Staggs) plays aggressively but I know he wouldn’t have meant to do any harm. To be honest, I didn’t even see it until after the game, so we play a hard fast game, he made a mistake and I’m sure he’ll own that. I love when he’s playing aggressive and I love running out with him.”
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In China’s countryside, a Nigerian student found more than a story
Beneath the blazing summer sun of East China’s Zhejiang province, a young foreign woman wearing a woven straw hat steps barefoot into the muddy waters of a terraced rice paddy. One hand grips a handwoven fishing net, the other holds a chipped wooden bucket ready to hold her catch. She wades slowly through the shallow water, her toes sinking into soft silt as she searches for native carp raised in Yunhe county’s centuries-old rice-fish co-culture system. Within an hour, her fresh catch is carried to a village kitchen, where it is transformed into a fragrant, steaming traditional Chinese dish, ready to be shared with local hosts.
That woman is Ibeakamma Chinazaekpere Ugochinyere, a Nigerian scholar who goes by her Chinese name Wang Qian. Now a doctoral candidate at Zhejiang Normal University’s College of Education, she traveled to the mountainous Yunhe county in 2025 to take part in filming the documentary series *A Foreign Apprentice Comes to the Mountains*. What was originally scheduled to be a straightforward media assignment quickly evolved into a deeply personal journey that reshaped her understanding of Chinese culture and development.
Ugochinyere’s connection to China stretches back to her primary school years in Nigeria, when she first developed a fascination with the country’s long history and unique culture. That childhood curiosity became a reality when she earned a Confucius Institute scholarship, an opportunity that allowed her to move to China to pursue her education. A decade later, she says China has become more than a place of study — it is her second home. “What the Chinese government gave us was not only the opportunity to study, but also a deep affection that crossed mountains and seas,” she explained.
Over her 10 years in China, Ugochinyere has grown from a curious cultural explorer into an active bridge for China-Africa people-to-people exchange. Her immersive stay in Yunhe added an unexpected new layer of meaning to that work. On camera, she worked alongside local villagers to dig up sweet potatoes, handcraft traditional tofu, harvest rice and cook family-style meals. Off camera, she found herself slowly drawn into a way of life that felt both entirely new and unexpectedly intimate. Having spent most of her time in China living in bustling urban centers, the quiet rhythm of rural life opened her eyes to a side of the country she had never experienced before.
For Ugochinyere, the unassuming magic of China’s countryside lives in small, everyday moments: soft mist curling over forested mountain peaks when she opens her curtains at dawn, a warm bowl of hand-folded wontons shared by a local neighbor, a daily schedule shaped by the cycles of the land and seasonal weather, rather than the nonstop noise and rush of city life.
Again and again during her stay, she returned to one observation: China’s rural revitalization drive is extraordinary. What impressed her most, however, was not just the visible signs of new prosperity — cleaner infrastructure, newer public facilities, higher living standards. What stood out to her was that development in Yunhe, and later in Wuyi county of Jinhua, did not come at the cost of cultural heritage.
“This project made me understand that while we are advancing modernization, embracing new development, and promoting rural revitalization, we must also preserve old buildings, past history and traditional knowledge,” she said. In her view, the centuries-old wooden farmhouses, historic architecture and surviving traditional handicrafts she encountered across the countryside are not outdated relics to be bulldozed for new construction; they are the foundation that allows rural communities to hold onto their unique cultural identity. “These old buildings, these old crafts and the things that have been preserved are all telling the story of who they are,” she noted. That balance, she argues, is what makes China’s rural transformation distinct from development models she has seen elsewhere: “We welcome development and modernization, but we do not need to lose ourselves, our culture or our history.”
Another group that left a lasting impression on Ugochinyere was the cohort of young Chinese villagers who have chosen to leave urban careers to return home and rebuild their local communities. She met dozens of young entrepreneurs using digital tools to market local farm produce, redesign traditional product packaging, and sell village goods to national audiences via livestreaming e-commerce. This new wave of entrepreneurship has injected fresh energy into rural areas, where older generations previously lacked the resources and digital skills to reach broader consumer markets.
“I’m really proud of them. They are willing to go back home, bring development, start businesses and promote the products of their villages,” she said. What stuck with her most were not grand policy announcements, but small, human moments of connection: elderly villagers greeting the film crew with warm grins and homemade snacks, new family restaurants and small businesses popping up on every return visit to Yunhe, the clear sense that ongoing changes were being experienced and shared by every member of the community.
The experience also stirred warm childhood memories for Ugochinyere, who grew up surrounded by mountains, rivers and untouched nature in Nigeria. In quiet, unspoken ways, the rolling hills and lush landscapes of rural China felt strangely familiar. So when filming wrapped, she found she could not leave the experience behind.
“If I have time off in the future, I would love to go back, rent a house or stay in a homestay for a while, and spend more time walking around,” she said. “I want to work the land again, dig up potatoes again, and experience that feeling once more. I haven’t felt that way in many years.” Smiling, she summed up what the journey meant to her with a famous Chinese phrase that now feels personal: “Lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets. China’s countryside is truly a treasure.”
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Donroe Doctrine is becoming everything China feared
On April 28, the U.S. State Department released a joint statement purporting to stand “in solidarity with Panama” after an alleged increase in detentions of Panama-flagged ships at Chinese ports. The statement frames these detentions as a “blatant attempt to politicize maritime trade” — a framing that collapses under scrutiny when examined against the backdrop of recent U.S. and Panamanian actions targeting Chinese-controlled logistics infrastructure across the region. This diplomatic move is just the latest step in a broader, coordinated U.S. geostrategic push that includes blockades of the Strait of Hormuz, new defense partnerships with Indonesia, and aggressive rhetoric targeting China-backed infrastructure projects like Peru’s Port of Chancay.
Five Latin American and Caribbean nations joined the U.S. as co-signatories: Costa Rica, Bolivia, Paraguay, Guyana, and Trinidad and Tobago. A closer look at this group reveals a deliberate alignment with longstanding U.S. economic and security priorities in the Western Hemisphere, rather than a random collection of like-minded states.
The irony of the U.S.’s sudden stance on Panama is difficult to overstate. Just a few months prior, Washington executed a coordinated two-pronged campaign to oust Chinese operators from key Panamanian ports: diplomatic coercion through high-stakes bilateral security dialogues, and a politicized legal campaign targeting Chinese concession agreements near the Panama Canal. This effort culminated in a widely expected Panamanian Supreme Court ruling that forced Hong Kong-based port operator CK Hutchinson to exit its operations at the Balboa and Cristobal terminals. The contract was subsequently awarded to a subsidiary of Danish logistics giant Maersk. This history of interference undermines the State Department’s claims of defending neutral maritime trade: even as far back as the Trump administration, U.S. negotiators openly threatened to retake the Panama Canal by force if Washington’s demands were not met, turning hollow the rhetoric about defending Panamanian sovereignty and opposing politicization of trade.
Breaking down the co-signatories further exposes the strategic logic behind the joint statement. Guyana, one of the world’s fastest-growing producers of high-quality sweet light crude, has attracted major new downstream investment as a result of U.S. blockades of Persian Gulf oil exports. Trinidad and Tobago is a leading regional producer of critical petrochemicals including urea and ammonia. Costa Rica has long been a dependable U.S. ally and hosts the Caribbean’s most technologically advanced commercial port. Paraguay, meanwhile, remains the only South American nation that recognizes Taiwan, a longtime point of alignment with U.S. foreign policy goals.
The most surprising co-signatory is Bolivia, a landlocked Andean nation that would seem to have no direct stake in Caribbean maritime security. This move makes strategic sense, however, when viewed through the lens of global green energy competition: Bolivia holds the world’s largest proven lithium reserves, a critical mineral for manufacturing electric vehicle batteries and large-scale grid energy storage. Extraction of Bolivian lithium, however, faces major barriers: the country’s brine deposits have an unusually high magnesium-to-lithium ratio, requiring costly, largely unproven extraction technology. There is also the massive logistical challenge of moving extracted lithium hundreds of kilometers over rugged terrain to Pacific ports in neighboring Chile, before shipments travel north through the Panama Canal to reach major consumer markets. These constraints push up the cost of every ton of exported Bolivian lithium dramatically.
Bolivia’s new President Rodrigo Paz has signaled a clear shift away from the previous socialist government’s partnerships with China and Russia. His recent decision to replace the leadership of state-owned lithium producer Yacimientos de Litio Bolivianos indicates a willingness to scrap existing deals in favor of new agreements with Western capital, provided Western markets offer guaranteed access for Bolivian lithium exports. For Paz’s administration, signing onto the U.S.-led statement framing Panama as a “pillar of our maritime trading system” is a low-cost, transactional diplomatic gesture to curry favor with Washington.
As a landlocked nation, Bolivia’s ability to become a major lithium export powerhouse depends entirely on access to ports through Chile, its longstanding historical rival that borders the Pacific. Chile already has a thriving, profitable lithium sector of its own, and was the source of Bolivia’s loss of coastline in the 19th century War of the Pacific. By aligning with the U.S. against China’s trade and infrastructure presence in the region, Bolivia is signaling to Chile, Panama, and other Latin American states that it will abide by Washington’s rules of the game in exchange for access to their critical maritime logistics networks.
This coordinated U.S. diplomatic push in Panama and Bolivia cannot be separated from broader global geostrategic shifts. In the Persian Gulf, the U.S. military has enforced a blockade that blocks most crude oil exports from reaching key Asian markets. At the same time, the State Department has worked aggressively across the Caribbean and Latin America to oust Chinese-owned logistics assets through a mix of diplomatic pressure and politicized legal campaigns. This pattern of activity makes clear that the modern iteration of U.S. dominance in the Western Hemisphere, sometimes called the “Donroe Doctrine” (a updated take on the 19th century Monroe Doctrine), does not aim to benevolently integrate the U.S. and Latin American economies. Instead, its core goal is to redirect global commodity supply chains away from West Asia and back into the Western Hemisphere by establishing U.S.-controlled maritime trade routes.
While it remains too early to tell whether Washington’s gambit will succeed, the pattern is deliberate: the State Department has actively built a new U.S.-aligned maritime consensus with Latin American countries that produce critical energy, agricultural, logistics, and green mineral inputs, many of which have already rejected recent Chinese investment offers. Any framing of the U.S. as a neutral guardian of free global maritime trade ignores clear, on-the-ground reality: the U.S. military is seizing commercial ships in West Asia to enforce its blockade, while the State Department simultaneously demands that China adhere to Washington’s rules for trade in Central and South America. When the Trump administration abandoned the longstanding Carter Doctrine commitment to secure free trade through the Persian Gulf, the myth of a neutral, free global maritime commons died.
In the long term, this power play is likely to work to the advantage of China and other coastal emerging economies seeking a more multipolar global order. But in the short term, it has created unprecedented instability in the global maritime trading system — instability that the U.S. State Department is actively exploiting to advance American energy, agricultural, and mining interests across the Western Hemisphere.
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Taiwan’s president lands in Eswatini in a trip delayed by lack of overflight clearance
After a weeks-long delay driven by cross-border pressure from Beijing, Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te announced his arrival in Eswatini on Saturday, marking the completion of a trip that became a high-stakes symbol of Taipei’s efforts to maintain international diplomatic space.
Lai’s journey to Eswatini — Taiwan’s last remaining formal diplomatic ally on the African continent — was originally scheduled to begin on April 22, but the trip was put on hold after three regional nations, Seychelles, Mauritius and Madagascar, withdrew prior approval for Lai’s aircraft to cross their airspace. Taiwanese officials attributed the permit revocations directly to heavy political and economic coercion from Chinese authorities, who have long demanded that no country grant official access to Taiwanese leaders.
In a public post on the social platform X following his arrival, Lai emphasized the purpose of his visit: to reaffirm the deep, decades-long diplomatic friendship between Taipei and Mbabane. “Taipei is a self-governing democracy that Beijing claims as its own territory, but we will never be deterred by external pressure,” Lai wrote. In an additional Facebook post, he credited his diplomatic and national security teams with the careful behind-the-scenes planning that made the visit possible, noting that the trip would deepen bilateral cooperation across key sectors including economic development, agriculture, cultural exchange and education. “Our resolve and commitment are rooted in one core truth: Taiwan will continue engaging with the global community, no matter what obstacles we face,” he added. Notably, Taiwanese authorities chose not to pre-announce the final itinerary of Lai’s trip for security reasons, keeping the revised travel plans confidential until he landed in Eswatini.
Beijing responded quickly and sharply to the news of Lai’s arrival. A spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs dismissed the visit as a “laughable stunt” staged for the global public, dismissing Lai’s journey as an act of “smuggling” out of Taiwan. The spokesperson reiterated Beijing’s longstanding position that Taiwan is an inalienable part of Chinese territory, stating that Lai’s “undignified” visit is a losing cause that can never alter that core fact. “We urge Eswatini and other individual countries to recognize the natural arc of history, and stop acting as props for ‘Taiwan independence’ separatist forces,” the statement read.
For decades, China has leveraged economic and political influence to shrink Taipei’s network of formal diplomatic allies, and has not ruled out the use of military force to bring Taiwan under Beijing’s control. Currently, only 11 United Nations-recognized states maintain full official diplomatic ties with Taipei, down from 29 in 2000. Eswatini, a small landlocked southern African nation with a population of roughly 1.2 million, has held out as Taipei’s only ally on the African continent since 2018, when Burkina Faso switched diplomatic recognition to Beijing. In recent years, Eswatini has also faced economic consequences for its alliance with Taiwan: it is the only African country excluded from China’s duty-free market access program for developing nations.
The visit comes amid a sharp recent escalation of cross-strait and Sino-U.S. tensions. Just one day before Lai’s arrival, Beijing warned Washington that the Taiwan issue remains the single biggest potential flashpoint for conflict between the two global powers, with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi telling newly confirmed U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio in a phone call that Taiwan is the “biggest risk” to bilateral relations. Taiwan’s government issued a formal statement of concern in response to Wang’s remarks.
The last visit by a sitting Taiwanese president to Eswatini took place in 2023, when Lai’s predecessor Tsai Ing-wen traveled to the country for diplomatic talks.
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Iran military official says renewed war with US ‘likely’
Tensions between Iran and the United States have spiked sharply in recent days, with a senior Iranian military commander warning that a resumption of open hostilities between the two nations is increasingly likely, just hours after former President Donald Trump publicly rejected Tehran’s latest peace proposal as unsatisfactory. The current ceasefire, which has paused the full-scale war launched jointly by the U.S. and Israel in late February 2026, has held since April 8, following one unsuccessful round of negotiation mediated by Pakistan earlier this spring.
Iran submitted its updated negotiating draft to Pakistani mediators on Thursday evening, according to Iranian state media, though no specifics about the draft’s content have been released to the public. Speaking to reporters on Saturday, Trump reiterated his disappointment with Iran’s offer, blaming the stalled talks on deep internal divisions within Iran’s top leadership. “Do we want to go and just blast the hell out of them and finish them forever — or do we want to try and make a deal?” Trump asked reporters, adding that he would “prefer not” to launch a full-scale offensive “on a human basis”.
Early Saturday, Mohammad Jafar Asadi, a high-ranking official in Iran’s central military command, echoed the rising pessimism in comments published by Iran’s semi-official Fars News Agency. Asadi stated plainly that “a renewed conflict between Iran and the United States is likely”, adding that “evidence has shown that the United States is not committed to any promises or agreements”.
A day earlier, Iran’s judiciary chief Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei pushed back against U.S. framing of the stalled talks, noting that Iran had “never shied away from negotiations” but would never accept externally imposed peace terms. While the White House has refused to release details of Iran’s latest proposal, U.S. news outlet Axios has reported that U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff has submitted amendments to an earlier draft that would place Iran’s nuclear program back on the negotiating table. Key U.S. demands include restrictions barring Iran from moving enriched uranium out of bombed nuclear sites or resuming enrichment activity at those locations while negotiations continue.
The geopolitical standoff has already sent ripples through global energy markets: news of Iran’s proposal briefly pushed international oil prices down by nearly 5 percent, though prices remain roughly 50 percent higher than pre-war levels, due to the ongoing closure of the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most critical energy chokepoints. Since the war began, Iran has maintained a tight blockade on the strait, cutting off global supplies of oil, natural gas, and fertilizer, while the U.S. has implemented a reciprocal blockade on all Iranian commercial ports. Speaking at a campaign rally Friday, Trump made unorthodox comments comparing U.S. naval operations in the region to piracy, while describing a recent helicopter raid on an oil tanker operating under the blockade.
Even with the ceasefire in place in the Gulf, violence continues to escalate in Lebanon, where Israeli forces have carried out repeated deadly airstrikes despite a separate ceasefire agreement with Iran-backed Hezbollah. Lebanon’s Ministry of Public Health confirmed Friday that 13 people were killed in Israeli strikes across southern Lebanon, including multiple fatalities in the town of Habboush, where the Israeli military had ordered civilian evacuations ahead of the attack.
On Friday evening, the U.S. State Department announced it had approved a series of major new arms sales to regional U.S. allies, including a $4 billion Patriot missile defense deal with Qatar and a nearly $1 billion sale of advanced precision weapons systems to Israel.
Back in Washington, the Trump administration is embroiled in a heated legal and political dispute with congressional opposition over the legality of the ongoing war. Under U.S. war powers law, the president must obtain congressional authorization for any military action lasting longer than 60 days. Administration officials argue that the current ceasefire pauses the 60-day clock, a claim that is fiercely contested by opposition Democrats. In a letter to congressional leaders released Saturday, Trump pushed back against criticism, claiming that “there has been no exchange of fire between United States Forces and Iran since April 7, 2026,” adding that hostilities “have terminated”. The president faces growing domestic pressure as inflation continues to climb, no clear military victory has been achieved, and U.S. midterm elections approach in late 2026.
For Iran, the economic damage from the war and U.S. sanctions continues to deepen. The Trump administration recently imposed new sanctions on three major Iranian currency exchange firms, and has warned global shipping companies against paying the passage tolls demanded by Iran for transit through the Strait of Hormuz. U.S. military officials estimate their port blockade has cut off $6 billion in Iranian oil exports, while Iranian inflation, already at high levels before the war began, has now surged past 50 percent.
“Everyone is trying to endure it, but… they are falling apart,” Amir, a 40-year-old Tehran resident, told an Agence France-Presse reporter reporting from outside Iran. “We still have not seen much of the worst economic effects because everyone had a bit of savings. They had some gold and dollars for a rainy day. When they run out, things will change.”
On Saturday, Iran’s judiciary announced that authorities had executed two men convicted of spying for Israel, marking the latest in a string of executions of alleged spies in recent weeks. One of the two men was convicted of assisting Israeli intelligence during the 12-day border war between Iran and Israel in June 2025.
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Trump likes the idea of the government owning some US companies but took a pass on Spirit Airlines
WASHINGTON — In a striking break from decades of Republican ideological orthodoxy, U.S. President Donald Trump has embraced a new role for the federal government as an activist investor in the private sector — a policy shift that recently led to the collapse of a potential government rescue of cash-strapped budget carrier Spirit Airlines, which ceased operations Saturday after talks reached an impasse.
For years, Trump has railed against political opponents as communists, framing himself as a defender of the free-market principles that turned the U.S. into a global superpower. But since returning to the Oval Office, he has openly championed government ownership of equity stakes in major domestic companies, casting the strategy as a way to both shore up U.S. economic security and turn a profit for American taxpayers.
The demise of Spirit highlights how this new approach operates. The discount airline was pushed to the brink of collapse by spiking fuel costs tied to the ongoing Iran war, and the Trump administration had weighed a $500 million deal that would give the federal government a controlling stake in the Florida-based carrier. Speaking to reporters Friday, a day before Spirit halted operations, Trump insisted any government investment would only move forward “only if it’s a good deal.” “If we can help them, we will,” he said. “But we have to come first.” He did not immediately issue a public statement addressing the airline’s shutdown after it was finalized.
Trump has pointed to his administration’s earlier investment in chip giant Intel as proof of concept for the strategy. He has monitored the company’s stock performance closely, and this week took to social media to boast that the U.S. government had netted more than $30 billion in gains from the Intel stake over the previous 90 days. That investment, which converted loans and grants allocated under the Biden administration’s 2022 CHIPS and Science Act into an $11.1 billion equity purchase, came even as Trump used his 2025 address to Congress to label the CHIPS Act a “horrible, horrible thing” and called on Republican congressional majorities to claw back unspent funding to reduce the federal deficit.
The Spirit and Intel deals are far from isolated moves. A review of the Trump administration’s actions shows a growing portfolio of government equity holdings and state-backed interventions across key U.S. economic sectors:
– The administration holds a “golden share” in U.S. Steel that limits operational autonomy for new owner Japan’s Nippon Steel
– Officials brokered an agreement that gives the U.S. government a cut of chip sales to China made by American firms Nvidia and AMD
– The government has invested in MP Materials, a U.S. rare earths producer, to break China’s dominant grip on the supply of critical minerals needed for smartphones, electric vehicles and advanced defense technologies
– Additional equity stakes have been taken in Lithium America, Trilogy Metals and Vulcan Elements, with preferential financing extended to energy and nuclear firms Westinghouse and ReElement Technologies
– The administration abandoned plans to end federal conservatorship of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, a policy Trump initially pursued during his first term. Speaking Friday, Trump argued that holding onto the companies had increased their value, noting “If I would have sold it, I would have felt like a schmuck.”Beyond equity investments, Trump has built close, often transactional ties with corporate leadership. He speaks regularly with CEOs by phone, but has also pressured firms to align with his policy agenda: he ordered retail giant Walmart not to raise prices to offset costs from his tariffs, and suggested he would “remember” favorably companies that declined to seek refunds after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled his tariffs were illegal.
The ideological contradiction at the heart of Trump’s policy has drawn intense scrutiny from both supporters and critics. During his 2024 presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly labeled the Biden administration communist and socialist, telling a Pennsylvania crowd in April 2024 “We will cast out the communists… We will liberate our country from these tyrants and villains once and for all.” In contrast, Joe Biden consistently framed himself as a committed capitalist who supported corporate profit so long as companies paid their fair share of taxes; while the Biden administration did extend loans and grants to domestic chipmakers as part of industrial policy, those investments were structured to follow formal legislation passed by Congress.
Critics argue Trump’s approach is driven more by a pursuit of power and personal ego than coherent policy. “This is entirely a reflection of a transactional-minded president who wants unilateral control of the economy,” said Tad DeHaven, a policy analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute. “At the end of the day, it is about power, it is about leverage and it is about control.” Even some congressional Republicans have pushed back: Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Tom Cotton of Arkansas publicly objected to the proposed Spirit Airlines bailout.
But supporters counter that the strategy is a pragmatic response to growing Chinese economic competition, pointing out that Chinese state-supported firms can operate with little regard for short-term profits, undercutting U.S. manufacturers and threatening America’s standing as a global technological and military leader.
“This is a strategic move, necessitated by the growth of China as an economic peer and rival,” said Sujai Shivakumar, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. “The key point is that we should not sacrifice our national economic and industrial framework in the name of ‘free markets’ or other ideologies. Pragmatism, in various forms of industrial and innovation policy, have always been a feature of our economic system since the very beginning of our republic.”
Outside analysts agree with the core logic of leveling the playing field against subsidized foreign competitors but warn that Trump’s unilateral, ad-hoc approach carries significant risks. “It is unclear whether the Trump administration has fully grasped the risks of ‘making some bad bets,’” said Monica Gorman, a managing director at Crowell Global Advisors who led manufacturing and industrial policy work in the Biden White House. Gorman stressed that a formal legislative framework is needed to govern these investments, rather than relying on the president’s personal discretion. “Congress really needs to step in and design a legislative framework for U.S. industrial policy that governs equity stakes as well as other mechanisms such as loans and grants,” she said. “All of these are important tools in the U.S. industrial policy toolkit, but we need more guidance on when and how to use them.”