Global Pulse

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  • Families’ interest in their kids’ education is falling around the globe as scores drop, test shows

    Families’ interest in their kids’ education is falling around the globe as scores drop, test shows

    The 2023 round of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), the world’s most comprehensive standardized evaluation of 15-year-olds’ academic proficiency, has delivered a stark warning to education systems across high-income economies: average scores in core subjects of math, reading, and science have hit their lowest point in the program’s 20+ year history.

    Organized by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the 2023 assessment drew more than 760,000 participants across dozens of nations, with results published this week confirming widespread declines. Even in the United States, which placed within the global top 15 for science, reading, and the new computational problem-solving category, scores for reading and math have fallen to their lowest level since PISA launched in the early 2000s — a trend that was only masked slightly by broader declines across other developed nations. Researchers also note the U.S. results should be interpreted with caution, as the country failed to meet the study’s required sample size standards for participating schools and students.

    What is driving this global slump in academic performance? OECD officials point to two interconnected factors: declining parental engagement in children’s learning, and unregulated overuse of digital and artificial intelligence tools in and out of the classroom.

    An accompanying student survey paired with PISA assessments found that nearly every high-income country recorded a drop in family investment in education between 2018 (the last full PISA round) and 2023, with the sharpest disengagement observed among boys. This disengagement is measured by how frequently parents discuss schoolwork with their children or actively participate in their learning progress. Andreas Schleicher, director of the OECD’s education and skills division, notes that many parents have shifted their perspective from active co-participants in education to passive clients of school systems.

    The performance gap tied to parental engagement is substantial. Even after adjusting for socioeconomic differences between students, teenagers who reported that a family member asks about their daily school experience at least once a week scored 35 points higher on the PISA science assessment than peers with less engaged families. That gap is equivalent to more than a year and a half of additional learning.

    Digital distraction is the second major contributor to falling scores. More than one in four students across high-income countries reported that classmates are distracted by personal digital devices in most or every science class. Data confirms that nations with strict school policies governing cellphone use see significantly lower distraction rates. When it comes to leisure use of digital devices, the link between heavy use and lower test scores is clear, Schleicher says, though the picture is more mixed for educational digital use: students who used edtech for 2 to 3 hours per day during school saw small score gains, but performance drops sharply once use exceeds that threshold.

    For artificial intelligence tools, the pattern mirrors that of general digital technology. Half of all students in developed economies now use AI chatbots for learning at least once a week, but the assessment found that higher AI use correlates with lower overall test scores, with students who never use chatbots outperforming their peers who use these tools regularly. That said, some nations have found a balanced, effective approach to integrating AI into learning: in China, Japan, Singapore, and Estonia, AI is used to support — not replace — teacher-led instruction. Schleicher highlighted one example from a Chinese elementary school, where students practice traditional ink calligraphy, and teachers use AI to scan and analyze student work to deliver personalized feedback on handwriting improvement — blending traditional teaching methods with AI-powered support, rather than letting technology lead classroom activity.

    Top performing spots in the 2023 PISA rankings were once again dominated by East Asian economies. Mainland China (with four provinces, Hong Kong, and Macao participating), Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea took the highest overall marks, with Estonia, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand also ranking among the top performers. Fewer than 10% of students in top-ranked East Asian nations reported classroom digital distraction, a fraction of the rate seen in North America and Western Europe. In the four participating Chinese provinces, nearly 100% of students scored at or above the baseline proficiency level for math and reading, compared to just 65% for math and 74% for reading in the U.S.

    Education experts warn that the growing gap in academic performance between the U.S. and top-performing East Asian systems carries major long-term geopolitical implications. “To win a technological race, you need the people with the science and the technology and the reading capabilities,” said Tracey Burns, chief of global strategy and research at the National Center for Education and the Economy, an organization that studies high-performing education systems worldwide.

  • Meta continues to run ads promoting child sexual abuse material in India – report

    Meta continues to run ads promoting child sexual abuse material in India – report

    A bombshell new investigation from a U.S.-based non-profit accountability group has uncovered that hundreds of paid advertisements featuring artificial intelligence-generated child sexual abuse material (CSAM) operated on Meta’s two flagship platforms, Facebook and Instagram, over a 10-month monitoring period – with dozens of the problematic ads slipping through content moderation even after an official government order in India targeting such harmful content.

    The Washington-headquartered Tech Transparency Project (TTP), a research arm of the non-profit Campaign for Accountability that works to hold big tech firms accountable for harmful content, published its findings on Tuesday, documenting 332 confirmed CSAM-laden ads across both platforms. The overwhelming majority of these ads – 274 out of 332 – were detected in August of this year, spread across six regions including the United States, United Kingdom, European Union, Australia and India. Roughly one-quarter of all the problematic ads, 84 total, ran in India alone. Shockingly, 78 of those Indian ads were published after the Indian government issued a formal order two months prior demanding Meta remove all CSAM-related content and ads from Instagram, a directive that came on the heels of an earlier investigative report from BBC Eye that first exposed CSAM paid ads active on the platform for Indian users.

    The report details a deeply disturbing pattern behind how these ads operate: nearly all start with a legitimate photograph of a real child, which is then manipulated using AI deepfake technology to generate graphic sexual content as the ad plays. In one high-profile case documented by TTP, images of a minor member of a European royal family were stolen and altered to create CSAM for an ad. TTP also shared one example of an Indian ad that featured an AI-animated preteen girl performing a graphic sex act, paired with a voiceover claiming the service offered unrestricted access to real AI-generated content of this nature. According to TTP’s research, this single ad was posted across more than 50 different user accounts in India over a two-week period in August.

    Beyond the initial discovery, TTP confirmed that more than a dozen additional CSAM ads remained live on Meta’s platforms even after the research group formally alerted Meta to their presence. This includes 11 ads that ran in India as recently as September 1 and 2, weeks after TTP shared its preliminary findings with the company. When TTP tested Meta’s own in-platform ad reporting system for 55 of the 84 Indian CSAM ads it identified, the results were alarming: 43 of the reported ads were reviewed by Meta’s automated moderation and deemed to not violate the company’s advertising standards. Only 11 were confirmed removed, with one ad still awaiting a response from Meta at the time of the report. Once TTP reached out directly to Meta’s communications team with its full findings, all flagged ads were ultimately removed.

    TTP’s investigation also uncovered that a large share of the problematic ads were placed through Meta’s official third-party ad reseller partners based in China. These resellers are responsible for moving billions of dollars in Chinese advertising onto Meta’s platforms annually, and none responded to TTP’s requests for comment on their role in approving and distributing the CSAM ads. Nearly all 332 ads documented by TTP directed users to AI-powered image and video generation apps, most developed by Chinese creators. The ads use CSAM to implicitly market that these tools can be used to create or access illegal child sexual exploitation content, a use case that Meta explicitly bans in its platform policies. Meta’s policies already prohibit the promotion of so-called “nudify” apps that create non-consensual fake nude or explicit content, but the CSAM ads still evaded detection.

    In response to queries from the BBC about the TTP report, Meta issued a statement reaffirming that it does not tolerate any form of child exploitation, whether involving real or AI-generated content. Meta representatives argued that criminal actors constantly shift their tactics to evade content detection systems, which is why the company continuously updates and strengthens its detection and enforcement workflows. The company also noted that it has built layered automated defenses designed to block violating ads before they go live, and ongoing monitoring catches content that may slip through initial screening. Meta claimed that most of the flagged ads had already been removed before TTP’s report, that the vast majority received fewer than 200 impressions each, and that total ad spend across all 332 CSAM ads amounted to less than $5,000. Meta also reiterated that it complies with all legal requirements to report confirmed child exploitation content to the U.S.-based National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), the global central clearinghouse for CSAM reporting.

    However, child protection advocates in India argue that Meta’s current reporting and enforcement framework falls far short of what is required under Indian law. Just Rights for Children, a national network of more than 250 Indian child protection organizations, has already filed a public interest petition with India’s Supreme Court citing the earlier BBC investigation, asking the court to issue formal mandates requiring social media platforms to proactively identify CSAM and report all violators directly to Indian law enforcement agencies. Bhuwan Ribhu, founder of Just Rights for Children, accused major social media firms of openly flouting Indian child protection laws by failing to report CSAM content to domestic law enforcement as required.

    Top Indian law enforcement officials echo these concerns, noting that the cross-platform nature of CSAM distribution creates unique enforcement challenges. Shikha Goel, director of the Cyber Security Bureau in the Indian state of Telangana, explained that bad actors can easily shift operations between different platforms to avoid detection, making it far harder to apprehend those responsible for distributing CSAM. Goel added that many in law enforcement hope the Indian government will issue new, clearer directives to social media intermediaries during upcoming negotiations to address this gap.

    The latest findings come after an earlier BBC investigation that also uncovered CSAM paid ads on Instagram directing users to the messaging platform Telegram, where CSAM could be purchased for as little as 99 Indian rupees (approximately $1.05). Telegram has previously stated that it uses a combination of automated moderation and human reviewers to combat CSAM, and claims it has virtually eliminated all public distribution of CSAM on its platform.

    The TTP investigation adds new scrutiny to Meta’s automated ad moderation system, which requires all ads to pass automated screening before they are published to users. Meta has previously acknowledged that no content moderation system is perfect, and that determined criminal actors consistently work to exploit gaps in platform defenses, including ad approval workflows.

  • Hegseth is shaking up the Pentagon as the US wages war – but at what cost?

    Hegseth is shaking up the Pentagon as the US wages war – but at what cost?

    The United States military currently finds itself entangled in two overlapping, high-stakes conflicts that are raising urgent questions about its operational readiness, global positioning, and long-term institutional stability during Donald Trump’s second presidential term. One front unfolds abroad: a years-long stalemate with Iran over control of the critical Strait of Hormuz, which has forced a massive global redistribution of U.S. military assets that is now rippling through alliance networks from Europe to the Indo-Pacific. The second front is a domestic institutional upheaval, led by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, whose aggressive shake-up of Pentagon leadership has triggered bitter partisan and internal recriminations, capped last week by the resignation of the U.S. Army’s top civilian leader, Secretary Dan Driscoll.

    Driscoll, a relatively low-profile figure outside defense policy circles, oversaw a critical modernization push for the U.S. Army before stepping down last Monday. For months, he had clashed repeatedly with Hegseth over the scope and pace of proposed reforms, particularly his push to integrate cheap, mass-produced drones into standard infantry formations, a shift he argued was essential to adapting 21st-century battlefields after lessons drawn from the war in Ukraine. Driscoll warned that the U.S. military’s bloated bureaucracy and glacial, costly procurement processes left it ill-prepared to counter evolving modern threats, according to senior administration sources. Though Hegseth initially backed the broader modernization agenda, he ultimately pushed back against rapid expansion, and Driscoll accused him of blocking the plan by removing senior generals tasked with leading its implementation. Driscoll’s departure is just the latest in a string of high-profile exits of top civilian and uniformed leaders aligned with the modernization effort.

    The growing chaos has prompted sharp criticism from across the political and national security spectrum. Republican Senator Thom Tillis, a consistent critic of Trump, has publicly called for Hegseth’s ouster, saying he has never witnessed more incompetent management of U.S. service members. Former first-term Trump National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster called Driscoll’s departure troubling for the U.S. Army, noting Driscoll had been pushing a critical modernization agenda to bring the service up to speed against near-peer competitors. Retired Navy Captain Jon Duffy, a former White House defense policy official during the Obama administration, argued that Driscoll’s exit has “hollowed out” senior military leadership at a critical moment, creating crippling uncertainty that disrupts progress on modernization and ripples down through the ranks to impact frontline readiness.

    Hegseth, a former Army National Guardsman and conservative Fox News pundit who campaigned on transforming the Pentagon’s cultural identity, has framed his overhaul as a necessary correction to decades of what he calls ideological overreach and institutional stagnation. He has repeatedly vowed to eliminate what he labels “woke” diversity initiatives, loosen restrictive rules of engagement he claims limit warfighter lethality, and purge the Pentagon of what he calls out-of-touch, complacent senior leaders. To date, he has removed or sidelined the top uniformed leaders of the Army, Navy, and Air Force, along with more than two dozen senior generals, admirals, and civilian defense officials—many of them among the military’s most decorated officers—often without public explanation.

    Critics have drawn unflinching comparisons to large-scale political purges of foreign military establishments. Michael Schiffer, a former senior Pentagon official for East Asia during the Obama administration and now a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, argued that the mass leadership shake-up amounts to a U.S. military purge that has created serious command gaps and readiness deficiencies that mirror those seen after China’s political purges of its People’s Liberation Army. “The way [Hegseth] is shaking them up… is bringing on board an awful lot of risk without any apparent way to address or ameliorate it,” Schiffer told the BBC.

    But Hegseth retains staunch support from the White House and top Trump administration officials. Vice President JD Vance defended the Pentagon overhaul last week, saying he strongly agreed with the need for cultural change after four decades of what he called lost wars and military misadventures. “What Pete came in wanting to do was revive the warrior spirit in the United States of America,” Vance said. The White House confirmed that Trump retains full confidence in Hegseth, pointing to what it calls a record of success in recent military operations against Iran. Trump has repeatedly stood by Hegseth through prior controversies, including the Signalgate scandal, calling him “one of my best” picks in a recent interview with NBC News. Ezra Cohen, a former Under Secretary of Defense during Trump’s first term, described Hegseth’s reforms as a breath of fresh air, bringing new ideas and a more proactive approach to defense strategy.

    Beyond the domestic upheaval, the ongoing stalemate with Iran in the Gulf is stretching U.S. military capabilities thin and straining long-standing alliances across the globe. After Trump ordered major strikes on Iran last February, the U.S. has drawn down critical weapons stockpiles and troop deployments from both Europe and the Pacific to reinforce the Gulf, replenishing munitions and moving large ground and naval assets to the region. The shift has already created significant strategic blowback in Europe, according to Liana Fix, a Germany-based expert at the Council on Foreign Relations.

    Fix explained that the Trump administration failed to consult NATO and European allies ahead of the Iran strikes, and the subsequent resource drawdown has accelerated a pre-planned shift of U.S. forces out of the continent, a move aligned with Trump’s longstanding criticism that European allies fail to carry their own defense weight. The perceived disunity and weakening of U.S. commitment to European security has created an opening for Russian President Vladimir Putin to escalate hybrid attacks, including armed drone strikes and sabotage operations across NATO countries like Germany, Fix said. “What [Putin] is seeing is not a united stance from the United States and the Europeans to further increase pressure on Russia… he sees that they are weakening, that there are windows and openings of vulnerabilities in Europe,” she noted. Recent unusual diplomatic moves reflect the growing tension: CIA Director John Ratcliffe made a rare high-profile visit to Moscow last month to warn the Kremlin against testing NATO’s resolve, while a top Hegseth aide was in Europe pushing allied governments to increase their own defense spending. The U.S. has already cut 5,000 troops from its 40,000-strong deployment in Germany, and scrapped a Biden-era plan to station a battalion armed with long-range Tomahawk missiles in the country.

    While the drawdown in Europe aligns with the Trump administration’s long-stated goal of refocusing U.S. strategy on great power competition with China in the Pacific, the Iran conflict has actually stretched U.S. capabilities in the Indo-Pacific too. Key naval assets, including the USS Abraham Lincoln and the Japan-based USS George Washington carrier strike groups, were diverted from the Pacific to the Gulf to support operations against Iran, leaving the region understaffed at a critical moment of rising tensions with Beijing. The prolonged deployment has already taken a visible toll: recent photos of the USS Abraham Lincoln docking in Thailand with a rusted hull after nine months straight at sea were seized on by Iranian state media to portray the U.S. as overextended and exhausted. Hegseth has forcefully denied claims of poor conditions aboard the vessel, but the image has become a symbol of the strain of the prolonged conflict.

    Most notably, the Iran conflict has gutted critical U.S. munitions stockpiles, according to analysis from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington-based think tank. The U.S. has fired roughly one-third of its entire national stockpile of 3,000 Tomahawk cruise missiles, and nearly 1,500 Patriot air defense interceptors—roughly two-thirds of the country’s total stockpile of 2,300—have been expended to counter Iranian drones and missiles. The White House has pushed back against these concerns, with Principal Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly insisting that U.S. military power is stronger than ever, and that the military retains enough stockpiles to meet all of the president’s strategic goals. Pro-administration analysts, including former Trump defense official Ezra Cohen, now at the conservative Hudson Institute, argue that the strikes have severely degraded Iran’s conventional military capabilities and weakened its proxy networks across the Middle East, leaving the U.S. with greater flexibility to target Iranian nuclear facilities if needed.

    Still, the ongoing conflict shows no sign of ending: 82nd Airborne Division troops deployed to the Middle East more than six months ago are now expected to remain in the region through 2027 with no clear exit strategy. For Trump and Hegseth, the dual challenge of overhauling the Pentagon’s culture and leadership while waging a costly, protracted conflict in the Gulf has created an unprecedented test of U.S. military stability, one that could shape the legacy of Trump’s second term and the future of U.S. global power for decades to come.

  • ‘Constantly on my mind’ – 9/11 agony goes on for bereaved, 25 years on

    ‘Constantly on my mind’ – 9/11 agony goes on for bereaved, 25 years on

    Twenty-five years ago, the deadliest act of modern criminal violence on U.S. soil unfolded across New York, Virginia, and Pennsylvania, leaving nearly 3,000 people dead and generations of families irrevocably broken. Today, as the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks approaches, the long-awaited trial of the plot’s alleged mastermind has still not begun – and grieving relatives are running out of time to see justice served.

    Tom Resta is one of those family members waiting for closure. On September 11, 2001, his brother John, a commodities trader, and John’s seven months pregnant wife Sylvia were at work on the 92nd floor of the World Trade Center’s North Tower. In the days before the attacks, the young couple had been hard at work painting their unborn child’s nursery with beloved characters from the children’s show *Blue’s Clues*, fulfilling a long-held dream of starting their own family after years of doting on their friends’ and relatives’ kids. Today, all that remains of that dream are memories that still bring Resta to tears a quarter-century later.

    “After all this time, it still chokes me up,” Resta told the BBC in an emotional interview. “9/11 is almost constantly on my mind.”

    Like many victims’ relatives, Resta has made repeated trips to the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to observe the glacial pre-trial proceedings for alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, widely known as KSM, and his four co-defendants. He describes the ongoing process as nothing short of “laborious and tedious.” Established in the wake of the 9/11 attacks as part of the U.S. global “war on terror,” Guantanamo’s military prison has held KSM for 20 years – and in all that time, he has never faced a final trial or been convicted of any crime.

    Access to the high-security Guantanamo courtroom is strictly limited: victims’ relatives must enter a lottery system just to win a spot to observe proceedings, where thick reinforced glass permanently separates observers and press from the defendants. The pre-trial process has dragged on so long that five different military judges have overseen the case to date.

    Last month, ahead of the 25th anniversary, a small flicker of progress emerged: military officials set a firm trial date for KSM of June 2028. Yet even this milestone has done little to ease the fears of grieving families, who have grown accustomed to decades of delays. Resta, for one, is already preparing for further postponements, and says many of his elderly family members doubt they will live long enough to see a verdict.

    “My father will be 98 in November, and I don’t think he’s expecting to see it,” Resta explained. “I have a lot of older family members – aunts, uncles – that all want to see justice done. But especially my parents, I don’t think they expect to live long enough to see this trial conclude. My biggest worry is that the defendants themselves won’t even be alive by the time we get to court.”

    Resta’s anxiety is widely shared among other 9/11 victims’ next of kin. Stephan Gerhardt, who lost his younger brother Ralph in the attacks, has made six separate trips to Guantanamo to follow the case. For Gerhardt, securing convictions for the plotters is non-negotiable, but he longs for the day he can stop devoting his energy to the legal process and focus entirely on preserving his brother’s memory.

    “I want to concentrate on the memories,” Gerhardt said. “I still have Ralph’s car. I’m trying to restore it and get it back in pristine shape… We recently visited my parents and found some of his old things they’d held onto. It’s just old stuff, but it belonged to my little brother, and that makes it mean everything.” Like Resta, Gerhardt’s greatest fear is that KSM and his co-defendants will die of old age before they can be convicted, a outcome he calls an unforgivable injustice.

    KSM has been charged with conspiracy and murder in connection with the attacks, with all 2,976 victims named on the official charge sheet. Prosecutors allege he developed the plan to train hijacker pilots to crash commercial jetliners into major U.S. targets, then presented the plot to al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden for approval. KSM has previously admitted he planned the “9/11 operation from A to Z.”

    Yet just days after the 2028 trial date was set, the presiding military judge threw out KSM’s key confessions to FBI agents obtained after he was transferred to Guantanamo from secret CIA “black site” prisons, where he was held for years in clandestine detention. In his ruling, the judge labeled KSM’s treatment at the hands of the CIA as “extraordinary physical and mental abuse,” finding the confessions were not given voluntarily and cannot be used as evidence against him at trial.

    Legal experts across the globe agree that the history of torture inflicted on KSM and his co-defendants is the single greatest cause of the decades-long delays in the case. “Every single legal issue in this proceeding has circled back to the torture,” explained Kasey McCall-Smith, an international law professor at the University of Edinburgh. She noted the defendants were subjected to “years of abuse,” including waterboarding and prolonged stress position detainment.

    John Ryan, author of *America’s Trial: Torture and the 9/11 Case on Guantanamo Bay*, says last month’s ruling strips prosecutors of what they themselves described as their strongest evidence against KSM, though the full impact on the case remains unclear. Prosecutors do hold other potential evidence, including intercepted communications and covert recordings, but Ryan cautions that defense teams are already expected to file motions to suppress much of this additional evidence as well.

    The history of U.S. interrogation policy in this case dates back to the George W. Bush administration, which publicly acknowledged using what it called “enhanced interrogation techniques” against terror suspects, claiming the methods saved lives and never amounted to torture. President Barack Obama banned these techniques on his second day in office, but the legal damage of the earlier practices had already been done.

    For victims’ families, that damage has meant decades of delayed justice, a right they say the torture has effectively blocked. “If we would’ve not tortured them, the legal process would’ve been much, much simpler,” Gerhardt said. “They probably would’ve been sentenced a long time ago. I can’t control what the government did, and we’ve got to live with the consequences.”

    In early 2025, Resta and Gerhardt both traveled to Guantanamo for a planned guilty plea hearing, under a controversial deal struck between defense attorneys and federal prosecutors that would have avoided a death penalty trial entirely. The hearing was halted at the eleventh hour after the U.S. government argued that cutting the deal would cause “irreparable” harm by “depriving the government and the American people of a public trial as to the respondents’ guilt and the possibility of capital punishment.” Legal battles over the validity of the proposed plea deal are still ongoing.

    Victims’ families remain deeply divided over the proposed agreement. Some see it as the only path to secure final convictions after decades of delay, while others condemn it as overly lenient and lacking in transparency. Resta supports the deal, saying his only priority is securing convictions, not capital punishment. “My philosophy is these guys are not the kind of people that should be out walking the streets, but as far as I’m concerned, they can just stay right where they are,” he said. “I just want them convicted.”

    Brett Eagleson, who was just 15 years old when his father Bruce was killed in the attacks, rejects the plea deal and demands a full public trial. “It’s not so much that I’m taking an opinion on life or death for these prisoners, but I believe in the judicial system and I believe that the process works,” he said. “I believe that a full trial, with full disclosure of evidence and a public airing of the facts, is the only way to get the full truth out.”

    Eagleson has chosen not to attend any pre-trial proceedings at Guantanamo, calling the entire situation “a mess.” He says he feels a profound sense of betrayal by the U.S. government, and extreme frustration over how the case has been handled from start to finish. “They’ve botched every single part of this trial,” he said. After 25 years, while 9/11 remains a daily presence in his life, he notes that for most of the American public, it is slowly fading into history. “I think people just assume that we got Bin Laden, we’re out of Iraq, the war in Afghanistan’s over, and they just assume that chapter has ended,” he said.

    When the trial eventually does begin at the Guantanamo military court, experts estimate it will last approximately one year. Professor McCall-Smith explains that the entire point of the decades-long pre-trial process has been to resolve disputes over what evidence can and cannot be admitted in court. “If that is agreed in advance, the trial can proceed much more quickly,” she said.

    As families prepare to mark another anniversary of the attack that took their loved ones, many just long for the day the trial is over, and they can stop traveling to Guantanamo and refocus on their lives and their memories. “It’s a place I don’t want to come back to,” Gerhardt said. “I want to live my life, enjoy my passions and my memories of Ralph.”

  • Israel bans 11 British MPs and announces closure of UK consulate in East Jerusalem

    Israel bans 11 British MPs and announces closure of UK consulate in East Jerusalem

    A major diplomatic rift has erupted between the United Kingdom and Israel after London formally recognized the illegality of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory and imposed sweeping sanctions on Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, prompting immediate counter-sanctions from Jerusalem.

    On Tuesday, UK Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband announced the landmark policy shift in parliament, confirming that the British government now aligns with the 2024 International Court of Justice advisory opinion, which ruled Israel’s decades-long occupation of Palestinian land unlawful. Miliband added that London officially recognizes ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinian communities in the occupied West Bank carried out by extremist Israeli settlers, noting that the Israeli government has repeatedly failed to intervene, and in many cases, facilitated forced displacement of local populations.

    Alongside the formal recognition, the UK introduced comprehensive sanctions targeting Israeli settlements and a full ban on all arms licenses and exports that could materially support Israel’s illegal occupation. The announcement quickly drew international backing: 11 other nations including Canada, France, Spain, and Sweden joined the UK in a joint statement committing to introduce national trade restrictions on settlement goods or explore such measures under their domestic legal frameworks. Both France and Canada have already confirmed they will implement bans on settlement goods on Wednesday, a step widely viewed as a key diplomatic win for the UK’s new policy.

    Within hours of Miliband’s announcement, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar unveiled a package of retaliatory measures targeting the UK. In a televised address Tuesday afternoon, Saar stated Israel would shut down the UK consulate in occupied East Jerusalem, expel all British representatives from the US-led International Gaza Support Center (IGSC) — a body established to monitor the fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas — and end all British training programs for Palestinian security forces.

    Saar also announced a travel ban barring 11 British Members of Parliament from entering Israeli territory. The list of banned politicians includes former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, independent MP Zarah Sultana, six current Labour MPs (Naz Shah, Diane Abbott, John McDonnell, Richard Burgon), and all three serving Green Party MPs (Carla Denyer, Adrian Ramsay, Ellie Chowns) alongside two additional Green Party figures Sian Berry and Hannah Spencer. A separate ban was also issued for Fahad Ansari, a British lawyer who led legal efforts to reverse Hamas’ designation as a terrorist organization in UK courts.

    Saar dismissed the UK’s boycott of settlement goods as “despicable”, doubling down on Israel’s long-standing claim of full sovereignty over all of Jerusalem. “A united Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, will always remain the capital of Israel and is under its full sovereignty,” he said. “We will also take additional retaliatory measures based on our discretion. The message to any government that seeks to harm us is clear: Those who act against Israel, Israel will act against them, and they will lose their influence and relevance in the region.”

    This is not the first time Israel has removed Western nations from the IGSC over settlement trade bans. Israel recently expelled Dutch representatives from the body after the Netherlands implemented its own restriction on settlement goods, and expelled Spanish delegates earlier this year over what it called Madrid’s “obsessive anti-Israel bias”.

    Responding to the entry ban, a spokesperson for the UK Green Party rejected Israeli pressure and reaffirmed the party’s support for Palestinian rights. “We will not be bullied into silence by the Israeli government. We are proud of our MPs for standing up for Palestinian rights and demanding an end to British complicity in genocide and illegal occupation,” the spokesperson said. “These threats only strengthen our resolve. The British government must stand firm and follow these overdue restrictions with a full arms embargo and wide-ranging sanctions.”

    The latest diplomatic escalation marks a historic turning point in Western policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as a growing bloc of industrialized nations moves beyond rhetorical criticism of Israeli settlements to implement concrete economic and diplomatic measures to oppose the illegal occupation.

  • ‘Standing up for freedom’: British politicians react to UK sanctions on Israeli settlements

    ‘Standing up for freedom’: British politicians react to UK sanctions on Israeli settlements

    The United Kingdom government’s landmark announcement of sweeping sanctions targeting illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian West Bank has triggered a wave of divided reactions across British political circles, with cross-party praise balanced by fierce opposition and calls for bolder action. Alongside the sanctions package, the UK government formally recognized the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, declared Israel’s long-running occupation of Palestinian territory illegal under international law, and implemented a full ban on arms licenses and all other exports that materially support the ongoing occupation. The move gained immediate international reinforcement, as both France and Canada confirmed they would also introduce bans on trade with goods produced in illegal Israeli settlements, a development that has been framed as a key diplomatic win for Downing Street.

    Debate over the new measures dominated parliamentary discussions on Tuesday, where political factions split sharply over the policy. Shadow Foreign Secretary Tom Tugendhat emerged as a leading critic from the opposition benches, arguing that the government had unnecessarily oversimplified the region’s long-standing complex conflict by framing the issue in unnuanced terms. “This isn’t about Israel alone and it certainly isn’t about reducing the complexity of the region to a single sentence. Sadly, the government is in the process of doing just that,” Tugendhat told parliament. Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband pushed back immediately, challenging Tugendhat’s contradictory stance on the two-state solution: “The underlying problem of his position is this: he supports the two-state solution with great vigour. He believes in the two-state solution. He sees the two-state solution being destroyed before our eyes. And I’m afraid his prescription is to do nothing about it.”

    Not all Conservative MPs lined up against the policy, however. Edward Leigh, the long-serving Father of the House and a senior figure in Conservative Friends of Israel, broke ranks to publicly back the government’s actions. “What is happening in the West Bank is absolutely violent and egregious. It is worse than stopping the two-state solution, it is ethnic cleansing,” Leigh said. “I am proud to say, as the longest-serving member of the Conservative Friends of Israel, that I absolutely and fully support what he is doing today, because it is about standing up for freedom, for morality, and justice of all people in this world.”

    Labour lawmakers broadly supported the new measures, with many long-time campaigners for Palestinian rights hailing the announcement as a historic turning point. Abtisam Mohamed, a Foreign Affairs Committee member who has led calls for a trade ban on settlement goods, praised the decision and pressed the government on its stance regarding the International Criminal Court’s existing arrest warrants against senior Israeli ministers. Miliband confirmed the government “absolutely” backs the ICC’s judicial work, in a further rebuke to Israeli and international opposition to the court’s investigations. Liberal Democrat MP Andrew George joked that aside from “Netanyahu’s fan club”, the entire House of Commons supported the government’s move, while senior Labour MP Naz Shah called the announcement a moment of British leadership, saying “today Britain has led” and that she was “proud of the government”.

    While welcoming the sanctions as a long-overdue step, smaller parties and independent figures argued the measures do not go far enough to meet the UK’s international legal obligations. Green Party Foreign Spokesperson Ellie Chowns said her party had long campaigned for such action and supported the announcement, but added that continuing military and intelligence cooperation with Israel amid ongoing civilian harm in Gaza and the West Bank remained a “shameful failure” to uphold international law. Chowns called for a full two-way arms embargo, broader sanctions on officials behind settlement expansion, an end to all intelligence and military cooperation, and withdrawal from the UK-Israel Trade and Partnership Agreement, noting that existing F-35 component exports through international supply chains must also be halted.

    Former Scottish First Minister Humza Yousaf echoed those calls, describing the announcement as a “significant step in the right direction” but urging the government to end all arms supplies to Israel, including components for the F-35 program. Yousaf also called for expanded sanctions on Israeli ministers pushing annexation, and for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – who is subject to an ICC arrest warrant – to be declared persona non grata in the UK. He warned that Downing Street would face intense pressure from Washington and the Israeli government to reverse course, saying “the prime minister and foreign secretary must hold their nerve.” Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn went further, calling on the government to end all trade and military cooperation that sustains Israel’s unlawful presence, recognize the genocide in Gaza, and launch a public inquiry into British complicity in the conflict.

    The most vehement opposition came from Reform UK deputy leader Richard Tice, who launched an inflammatory attack claiming the government was “anti-Jew” and that the sanctions would embolden antisemitic hate crime across the UK. Tice posted on X, referring to the administration as a “hard left, anti Jew Burnham Govt”, referencing Prime Minister Andy Burnham, who took office in July.

    According to insider sources from Whitehall, Tuesday’s announcement marks the start of a fundamental shift in UK foreign policy towards the region, with further measures expected in the coming months. Burnham has not spoken to Netanyahu since becoming prime minister, and it was confirmed that he briefed U.S. President Donald Trump on his plans for sanctions during a call on Monday afternoon. The announcement represents an unusually bold break from U.S. policy, as Downing Street pushed ahead with the measures despite private appeals from Washington to abandon the plan. With France and Canada joining the UK in implementing new restrictions on settlement trade, the coordinated action by three of the U.S.’s closest historical allies is being widely perceived as a major diplomatic rebuke of Washington’s long-standing pro-Israel policy in the Middle East, and is expected to ramp up international pressure on Israel to halt its ongoing expansion of illegal settlements in the West Bank.

  • Sanctions on Israeli settlements: Here’s what Europe is saying and doing

    Sanctions on Israeli settlements: Here’s what Europe is saying and doing

    A coordinated diplomatic push led by the United Kingdom has sent tensions between Israel and multiple European states soaring, after 12 European nations unveiled plans this week for new national sanctions targeting Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, a move that has already triggered sharp retaliation from the Israeli government.

    The landmark announcement on Tuesday followed months of growing international outcry over escalating violent attacks on Palestinian communities by Israeli settlers and the ongoing expansion of illegal settlement infrastructure under the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It also comes more than two years after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued a formal 2024 ruling confirming that Israeli settlements across the occupied West Bank violate international law, a decision that has provided the legal foundation for many nations’ restrictive measures.

    Speaking to the UK Parliament as the coordinated measures were revealed, UK Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband used unusually sharp rhetoric for a senior Western government minister, stating that the sanctions were introduced in response to the ongoing “ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in areas of the West Bank perpetrated by settler terrorists”. Miliband further accused the Netanyahu administration of deliberately turning a blind eye to the forced displacement of Palestinian residents, noting that more than 450,000 Israeli settlers currently reside in the occupied territory. The UK’s new package of measures, among the strictest national policies adopted to date, targets the import of settlement-produced goods, restricts investment in settlement-based businesses and real estate, and bans the promotion of settlement-based services. Miliband emphasized that the action targets the Israeli government, not the Israeli people.

    Shortly after the UK’s announcement, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot confirmed Paris would adopt matching restrictions. “France cannot, through its trade, support a situation that threatens the security of Israelis and Palestinians alike,” Barrot said in an official statement. Before this week, France had only imposed sanctions on approximately 50 individual extremist settlers and unapproved outpost organizations, rather than a broad trade ban. Barrot has repeatedly called for a full EU-wide ban on settlement goods, drawing a direct comparison to the bloc’s immediate trade restrictions on Crimea after Russia’s 2014 annexation, arguing the same standard must be applied to illegal Israeli settlements. “The settlements are illegal. It is not normal that the European Union can support this trade,” he stated earlier this month.

    The 12 signatory nations — the UK, France, Spain, Ireland, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, and Portugal — released a joint statement confirming their commitment to either implement national trade restrictions on settlement goods or actively support binding EU-wide restrictions, in line with each country’s domestic legislative processes.

    Many of the signatory nations have already moved forward with national restrictions ahead of this week’s joint announcement. Spain, one of the most vocal European critics of Israeli policy under Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s centre-left government, implemented a full ban on settlement imports in September 2025, requiring all goods from Israel and the occupied territories to disclose their origin postcode and imposing penalties for non-compliance. Madrid has also adopted broader restrictive measures, including an arms embargo on Israel, restrictions on military-related vessels and aircraft using Spanish infrastructure, and formal recognition of Palestinian statehood, moves that have severely strained bilateral ties with Israel and triggered trade tariffs from the United States.

    Ireland implemented its own partial ban on settlement goods in July 2026, after a 2018 proposal was watered down amid political and economic pressure. The Netherlands will bring its three-year ban on settlement goods into force on September 22, and Belgium’s cabinet approved a full import ban earlier this summer ahead of final parliamentary review. Norway tabled a full trade and services ban in June, with public consultation on the proposal closing mid-September, while Iceland joined South Africa’s ICJ genocide case against Israel earlier this year.

    Still, a number of nations have signaled they prefer to wait for collective EU action rather than impose unilateral measures. Sweden, Denmark, and Finland all confirmed they would only move forward with restrictions as part of a coordinated bloc-wide policy, despite signing Tuesday’s joint statement. This divide mirrors long-standing deadlock within the European Union over a proposed bloc-wide ban on settlement goods, which has stalled for months due to opposition from key member states Germany and Italy. Neither country joined Tuesday’s joint declaration, though Germany has repeatedly stated it opposes settlement expansion as a violation of international law and is currently facing its own ICJ case over its continued arms sales to Israel. Right-wing-led Austria has also opposed EU-wide measures, while Slovenia’s new conservative government reversed a 2025 national import ban and other anti-Israel sanctions shortly after taking office in June, a move that earned warm praise from Tel Aviv.

    Israeli officials have responded to the new sanctions with swift and aggressive retaliation. In the wake of the UK’s announcement, Israel closed the British consulate in occupied East Jerusalem, expelled British representatives from the International Gaza Support Center, and issued entry bans for 11 non-governmental British members of parliament. Tensions between London and Tel Aviv had already risen sharply last month, after Netanyahu sparked outrage in the UK Parliament by labeling the country the “Islamic Republic of Britain”. Bilateral relations between Israel and other European capitals, including the Netherlands and Spain, have already deteriorated sharply in recent months following the adoption of individual national measures.

  • Israeli settlements: What does the ICJ ruling require Britain and other states do?

    Israeli settlements: What does the ICJ ruling require Britain and other states do?

    On a historic Tuesday in the UK Parliament, Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband unveiled long-awaited measures aligning British government policy with a landmark 2024 legal ruling from the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the United Nations’ highest judicial body. In a speech marking a sharp break from decades of ambiguous British policy, Miliband explicitly declared Israel’s decades-long occupation of Palestinian territory illegal, announced sweeping new sanctions targeting Israeli settlements, and implemented a full ban on arms licenses and all exports that materially contribute to sustaining the occupation.

    Miliband further stated that the UK government has concluded Israeli settlers are perpetrating ethnic cleansing against Palestinian communities in the occupied West Bank, accusing the Israeli government of deliberately ignoring these widespread abuses and actively condoning the forced displacement of Palestinian people. “For a long time, the British government has correctly acknowledged that Israeli settlements are illegal under international law, but we have remained silent on the broader question of the legality of the entire occupation,” Miliband told lawmakers. “Today, I announce that the official view of the British Government is that the occupation is unlawful, because of Israel’s entrenchment of its control, its stated intention to extend permanent sovereignty over the territory, and its expansionist agenda pursued through illegal settlements.”

    Miliband’s announcement represents the clearest endorsement to date from the United Kingdom of the ICJ’s landmark July 19, 2024, advisory opinion. The ruling, requested by the UN General Assembly, formally confirmed the illegality of Israel’s decades-long occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, ordered all Israeli settlers to withdraw from occupied Palestinian territory, and mandated that all governments take action to end any support that sustains Israel’s unlawful presence in the region.

    These findings have taken on renewed urgency in recent months as Israel accelerates settlement expansion, including advancing construction tenders for the controversial E1 project. British and international officials have repeatedly warned that the E1 development would split the occupied West Bank into disconnected fragments, eliminating any possibility of establishing a geographically contiguous and viable Palestinian state.

    The UK did not act alone: on the same day as Miliband’s announcement, 11 other nations—Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden—joined the UK in signing a joint international statement. The signatories confirmed their intention to introduce national restrictions on trade in goods produced in illegal Israeli settlements, or support European Union-wide restrictions, with many nations actively evaluating additional measures in line with their domestic legislative procedures.

    To contextualize the announcement, it is critical to revisit the full scope of the 2024 ICJ advisory opinion. Judges on the court concluded that Israel’s entire continued presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), not only its isolated settlements, violates international law on multiple overlapping grounds. The court ruled that Israel’s policy of transferring its own civilian population into the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and maintaining their presence there, directly violates the Fourth Geneva Convention’s explicit ban on an occupying power relocating its own citizens into occupied territory.

    Additional findings confirmed that Israel’s seizure of Palestinian land for settlement construction breaches customary international law, that its exploitation of Palestinian natural resources exceeds the legal limits allowed for occupying powers, and that extending Israeli domestic law to settlers in occupied territory has no legal justification. The court also found that Israel’s policies have enforced near-total separation between Palestinian and Israeli civilian populations, violating the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination’s ban on racial segregation and apartheid.

    When combined with state policies designed to push Palestinians to leave their land and widespread settler violence that Israel has systematically failed to prevent, the ICJ concluded these practices amount to de facto annexation of large swathes of the OPT. The court ordered Israel to end its unlawful occupation as rapidly as possible, halt all new settlement construction, withdraw all settlers from occupied territory, repeal all discriminatory legislation related to the occupation, and provide reparations for all harm caused to the Palestinian people.

    The ruling also mandated that all other countries must not recognize Israel’s occupation as legal, must not provide aid or assistance that helps sustain the occupation, and must avoid economic or trade activities that support illegal Israeli settlements. Most fundamentally, the court reaffirmed that the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination is an absolute, peremptory norm of international law, and that Israel’s occupation fundamentally violates this right by fragmenting Palestinian territory, forcing mass displacement of Palestinian communities to alter the territory’s demographic makeup, denying Palestinians permanent sovereignty over their own natural resources, and creating a system of economic dependence that undermines Palestinians’ ability to pursue independent social, economic and cultural development. The court emphasized that the 60-plus year duration of Israel’s policies significantly aggravates this violation.

    Notably, international law experts have flagged a key gap in Miliband’s parliamentary address. While Miliband mentioned the term “self-determination” twice, he did not connect it to the ICJ’s core finding that the occupation violates this fundamental right. Ralph Wilde, a professor of international law at University College London who represented the League of Arab States during the ICJ proceedings, noted in an interview with Middle East Eye (speaking in a personal capacity) that the omission is meaningful, because the right to Palestinian self-determination forms the foundational underpinning of the court’s entire ruling.

    “The core point of the ruling is that Israel should not be there at all. This is not Israel’s sovereign territory, and its presence is a direct violation of Palestinian self-determination,” Wilde explained. “It is incorrect to omit the most important finding, which is that this is a violation of Palestinian self-determination. That omission misleadingly frames the issue as narrower than the fundamental denial of Palestinian freedom itself—a denial that has persisted since 1967.”

    In the period following the ICJ’s 2024 ruling, settlement expansion has accelerated dramatically. By 2025, the annual rate of settlement growth hit its highest level since 2017, with an average of roughly 12,815 new housing units added each year. The total number of official Israeli settlements and unauthorized outposts grew from 141 in 2022 to approximately 210 by 2026. Israel has continued to advance the E1 project near Jerusalem, which would permanently break the territorial continuity of the West Bank and eliminate any realistic path to an independent Palestinian state.

    In September 2024, the UN General Assembly adopted resolution A/RES/ES-10/24 by a vote of 124 to 14, with 43 abstentions, translating the ICJ’s findings into binding, concrete demands. The resolution gave Israel a 12-month deadline, expiring in September 2025, to end its unlawful presence in the OPT, and required all UN member states to halt imports of settlement goods and stop transferring arms that could be used in the occupied territory. At the time, the UK abstained from the vote, arguing it did not dispute the ICJ’s core findings but claimed the resolution lacked “sufficient clarity” to advance a negotiated two-state settlement. The September 2025 deadline passed without any compliance from Israel.

    To date, most UN member states have failed to implement the ICJ ruling or meet the requirements of the General Assembly resolution. However, a growing bloc of European countries have begun taking incremental steps to fulfill their international legal obligations. Spain implemented a full ban on settlement goods imports in September 2025, Ireland enacted similar legislation in July 2026, and Belgium approved its own import ban that same month. The Netherlands adopted new restrictions on the import, purchase and sale of settlement goods, set to enter into force on September 22. Slovenia introduced restrictions in 2025, but its new government repealed the import ban in June 2026.

    Norway strengthened official business guidance after the 2024 ICJ ruling, advising domestic companies against engaging in activities that sustain Israel’s occupation, and opened a public consultation in June 2026 on draft legislation to restrict settlement imports, exports and relevant property and service transactions. With Tuesday’s announcement, the UK, France and Canada have now joined the group of nations pledging national restrictions on settlement goods trade, bringing the total number of countries backing new measures to 12.

  • OpenAI says it cracked 90-year-old maths problem in 88 hours

    OpenAI says it cracked 90-year-old maths problem in 88 hours

    In an announcement that has sent ripples through both the artificial intelligence and global mathematics communities, OpenAI — the creator of the widely used ChatGPT platform — says it has cracked a decades-old unsolved advanced mathematical problem in just 88 hours, leveraging a cutting-edge internal AI model and a decentralized network of 10,000 independent AI agents. The breakthrough centers on the Navier-Stokes existence and smoothness problem, a long-standing conundrum focused on modeling the behavior of fluid flow that has stumped mathematicians for nearly a century. Since 2000, the problem has been one of the seven Millennium Prize Problems curated by the U.S.-based Clay Mathematics Institute, which offers a $1 million reward to any researcher who produces a publicly verified, accepted proof.

    OpenAI framed the achievement as a major milestone for advancing artificial intelligence, confirming that it began developing the new specialized model in late August. The in-house model, which the company says is far more capable than any of its publicly released AI systems, was quickly identified as particularly strong at mathematical reasoning. The project gained urgency after OpenAI acknowledged it first heard rumors that two Millennium Prize problems had been solved by independent researchers on September 1. Within days, the company deployed its fleet of 10,000 task-oriented AI bots, which work autonomously to test and refine different approaches to the proof.

    By September 5, just 88 hours after launching the large-scale collaborative effort, the AI network arrived at a proposed solution. Over the course of the work, the AI agents exchanged nearly 3 million messages and generated 130 billion output tokens of code and mathematical reasoning — a computational effort that would cost an estimated $10 million at OpenAI’s current public pricing for its most advanced models. The company’s proposed proof addresses two of the four core requirements laid out by the Clay Mathematics Institute for the full Millennium Prize solution. In a statement Tuesday, OpenAI clarified that it is not seeking the $1 million prize, and is only releasing its findings to demonstrate the rapid progress of its AI capabilities. The result has not yet undergone independent peer review or received formal acceptance from the Clay Institute.

    Despite OpenAI’s celebratory framing, the claim has already ignited significant controversy within the mathematics field. Tristan Buckmaster, a mathematics professor at New York University, and Levent Alpöge, a mathematician at OpenAI competitor Anthropic, have been working on their own solution to the same problem for some time, using OpenAI’s own Codex AI coding tool in their research. Buckmaster claims that details of his team’s progress were shared with OpenAI before the company began its own work on Navier-Stokes, and that OpenAI only launched its project after receiving that information. In a public statement released hours before OpenAI published its findings, Buckmaster shared email correspondence to back up his claims, noting that he felt obligated to speak out to correct what he sees as a misleading narrative around the breakthrough. He added that he has not yet reviewed OpenAI’s full proof, but could not stay silent given the timeline of events.

    OpenAI has pushed back against Buckmaster’s allegations, issuing a response that congratulated Buckmaster and Alpöge on their concurrent independent work, calling their progress remarkable. The company denied that it accessed any of the pair’s private work before it was released publicly, and confirmed no user data was improperly used in its Navier-Stokes research. OpenAi did acknowledge that it cannot fully rule out the possibility that de-identified data from the pair’s use of OpenAI’s public products contributed to the training of its models, but emphasized that the two teams’ proofs and core results are significantly different. The clash over the discovery highlights the growing intersection of artificial intelligence and advanced academic research, as well as the new ethical and credit challenges that come with AI-assisted breakthroughs in long-standing scientific problems.

  • Suspected spyware attacks target Turkish ministers’ phones

    Suspected spyware attacks target Turkish ministers’ phones

    Sources with direct knowledge of the incident have confirmed to Middle East Eye that technology giant Apple has pushed threat notifications to the personal and official iPhones of at least three senior Turkish government ministers, warning that the devices could be in the crosshairs of mercenary spyware operators.

    This latest round of alerts forms part of a broader global warning Apple issued last month, which reached an undisclosed number of iPhone users across 110 countries, with Turkey included among the affected regions. Multiple industry and government sources confirm the Turkish ministers’ notifications were part of this global batch of warnings.

    Cybersecurity observers have not flagged this development as unexpected: in 2021, multiple senior Turkish public officials were already identified as targets of suspected surveillance campaigns using Pegasus, the controversial spyware developed by Israeli cybersecurity firm NSO Group. That same year, Paris-based nonprofit journalism collective Forbidden Stories, in partnership with 16 global media organizations, published a groundbreaking investigation exposing that government clients of mercenary spyware firms had flagged more than 50,000 phone numbers across the globe as potential hacking targets starting from 2016.

    At this stage, investigators have not been able to confirm what strain of spyware was used in the 2024 attempted attacks, as a growing number of private surveillance companies now offer capabilities comparable to Pegasus for government clients.

    Despite the confirmed targeting attempts, a senior Turkish official speaking to Middle East Eye on condition of anonymity emphasized that the hacking attempts were ultimately unsuccessful. The official also declined to disclose the identities of the three ministers impacted by the attempted surveillance.

    The official explained that the ministers targeted in this campaign had long used devices pre-equipped with enhanced security protocols, alongside purpose-built encrypted communication applications designed to safeguard sensitive government information. Immediately following Apple’s official alert, Turkey’s newly created Presidency of Cyber Security launched a full forensic review of the ministers’ devices, replaced the compromised hardware, and rolled out additional layered security safeguards to block future threats, the official added.

    The official noted that sustained attempts to infiltrate the devices of politicians, ministers, prominent business leaders and other high-profile public figures have become a routine threat across the Middle East region. As a result, senior Turkish officials now operate under the persistent assumption that they may be targeted at any time. “There does not need to be a specific trigger for these attacks. We all have a responsibility to remain constantly vigilant,” the official stated.

    Cybersecurity experts have outlined a range of measures that public officials can adopt to harden their devices against surveillance. Back in 2021, for example, Turkish officials swapped out all their personal and official devices and changed their private phone numbers to eliminate any potential foothold that mercenary spyware could have exploited.

    For its part, Apple offers a specialized high-security tool called Lockdown Mode, built specifically to defend users against extremely sophisticated cyber attacks, including the category of threats known as zero-click exploits. These attacks are capable of compromising a smartphone without requiring any action from the user, such as clicking a malicious link, to trigger the breach. Pegasus, infamously, exploited an unpatched vulnerability in Apple’s iMessage platform to gain full access to all data stored on target iPhones.

    While sources based in Ankara say that a broad array of domestic and international political and economic interest groups could be behind the latest attempted attacks, definitively tracing the origin of these surveillance campaigns remains an enormous challenge. Many local analysts have pointed fingers at countries including Israel and Greece as potential actors, but it is important to note that Pegasus has been sold to dozens of national governments across the Middle East and broader region.

    Complicating attribution efforts further, updating an iPhone’s iOS operating system can often erase residual forensic evidence of an attack. Even when traces of a breach remain, they often only lead investigators to an IP address tied to a specific country, which does not confirm the true origin or sponsor of the attack, as malicious actors frequently route their activity through third-party servers to cover their tracks.