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  • US challenges China on secret nuclear tests as arms race looms

    US challenges China on secret nuclear tests as arms race looms

    A deepening diplomatic standoff rooted in unproven U.S. allegations of secret Chinese nuclear testing and rapid nuclear arsenal growth has reignited a fraught domestic debate in the United States over whether to end its 30-year pause on explosive nuclear testing. Multiple independent media outlets have documented how this friction has intensified on the sidelines of high-level diplomatic engagement, coming amid a period of sharp strategic competition ahead of key summit talks between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

    U.S. diplomatic officials have raised the allegations in closed-door bilateral discussions held on the margins of multilateral forums in Geneva, New York, and Casablanca, focusing claims on China’s Lop Nur testing facility in northwest China, where Washington accuses Beijing of violating the 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT). The formal accusation was first delivered publicly by U.S. delegates at the Conference on Disarmament in February 2026, shortly after the expiration of the New START arms control treaty between the U.S. and Russia. In that accusation, Washington claimed China carried out a low-yield underground nuclear test in June 2020, using a technique called cavity decoupling to hide the blast’s seismic signature from global monitoring networks.

    Complementing these accusations, declassified geospatial satellite intelligence has documented large-scale infrastructure upgrades at seven separate Chinese nuclear-related sites across the country. These upgrades cover activities ranging from plutonium pit fabrication at Pingtong and blast effect testing at Zitong to nuclear fuel reprocessing in Jiuquan, Jinta, and Guangyuan, as well as a major expansion of laser fusion research facilities in Mianyang. Notably, analysts point out that China’s Mianyang laser complex operates similarly to the U.S. National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where the vast majority of laser tests are used for stockpile stewardship – a practice permitted under international nuclear rules that allows nations to model thermonuclear weapon performance without conducting live underground detonations.

    Even so, the combination of alleged covert testing and infrastructure expansion has supported a rapid expansion of China’s nuclear arsenal, which now stands at more than 600 operational warheads and is projected to grow to 1,500 deployable warheads by 2035, according to U.S. defense estimates. In response, Washington has pushed Beijing to adopt new confidence-building and verification measures, including expanded access for independent seismic and radiological detection at Chinese sites. President Trump has also issued a clear warning that if China does not address U.S. concerns and halt alleged violations, the U.S. will resume its own explosive nuclear testing on what he called an “equal basis” to match China’s activity.

    Beijing has consistently rejected all U.S. accusations, denying that it conducts any unauthorized explosive nuclear tests or pursues an offensive nuclear arms race. China maintains its long-standing defensive “no first use” nuclear policy, and has refused to accept binding caps on its arsenal, arguing that the massive existing disparity between China’s smaller stockpile and the far larger arsenals held by the U.S. and Russia means any equal cap would unfairly lock in U.S. strategic dominance.

    Crucially, independent arms control analysts have raised significant technical skepticism about the validity of U.S. claims. In an August 2026 research report published by the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), analyst Philipp Rombach concluded that U.S. accusations remain unconfirmed due to fundamental limitations in global monitoring capabilities. While Rombach acknowledged that a magnitude 2.75 seismic tremor recorded at Lop Nur in June 2020 matched the waveform pattern expected from a cavity-decoupled underground blast, the CTBT Organization’s global International Monitoring System is only calibrated to reliably confirm detonations equal to or above 500 to 1,000 tons of TNT equivalent. As nuclear testing technology advances, micro-yield experiments have become even harder to distinguish from natural seismic background noise, and the U.S. has refused to release its underlying sensor data to independent observers to protect its intelligence gathering methods. This means there is no way to separate ambiguous micro-yield detonations from permitted hydrodynamic experiments or routine industrial blasting that also produce seismic activity. Many analysts argue that without verifiable, transparent data, these unproven allegations may be a tactical tool to pressure China into trilateral arms control talks or to build domestic political support for the U.S. to resume its own nuclear testing.

    From a Chinese strategic perspective, arms control analyst Tianjiao Jiang outlined in a 2026 article for the Arms Control Association (ACA) that U.S. strategy is designed to draw China into trilateral arms control negotiations alongside Russia to cap China’s growing arsenal before it reaches the projected 2025 1,500-warhead level, allowing the U.S. to avoid the strategic risk of facing two peer nuclear adversaries at the same time. Jiang explained that while U.S. coercive leverage has pushed forward limited incremental agreements on risk reduction, such as pre-notification of missile tests and bilateral crisis communication hotlines, the broader U.S. framework is fundamentally counterproductive. The approach fails to address China’s core demand for mutual recognition of strategic vulnerability, ignores the massive asymmetry in existing arsenal sizes, and pairs arms control demands with major expansions of U.S. missile defense systems such as the Golden Dome program.

    Tong Zhao, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, echoed this skepticism in a September 2026 report. Zhao noted that while U.S. strategy correctly identifies areas of feasible operational cooperation, such as reciprocal limits on theater-range strike systems in the Western Pacific and mutual inspection protocols for co-orbital space weapons, these opportunities are undermined by Washington’s broader strategic doctrine. By clinging to a policy of open-ended escalation dominance and maintaining deliberate ambiguity about first use of nuclear weapons to offset shifts in regional conventional military power, Zhao argues that the U.S. has adopted a coercive, unilateral “America First” posture that confirms China’s worst-case security fears, trapping both nations in a classic security dilemma where escalating preparations for conflict only increase the risk of confrontation.

    Beyond the bilateral standoff, the escalating dispute over China’s nuclear program has reignited a fierce domestic debate in the U.S. over whether Washington should end its decades-long moratorium on explosive nuclear testing. Proponents of resuming testing, such as Heritage Foundation analyst Robert Peters, argued in a January 2026 article that the U.S. must restart live testing to confirm that its rapidly aging nuclear stockpile remains functional and credible as a deterrent. Peters pointed out that while China and Russia have both fielded newly designed nuclear weapon systems, the youngest warhead in the U.S. arsenal is 36 years old. The entire U.S. deterrent relies on decades-old plutonium pits that were never tested for multi-decade service life, and as the plutonium naturally degrades, it creates structural changes that could undermine weapon performance. A February 2024 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) supported this concern, noting that radioactive decay produces helium bubbles and chemical byproducts within the plutonium metal that alter the material’s structural strength and disrupt how the weapon core compresses during the high-explosive implosion that triggers a nuclear detonation. The GAO warned that these changes could lead to unacceptably low explosive yield in a weapon’s primary stage, potentially preventing it from generating enough force to trigger the secondary stage and achieve the warhead’s designed military output.

    However, critics of resuming testing argue that ending the moratorium would cause far more harm than good to U.S. national security. Leading nuclear scientist Siegfried Hecker argued in a November 2025 Foreign Affairs article that restarting explosive testing would primarily benefit China and Russia. Hecker noted that a U.S. exit from the moratorium would allow China to rapidly validate next-generation weapon designs for its expanding arsenal, and let Russia refine new strategic delivery systems. China and Russia would be able to resume large-scale testing operations far faster than the U.S., which has not maintained active testing infrastructure at scale since the 1990s. Instead of resolving U.S. plutonium pit production bottlenecks, Hecker argued that a U.S. return to testing would dismantle decades of global nonproliferation norms, spark a new multi-front nuclear arms race, and encourage other nuclear-armed states to conduct their own tests.

    In the end, the shifting nature of modern nuclear research – where much of the work once done in live tests now moves into permitted large-scale laser fusion research facilities – demonstrates that the line between legal laboratory stockpile stewardship and unauthorized explosive testing is a political agreement, not a clear, unambiguous physical boundary. If weapons laboratories conclude that live explosive testing is necessary to verify the safety and yield of aging warheads, this issue must be resolved through transparent, multilateral negotiation between the U.S., China, and Russia. Rather than using unproven allegations of low-yield testing as cover to unilaterally end the global testing moratorium, the three major nuclear powers must negotiate an updated, mutually verified agreement that sets clear physical boundaries for permitted laboratory simulations and subcritical experiments, before unchecked distrust unravels the entire global arms control framework.

  • Young people in China are fangirling over a professor who gets their anxiety

    Young people in China are fangirling over a professor who gets their anxiety

    Against the backdrop of decades of breakneck economic and technological expansion that has reshaped every layer of Chinese society, Generation Z in the country is grappling with unprecedented levels of uncertainty about everything from career prospects to romantic relationships to the constant pressure to keep pace with societal expectations. In this climate of widespread disillusionment, an unexpected public figure has emerged as a trusted voice for millions of anxious young people: 54-year-old anthropologist Biao Xiang, not a A-list pop star or box office movie star.

    Xiang, currently director of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Germany, has built a massive, loyal following across Chinese digital and physical spaces for his unflinching focus on youth anxiety and actionable frameworks for navigating it. His ability to name the unspoken pain points of modern Chinese youth life has turned him into a cultural phenomenon, with the popular mantra “When in doubt, ask Biao Xiang” circulating widely across domestic social media.

    The depth of his appeal was on full display during a recent speaking event in Singapore, where roughly 500 attendees—most of them members of the Chinese diaspora—packed a local auditorium to hear him speak for more than an hour, followed by a question-and-answer session. When the event wrapped up, dozens of attendees lined up for hours just to meet Xiang and snap a photo with him, with one anonymous 23-year-old Chinese graduate describing the scene as “an academic fan meeting.” That same graduate, who requested anonymity out of fear that speaking to foreign media could harm her future job prospects in China, summed up the sentiment driving Xiang’s popularity: “The transition from school to the real world brings a lot of uncertainty now, and people often feel anxious because they don’t know how to face it. People need an anchor in life. And his words make us feel there is someone that gets me.”

    Xiang’s reach extends far beyond overseas speaking engagements. He has been featured in major Chinese domestic media outlets and has toured top university campuses across the country, including his alma mater, Peking University. Earlier this year, one campus talk had to be live-streamed to a wider audience after the auditorium filled to capacity long before the event began.

    In his Singapore address, Xiang broke down the core dynamic driving youth unease: In modern competitive China, many young people tie their entire sense of self-worth to external approval from rigid systems, ranging from high-stakes university entrance exams to securing a stable, elite job. This constant chase for validation, he argues, is not only emotionally exhausting but psychologically damaging. Instead, he encourages young people to shift their focus to building meaningful connections with others, using those relationships to cultivate a clearer, more grounded understanding of themselves.

    Speaking to the BBC during his time in Singapore, Xiang noted that while widespread public discussion of systemic discontent remains politically sensitive and heavily censored in China, he sees his role as an academic to openly name the problems that everyone recognizes but few dare to discuss. “Everyone knows where the issue is, but they are reluctant to look at it. Sometimes it is too painful to look at, or they don’t have a way,” he explained over tea. “But as an academic, it is not terrifying if you can describe it – that’s how you analyse and manage it.”

    Xiang frames contemporary Chinese society as sitting at a critical “turning point,” where rapid economic and social transformation has left people searching for a new collective narrative to make sense of their lives. He points to a stark contradiction at the heart of modern China: a globally powerful, increasingly assertive nation that is home to a generation of deeply uncertain, disillusioned young people, even after decades of unprecedented advancement. It is his job, he says, to unpack the underlying forces driving this tension—a observation that aligns with Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s own framing of China’s “principal contradiction” as “between the people’s ever-growing needs for a better life and unbalanced and inadequate development.”

    Xiang has coined memorable, accessible terms to describe the forces shaping young people’s anxiety. He calls the relentless cycle of overwork just to maintain basic stability “Floating,” comparing it to a hummingbird that must constantly flap its wings just to stay aloft. He also developed the concept of “the nearby,” arguing that modern young people are so fixated on either their immediate personal struggles or distant global trends that they neglect the middle space of local community and close connections, leaving them feeling isolated and adrift.

    These ideas have struck a powerful chord with young Chinese searching for answers to their unspoken stress. On Chinese social platform RedNote, one user wrote: “He consistently views issues from the perspective of the vulnerable, attributes personal stress to macro-level causes, and encourages people to actively engage with life – it’s truly wonderful.” Another commenter noted: “He never spouts empty, feel-good platitudes; instead, he crouches down to face real-life dilemmas alongside us.” For fan Zihan Han, Xiang’s willingness to speak candidly sets him apart from other public figures: “Those who have said similar things aren’t as kick-ass as Teacher Xiang, yet people who are as kick-ass as him haven’t said such things.”

    Xiang’s own life experience gives him unique insight into China’s generational shifts. Born in 1972, he came of age during a previous turning point in Chinese history, when the country emerged from the chaos of the Mao era to open up to global trade, rapidly urbanize, and cultivate a new generation of entrepreneurs. Growing up in Wenzhou, a coastal city that transformed into a thriving industrial port, he witnessed this economic boom first-hand: “It was a vast landscape of small business owners. Most people didn’t care too much about education, the focus was on practical matters – specifically, how to make money.”

    The children of that boom generation grew up enjoying decades of double-digit economic growth, but the slowdown of China’s economy following the COVID-19 pandemic broke the long-held social contract that hard work would automatically deliver security and success. Today, youth anxiety permeates every stratum of society: youth unemployment hit a record 21.3% in 2023 before the government halted public release of the data, and even young people who land coveted stable jobs in the civil service, major corporations, or tech firms live in constant fear of layoffs. Online, young people frequently vent about punishing 996 working schedules, toxic office culture, and the widely resented “curse of 35,” a common industry practice that excludes job applicants over 35 years old.

    While strict censorship limits open discussion of the scale of this discontent, the pervasive sense of anxiety leaks into public discourse in other ways, regularly igniting heated online anger over issues from university entrance exams to bride price traditions to food safety scandals. Over the past several years, terms describing this collective mood have gone viral, most notably “lying flat”—a movement that rejects the endless grind of the rat race entirely—and “involution,” a term used to describe a cycle of extreme competition that produces little meaningful reward for participants.

    Xiang identifies two key systemic forces that have amplified youth anxiety: the overheated property market and the rapid expansion of China’s higher education system. Decades of property booms, fueled by local governments’ reliance on land sale revenue, have tied most Chinese families’ sense of security and social status directly to the value of their homes. At the same time, the rapid expansion of university enrolment has raised the bar for what counts as a “successful” education, intensifying competition at every stage of life. The end result, Xiang argues, is a one-size-fits-all blueprint for success that nearly 1.4 billion people are all chasing at the same time: “When 1.4 billion people are all in the same race, that is involution.”

    Xiang first realized he had broken out of academic circles around three years ago, when a digital nomad camp that hosted a talk from him raised its prices immediately after his visit. Many of his academic peers, he says, prioritize traditional research publishing and view his public-facing work with cool detachment, with some even advising him to “cherish your feathers”—a common Chinese idiom meaning to protect one’s professional reputation. But Xiang embraces his unexpected popularity as a force for good, saying he would take the label of “influencer” as a compliment: “Because the real influence I can have is to make people think for themselves.”

  • Haftar’s forces execute 30 after secret military trials in eastern Libya

    Haftar’s forces execute 30 after secret military trials in eastern Libya

    A wave of secret death penalty convictions carried out by de facto authorities in eastern Libya has triggered international condemnation, after rights groups confirmed that at least 30 men have been executed since late August, with dozens more facing imminent execution. This resumption of capital punishment ends a 15-year de facto moratorium on executions that has held across Libya since 2010.

    The executions were carried out by the Libyan Arab Armed Forces (LAAF), the powerful military bloc led by eastern commander Khalifa Haftar that controls most of eastern and southern Libya, alongside the region’s de facto governing institutions. According to Amnesty International, the global human rights watchdog that first documented the abuses, all of those put to death were convicted in grossly unfair, closed military trials tainted by systemic torture.

    Many of the convictions were tied to alleged murder and terrorism offences connected to intra-Libyan conflict between the LAAF and rival armed groups between 2014 and 2018. Multiple detainees alleged that armed groups aligned with the LAAF tortured them following arrest to force coerced confessions, which were then used as primary evidence against them at trial. Amnesty’s investigation confirms that military courts in eastern Libya systematically violate core fair trial rights: defendants are denied access to legal counsel, given insufficient time to mount a defense, stripped of the right to remain silent, and are not granted public hearings before an independent, impartial judiciary. All military prosecutors and judges in the region are affiliated with the LAAF or its allied armed groups, eliminating any guarantee of judicial independence.

    This irregular judicial framework dates back to a 2017 law passed by the eastern-based House of Representatives that granted military courts jurisdiction over civilians accused of terrorism and crimes in so-called military zones. The legislation was later ruled unconstitutional by Libya’s Constitutional Chamber, but it remains in use by Haftar-aligned authorities.

    Witnesses and rights groups have also documented cruel post-execution mistreatment of the deceased and their families. Local human rights defenders report that de facto authorities have denied families permission to bury their executed loved ones themselves, instead seizing the bodies and conducting secret burials. While relatives have been permitted to identify remains before interment, they have been explicitly barred from holding public funerals—a practice the United Nations has repeatedly classified as cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.

    Local Libyan rights group the Crime Monitoring Organisation has independently verified 31 executions at Gernada and al-Kuwayfiyah prisons as of September 10. The group confirmed that all sentences were handed down by military courts, and no case files have been released to the public, making independent audits of trial fairness impossible. Libya Al-Ahrar television station has also reported that families of detainees have already received notifications of upcoming additional executions at the same two facilities.

    The resumption of executions came roughly two weeks after a car bomb assassination of LAAF military intelligence chief Major General Fawzi al-Mansouri in Benghazi in August. It also unfolds against a long-running political backdrop of Libyan division: the country remains split between the internationally recognized Government of National Unity that holds the capital Tripoli and controls western Libya, and the Haftar-aligned administration that governs the east and most of the south. The executions come as UN-led mediation efforts continue to work toward unifying the country’s rival institutions and paving the way for long-delayed national elections.

    Both Amnesty International and the United Nations have called for immediate action to end the crisis. Amnesty is demanding the LAAF authorities immediately implement an official moratorium on all executions, vacate all convictions and death sentences obtained through unfair trials, and retry all civilian defendants in civilian courts that adhere to international fair trial standards, excluding any evidence obtained through torture. The organization has also called for independent, impartial investigations into all allegations of torture and ill-treatment of detainees, and for unimpeded access for international human rights monitors to Gernada and all other detention facilities in eastern Libya. The UN Support Mission in Libya has echoed the call for an immediate halt to further executions, noting that the resumption of capital punishment ended the 15-year unofficial moratorium.

    The internationally recognized Tripoli-based Libyan authorities have also joined the UN in condemning the executions. Separately, reporting from Middle East Eye has confirmed that the LAAF, in partnership with the United Arab Emirates, continues to support Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces, a militia widely accused of perpetrating genocide in Sudan’s ongoing conflict. Investigations have documented active RSF fighter training camps in both eastern and southern Libya, raising further international concern over the LAAF’s regional activities.

  • Canadian lawmaker removed from position after backing bill targeting arms exports to Israel

    Canadian lawmaker removed from position after backing bill targeting arms exports to Israel

    A sitting Liberal Party legislator in Canada has been stripped of his parliamentary secretary role at the Department of Veterans Affairs, a disciplinary move that followed his decision to back a private member’s bill seeking tighter oversight of Canadian arms exports to Israel.

    Sean Casey, who represents the riding of Charlottetown on Prince Edward Island, confirmed in an interview with CBC News that Liberal Party whips explicitly warned him back in March that supporting the bill introduced by New Democratic Party MP Jenny Kwan would carry professional consequences. The legislation was crafted to close a longstanding regulatory gap that permits Canadian-manufactured military hardware to be shipped to third-party nations, then transferred onward to Israel for end use.

    Casey explained that he cast his vote in line with concerns raised directly by residents of his constituency, even though the bill ultimately failed to pass a vote in the House of Commons. He was the sole Liberal MP out of 15 total who backed the measure, and the only Liberal parliamentary secretary to support it. Casey received formal notification of his dismissal during a phone call with representatives from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s office on Thursday, and Quebec Member of Parliament Sophie Chatel was appointed to fill his position the following day.

    Kwan, who sponsored the private member’s bill, has condemned the disciplinary action, calling the outcome deeply troubling and questioning whether Liberal lawmakers actually enjoy the freedom to vote in alignment with the interests and wishes of the constituents they represent. In an official statement posted to her public website, Kwan argued that parliamentary secretaries should never be forced to choose between retaining their appointed roles and acting on their moral judgment. While the governing Liberal caucus has every right to oppose legislative proposals, she added, no elected representative should face retaliation including the loss of official parliamentary duties simply for voting according to their conscience and the priorities of their community.

    This internal Canadian political controversy emerges alongside a stark warning from major Israeli newspaper Haaretz that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s leadership has dragged Israel’s global diplomatic standing to an unprecedented low. In a scathing editorial, the outlet argued that Netanyahu has dismissed repeated warnings over years about the lasting damage his policies inflict on Israel’s key strategic alliances.

    Haaretz specifically called out Netanyahu’s “blatant interference in American politics in favor of [former President Donald] Trump and the Republican Party,” noting that this move has caused Israel’s reputation among U.S. Democrats to collapse entirely. The editorial added that the erosion of Israeli standing is no longer confined to the Democratic Party; Netanyahu’s current governing coalition, which includes far-right figures National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, has pushed Israel’s standing among Republican voters to a new low as well.

    The editorial cited multiple factors driving growing criticism of Israel even among Americans that have traditionally been strong supporters: threats of an expanded war with Iran, skyrocketing domestic fuel prices in Israel, ongoing violence by extremist Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank, and documented harm to Christian communities across Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. It also referenced recent U.S. public opinion polling that shows a sharp, unheard-of decline in favorable public attitudes toward Israel, particularly among younger generations of Americans.

    Haaretz concluded that no ambitious, rhetoric-heavy speech from Netanyahu at the United Nations General Assembly could hide or reverse this stark negative trend. The paper warned that the Israeli public must recognize the far-reaching long-term consequences of this image collapse for the future of Israel’s critical bilateral alliance with the United States.

  • Watch: Bangkok declared flood disaster zone

    Watch: Bangkok declared flood disaster zone

    Bangkok, the bustling capital of Thailand, has been formally declared a flood disaster zone following 48 hours of unrelenting heavy rainfall that has pushed the city’s drainage and water management infrastructure to its breaking point. According to local weather forecasts, additional precipitation is expected to hit the metropolitan area on Sunday, raising urgent concerns about worsening flooding and potential risks to public safety. The relentless downpour has already overwhelmed the city’s existing water systems, which were designed to handle moderate rainfall but lack the capacity to absorb the volume of water that has accumulated in recent days. Local authorities are expected to imminently activate emergency response protocols, including evacuations for at-risk neighborhoods, deployment of flood mitigation resources, and assessments of damage to residential and commercial properties across the city. The impending new round of rain has prompted officials to urge residents in low-lying areas to prepare for potential displacement and heed official safety guidance to avoid flood-related hazards.

  • Time’s no longer on Israel’s side in America

    Time’s no longer on Israel’s side in America

    For 80 years, a core unspoken assumption has shaped every decision made by Israel’s political and national security leadership: unwavering American backing is not a contingent policy outcome, but an immutable fact of geopolitical life, as unchanging as the Mediterranean shoreline that borders Israel itself.

    Across changing U.S. presidential terms, even when sitting presidents pressured or persuaded Israeli leaders to make concessions, the foundational structure of the relationship held: solid pro-Israel majorities in Congress, broad public sympathy among American voters, and a multi-billion-dollar annual aid package that renewed with little to no political friction. This assumption was not without its exceptions even decades ago: during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Washington only rushed critical resupplies to a struggling Israel Defense Forces after securing future diplomatic concessions that Jerusalem opposed. But for generations, the assumption held strong enough that Israeli strategists could count on U.S. support as a permanent structural given, not a variable to be negotiated or defended.

    Today, that foundational assumption is at greater risk than any military defeat, Iranian nuclear advancement, or conflict with Hezbollah. The greatest long-term threat to Israel’s position in Washington is not on a battlefield—it is demographic, and the numbers already tell a clear story.

    Gallup has tracked American sympathies in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict every year since 2001. For every year of that survey up to 2025, sympathies for Israel outpaced those for the Palestinians, often by margins of more than 40 percentage points. In the 2026 survey, that streak broke for the first time: 41% of U.S. respondents now say they sympathize more with Palestinians, compared to 36% who side with Israel, a gap that falls within the poll’s margin of error but marks a historic turning point.

    Data from Pew Research Center reinforces this trend from a different perspective: 60% of all U.S. adults now hold an unfavorable view of Israel, up from just 42% in 2022—a near doubling of negative sentiment in four years. A further 59% of Americans lack confidence in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s handling of global affairs. Among Democratic voters, unfavorable views of Israel have now reached 80%.

    For Israel, the only partial reprieve is that a full bipartisan collapse of support has not yet occurred: Republicans still sympathize with Israelis over Palestinians by a 70% to 13% margin. But the most damaging erosion is concentrated in the youngest cohorts of voters, cutting across both major U.S. political parties.

    Gallup’s data shows a majority of 18-to-34-year-old Americans now sympathize with Palestinians, hitting a record 53%. Pew found that only 52% of Republicans under 30 express confidence in Donald Trump’s handling of U.S.-Israel relations, compared to 93% of Republicans over the age of 65. A 2025 youth survey conducted by Yale University measured this generational divide directly, finding it is larger than any other political split in American public life: Baby Boomers register a +34 score on a composite pro-Israel index, while Gen Z registers a -22—a 56-point generational swing that cannot be dismissed as random polling noise.

    This shift is not reversible by more aggressive public diplomacy, polished social media influencer campaigns, or additional congressional delegations to Israeli-occupied territories. It is the natural product of differing generational formative experiences: older Americans came of age with the 1967 Six-Day War as their defining frame of reference, while younger Americans’ core understanding of the conflict is shaped by the live-streamed 2023-2025 Gaza war.

    Israel’s political establishment has historically fallen back on a familiar argument: moments of crisis, like the October 7 attacks, trigger a rally-around-the-flag effect that will reverse drifting public opinion. The October 7 attacks tested this expectation, but the rally in U.S. public opinion faded after just a few months, failing to hold long-term.

    The roots of the shift are structural, not emotional. American sympathy for Israel was never an unprompted cultural given. It was built on specific post-WWII and Cold War context: the living, widespread memory of the Holocaust among American voters, a Soviet-aligned bloc of Arab states opposing Israel, and a framing of Israel in American eyes as a small, embattled democracy rather than the regional military power it is today, boasting the world’s fourth-strongest air force.

    Those contextual conditions will not return. Generational replacement is an cumulative, irreversible process: every election cycle, the electorate grows slightly more shaped by the experience of the Gaza war and slightly less shaped by the 1967 conflict.

    Projecting current trends forward makes the coming shift easy to predict. The current $3.8 billion annual U.S. military aid package for Israel runs through 2028; negotiations for the next agreement will take place before a Congress where more members launched their political careers after October 7 than before it. Longstanding U.S. policies of automatic diplomatic cover for Israel at the UN Security Council, unconditional arms sales, and the routine “ironclad alliance” rhetoric recited by every U.S. administration since Bill Clinton—none of these are permanent natural laws. They are political outcomes, sustained by an electoral coalition that is steadily aging out of the electorate, replaced by voters who demand justification for the “ironclad” label rather than accepting it as given.

    Within a decade, if current trends hold, the core debate in Washington will no longer be whether to support Israel, but on what terms. Israeli governments that have spent decades treating U.S. backing as an unconditional given will suddenly find themselves negotiating from a position they have never had to occupy before.

    None of this is an irreversible fate. Public opinion is not an unchanging glacier; it shifts in response to events. A genuine diplomatic peace settlement, a change in Israel’s ruling government, or a different character to future crises could all alter the current trajectory. But one assumption Israel can no longer rely on is the long-held belief that time is on its side among the American public, that the bilateral relationship is a fixed asset rather than a renewable political arrangement that requires ongoing defense and justification.

  • Report: UAE-owned Manchester City found guilty of financial rules breach

    Report: UAE-owned Manchester City found guilty of financial rules breach

    In a landmark ruling that threatens to upend the landscape of English top-flight football, Abu Dhabi-owned Premier League giant Manchester City has been found guilty of 114 out of 115 financial rule violations spanning the 2009–2018 period, according to a recent report from The Athletic. The high-stakes verdict carries the potential to reshape English football’s competitive balance and even strain diplomatic and economic ties between the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom.

    The case against Manchester City dates back to a 2018 leak of internal club documents by German news outlet Der Spiegel. The leaked emails, exchanged between senior club executives, exposed a scheme that hid direct state-backed investment from Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan’s Abu Dhabi United Group (ADUG) as inflated commercial sponsorship revenue from two UAE state-controlled firms: airline Etihad and telecommunications provider Etisalat. Based on these revelations, the Premier League launched a multi-year investigation and formally brought 115 charges against the club in 2023.

    The accusations against City center on multiple failures: the club allegedly withheld accurate financial records, hid the full details of payments to players and coaching staff, and consistently violated the league’s financial sustainability regulations. Sheikh Mansour, who currently serves as the UAE’s deputy prime minister and vice president, purchased Manchester City for approximately £200 million in 2008, transforming the historically mid-tier club into a global football powerhouse. Over the 15 years of his ownership, City has claimed eight Premier League titles, four FA Cups, seven League Cups, and the club’s first ever UEFA Champions League trophy, establishing unrivaled dominance in English domestic football. Three of those Premier League titles, three League Cups, and one FA Cup came during the period covered by the financial investigation.

    While the independent commission has issued its guilty verdict, formal sanctions have not yet been finalized. Manchester City has confirmed it will appeal the ruling, though the BBC reports that the commission’s final punishment will be made public before the appeal process concludes. The most severe potential penalties include a massive fine, a points deduction steep enough to relegate the club to the second tier of English football, or in the most extreme outcome, permanent expulsion from the Premier League.

    In anticipation of the guilty verdict, rival Premier League clubs have already begun mobilizing for legal action. The Athletic reports that multiple teams have retained top sports law specialists to assess potential compensation claims, with legal firms actively reaching out to clubs to outline their eligibility for damages stemming from City’s decade-long rule-breaking. The prospect of overturned past results or stripped titles has left competing clubs poised to pursue legal recourse to secure any prizes or financial rewards they would have gained had City not cheated the system.

    Beyond the pitch, the ruling has created significant diplomatic and economic friction between the UAE and the UK. Bloomberg reported last month that UAE officials had already issued formal warnings that an adverse ruling against City would harm the increasingly warm bilateral relations between the two nations. Manchester City has grown into the UAE’s most high-profile flagship investment in the UK, far beyond just football: the club has a sprawling real estate development branded as Manchester City Residences in Abu Dhabi, a dedicated training academy with a public match day viewing facility, and a retail outlet on the capital’s popular Yas Island. The UAE has also poured billions of dollars into large-scale urban regeneration projects in East Manchester, developing new social housing and upgrading community sports infrastructure in what was once a depressed post-industrial district.

    The issue also intersects with UK domestic politics, as new Prime Minister Keir Starmer took office in July 2024 after serving nine years as Mayor of Greater Manchester. During his tenure as mayor, Starmer repeatedly praised ADUG’s investment and the positive impact the Abu Dhabi group has had on regenerating East Manchester. In late July, shortly after taking office as prime minister, Starmer held his first official phone call with UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Sheikh Mansour’s brother, as part of a push to attract large-scale foreign investment from wealthy Gulf allies like the UAE. It remains unclear how the guilty verdict will affect these ongoing economic and diplomatic outreach efforts.

  • Bangkok roads submerged as flood disaster declared

    Bangkok roads submerged as flood disaster declared

    Two full days of nonstop heavy rainfall have inundated Thailand’s capital Bangkok, pushing local authorities to declare a citywide flood emergency and urge residents to take urgent safety precautions.

    The downpour, which began earlier this week, has overwhelmed Bangkok’s already strained drainage infrastructure, turning major thoroughfares into stagnant waterways and worsening the capital’s notoriously gridlocked traffic into widespread chaos. While monsoon thunderstorms are a regular seasonal occurrence in Thailand this time of year, the intensity of the recent extreme weather has far outpaced the city’s capacity to manage runoff. Multiple canals crisscrossing the urban area have already burst their banks, and forecasts calling for continued precipitation through the coming week have amplified fears that more waterways will overflow.

    Local officials have issued urgent guidance for residents: people across the city are advised to remain at home unless travel is absolutely essential, and households located in low-lying areas adjacent to canals have been told to relocate all valuable belongings to upper floors of their properties to avoid water damage. All 50 administrative districts that make up the greater Bangkok area have been officially classified as emergency disaster zones, with the city’s governor Chadchart Sittipunt confirming that eastern districts have suffered the worst impacts of the deluge.

    In an interview with AFP, Chadchart outlined the scope of the ongoing response challenge, noting, “The rain keeps falling and we are doing our best. We are trying to pump the water out, but the water in canals are full… The risk areas are those who live near canals. Every canal is now filled.”

    Residents in flood-prone neighborhoods are already grappling with deep, disruptive flooding that many say is worse than the devastating 2011 nationwide flood event that claimed hundreds of lives across Thailand over three months. Somkid Pheuk-ngam, a 67-year-old small business owner who lives alongside a canal just north of central Bangkok, described the ongoing crisis to AFP: “The water keeps coming in. It’s hard to go out now. It’s like at my waist level now. I cannot go anywhere. I have been closing my shop for two days now.”

    As of Friday, the Thai Meteorological Department projects that the heavy rain will continue through at least Sunday, and will persist across central parts of the country through the coming week. The low-pressure system driving the intense downpours is forecast to shift deeper into central Thailand in the coming days. Importantly, no casualties have been reported in Bangkok as of this update, a stark contrast to the deadly 2011 flood that remains one of the worst natural disasters in recent Thai history.

  • Disaster declared as heavy rains spark Bangkok flooding

    Disaster declared as heavy rains spark Bangkok flooding

    After days of unrelenting heavy rainfall that has deluged large swathes of the Thai capital, officials have formally declared a disaster amid widespread flooding that has disrupted daily life for hundreds of thousands of residents. The near-continuous downpours, which have pounded the Bangkok metropolitan area for nearly a week, have overwhelmed the city’s aging drainage infrastructure, leaving major thoroughfares, residential neighborhoods, and commercial districts submerged under waist-deep water in the hardest-hit zones. Local emergency management teams have been deployed across the city to conduct evacuations of at-risk neighborhoods, distribute emergency food and clean drinking water, and work to clear blocked drainage canals that have exacerbated the flood spread. Commuters have faced massive disruptions to public transit, with several suburban rail lines suspending service after tracks were submerged, and many major roads remaining impassable to passenger vehicles. The disaster declaration unlocks additional national emergency funding and resources to support response and recovery efforts, as meteorologists warn that scattered rain showers could continue through the end of the week, raising concerns about further flood worsening in low-lying areas of the capital. Bangkok, which sits barely above sea level, has long faced growing flood risk as climate change increases the intensity of monsoon season downpours across Southeast Asia, and urban development has reduced the natural absorption capacity of surrounding land.

  • No, Netanyahu wasn’t arrested during his UN visit, but those protesting against him were

    No, Netanyahu wasn’t arrested during his UN visit, but those protesting against him were

    On Thursday, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived in New York City to address the United Nations General Assembly, widespread demonstrations across the city culminated in dozens of arrests of protesters demanding he be held accountable for alleged war crimes in Gaza and the broader Middle East.

    Organized by coalitions including Jewish Voice for Peace and the Palestinian Youth Movement, thousands of demonstrators gathered outside UN headquarters to march against Netanyahu’s presence in the city, with many condemning Israel’s military campaign in Gaza and the threat of expanded conflict to Lebanon and Iran. What started as a mass demonstration shifted to direct action when a group of protesters held a sit-in that blocked a primary arterial road leading to the UN complex, prompting NYPD officers to move in and make arrests.

    The list of detained demonstrators includes high-profile public figures: Academy Award-winning actor Susan Sarandon, comedian Hannah Einbinder, and former US Army intelligence analyst and whistleblower Chelsea Manning were all taken into custody. Video of Einbinder, handcuffed and being led away by police, circulated widely on social media, where she can be heard chanting, “Netanyahu out of New York, no bombs on Lebanon, no bombs on Iran, stop the genocide.”

    Multiple sitting and candidate elected officials were also among those arrested. New York City Council members Alexa Avilés, Linda Sarsour, Jennifer Gutiérrez, Chi Ossé, Darializa Avila-Chevalier, and New York State Senate candidate Aber Kawas were all detained during the action. In remarks to Middle East Eye (MEE) hours after her release, Kawas reaffirmed her commitment to the protest, saying that more elected leaders must condemn what she called the presence of a war criminal on New York soil.

    “I was proud to be out in protest, to even face arrest… because I think we’re sending a message that we need more people to stand up for what is morally right in this moment,” Kawas told MEE.

    Protesters wore matching emblazoned shirts reading “Fund people, not bombs” as they blocked traffic near the UN, echoing demands for an end to US military aid to Israel, a ceasefire in Gaza, and accountability for crimes against Palestinian civilians. The International Criminal Court (ICC), based in The Hague, Netherlands, issued an official arrest warrant for Netanyahu in November 2024, charging him with multiple war crimes including the use of starvation as a weapon of war, murder, persecution, and deliberate attacks on civilian populations, with allegations dating back to at least October 8, 2023.

    Ibtehal, a leading Palestinian Youth Movement organizer in New York who was arrested alongside Kawas, told MEE the core demand of the demonstration was to challenge the international community’s failure to execute the ICC warrant.

    “We were protesting the fact that a war criminal, Benjamin Netanyahu, hasn’t been held to account, that the international community hasn’t arrested this war criminal and hasn’t enacted sanctions and an arms embargo for the crimes that he’s committed,” she said.

    Much of the public criticism on the day was also directed at New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who made a campaign promise to use city law enforcement to arrest Netanyahu if he entered New York. Eight months after taking office, however, Mamdani announced in July that the city lacked the legal authority to enforce the ICC’s arrest warrant. On the day of the protests, Mamdani attempted to signal solidarity with Palestinian people by sharing a video of himself planting an olive tree with Gaza-based Palestinian families at Gracie Mansion, the official mayoral residence.

    The gesture drew sharp backlash from Palestinian advocacy leaders. Nerdeen Kiswani, founder of the Palestinian-led community organization Within Our Lifetime, called the video performative politics designed to distract from the city’s actual actions.

    “This is a far cry from campaigning on arresting Netanyahu. So this performative nonsense is meant to distract from the fact that hundreds of NYPD vehicles escorted Netanyahu to the UN today, giving him a grander welcome than most, if not all, heads of state. Meanwhile the NYPD was arresting anti-genocide protesters in the streets,” Kiswani wrote on social media. “Instead of arresting Netanyahu, the NYPD arrested the protesters. This is the exact opposite of what Mamdani ran on.”

    Across the protest, demonstrators echoed a consistent message: the UN had no business granting Netanyahu a speaking platform, and he should instead be standing trial at the ICC in The Hague. Thaer Ahmed, a physician who volunteered treating injured civilians in Gaza, described the human cost of the conflict that drove him to protest. Ahmed told MEE that Gazan civilians are routinely targeted by 2,000-pound US-manufactured bombs, and medical workers were deliberately cut off from the life-saving supplies needed to treat casualties.

    “We were deprived of the supplies that we needed to be able to treat them, and we just had to watch one by one, brought in dead, killed by the Israeli military,” he said. Ahmed added that the UN’s decision to allow Netanyahu to speak had destroyed the body’s global moral authority, saying, “I don’t think that we should be listening to what anybody at the UN General Assembly has to say, especially not listening to a child murderer by the name of Benjamin Netanyahu.”

    Many Jewish demonstrators also joined the protest to separate their faith from the actions of the Israeli government. Carol Choke, a Jewish woman who lost relatives in the Holocaust, told MEE that Judaism and Zionism are distinct, and that the violence carried out in the name of the Jewish people does not align with her religion’s values.

    “We take care of people, we tithe (give charity). We leave the edges of the fields for people to gather who don’t have; we don’t go destroying a whole culture,” she said.

    Protests against Netanyahu were not limited to the streets outside the UN. As Netanyahu walked to the General Assembly podium to deliver his address, dozens of UN member state delegations staged a coordinated walkout, booing and jeering the Israeli leader as they left the chamber in boycott.

    Even so, Medea Benjamin, co-founder of grassroots feminist anti-war organization Code Pink, told MEE that a symbolic walkout is not enough to hold Israel accountable. “What they have to do is say that we’re going to sanction Israel first, then expel Israel from the United Nations. It shouldn’t be allowed to participate,” she said.

    Benjamin also condemned continued US military support for Israel, particularly in the wake of Netanyahu’s statement during his address that Israel has “no greater partner than President Trump.” She argued that any government that continues selling weapons to Israel violates the will of the majority of the American public, who oppose deepening US military entanglement with Israel.

    “I think that any country that is still selling weapons to Israel should be overthrown by their people,” Benjamin said. “It shows that this country is not a democracy, because if it were, we would not be selling those weapons to Israel, and we would not have in our National Defense Authorization Act right now a section that says that we’re going to intertwine the US and the Israeli militaries even further than they are now. That goes against everything that the majority of the American people want.”