Global Pulse

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  • A rumour, a lynching in India and a long wait for justice

    A rumour, a lynching in India and a long wait for justice

    In the humid heat of a June 2018 afternoon, two young residents of Guwahati, India, set off on a casual road trip through the rolling hills of Assam’s Karbi Anglong region. Abijeet Nath, a 30-year-old local businessman, and Nilotpal Das, a 29-year-old musician, never made it back to their homes. Nearly eight years after their brutal killing at the hands of a mob falsely accusing them of child abduction, an Assam court has finally issued a long-awaited verdict – one that has left the victims’ grieving families far from satisfied.

    On Monday, the district sessions court delivered its ruling in the high-profile case: 20 of the 45 adult accused were found guilty on charges of murder and participation in an unlawful assembly, while 25 others were acquitted due to insufficient evidence that met the “beyond reasonable doubt” standard required for conviction. The court will announce the length of the defendants’ sentences on Friday. All convicted individuals have already denied wrongdoing, and retain the right to file an appeal with a higher regional court.

    In its written judgment, the court emphasized the scale of the violence that unfolded that evening, noting “this is not a simple case of murder. The involvement of the entire locality is established from the evidence on record.” Court testimony and police records reconstruct the chaotic sequence of events: after stopping in Panjuri Kachari village to ask for directions, an unsubstantiated rumor that the pair were child kidnappers spread rapidly through the community. A spontaneous crowd of 150 to 200 villagers gathered at the site, with at least 50 people directly joining the fatal attack using sticks and other crude weapons. While the exact motivation for their trip to Karbi Anglong, roughly 112 miles from Guwahati, was not confirmed in court, the victims’ parents testified that the two were avid travelers who often explored remote areas of the state together.

    The first confirmation of the tragedy reached Nath’s family when he failed to return calls: a stranger answered Nath’s phone and told his father that his son was dead, and the news would soon air on television. Families rushed to the region immediately, while local police, alerted to reports of an assault, also deployed to the village. By the time emergency responders arrived, the two men had already been pronounced dead at a local hospital. In the aftermath of the killings, dozens of arrests were carried out, and a formal chargesheet was filed against 48 people in 2024. Three of the accused were confirmed to be minors at the time of the attack, so their cases were transferred to the juvenile justice system, leaving 45 adults to stand trial.

    The verdict has returned this shocking case to national headlines, and reignited long-simmering conversations about the deadly consequences of viral misinformation that first gripped India in the late 2010s. The 2018 lynching of Nath and Das was not an isolated incident: at the time, a nationwide wave of mob attacks was being fueled by false rumors of child abduction gangs that spread exponentially across WhatsApp, a massively popular messaging platform in India. Viral text posts and videos stoked widespread panic and deep suspicion of unfamiliar outsiders, leading to similar lynchings across Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Telangana, Maharashtra, Tripura and other states. Law enforcement struggled for months to curb the rapid spread of the false claims across encrypted social platforms.

    At the height of the violence, the case sparked national outrage, particularly after the federal government claimed there was no proven connection between the online rumors and the mob attacks. India’s Supreme Court publicly urged the central government to draft and pass a dedicated anti-lynching law, while lawmakers raised alarms about the growing threat of unregulated “fake news” on private messaging platforms. Pressure also mounted on WhatsApp, which the Indian government warned could face legal liability if it continued to act as a “mute spectator” to deadly misinformation. In response, the platform implemented sweeping changes: it introduced limits on how many times a single message could be forwarded, added clear labels for all forwarded content, and launched national public awareness campaigns to teach users how to identify false claims.

    Years later, the case remains a defining example of the complex challenges of containing harmful viral misinformation, a problem that continues to frustrate policymakers and tech companies alike. A 2021 UNICEF study confirmed what the 2018 attacks made clear: false information spreads far faster and reaches wider audiences than verified factual reporting, especially when the content preys on public fear and anger, making it extremely difficult to halt mid-spread.

    Prateek Waghre, a New Delhi-based researcher focused on technology policy, argues that the root of the problem extends far beyond platform design. “Technology companies alone cannot address problems rooted in society,” he explained. While limiting message forwarding can slow the spread of misinformation, Waghre noted, the measure can also restrict the flow of legitimate, valuable information to users. On platforms like WhatsApp, which uses end-to-end encryption that only allows senders and recipients to read message content, direct content moderation is inherently complicated. Any attempt to increase monitoring of private messages, Waghre added, would require weakening encryption protections, which would in turn raise serious, widespread concerns about user privacy.

    For law enforcement agencies in Assam, the 2018 lynching marked a major turning point in how authorities approach rumor-fueled violence. Kuladhar Saikia, Assam’s former top police official, told reporters that response strategies have shifted dramatically in the years since the attack. Early responses, such as temporary suspensions of local internet service, only offered short-term disruption of misinformation and did nothing to address the underlying social conditions that allowed rumors to take root, he explained. “Instead, we focused on grassroots outreach, working with community leaders to verify information and discourage rumors,” Saikia said.

    But for the families of Nath and Das, these broader policy discussions feel distant from their years-long fight for justice. The acquittal of more than half of the accused has left their demands for full accountability unmet. Gopal Das, father of Nilotpal Das, told reporters after the verdict that his family was “not satisfied” with the ruling. They plan to meet with their legal team to review their options for further legal action, and are pushing for the maximum possible sentence for the 20 convicted defendants. Nath’s family has echoed those concerns, noting they are also evaluating legal challenges to the acquittals and have called on the state government to provide support for their case.

    For the grieving families, Monday’s ruling is only one more incremental step in a legal process that has stretched on for nearly eight years. It cannot bring back the two young men who left home for a casual trip and never returned, nor can it undo the permanent loss that has shaped their lives every day since that summer afternoon in 2018.

  • Trump administration vows crackdown on Chinese companies ‘exploiting’ AI models made in US

    Trump administration vows crackdown on Chinese companies ‘exploiting’ AI models made in US

    As China rapidly closes the technological gap with the United States in global artificial intelligence development, the Trump administration has launched a new crackdown on what it frames as unfair exploitation of American AI innovation by foreign firms, with China positioned as the primary target of the policy push.

    In a formal memorandum released Thursday, Michael Kratsios, then-President Trump’s top science and technology advisor, leveled accusations that foreign entities—most headquartered in China—are running coordinated, industrial-scale campaigns to “distill” core capabilities from leading U.S.-built AI systems, effectively siphoning off American research and development work for their own gain. “Foreign actors are exploiting decades of American expertise and innovation to cut corners on their own AI development,” Kratsios wrote, outlining that the administration would partner with leading U.S. AI companies to map unauthorized extraction activity, reinforce defensive systems, and implement penalties against bad actors.

    The policy announcement lands amid a shifting global AI landscape: the White House has repeatedly framed AI dominance as a critical strategic priority, arguing U.S. leadership is necessary to set global technical norms and secure long-term economic and military advantages. However, a recent analysis from Stanford University’s Human-Centered AI Institute found that the performance gap between the world’s top U.S. and Chinese AI models has “effectively closed” in recent years, eroding the long-held American competitive edge.

    China’s embassy in Washington swiftly pushed back against the accusations, condemning what it called the United States’ “unjustified suppression of Chinese companies.” “China has always been committed to advancing global scientific and technological progress through open cooperation and healthy, fair competition,” embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu said in a statement, adding that China prioritizes rigorous intellectual property protection for all innovators.

    Kratsios’ memo coincided with a key congressional development that same week: the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee gave unanimous, bipartisan backing to a new bill that would establish a formal government process to identify foreign actors that steal core technical details from closed-source, U.S.-owned AI models, and impose punitive measures including economic sanctions against offenders. The bill’s sponsor, Republican Representative Bill Huizenga of Michigan, framed model extraction attacks as a new front in Chinese economic aggression and intellectual property theft. “American AI models are delivering transformative new capabilities that will reshape our economy and national security,” Huizenga said. “It is absolutely critical that we block China from stealing these decades of technological advancement to boost their own strategic position.”

    Tensions over AI extraction first flared last year, when Chinese AI startup DeepSeek launched a high-performance large language model that could compete with products from top U.S. AI giants—at a fraction of their development cost, sending shockwaves through U.S. tech markets. David Sacks, who served as Trump’s AI and crypto advisor at the time, publicly claimed there was substantial evidence that DeepSeek had distilled proprietary knowledge from OpenAI’s leading models to build its own product. OpenAI, the developer behind ChatGPT, echoed these claims in a February letter to U.S. lawmakers, arguing that China should not be allowed to build what it called “autocratic AI” by “appropriating and repackaging American innovation.”

    Shortly after, Anthropic—creator of the popular Claude chatbot—accused DeepSeek and two other China-based AI research labs of running coordinated campaigns to illicitly extract Claude’s core capabilities to improve their own competing models via knowledge distillation, a technique that involves training a smaller, less advanced model on the output of a more powerful, cutting-edge system. While Anthropic acknowledged that distillation can be a legitimate, widely used method for AI training when done with permission, the company argued that it becomes unfair and illicit when competitors use the technique to gain powerful AI capabilities in a fraction of the time and at a tiny fraction of the cost required to develop leading models independently.

    However, cross-border knowledge sharing in AI works in both directions. San Francisco-based startup Anysphere, maker of the widely used coding tool Cursor, recently confirmed that its latest flagship product is built on an open-source model developed by Chinese AI firm Moonshot AI, creator of the popular Kimi chatbot.

    Industry and policy experts note that enforcing new restrictions on unauthorized AI distillation will pose massive practical challenges. Kyle Chan, a Brookings Institution fellow based in Washington D.C. and a leading expert on Chinese technology development, explained that distinguishing unauthorized extraction from the massive volume of legitimate, routine data requests from AI systems is comparable to “looking for needles in an enormous haystack.” That said, Chan added that coordinated information sharing between U.S. AI research labs could help mitigate the risk, and the federal government can play a key facilitating role in aligning anti-extillation defenses across the private sector.

    While it remains unclear how far the House-passed bill will advance through the legislative process, Chan noted that the Trump administration may be hesitant to escalate tensions with Beijing ahead of a planned mid-May state visit by the U.S. president to China, creating uncertainty about how aggressively the new policy will be implemented.

    This reporting included contributions from Matt O’Brien, an AP technology writer based in Providence, Rhode Island.

  • Iran blames US as truce talks reach a deadlock

    Iran blames US as truce talks reach a deadlock

    Truce talks aimed at de-escalating conflict between the United States and Iran have reached an impasse, with top Iranian leaders directly blaming Washington’s bad-faith tactics and uncompromising posture for the breakdown, as escalating military and maritime moves in the strategic Strait of Hormuz threaten global energy supplies. As of April 23, 2026, Washington has unilaterally extended its proposed ceasefire on its own terms, but ongoing exchanges of attacks and counterattacks have continued to disrupt critical commercial shipping through the key waterway, through which roughly a fifth of the world’s oil flows daily.

    In a public social media statement released Wednesday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian pushed back against US claims that Iran has refused to negotiate in good faith, emphasizing that the Islamic Republic has consistently remained open to meaningful dialogue. “Bad faith, siege and threats are the main obstacles to genuine negotiation,” Pezeshkian said. “The world is witnessing your hypocritical empty talk and the contradiction between your claims and your actions.”

    Hours after Pezeshkian’s remarks, US President Donald Trump issued his own provocative social media statement, announcing he had ordered the US Navy to “shoot and kill” any small Iranian vessels that attempt to block passage through the strait. “There is to be no hesitation,” Trump added, doubling down on his administration’s aggressive posture toward Iran.

    The day before Trump’s order, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that the White House cites inconsistent messaging from Tehran as a core barrier to progress, noting that US leadership retains full authority to end the unilateral ceasefire extension at any time. “We see a lot of different messaging and rhetoric,” Leavitt said, adding that the US maintains full control of the regional situation and holds significant leverage over the Iranian government. “Not only have they been significantly weakened and obliterated militarily, but they are losing economically and financially every single moment that passes with this blockade. So the president is going to continue to lead the free world, to run the United States of America as we await the Iranian response,” she said.

    In response to the ongoing US blockade and escalating rhetoric, Iranian legislative and security bodies are now reviewing a new framework to assert full sovereign control over the Strait of Hormuz, according to Iran’s official Mehr News Agency. Fada Hossein Maleki, a senior member of the Iranian parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, confirmed Thursday that both parliament and the Supreme National Security Council are conducting joint reviews of proposals for the strategic waterway.

    Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said in a Wednesday social media post that any meaningful ceasefire can only function if Washington ends its maritime blockade, which Tehran argues is holding the global economy hostage. Ghalibaf stressed that reopening full unimpeded navigation through the strait is impossible while Washington flagrantly violates the terms of the proposed truce. “They did not achieve their goals through military aggression, nor will they through bullying. The only way forward is to recognize the rights of the Iranian nation,” he added.

    On Thursday, Iran’s state-run media outlets Islamic Republic News Agency and Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting released the first public footage of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy (IRGC-N) operations in the strait, directly contradicting recent claims from the Trump administration that Iran’s naval capabilities have been completely destroyed. The IRGC confirmed it has seized two foreign commercial vessels for violating Iranian shipping restrictions in the waterway, and opened fire on a third vessel that failed to comply with orders.

    Tasnim News Agency, another Iranian state outlet, also reported Thursday that the first revenue collected from new shipping tolls imposed on vessels passing through the strait has been deposited in the Central Bank of Iran, marking the formal launch of the country’s new toll regime for the waterway.

    For its part, US Central Command confirmed Thursday that American forces have diverted or ordered 31 vessels back to port as part of Washington’s ongoing economic blockade against Iran. Most of the redirected vessels are oil tankers, US officials said, and the vast majority have complied with US orders to avoid the region.

    A recent Pentagon assessment, first reported by The Washington Post, estimates that it would take up to six months to clear all naval mines laid by Iran from the strait, a timeline that would keep global oil prices elevated for an extended period. International Energy Agency Executive Director Fatih Birol confirmed the severe impact of the ongoing conflict on global energy markets, noting that the world is currently losing 13 million barrels of oil supply per day due to disrupted shipping and production tied to the confrontation.

  • Kuwait releases journalist Ahmed Shihab-Eldin after acquittal

    Kuwait releases journalist Ahmed Shihab-Eldin after acquittal

    After 52 days of behind-bars detention on charges tied to social media posts about the US-Israeli military campaign targeting Iran, award-winning Kuwaiti-American journalist Ahmed Shihab-Eldin has been cleared of all counts and released from custody in Kuwait.

    The 41-year-old, who holds dual Kuwaiti-American citizenship and was born in the United States, was taken into custody on March 2 during a trip to Kuwait to visit extended family. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), the arrest was triggered by a string of social media posts Shihab-Eldin shared about the ongoing regional conflict. Among these posts was footage of a U.S. fighter jet crashing at an American airbase located within Kuwait; the press freedom advocacy group stressed that all material the journalist shared was already publicly available.

    Caoilfhionn Gallagher, international legal counsel representing Shihab-Eldin’s family, confirmed the acquittal in an official statement, saying, “We are relieved that, after 52 days in detention, Ahmed has been found innocent on all charges. Our focus now is upon ensuring the liberty and safety of our client.”

    The CPJ echoed this relief in an update posted to the social platform X, noting that while full details surrounding the case were still being collected, Shihab-Eldin’s international legal team had formally confirmed the full acquittal and his impending release.

    A veteran journalist with an extensive career, Shihab-Eldin has contributed reporting to a roster of major global media outlets including The New York Times, Al Jazeera English, and PBS. His work, which focuses heavily on human rights and regional affairs, has earned him high-profile industry honors, including a British Journalism Award and an Amnesty International Human Rights Defender Award.

    Beyond Shihab-Eldin’s individual case, the CPJ has framed his detention as part of a growing, region-wide crackdown on digital free speech that has unfolded alongside the escalation of the US-Israeli war on Iran. Like other Gulf nations, Kuwait has rolled out increasingly strict limits on online expression amid rising regional tensions, moving to restrict public discussion of attacks on the country’s critical infrastructure.

    On the same day Shihab-Eldin was arrested, Kuwait’s Ministry of Interior published a public statement advising citizens and residents against “photographing or publish any clips or information related to missiles or relevant locations,” warning that multiple people had already been taken into custody on charges of spreading false information. Weeks after that initial announcement, Kuwait’s legislature introduced sweeping new legislation that carries a maximum 10-year prison sentence for anyone found guilty of “disseminating news, publishes statements, or spreads false rumours related to military entities” with the intent to erode public trust in state military institutions.

    Data from the Gulf Centre for Human Rights (GCHR) underscores the scale of this crackdown: the rights organization reports that dozens of people across the region have been arbitrarily detained since the outbreak of the war, all for the act of “peacefully expressing their opinions on social media.” The GCHR added that most of these detainees are held in unacknowledged state security facilities for days at a time, and are systematically denied access to both family visits and legal representation, in violation of international human rights standards.

  • China finds new moon mineral in first domestically recovered lunar meteorite

    China finds new moon mineral in first domestically recovered lunar meteorite

    In a landmark breakthrough for planetary science, Chinese researchers have confirmed the discovery of a previously unknown lunar mineral from the first lunar meteorite ever recovered within China’s borders, a finding that pushes global lunar material knowledge to new heights. This newly recognized substance, now the 11th confirmed lunar mineral documented across the world, brings China’s total count of identified lunar minerals to four — tying the country with the United States for the highest number of lunar mineral discoveries globally.

    Officially named Magnesiochangesite-(Ce), the new mineral has received full formal approval from the International Mineralogical Association’s Commission on New Minerals, Nomenclature and Classification, the globally recognized governing body that verifies and formalizes the naming of all newly identified minerals. Geochemically classified as a rare-earth-bearing phosphate, Magnesiochangesite-(Ce) displays distinct physical traits that set it apart from other known lunar materials: it is colorless, transparent, and carries a bright glass-like luster. It is characteristically brittle, forms distinctive shell-like fractures when broken, and emits visible fluorescence when exposed to ultraviolet light, properties that helped researchers isolate and confirm its identity.

    The mineral was extracted from Pakepake 005, the 44-gram spherical lunar meteorite recovered by Chinese researchers in 2024 from the Taklamakan Desert, located in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. The stone’s dark outer fusion crust, a signature feature of meteorites formed when friction superheats the rock’s surface during its high-speed passage through Earth’s atmosphere, confirmed its extraterrestrial origin before detailed analysis began.

    Wang Yanjuan, a doctoral graduate at the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences and the lead researcher who first identified the new mineral, emphasized the far-reaching scientific value of the finding. “This discovery provides critical mineralogical evidence that helps us unpack the moon’s origin and long-term evolutionary history, and it expands the overall boundaries of human understanding of the material composition of our solar system,” Wang explained. She added that analysis of the mineral’s unique crystal structure and precise chemical composition is already yielding new insights into ancient lunar volcanic activity, as well as the geochemical processes that drive rare-earth element separation during planetary formation. Even beyond planetary science, Wang noted that the mineral’s unusual luminescent properties could inform the development of innovative new luminescent materials for industrial and commercial use.

    A key enabling factor behind this discovery, researchers note, is China’s domestic development of high-precision scientific instrumentation. Che Xiaochao, an associate researcher at the Planetary Science Research Center of the Institute of Geology under the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences, explained that the analysis of the rare meteorite sample relied on a domestically developed high-resolution secondary ion mass spectrometer. Unlike traditional analytical methods that require dissolving or altering valuable samples, this instrument uses a tightly focused ion beam to map surface composition at the microscopic level without damaging the specimen. “This process is analogous to doing a CT scan of the rock,” Che explained. “Without altering or dissolving the sample, we can accurately capture its internal chemical information and precisely measure nearly all elements and isotopes it contains.” Che also highlighted that the technology has broader cross-sector applications, including use in semiconductor manufacturing and new energy materials development.

    Yang Zhiming, director of the Institute of Geology, stressed that access to advanced, domestically controlled instrumentation is foundational to advancing cutting-edge research on rare extraterrestrial samples. He added that the same domestic high-resolution instrument has already been used to analyze lunar samples collected by China’s Chang’e 6 mission, as well as other samples from the country’s first domestic lunar meteorite recovery. The breakthrough, Yang noted, underscores the critical importance of developing and mastering core scientific equipment and analytical techniques domestically to expand global and national planetary research capabilities.

  • Amal Khalil: The fearless journalist, killed by Israel, who embodied southern Lebanon

    Amal Khalil: The fearless journalist, killed by Israel, who embodied southern Lebanon

    Forty years after she was born into the decades-long Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon, seasoned Lebanese journalist Amal Khalil was killed in that same region by invading Israeli forces while on assignment, leaving a deep gap in local journalism and a nation mourning a fearless storyteller who dedicated her life to amplifying marginalized voices.

    Khalil, 42, was targeted and killed last Wednesday while traveling to al-Tayri to cover an earlier Israeli strike on the southern Lebanese town. According to Lebanon’s health ministry, an initial Israeli strike hit a vehicle ahead of Khalil and freelance photographer Zeinab Faraj, forcing the pair to seek shelter in a nearby residential building. A second Israeli strike then directly hit the structure. Rescuers managed to pull out Faraj, who suffered a severe head injury, but came under Israeli gunfire when they attempted to reach Khalil. Her body was recovered hours later, pulled from the rubble of the destroyed home.

    Born in 1984 in al-Baisariyah, a village in Lebanon’s southern Saida district, Khalil grew up steeped in the realities of conflict and occupation. Her hometown had just been retaken from Israeli control shortly before her birth, and she spent her childhood looking out at nearby occupied villages while Lebanon was mired in civil war. Her early exposure to the struggles of southern Lebanese communities shaped her lifelong commitment to on-the-ground, people-centered reporting. As a young girl, she secretly read the now-defunct Lebanese newspaper As-Safir, where she first learned about ordinary people’s struggles, detained activists, forcibly disappeared citizens, and the human cost of Lebanon’s civil war. She went on to study Arabic literature in Saida, and without her parents’ knowledge, traveled to Beirut to become involved in communist activism — a step that launched her professional writing career, starting with early features for al-Hasnaa magazine. In one notable early piece, she profiled how queer people navigated and celebrated love in Lebanon’s conservative society for a Valentine’s Day special issue, she recalled in a January 2025 interview with Beirut-based outlet The Public Source.

    In April 2006, just months before Al-Akhbar newspaper published its first issue, Khalil joined the newly launched outlet, where she would remain for nearly 20 years. Only weeks after she joined, Israel launched its 33-day 2006 war on Lebanon, a turning point that shifted her focus from planned coverage of women’s and cultural issues to documenting the experiences of people displaced and targeted by Israeli strikes. This focus on public interest storytelling, particularly for communities in southern Lebanon, became the throughline of her entire career. For most of her professional life, she was based in Tyre (known locally as Sour), where she investigated corruption and highlighted social injustices without sparing powerful figures — even when that put her own safety at risk. “Going after corruption cases and social issues in the area, sparing no one – not even my family – led to confrontations,” she once said. “I was threatened, assaulted, and intimidated. The pressure to break me was relentless, but I didn’t yield.” Though Al-Akhbar has a longstanding editorial alignment with Hezbollah and its resistance against Israeli occupation, Khalil repeatedly emphasized she reported without imposed limitations, pointing to the outlet’s 2011 decision to publish WikiLeaks documents referencing parliamentary speaker Nabih Berri, despite a request from then-Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah to withhold the material. Over time, she became the newspaper’s lead field correspondent for all of southern Lebanon, covering areas including Sour, Bint Jbeil and Nabatieh.

    Khalil was well aware of the risk Israeli forces posed to Lebanese journalists, having already mourned one of her own colleagues killed in Israeli shelling: in 2010, she wrote the obituary for Assaf Abu Rahhal, recalling the moment a Lebanese soldier handed her Abu Rahhal’s blood-stained identification, the only personal effect that remained of him. “It was all that remained of Assaf. I will never forget that day,” she wrote.

    Throughout her career, Khalil remained unwavering in her commitment to left-wing politics and resistance against Israeli occupation. In recent years, she taught herself video editing to produce on-the-ground reporting, though she refused to appear on camera herself, saying: “For me, it was simple: I’m here to tell the stories of the people, not to become the story myself.” When the 2023-2024 Israel-Lebanon conflict broke out — after Hezbollah launched attacks on Israel in solidarity with Palestinians under assault in Gaza — Khalil spent months documenting evidence of Israeli targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure across southern Lebanon. Following a February 2024 ceasefire, she continued to report on near-daily Israeli violations of the truce. She survived multiple close calls, the most recent in November 2024, when Israeli forces opened fire to force her and her colleagues to retreat from the border. Friends and colleagues said she never bowed to Israeli restrictions on her movement, refusing to stay out of areas Israeli forces sought to bar journalists from entering. After that 2024 close call, she said people had repeatedly urged her to limit her travel for safety, but her beliefs and upbringing taught her to stand “in the face of oppression.” “My alignment with the people of the south, my presence among them since the July 2006 war, has always been the right choice. They have always lived up to that faith placed in them,” she said. “They will grow stronger, more steadfast, and more committed to this unwavering compass, toward truth, and toward Palestine.”

    In the days after her killing, tributes poured in from across Lebanon and the global journalistic community, with friends and colleagues remembering her generosity, courage and pioneering spirit. “Amal was present in every home. Every home in Lebanon has lost her,” her brother Ali Khalil said tearfully. “Amal resembles the south in all its details – its sweet breeze, its valleys, its mountains, and its old houses. She resembles all of that.” For younger Lebanese journalists, Khalil was a beloved mentor who freely shared her decades of knowledge and connections even with professional competitors. “She was so generous even if we were competitors. She never hesitated in sharing a contact, a key – and she had all the keys in the south. She knew it like the palm of her hand and she shared this love and dedication with everyone who needed it,” Hussein Chaabane, a Lebanese investigative and legal journalist, told Middle East Eye.

    Lebanese filmmaker Bachir Abou Zeid framed Khalil as far more than a conventional journalist, saying her devotion to her people and her land guided all her work. “Amal was not a journalist in the conventional sense of the profession. Her love for the land and for her people outweighed everything,” he said, calling her “a journalist of resistance” who was targeted specifically for her unflinching reporting. “The killing of Amal was the killing of a woman of resistance. Israel killed her because she was a journalist of resistance, not simply because she was a journalist.” Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam has labeled her killing a war crime, saying Lebanon will use all available international channels to hold those responsible accountable. Chaabane said Khalil’s death leaves an enormous void in Lebanese journalism, one that surviving colleagues must work to fill. “Amal never accepted what the Israelis tried to impose as limitations; she pushed their limits,” he said. “Her death will leave a vacuum, a huge one, which we need to fill.”

  • Turkey and UK to sign strategic partnership agreement during Fidan’s visit

    Turkey and UK to sign strategic partnership agreement during Fidan’s visit

    On Thursday morning, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan touched down in London, kicking off a high-stakes two-day diplomatic visit that will culminate in the signing of a landmark UK-Turkey strategic partnership framework agreement by Thursday afternoon.

    Fidan’s first scheduled engagement of the visit is a formal meeting with British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper set for 4 p.m. local time. While the full scope of the upcoming strategic partnership framework remains under wraps ahead of the signing, preliminary outlines of the agenda have emerged from diplomatic and media sources.

    Turkish state-affiliated broadcaster TRT World has confirmed that Fidan plans to open the discussion by highlighting the steady upward momentum of bilateral ties between Ankara and London, and to lay out Turkey’s ambition to deepen cooperation across multiple priority areas. One key bilateral issue Fidan is expected to raise is the ongoing delays Turkish residents in the UK face when processing applications for Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR), a long-term residency status that impacts hundreds of thousands of Turkish citizens currently living in Britain.

    Defense industry collaboration and expanded energy sector partnership are also set to be core topics on the meeting agenda, with both sides expected to formalize a shared commitment to advancing work in these two critical areas. Beyond bilateral concerns, Fidan and Cooper will also turn their attention to regional and global tensions, particularly the ongoing standoff between the United States and Iran. The two top diplomats are expected to explore pathways to advancing a diplomatic resolution to the conflict and align on shared goals for de-escalation.

    This visit marks the second high-level meeting between Fidan and Cooper in less than a week, following Cooper’s attendance at the Antalya Diplomacy Forum in southern Turkey last weekend, where the pair held preliminary talks. Beyond his meeting with Cooper, Fidan’s packed two-day schedule includes engagements with British members of parliament, a public address at the University of Oxford’s Global History Centre as part of the university’s Changing Global Order Program, and a closed-door meeting with representatives of the UK’s large Turkish community, which is estimated to number between 350,000 and 500,000 people across the country.

    The visit also comes on the heels of stark remarks Fidan delivered at the Antalya Forum regarding shifting security alliances in the Eastern Mediterranean. During that appearance, Fidan warned that Muslim nations across the region are growing increasingly alarmed by the expanding military partnership between Israel, Greece, and Cyprus, noting that Greece’s participation in the alliance is notable given its status as a fellow NATO member. “Israel has been pursuing an overtly expansionist foreign policy in recent months, so Turkey’s security concerns are not without justification,” Fidan stated at the forum.

    In recent months, Turkey has worked to rebuild and expand regional diplomacy, launching regular formal dialogue mechanisms with key regional powers including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Pakistan to coordinate on shared regional security and policy challenges. This current diplomatic outreach to the UK represents another step in Ankara’s broader strategy of strengthening ties with both regional and Western actors amid a shifting global security landscape.

  • Beijing museum launches immersive showcase of lunar farside exploration

    Beijing museum launches immersive showcase of lunar farside exploration

    To mark China’s annual Space Day, which fell on Thursday this year, a groundbreaking immersive exhibition focused on China’s far side of the Moon exploration missions opened to the public at the China Science and Technology Museum in Beijing on April 24, 2026. Jointly organized by the China Science and Technology Museum and the China National Space Administration, the showcase blends traditional artifact displays with cutting-edge large-scale virtual reality (VR) experiences to offer visitors a one-of-a-kind journey through China’s decades-long lunar exploration program. Unlike standard science exhibitions that rely on static displays, this dual-format event invites guests not only to view landmark technological achievements, but also to step into the landscape of the Moon themselves.

    Among the physical exhibits on display are two key examples of China’s indigenous aerospace innovation: the high-strength, high-toughness steel developed entirely in China for Chang’e series lunar spacecraft, and a decommissioned rocket engine. These tangible artifacts serve as concrete proof of the major leaps forward China has made in space technology over the past two decades. Complementing these core pieces, the exhibition also features high-resolution satellite imagery captured during actual lunar missions, original documentary footage of mission operations, and ultra-high-precision scale models of Chang’e spacecraft. Curators arranged these materials to trace the full evolutionary timeline of China’s lunar exploration program, breaking down complex scientific principles and critical technological breakthroughs that made far side lunar exploration accessible for a general audience.

    The centerpiece of the showcase is the dedicated VR zone, built using real, authenticated data from China’s past lunar exploration missions to deliver a hyper-accurate simulated experience. This immersive zone lets visitors step into a hypothetical 2049 mission to the Tianshu Base located at the lunar south pole, a long-term goal outlined in China’s deep space exploration roadmap. Guests can walk through every step of a full lunar mission: from feeling the rumble of a rocket launch, to transitioning between Earth and Moon orbits, completing a lunar spacewalk, and conducting the first crewed landing on the lunar surface. The simulation also recreates the harsh natural conditions of the lunar environment, including visual renderings of meteorite impacts, cosmic radiation bursts, and intense solar storms, giving visitors a realistic sense of the challenges that deep space exploration poses.

    Running through August 16, the exhibition was developed with a core outreach goal: to ignite widespread public enthusiasm for space science, exploration, and technological innovation, particularly among children and young people who are the future of China’s space program.

  • Exclusive: UK’s Aviva Investors bought $108m of Israeli government bonds in January sale

    Exclusive: UK’s Aviva Investors bought $108m of Israeli government bonds in January sale

    Exclusive data obtained by Middle East Eye (MEE) has revealed that Aviva Investors, the asset management subsidiary of the United Kingdom’s largest general insurance provider, acquired $108 million in Israeli government bonds during a major $6 billion international bond issuance in late January, a move that defies a growing trend of divestment from Israeli assets among major British institutional investors.

    The transaction, documented by Amsterdam-based sustainability research firm Profundo in a dataset shared exclusively with MEE, saw Aviva Investors take up positions across all three tranches of the January issuance: $45.7 million in five-year bonds, $25.7 million in 10-year bonds, and $36.4 million in 30-year bonds. This purchase marks the largest single British investment in Israeli sovereign debt captured in Profundo’s dataset, which tracks international investor participation in Israeli bond sales between late 2024 and early 2026. Only a small handful of non-UK firms – including German insurer Allianz and American investment giants BlackRock, Vanguard, and Wellington Management – placed larger orders in the January issuance, and Aviva Investors’ acquisition ranks as the 16th largest non-Israeli investment in Israeli bonds over the full period tracked by the research.

    Following Aviva Investors, the next largest UK buyers in the January sale were asset manager Schroders and banking group HSBC, whose combined purchases amounted to only a small fraction of Aviva’s total holding. US and German investors currently dominate the international market for Israeli sovereign debt, according to Profundo’s analysis.

    When contacted by MEE for comment, parent company Aviva plc confirmed the holding but sought to separate its own brand from the transaction, noting that “Aviva plc has no exposure to Israeli government debt.” A company spokesperson added that Aviva Investors manages portfolios on behalf of third-party clients, and that the firm’s aggregate client exposure to Israeli government debt is “very limited” and has been “significantly reduced” since the end of January. While the company declined to provide further details, MEE has confirmed that Aviva Investors’ current holding stands at roughly $40 million, down nearly 63% from its original $108 million purchase.

    Aviva Investors manages approximately £262 billion ($353 billion) in assets for more than 25 million customers across the UK, Ireland, and Canada. Industry data shows that 39% of UK adults hold at least one policy from the Aviva group, giving it a larger customer base than most major British high street banks.

    For Israel, international sovereign bond sales have become an indispensable source of funding for its ongoing military operations across Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran, as the country grapples with a rapidly expanding wartime fiscal deficit. Israel issued a historic $75 billion in bonds in 2024 and followed that with $60 billion in new issuance in 2025, with roughly 15% of annual government financing coming from foreign investors. Sovereign bonds are generally viewed by institutional investors as a low-volatility asset that delivers steady fixed interest payments, but human rights advocates argue that Israeli sovereign debt carries unique ethical, legal, and financial risks that set it apart from ordinary government debt.

    “There is a well-documented link between the proceeds of Israeli bond deals and the country’s military spending in Gaza and beyond,” explained Anne-Marie Brook, an economist and co-founder of the Human Rights Measurement Initiative. “This creates a substantially different risk profile from ordinary government financing – and makes continued involvement by bondholders significantly harder to defend, both in terms of ESG [Environmental, Social, and Governance] obligations and potential legal exposure.”

    Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has publicly confirmed this link, framing last year’s national budget – which is funded in large part by international bond issuances like the January offering Aviva joined – as “a war budget. And with God’s help, it will also be the victory budget.”

    The January $6 billion issuance, Israel’s first major international bond sale after a ceasefire took effect in Gaza, drew overwhelming global demand, with an order book totaling $36 billion – six times the amount offered – from more than 300 institutional investors across 30+ countries. Israeli officials framed the strong demand as proof of ongoing international investor confidence in the country’s economy, and a return to prewar borrowing costs. The strong demand came even though all three major global credit rating agencies have downgraded Israel’s sovereign credit rating over the past two years amid rising wartime fiscal risks.

    The speed of Aviva Investors’ post-purchase drawdown is notable: Profundo’s data confirms the firm held no Israeli government bonds prior to the January issuance, meaning it entered the market, built a position, and cut it by more than half within just a few months. There are multiple plausible financial explanations for the rapid reduction: it is common for investors to purchase bonds at initial issuance and sell quickly to lock in capital gains if borrowing spreads tighten, while client redemptions, benchmark index rebalancing, or internal risk limit adjustments could also drive a rapid sell-off. Israel’s January bonds were initially priced with a large premium to compensate investors for wartime risk; as that premium shrank in subsequent weeks, early buyers were able to sell at a profit, a path Aviva Investors may have taken.

    Regardless of the motivation, the purchase puts Aviva Investors at odds with a clear shift among large UK institutional investors, a growing number of which have moved to divest Israeli assets amid grassroots and activist pressure. In August 2024, for example, the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS), the UK’s largest private pension fund with over 500,000 members, sold £80 million ($108 million) in Israeli assets including government bonds after sustained pressure from scheme participants.

    The Aviva group as a whole has already faced years of activist pressure over its financial ties to Israel, and has already moved to cut other links to Israeli-related defense businesses. In January 2025, Palestine Action activists occupied Aviva’s Bristol offices over the firm’s insurance coverage for UAV Engines Ltd, a British manufacturer whose drone components were linked to an April 2024 Israeli air strike that killed seven aid workers, including three British military veterans. A March 2025 report from the Boycott Bloody Insurance campaign, endorsed by 22 civil society organizations, named Aviva as one of the top global insurers complicit in Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. By late 2025, Aviva had ended its insurance coverage for Elbit Systems UK, a major Israeli defense contractor’s British subsidiary, after months of protests, and the firm’s liability insurance for UAV Engines Ltd expired in September with no renewal.

    This makes Aviva Investors’ decision to purchase Israeli government bonds even more notable: the transaction came even as other parts of the broader Aviva group were cutting financial ties to Israeli arms manufacturers.

    The broader political and regulatory landscape around Israeli sovereign bond investment has shifted dramatically across Europe in recent months. In September 2025, the Central Bank of Ireland stepped down from its role as the European Union’s designated approving authority for Israeli government bond prospectuses, after mounting pressure from activists and elected officials. Israel subsequently moved its EU bond approval process to Luxembourg, an outcome that underscores how Israeli bond sales have become a deeply contested political and legal issue across the continent.

    The International Court of Justice’s January 2024 provisional ruling that Israel’s actions in Gaza could plausibly amount to genocide has prompted dozens of European financial institutions to seek formal legal guidance on whether holding Israeli government bonds aligns with their fiduciary duties and international human rights obligations. A recent report from the Amsterdam-based Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations notes that under global standards for responsible business conduct, financial institutions should avoid investing in sovereign debt issued by governments suspected of committing war crimes.

    For UK asset managers that market their funds to clients on the basis of strong ESG performance, the legal and reputational risks of holding Israeli sovereign debt have grown sharply in recent months. New UK greenwashing rules implemented by the Financial Conduct Authority in May 2024 require all regulated financial firms to ensure their client communications around ESG are clear, fair, and not misleading. For a firm like Aviva Investors, which positions itself as a leader in responsible ESG investing, holding Israeli sovereign debt while its parent company cuts ties to Israeli arms manufacturers creates an inconsistency that could attract regulatory scrutiny.

    Aviva’s attempt to frame the holding as a client-driven decision offers little protection under these rules: as an asset manager, Aviva Investors retains ultimate responsibility for investment allocation decisions for client capital.

    At its core, the transaction confirms that Aviva Investors chose to participate in one of Israel’s largest ever international bond issuances, only to cut its position dramatically within weeks. Whether that rapid reversal was driven by market forces, client pressure, growing reputational and regulatory risk, or a combination of all three, remains unclear.

  • Guangdong city football league agrees raft of sponsorships

    Guangdong city football league agrees raft of sponsorships

    Ahead of its much-anticipated debut this weekend, the Guangdong City Football Super League has locked in sponsorship partnerships with dozens of enterprises, marking strong commercial momentum for one of southern China’s most ambitious regional amateur football tournaments.

    Organizers formalized the multi-tiered sponsorship deals at a signing ceremony held in Shenzhen, Guangdong province on Wednesday, capping months of preparation for the province-wide competition that brings together representative teams from all 21 of Guangdong’s prefecture-level cities. The opening match is scheduled to kick off this Saturday at Guangzhou’s iconic Yuexiushan Stadium, bringing together amateur football talent from across the economic powerhouse province.

    As a leading amateur football event in Guangdong, tournament organizers have built a structured, inclusive sponsorship framework designed to accommodate businesses of all scales. The layered system includes title sponsorship, strategic partnership tiers, official sponsorship, official supplier agreements, and dedicated support slots for micro-enterprises.

    Chen Xuhui, chairman of the Guangdong Sports Development Corporation, noted that the clear tiered structure has allowed the league to attract investment from both major local technology manufacturing leaders and small, community-focused micro-businesses, creating mutually beneficial opportunities for all participating partners.

    Beyond corporate support, the tournament has already seen explosive growth in fan interest ahead of kickoff. Lei Jianjun, deputy director of the Guangdong Sports City League Organizing Committee, shared that more than 80 companies of varying sizes have also signed on as sponsors at the individual city level across the tournament structure. Fan engagement has outpaced early projections: the league’s official ticketing WeChat mini-program drew more than 30,000 registered users on its very first day of launch, and total registrations surpassed 72,000 by Monday, just days before the opening match.

    The strong commercial and public turnout for the league underscores the rising popularity of grassroots amateur sports in China, as regional competitions increasingly draw both business investment and fan attention outside of top-tier professional leagues.