Global Pulse

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  • Tim Payne, New Zealand’s viral World Cup star, to join Paraguay club Olimpia, source says

    Tim Payne, New Zealand’s viral World Cup star, to join Paraguay club Olimpia, source says

    DALLAS (AP) — An unlikely rise to global fame has earned a little-known New Zealand soccer defender a once-in-a-lifetime career move: 38-year-old Tim Payne, who went from relative obscurity to international social media celebrity in the span of weeks, is set to leave his current club Wellington Phoenix to join Olimpia, the defending Paraguayan top-flight champion and one of South America’s most storied soccer institutions.

    The details of the impending transfer were confirmed to The Associated Press on Tuesday by an insider close to the negotiation process, who spoke on condition of anonymity because Olimpia has not yet scheduled an official public announcement of the signing. The source also declined to disclose the financial terms of Payne’s upcoming contract with the club.

    Payne’s explosive leap into the global spotlight traces back to a viral social media campaign launched by Argentine influencer El Scarso. The content creator set out to find the most low-profile player at this year’s FIFA World Cup, settling on Payne due to his tiny pre-tournament social media following. El Scarso called on his own followers to band together to turn the little-known New Zealander into a household name, and the campaign quickly caught fire across platforms.

    In the weeks following the campaign’s launch, Payne’s Instagram follower count skyrocketed from just under 5,000 to more than 5.8 million, a more than 1,000-fold increase that captured the attention of clubs across the globe. The outpouring of support for Payne has even spawned an original fan song in Spanish, whose chorus declares devotion to the defender: “I’ve got his back. I cheer him on. I’ve been rooting for him from the beginning. Tim Payne, from cradle to grave. You’re a crack. I cheer you on, every step.” The track also leans into a playful pun on Payne’s name, closing with the line “no Payne, no gain.”

    Payne got the chance to show his on-pitch skills to his new global fan base earlier this week, starting in New Zealand’s opening Group G match against Iran that ended in a 2-2 draw on Monday. The All Whites, New Zealand’s men’s national soccer team, are still chasing their first ever World Cup win across three tournament appearances.

  • ‘From outlier to trailblazer’: How Oman offers a glimpse into the post-war Gulf

    ‘From outlier to trailblazer’: How Oman offers a glimpse into the post-war Gulf

    When former U.S. President Donald Trump threatened military action against Oman over its refusal to side with Washington’s war on Iran, few could have predicted that this small Gulf sultanate would emerge as the primary beneficiary of the new regional order being negotiated between the U.S. and the Islamic Republic. This surprising turn of events, which may seem counterintuitive at first glance, is reshaping regional power dynamics, with Western, Arab, and even U.S. diplomatic sources acknowledging that Oman stands to gain the most from the shifting landscape.

  • Paying homage to Socceroos great Tim Cahill has become a World Cup tradition for Australia

    Paying homage to Socceroos great Tim Cahill has become a World Cup tradition for Australia

    Two decades have passed since Tim Cahill etched one of the most recognizable celebrations in Australian soccer history into global memory. During the opening match of the 2006 FIFA World Cup against Japan, Cahill scored a dramatic late equalizer to turn the tide of the game, which ultimately ended in a 3-1 Australian victory. Immediately after the ball hit the back of the net, the forward sprinted to the corner of the pitch and launched into a playful shadow boxing routine against the corner flag. What began as an impulsive moment of joy has grown into a beloved generational tradition for Australian soccer at the World Cup.

    Months after Cahill hung up his boots in 2019, another Australian star carried the tradition onto one of the sport’s biggest stages. At the 2019 Women’s World Cup in France, during a critical group stage match against Italy, Sam Kerr — then a rising talent making her mark on international soccer — recreated Cahill’s iconic shadow boxing routine to celebrate one of her goals. The moment paid homage to Cahill’s legacy while signaling the continuity of the tradition across Australia’s men’s and women’s national programs.

    Kerr would go on to rewrite the Australian soccer record books: in 2022, she surpassed Cahill to become the country’s all-time leading international goalscorer, and she led the national women’s side, the Matildas, to a historic semifinal finish at the 2023 Women’s World Cup co-hosted by Australia and New Zealand. Now, the tradition has passed to a new generation of Australian talent, with 20-year-old Nestory Irankunda adding his own name to the lineage.

    On Saturday night, Irankunda made history for Australia’s men’s national team, the Socceroos, during their 2-0 upset win over Turkey. The young winger became the youngest goalscorer in Australian World Cup history, and he marked the milestone by paying direct tribute to the man who inspired his soccer journey from childhood. Just like Cahill 20 years earlier, Irankunda sprinted straight to the nearest corner flag after his goal, throwing a rapid series of punches in a perfect recreation of the iconic celebration that first made the routine famous.

    Unlike his predecessors, Irankunda has already cultivated his own unique set of trademark goal celebrations, from acrobatic backflips to playful Michael Jackson-inspired dance moves that have become a defining part of his on-pitch persona. Even so, the young star made clear that Cahill has been the biggest influence on his career to date.

    “Tim Cahill was my biggest inspiration in Australian football, and I look up to him,” Irankunda told reporters after the match when asked about his decision to replicate the celebration. “I look up to him and I want to be like him one day and I’m really really proud of myself to get the goal.”

    Like many young Australian soccer talents, Irankunda launched his professional career domestically, spending three seasons competing in the A-League with Adelaide United before earning a move to European soccer. In 2025, he completed a permanent transfer to English Championship club Watford, where he is continuing to develop his game ahead of future international and club competitions.

  • AP Exclusive: Nvidia’s Jensen Huang says society needs ‘new social norms’ in the age of AI

    AP Exclusive: Nvidia’s Jensen Huang says society needs ‘new social norms’ in the age of AI

    SHERMAN, Texas — As the leader of the firm that ignited the global artificial intelligence boom, Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang laid out a comprehensive vision for AI’s integration into modern life Tuesday during an exclusive interview with the Associated Press, arguing that widespread embrace of the transformative technology will deliver broad societal benefits while calling for deliberate adaptation to new norms and targeted regulation.

    Huang, whose company’s explosive growth fueled by AI demand has pushed its market capitalization past $5 trillion to make it the world’s most valuable publicly traded company, has long voiced unbridled optimism about AI’s ability to reshape economies and accelerate scientific discovery. But as public anxiety grows over the technology’s potential harms — from mass layoffs to existential safety risks — the industry’s most prominent executive has stepped forward to address critics, pushing back against fears while acknowledging the need for proactive change.

    “We need to create new social norms,” Huang said during the interview. “I would advocate that everybody use AI. Just go engage it.”

    His remarks come at a moment when AI has become a contentious political flashpoint across the United States. Communities have pushed back against plans to build new AI-focused data centers over environmental and infrastructure concerns, while workers across sectors worry that rapid adoption will leave millions jobless without adequate social safety nets. These growing concerns have eroded public support for the technology even as the U.S. faces intensifying AI competition with China — a race Huang says the U.S. can only win by maintaining an open, globally engaged approach to AI development.

    Huang pushed back against narratives that AI will leave non-technical workers behind, noting that the technology has already narrowed the digital divide by enabling people without coding or software development skills to complete complex tasks ranging from website design and dense document analysis to cutting-edge scientific research and home renovation planning.

    Drawing a historical parallel to the introduction of automobiles, Huang argued society will adapt to AI just as it adjusted to the new technology of a century ago. “Cars were once portrayed as killing children, but the world changed its norms by having sidewalks and crosswalks and stopping kids from playing in the streets,” he explained, framing current anxiety as a natural part of integrating a transformative new technology.

    On the topic of regulation, Huang acknowledged that targeted government oversight and baseline safety standards are necessary, stressing that national security must remain a top priority for a technology that has been a key driver of recent U.S. stock market gains and economic growth.

    He voiced skepticism over a recent cross-ideology proposal that would have the U.S. government take equity stakes in AI companies to ensure the public broadly shares in the sector’s windfall profits, an idea floated by former and current President Donald Trump, independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, and even OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Huang noted that American companies already deliver broad benefits to the public through multiple channels: “Their success benefits the stock price, of which many Americans are investors in. It generates taxes, which helps many Americans. It creates a lot of jobs.” He added that growth in the AI sector also lifts profits for connected industries including energy, construction and hardware manufacturing, meaning Americans already hold a natural stake in AI firms’ success across the economy.

    Huang addressed the Trump administration’s recent shift toward stricter AI regulation, including new export controls on Anthropic’s latest AI models that forced the company to suspend public access to the tools, and a new executive order requiring voluntary government screening of high-impact AI models before release. He agreed that national security must be the top priority for all emerging technologies, but called for clear, targeted policy: “you have to be very specific about the risk that you’re concerned about, before setting up policies for export controls.”

    This is not Huang’s first run-in with AI export controls: during the Biden administration, Nvidia pushed back against restrictions on chip sales to China, rejecting the argument that a ban would protect U.S. AI advantages. Huang warned at the time that broad restrictions would undermine the development of a global U.S.-led AI ecosystem, as China would respond by accelerating development of its own advanced chips.

    Huang also identified energy supply as one of the most critical vulnerabilities for U.S. AI development, noting that AI training and inference data centers require massive amounts of electricity that risks straining the national power grid and raising household utility costs. “The United States is woefully behind in energy production,” he said. “We just suffocated energy production for too long.” Without expanded energy output, he warned, the U.S. will struggle to capitalize on its leading position in AI chips, models and infrastructure. Huang complimented Trump’s policy of expanding domestic fossil fuel production, declining to comment on Trump’s rejection of large-scale solar and wind energy development.

    The interview took place during a visit to Sherman, Texas, for the expansion of a Coherent factory building new laser systems that transmit data between chips, a technology that could cut AI power consumption by as much as 50%.

    Huang’s close public friendship with Trump has drawn criticism from Democrats, and Huang shed new light on how the relationship began. The pair first connected last year, when Huang was in South Florida to accept the Edison Achievement Award for his work on AI, and Trump invited him and his wife Lori to dinner at his Mar-a-Lago private club. “He was incredibly engaging, incredibly charismatic, conversational, asked a lot of questions,” Huang recalled of the meeting. “From the moment that I met him, the only thing that he’s ever talked to me about is creating more jobs, reindustrializing the United States, protecting national security, winning.” Huang added that Trump often calls him unexpectedly to discuss policy around these priorities, and arranged for Huang to be picked up by Air Force One in Alaska during Trump’s recent state visit to China.

    Sen. Elizabeth Warren was among the Democratic critics who attacked Huang for declining to testify before a Senate panel while attending the high-profile Mar-a-Lago dinner, which reportedly had a $1 million per person admission price. Huang pushed back on the political criticism, noting that he supports presidential success regardless of party affiliation: “We could differ with politics, but we should want him to succeed. Because when President Trump succeeds, our country succeeds.”

    Huang also reaffirmed that AI’s long-term impact will be overwhelmingly positive, arguing that full engagement with the technology rather than fear-driven restriction will position the U.S. to lead the world in delivering shared growth and progress.

  • Is China sleepwalking down Japan’s zombie economy path?

    Is China sleepwalking down Japan’s zombie economy path?

    Decades after Japan’s 1990 asset bubble collapse left a legacy of unprofitable “zombie” firms propped up by cheap bank lending, mounting economic data suggests China could be walking down a very similar path after its 2021 real estate slowdown. While broad comparisons between 1990s Japan and 2020s China often overlook critical structural differences between the two economies, experts say the pattern of debt evergreening that dragged Japan into decades of stagnation is now visible in China’s financial system.

    The case of Japan’s Daiei, once the nation’s top retail giant, illustrates how the zombie company cycle plays out. After the bubble burst, Daiei slipped into sustained unprofitability, but Japanese major banks including UFJ kept the firm afloat with repeated below-market-rate loans. This practice, dubbed “evergreening”, let banks avoid classifying outstanding debt as non-performing (NPL), hiding bad assets from regulators and the public to meet capital requirements and avoid public backlash. Eventually acquired by rival Aeon, Daiei’s brand is set to be fully phased out in the coming years, decades after it first became insolvent.

    A landmark 2008 paper by economists Caballero, Hoshi, and Kashyap found that this widespread evergreening dragged down Japan’s entire economy for decades. When the bubble burst, hundreds of profitable firms across construction, retail, and trade became unprofitable. Rather than force these firms into bankruptcy and accept their own losses, banks extended new cheap loans to let unprofitable firms pay off old debt, reclassifying bad debt as performing. This locked up scarce capital, labor, and other resources in unproductive firms, blocking healthy new companies from accessing the resources they needed to grow. Even with government backing to keep lending alive, the misallocation of resources left Japan stuck in long-term productivity stagnation.

    Japanese policymakers chose this path for clear sociopolitical reasons: at the time, the country had a strong norm of lifetime job security, and widespread corporate failures would have thrown millions out of work, raising the risk of social unrest. Bank bailouts were also deeply unpopular, so regulators chose regulatory forbearance and capital injections for banks rather than forcing them to clean up their balance sheets by cutting off zombie borrowers.

    Today, China faces a similar post-bubble moment. After the 2021 correction in its overheated real estate sector, the country has seen a broad economic slowdown that is deeper than official figures indicate, and a sharp rise in the share of loss-making firms across real estate-linked sectors. Multiple independent analyses show signs of widespread debt evergreening that mirror 1990s Japan.

    Data from the Rhodium Group shows that despite a rising share of unprofitable firms since 2021, the official share of non-performing loans has actually fallen. A 2025 audit from China’s National Audit Office found that 16 out of 43 audited Chinese banks had actual non-performing loan levels double their officially reported figures. Loan rollovers to avoid NPL classification are pervasive, with the Chinese financial system acting as a shock absorber to keep unprofitable firms afloat and prevent widespread defaults. Rhodium Group data also shows the share of bank loans issued below benchmark interest rates has risen sharply since 2021, even as benchmark rates have fallen, and analysis from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas confirms that a growing share of Chinese firms, particularly in real estate, do not earn enough to cover their loan interest payments.

    Critics argue that unlike market-based Japan, China’s state-directed banking system can avoid the downsides of zombie lending, since bad debt is effectively backed by the central government, which can order banks to keep lending indefinitely. But analysts point out this does not solve the core resource misallocation problem that hurt Japan, and China’s own government already took similar actions to Japan’s in the wake of the bust: supporting banks and encouraging them to keep lending to unprofitable firms to avoid unrest.

    Even if the government can avoid a financial crisis, zombie firms still lock up critical resources that healthy firms could use. They compete for skilled labor, raw materials, land, and energy, driving up costs and crowding out innovative new entrants. For example, 1990s Japan’s Daiei was able to underprice new competitors thanks to cheap bank loans, blocking retail sector innovation for decades. In China today, this dynamic may be driving widespread industrial involution: after the real estate slowdown, the Chinese government directed banks to increase lending to manufacturing and green tech sectors as part of its industrial policy strategy. While many of these firms are efficient and globally competitive, as much as 30% of listed firms in high-priority sectors including electric vehicles, solar panels, and batteries are zombies that cannot service their debt, kept alive by loan rollovers and local government subsidies to preserve jobs and tax revenue. These unprofitable firms cut prices to below production cost to hold market share, crushing profit margins across the entire sector for even the most efficient competitors.

    While this flood of cheap exports has helped China gain global market share in key industrial sectors, it comes at a long-term cost to domestic productivity growth. Over time, persistent resource misallocation could erode China’s long-term competitiveness, rather than strengthen it. The practice may also be adding to fiscal risks: just as Japan’s zombie lending left the country with unsustainable government debt that is now causing currency weakness and inflation, China’s evergreening practice pushes the cost of unproductive firms onto taxpayers and domestic bondholders, creating long-term fiscal pressures that the government will eventually have to address.

    In an update addressing reader questions about geopolitical differences between Japan and China, author Noah Smith notes that China’s government shares Japan’s core motivation for zombie lending: fear of social unrest from widespread unemployment, which has remained a top policy priority in China after the end of rapid growth. While China’s goal of reshaping global supply chains means it will continue to support unprofitable firms in strategic sectors, this will only deepen the productivity trap over time. Ultimately, while many structural differences separate the two economies, the parallel of zombie lending and debt evergreening is clear — and so far, China’s government appears to be stepping into the same long-term trap that stunted Japan’s growth for decades.

  • Smotrich cancels Hebron Protocol, ending Palestinian control in occupied city

    Smotrich cancels Hebron Protocol, ending Palestinian control in occupied city

    On a Monday earlier this year, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich made a provocative announcement that sent shockwaves across the occupied West Bank: the decades-old Hebron Agreements, a core component of the 1990s Oslo Accords peace framework, are formally canceled. The move immediately strips the Palestinian-administered Hebron Municipality of all its legal authority over construction and urban planning across large swathes of the occupied city, transferring full control to the Israeli state.

    Speaking at an inauguration ceremony for a new illegal Israeli settlement outpost in the southern Mount Hebron region, Smotrich framed the cancellation as a long-overdue correction, claiming that for decades, planning powers for Jewish settlements in Hebron had absurdly rested with what he called Hebron’s “terror municipality.” The policy change was not a spontaneous announcement: following months of advocacy led by Smotrich, Israel’s security cabinet approved the measure in principle back in February, and the country’s Higher Planning Council — the governing body that oversees all construction in occupied West Bank territories — gave the decision final approval on the same night of Smotrich’s public announcement.

    The Hebron Protocol, originally signed in 1997 by then-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and late Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat as an extension of the Oslo Accords, established a split governance structure for the contested city. The larger H1 zone, covering roughly 80% of Hebron’s total territory, was placed under the full civil control of the Palestinian Authority. The smaller H2 zone, which encompasses Hebron’s historic Old City, the revered Ibrahimi Mosque (a site holy to both Muslims and Jews), and multiple southern residential neighborhoods, was designated to remain under exclusive Israeli military control, while the Palestinian municipality retained planning and construction jurisdiction for Palestinian communities and holy sites within the zone.

    Smotrich’s cancellation of the protocol erases that long-standing arrangement, meaning even planning and development projects at the Ibrahimi Mosque now fall outside Palestinian municipal jurisdiction. The site has already been a decades-long flashpoint of tension: shortly after the protocol was signed, illegal Israeli settlers seized control of roughly half of the mosque compound, and the site remains a top target for settler takeover efforts.

    Earlier this year, the Israeli military had already begun rolling back Palestinian control of the holy site, issuing a 15-day entry ban that barred the mosque’s director Mu’taz Abu Sneineh and its head custodian Hammam Abu Murkhiya from accessing the compound. Local observers have widely interpreted this sequence of moves as a deliberate effort to shift full control of the Ibrahimi Mosque from the Palestinian Hebron Municipality to the settler religious council of the nearby illegal Kiryat Arba settlement.

    For more than 25 years, Israel has enforced a tight closure on the roughly one-square-kilometer area surrounding the Ibrahimi Mosque, installing more than 120 permanent checkpoints and access gates to restrict Palestinian movement. The closed zone is home to approximately 7,000 Palestinian residents, alongside multiple established illegal Israeli settlement outposts.

    In recent months, Israeli forces have ramped up military operations across occupied Hebron, carrying out frequent raids on Palestinian residential neighborhoods, imposing multi-day consecutive curfews, blocking Palestinian access to work and commercial spaces, and deploying military vehicles and bulldozers to seal off neighborhood entrances. During these curfews, high-profile Israeli far-right officials regularly enter the occupied city under heavy military protection. Just one week before Smotrich’s announcement, far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir led a heavily guarded military convoy through Hebron’s streets in a deliberate show of force.

    Local Palestinian residents say the string of recent escalations and the cancellation of the Hebron Protocol are part of a clear, long-term strategy: to expand illegal Israeli settlement outposts across Hebron, connect isolated outposts into contiguous blocs of Israeli control, and permanently entrench a dominant settler presence across the entire southern occupied West Bank.

    The controversial move comes as Smotrich faces potential international legal consequences for his actions in the occupied territories. Independent outlet Middle East Eye has confirmed that prosecutors at the International Criminal Court based in The Hague submitted an application for an arrest warrant for Smotrich back in April. The warrant application charges Smotrich with multiple crimes under international law, including forced displacement classified as a crime against humanity and war crime, the transfer of Israel’s own civilian population into occupied territory — a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention classified as a war crime — and charges of persecution and apartheid as crimes against humanity.

  • World Cup 2026: Iran’s spirited display against New Zealand eases tensions among divided supporters

    World Cup 2026: Iran’s spirited display against New Zealand eases tensions among divided supporters

    For decades, Iran’s national football squad, popularly known as Team Melli, stood as one of the rare unifying forces cutting across Iran’s deep political, social and generational divides. From the 1998 World Cup upset over the United States that sent entire cities of Iranians at home and abroad into street celebrations to tournament runs that drew cross-spectrum backing from both government supporters and opposition figures, the national side once united Iranians of all backgrounds for 90 minutes of sport.

    That historic unity began to fray as political polarization seeped into global football, most dramatically at the 2022 Qatar World Cup. Just weeks before that tournament erupted nationwide protests across Iran following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in morality police custody, sparked by anger over the country’s mandatory hijab laws. When Iran took the pitch against England in their opening group match, players refused to sing the official national anthem in a gesture of solidarity with protesters, but the anthem was still loudly booed by anti-government fans in the stands. For many diaspora Iranians who had previously set political disagreements aside to support the team, this moment permanently changed their relationship with the squad.

    In the years that followed that fracturing tournament, Iran has undergone profound upheaval: crippling economic sanctions have gutted household incomes, ongoing political unrest has reshaped daily life, and a February 2024 joint US-Israel strike that killed senior Iranian officials also claimed the lives of 168 schoolchildren and teachers in the southern city of Minab. Ahead of this year’s global tournament preparations, the Iranian Football Federation made a gesture of mourning: dedicating the team’s campaign to the children killed in Minab, requiring players to wear lapel pins marked with the number 168 in official photos, and holding portraits of the victims and children’s schoolbags during pre-match national anthem ceremonies for warm-up friendlies.

    When the team scheduled pre-tournament friendlies in the United States, long-standing visa restrictions imposed by the US government on Iranian teams created immediate barriers. Two planned matches in Los Angeles, a city home to more than 700,000 Iranian-Americans and a major hub of anti-Islamic Republic sentiment, were thrown into chaos when US officials forced the team to relocate its training camp to Tijuana, Mexico. Even when the team arrived in Inglewood for a high-profile friendly against New Zealand at SoFi Stadium, political tensions continued to overshadow preparations. FIFA, which controls all stadium access and rules for World Cup-related events, revoked the Iranian Football Federation’s allocated 8 percent of stadium tickets at the last minute, a decision the federation blamed squarely on US political interference. Bans on pre-revolutionary Lion and Sun flags and political protest symbols inside the stadium were also enforced, despite a legal challenge from local community activists that was ultimately dismissed.

    Heading into kickoff, few could predict how the crowd would react. Anti-government voices dominated public discourse online and in regional media, and a small protest greeted the team upon its arrival in LA. But inside the 70,000-seat stadium, the energy defied expectations. When the national anthem played, cheers from pro-Team Melli fans easily outnumbered boos. Every attacking move from the Iranian side drew loud, unified encouragement. When New Zealand scored an early opening goal, a hush fell over pro-Iranian sections – but that tension turned to eruption when fullback Ramin Rezaeian slotted home an equalizer in the 32nd minute.

    The connection between the squad and the crowd only grew stronger in the second half. After New Zealand retook the lead, supporters launched a steady chant of “Iran, Iran” that lifted the team, and striker Mohammad Mohebi leveled the score once again with a well-placed header off Rezaeian’s cross. Though the match ultimately ended in a 2-2 draw with no late winner for Team Melli, the moment carried enormous symbolic weight. After four years of deep polarization, political upheaval, and global tensions that have split Iranian communities abroad, a spirited, competitive performance on US soil won over the majority of fans in attendance.

    For fans like Hossein Alizadeh, a 40-year-old supporter who traveled from Toronto to attend the match, the outcome was more than just a draw. “Team Melli is an institution that belongs to all Iranians, no matter what their political beliefs are,” he said ahead of kickoff. “I want them to do well and bring back that love people used to share for the national team.” The team will get another chance to build on this moment when it faces off against Belgium in southern California on Sunday.

  • Rights groups call for a halt of AI tech use in the military

    Rights groups call for a halt of AI tech use in the military

    A broad coalition of more than 100 global human rights organizations and technology activists has issued an urgent warning about the accelerating integration of artificial intelligence into military operations, pointing to Israel’s military campaign in Gaza as a catastrophic and dangerous precedent for the future of warfare. The joint statement, signed by prominent groups including Amnesty International, Access Now and the Stop Killer Robots Campaign, warns that expanding AI’s role in end-to-end military kill chains carries severe risks of escalating civilian casualties and eroding mechanisms for holding perpetrators of violence accountable for human rights violations.

    The coalition specifically highlights the widespread deployment of AI-powered targeting systems by the Israeli military during its ongoing operations in Gaza, where more than 73,000 Palestinians have been confirmed killed, with thousands more still trapped and presumed dead beneath the rubble of destroyed residential and infrastructure sites. Three AI tools in particular — named Lavender, Gospel, and Where’s Daddy — have been leveraged to generate air strike targeting lists, drawing on massive Israeli mass surveillance datasets collected on Palestinian residents of Gaza. Rights groups argue that this AI-driven targeting process, which selects targets with little to no active human oversight, is a key contributing factor to the unprecedented scale of death and displacement in the territory.

    “The adoption of AI targeting systems in this campaign follows the example of the Israeli government’s weaponisation of data analysis and machine learning tools, powered by mass surveillance, in its genocidal attacks on Gaza,” the statement reads. “By diluting human responsibility for life-and-death decisions, Israel’s use of systems such as Lavender, Gospel, and Where’s Daddy may contribute to the obfuscation of international crimes behind a veneer of perceived algorithmic objectivity while also obfuscating accountability.”

    The coalition has issued a clear call to action for global technology companies to immediately end all provision of AI and related technical support to the Israeli military and other state armed forces, warning that unregulated deployment risks normalizing and accelerating the proliferation of AI-powered tools of war. In recent years, many of the world’s largest technology firms have deepened their institutional ties to military establishments, particularly the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD). OpenAI has publicly confirmed it provides AI services to the DoD, while Google holds a DoD contract to “develop prototype frontier AI capabilities to address critical national security challenges across warfighting and enterprise domains.” Microsoft, Google, and Amazon have also all secured contracts to provide cloud data storage, processing capacity, and other core enterprise infrastructure to support the DoD’s warfighting programs.

    These corporate military partnerships have triggered significant internal backlash from technology workers, who fear they are being forced to participate in projects that enable human rights abuses. Last month, hundreds of employees at Google DeepMind’s UK artificial intelligence division voted overwhelmingly to unionize, driven by growing concerns over the company’s technology being used by the U.S. for military action against Iran and by Israel against Palestinians in Gaza. UK-based DeepMind staff formally requested that Google management recognize the Communication Workers Union (CWU) and Unite the Union as their official workplace representatives, a move organizers say marks the first unionization drive at a major global frontier AI research lab. In the internal vote among CWU members at DeepMind, 98 percent of participants supported the unionization push. Beyond union representation, DeepMind workers are demanding an end to the use of Google AI by Israel and the U.S. military, the restoration of a previously scrapped corporate commitment not to develop AI-powered weapons or surveillance tools, the creation of an independent ethics oversight body to review high-risk projects, and formal legal protection for workers who refuse to participate in projects on moral grounds.

  • Photos prove London event marketed illegal Israeli settlement properties

    Photos prove London event marketed illegal Israeli settlement properties

    A contentious real estate exhibition hosted at a UK synagogue has ignited widespread legal and political scrutiny, after new documentation revealed multiple Israeli firms openly advertised residential properties in illegal Israeli settlements across occupied Palestinian territory. The Great Israeli Real Estate Event, held Sunday at London’s Edgware United Synagogue, is now the subject of three separate official probes following the release of promotional materials obtained by Middle East Eye (MEE).

    Within 24 hours of the event closing, UK Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper confirmed that government ministers had formally requested the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) launch an urgent investigation into the exhibition’s activities. This official action came after MEE published first-hand evidence of the illegal settlement advertising on Monday.

    The same day, the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP), a London-based legal advocacy group focused on Palestinian rights, submitted a formal complaint to the Charity Commission for England and Wales, the UK’s official charity regulator. The complaint targets Edgware United Synagogue itself, a registered charity, for its decision to host the event. The ICJP stated it holds irrefutable documented proof that multiple participating exhibitors marketed residential properties located exclusively in Israeli settlements built illegally on occupied Palestinian land, and is calling for an immediate regulatory compliance case to be opened against the synagogue and its trustees. In the complaint, the group argues that hosting an event that promotes illegal settlement property amounts to a clear violation of the institution’s legal obligations as a registered UK charity.

    The promotional materials published by MEE name multiple high-profile Israeli real estate developers and agencies that advertised in illegal settlements. One exhibitor, developer Harey Zahav, promoted two separate West Bank settlements: Kfar Eldad, located south of Bethlehem, and Teneh Omarim, situated near Hebron — both established illegally in occupied territory. Leading Israeli agency Tivuch Shelly marketed a new residential development in Ma’ale Adumim, a large illegal settlement in the central West Bank, touting the project’s proximity to Jerusalem and its established English-speaking expat community in its brochure. Jerusalem Real Estate (JRE) featured projects in French Hill and Ramat Eshkol, two illegal settlements in occupied East Jerusalem, positioning the neighborhoods as desirable locations for foreign property buyers. Another firm, Africa Israel, which has a long track record of development work in illegal settlements across the West Bank and East Jerusalem, advertised a residential project in West Jerusalem’s Katomon neighborhood at the event.

    The controversy reached the UK Parliament on Tuesday, where Green Party Member of Parliament Ellie Chowns pressed the government on its inaction ahead of the event. Chowns told lawmakers that officials were notified of the event and its planned promotion of illegal settlement property the week before it took place, but no preventive action was taken. “How is it that this government fails even to prevent the marketing of illegal property in this country and still fails to take action?” Chowns asked in parliamentary questioning.

    In response, Foreign Secretary Cooper reaffirmed the UK government’s clear stance: no commercial entities should engage in marketing or trade related to illegal settlements, and such activity is particularly unacceptable when it occurs on UK soil. She confirmed that the Minister for the Middle East and North Africa, alongside officials from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, had directly raised the issue with the ASA, and requested the regulator conduct an urgent review to ensure all applicable laws, regulations and guidance are enforced if evidence of illegal advertising is confirmed.

    ICJP Public Affairs Officer Orlaith Roe emphasized the stakes of the situation for UK charity regulation. “If charities can use their premises and resources to host events connected to illegal settlement activity without scrutiny or consequence, public trust in charity regulation is seriously undermined,” Roe said. She called on both the Charity Commission to launch an urgent probe and the UK government to match its public commitment to upholding international law with concrete action. In addition to its complaint to the Charity Commission, the ICJP has also shared its full set of photographic evidence of the illegal advertisements with London’s Metropolitan Police Service.

    In the lead-up to the event, organizers dismissed allegations that they would feature settlement property, telling Jewish News that “all exhibitors, without exception, will provide information about properties and projects within the Green Line,” the 1949 armistice line that marks Israel’s pre-1967 border. Organizers went further, claiming the allegations were “motivated by anti-Israeli and terrorist supporters, seeking only excuses to attack Jews in general and the State of Israel in particular.”

    As of Tuesday, MEE has reached out to the Charity Commission, Metropolitan Police, event organizers, and Edgware United Synagogue for comment on the controversy. None of the parties contacted had issued a public response as of publication. Last week, the UK government had already announced it would explicitly issue formal guidance advising UK businesses against all economic and financial activity linked to illegal Israeli settlements.

  • Hundreds of cats stolen for food in Vietnam rescued by police, welfare group says

    Hundreds of cats stolen for food in Vietnam rescued by police, welfare group says

    A major crackdown on an organized cat trafficking operation in southern Vietnam has resulted in the rescue of more than 400 cats bound for the commercial meat trade, the arrest of nine suspects, and the joyful reunion of more than 40 stolen pets with their heartbroken owners, animal welfare organization Humane World for Animals Vietnam has confirmed.

    The operation unfolded last week when law enforcement teams executed coordinated raids on multiple storage facilities across Tay Ninh Province and Ho Chi Minh City, following a weeks-long investigation into a rising wave of reported pet disappearances across the region. According to official statements from Ho Chi Minh City Police’s official newspaper, the group dismantled in the raids was a dedicated criminal network focused exclusively on stealing and collecting domestic cats for illegal sale to meat traders.

    During the searches, officers recovered 404 live cats and approximately 80 deceased felines that had been preserved on ice ahead of distribution to markets. The suspects, who have been in custody since the raids, confessed to operating the illegal ring for three years, trapping and collecting cats across multiple provinces in southern Vietnam. Investigators say the group regularly moved stolen felines to secret holding facilities, selling bulk batches to meat traders every two to three days in unlicensed transactions that violate Vietnamese animal trade regulations.

    While cat and dog meat consumption remains legal in Vietnam, all vendors are required to hold official permits proving the legal origin of their animals, a requirement this criminal ring never met. By Tuesday, Humane World for Animals confirmed that more than 40 of the rescued cats that could be identified had already been returned to their original owners. The organization commended local law enforcement for what it called “decisive action that has saved the lives of so many animals,” though it also confirmed that a number of the rescued cats died after being rescued, due to poor conditions they endured while held by the traffickers.

    Humane World for Animals is currently supporting the ongoing investigation by providing food, medical care, and other essential supplies for the hundreds of surviving cats that remain in police custody as evidence. Local police have extended an open call to all residents who have had pet cats go missing in recent months to come forward to file reports and assist with identifying the recovered animals, as the investigation into the full scope of the trafficking network continues.

    According to data from Humane World for Animals, an estimated one million cats and five million dogs are stolen, trafficked, and slaughtered for meat across Vietnam each year. The organization notes that most of these animals are stolen household pets: thieves typically use poisoned bait, tasers, and iron pincers to capture dogs, while cats are most often caught with hidden spring-loaded snares placed in residential neighborhoods.