Global Pulse

标签： Asia

亚洲

  • China is trying to play peacemaker in the Iran war – will it work?

    China is trying to play peacemaker in the Iran war – will it work?

    As the armed conflict in the Middle East stretches into its second month, global energy markets have been thrown into chaos, with oil prices surging to multi-month highs amid disrupted supply chains. In this tense geopolitical landscape, China has emerged as an unexpected peace broker, joining Pakistan to table a five-point peace initiative aimed at securing an immediate ceasefire and reopening the strategically critical Strait of Hormuz, a waterway through which roughly a fifth of the world’s daily oil supplies pass.

    The move comes as former U.S. President Donald Trump has suggested that direct American military action against Iran could wrap up within two to three weeks, though no clear timeline or post-conflict plan has been laid out to date. Pakistan, a long-time U.S. ally that has positioned itself as an unlikely intermediary in the U.S.-Israel led campaign against Iran, has reportedly already gained Trump’s ear for its mediation efforts. China’s entry into the fray comes just weeks ahead of high-stakes trade talks between Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Trump, placing Beijing directly in a role as a diplomatic counterweight to Washington in the region.

    Zhu Yongbiao, director of the Centre for Afghanistan Studies at Lanzhou University and a leading Chinese expert on Middle East affairs, described Chinese backing for the initiative as “very important.” He noted that “Morally, politically and diplomatically, China is providing comprehensive support with the hope that Pakistan can play a more distinctive role” in de-escalating the conflict. This marks a notable shift for Beijing, which had maintained a relatively muted public response to the war since it began with U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran in late February.

    The joint peace plan took shape after Pakistan’s foreign minister traveled to Beijing to formally request Chinese backing for Pakistan’s negotiation efforts. Following the meeting, Chinese Foreign Ministry officials confirmed that the two countries were making “new efforts towards advocating for peace,” releasing a joint statement that reaffirmed dialogue and diplomacy as “the only viable option to resolve conflicts” and called for the protection of global key waterways including the blockaded Strait of Hormuz.

    While energy security is a core consideration for Beijing, analysts note that the world’s largest crude importer currently holds enough strategic stockpiles to cover its domestic needs for the next several months. Instead, China’s decision to step into the mediation role is rooted in its broader pursuit of global economic stability, a priority that is closely tied to Beijing’s efforts to reboot its post-recovery sluggish domestic economy. A prolonged energy shock triggered by the conflict would drag down global growth, which would in turn hit Chinese factories and export-dependent sectors that are central to the country’s economic rebound.

    Matt Pottinger, chairman of the Foundation for Defense of Democracy’s China Program, explained that “If the rest of the world begins to slow down economically because of an energy shock, that’s going to be tough for China’s factories and exporters. That’s why I think when I see China’s foreign minister just this week advising Iran that we need to find a way to end this war, I think there’s some sincerity there. I think that Beijing is a little bit worried about where this could lead if it turns into a real energy shock that is protracted.”

    A prolonged crisis would send ripples through China’s sprawling industrial supply chain, from raw material inputs for plastic goods and synthetic textiles to critical components for consumer electronics, electric vehicles and semiconductors – sectors that are foundational to China’s export economy. In recent years, the Middle East has become one of China’s fastest growing export markets, with Chinese sales to the region growing nearly twice as fast as exports to the rest of the world in the last year. The region is the world’s fastest growing market for electric vehicles, and China is the largest foreign investor in regional desalination projects, with major Chinese state-owned energy and infrastructure firms operating across Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Iraq.

    This deepening economic engagement has allowed China to build balanced diplomatic ties across the region, maintaining strong relationships with both U.S. allies such as Saudi Arabia and geopolitical rivals of Washington such as Iran. China and Iran have maintained a close partnership spanning decades, with China serving as Iran’s largest trade partner and purchasing roughly 80% of Iran’s total oil exports.

    This is not the first time Beijing has sought to play the role of peace broker in the Middle East, though previous efforts have yielded mixed results. In 2023, China famously brokered a landmark deal to restore diplomatic relations between longtime regional rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran, a breakthrough that reduced the risk of open conflict between the two powers. A year later, Beijing hosted leaders from 14 competing Palestinian factions, including Fatah and Hamas, resulting in an agreement to form a national unity government for the Palestinian territories. While the agreement was largely an expression of intent rather than a binding final settlement, it further cemented China’s growing diplomatic profile in the region.

    Unlike the United States, which maintains a heavy military presence across the Gulf region, China’s global engagement does not come with formal security guarantees or military alliances. For Beijing, economic development remains the top domestic and foreign policy priority, and Chinese leaders have long avoided direct entanglement in Middle East great power conflicts. This cautious approach also reflects practical limitations: China’s only overseas military logistics facility in the broader region is a small anti-piracy hub in Djibouti, opened in 2017, and it lacks the power projection capabilities that the U.S. maintains across the Gulf. During the 2025 Israel-Iran war, Beijing maintained a largely hands-off approach, highlighting the inherent limits of its regional influence.

    To date, neither Washington nor Tehran has issued an official response to the new five-point peace plan. Analysts note that the initiative nonetheless allows Xi to position himself as a neutral broker and voice for de-escalation, a stark contrast to the Trump administration’s approach of military pressure. Still, Beijing’s credibility as a neutral global actor faces ongoing questions: its close strategic alignment with Russia has sparked widespread skepticism about its commitment to neutrality in regional conflicts, while its authoritarian governance model and expansionist territorial claims have drawn global criticism.

    Despite these caveats, China remains a powerful global actor with clear strategic interests in regional stability, and it has already demonstrated that it can wield meaningful diplomatic influence in the Middle East. For Beijing, the current mediation effort marks another step in its long-term push to expand its geopolitical leverage across the region in the years ahead.

  • IndiGo names former British Airways chief Willie Walsh as CEO

    IndiGo names former British Airways chief Willie Walsh as CEO

    India’s dominant domestic air carrier IndiGo has turned to a global aviation industry stalwart to steady its operations, announcing the appointment of Willie Walsh as its incoming chief executive officer. The move comes just one month after the sudden resignation of former CEO Pieter Elbers, who stepped down from the role effective March 10, with the resignation officially framed as a personal decision. But industry observers and analysts have broadly linked Elbers’ exit to the massive operational crisis that rocked the airline just three months prior, the most severe disruption in the carrier’s 20-year operating history.

    In December 2025, the airline was forced to cancel roughly 4,500 scheduled flights, leaving thousands of passengers stranded across airports throughout India. As India’s largest airline by market share, holding approximately 60% of the country’s domestic aviation segment, the disruption had outsized impacts on Indian travelers. Many passengers missed milestone life events including weddings and funerals, and all affected travelers were forced to quickly source costly, last-minute alternative travel arrangements at a peak travel period.

    The root of the disruption traces back to new national pilot duty and rest regulations rolled out by Indian aviation authorities, designed to cut down on dangerous crew fatigue. In a post-crisis acknowledgment, IndiGo’s leadership admitted it had significantly miscalculated the number of active pilots it would need to maintain full operations after the rules went into effect. Following an investigation into the chaos, India’s civil aviation regulator imposed a $2.45 million fine on the carrier and publicly reprimanded multiple senior company leaders, including Elbers, for poor crisis management.

    After Elbers’ departure, IndiGo co-founder Rahul Bhatia stepped in to serve as interim CEO, a role he will retain until Walsh officially takes over leadership of the airline. Walsh is set to join IndiGo in August 2026, once his current term as Director General of the International Air Transport Association (IATA) concludes.

    Walsh’s 50-year career in aviation is one of steady upward progression from entry-level pilot to global industry leadership. He launched his career in the late 1970s as a cadet pilot with Irish flag carrier Aer Lingus, working his way up through flight operations roles before being named Aer Lingus CEO in 2001. He went on to take the top leadership role at British Airways in 2005, and later became the founding CEO of International Airlines Group (IAG), the parent holding company of both BA and Aer Lingus, holding that role until his retirement from the group in 2020. He stepped into the IATA director general role shortly after leaving IAG.

    In a prepared statement following his appointment, Walsh noted that the global aviation sector is undergoing a period of rapid transformation, adding that IndiGo is uniquely positioned to lead this shift in the South Asian market. IndiGo chairman Vikram Singh Mehta echoed that confidence in the new CEO, highlighting Walsh’s decades of experience leading large-scale global airline operations and navigating volatile, complex market conditions as the exact skill set needed to guide IndiGo into its next phase of strategic growth.

    Today, IndiGo operates a fleet of more than 400 aircraft, running thousands of daily domestic flights across India alongside a growing portfolio of international routes. The carrier has recently made expansion into the premium long-haul international travel segment a core strategic priority, making steady, stable leadership critical to executing that growth plan.

  • Hiker’s dog lost in a wild New Zealand forest rescued by helicopter after strangers fund search

    Hiker’s dog lost in a wild New Zealand forest rescued by helicopter after strangers fund search

    On the rugged, untamed West Coast of New Zealand’s South Island, a dramatic story of community kindness and canine resilience has come to a heartwarming close, nearly a week after a hiking accident left an injured hiker separated from her beloved pet.

    The incident unfolded on March 24, when 34-year-old hiker Jessica Johnston slipped and fell 180 feet (55 meters) from a rocky waterfall along the Arahura River, while trekking through remote native bush with her 4-year-old border collie, Molly. Emergency rescuers were quickly dispatched to the hard-to-reach location, where they found Johnston alive but suffering extensive bruising and deep lacerations across her body. With the hiker’s condition requiring urgent medical care, crews airlifted her to a nearby hospital, but a frantic initial search for Molly turned up no trace of the dog, forcing rescuers to leave the missing canine behind in the unforgiving wilderness.

    For Matt Newton, owner and lead pilot of Hokitika-based Precision Helicopters Ltd — whose operating base sits just a short distance from the Arahura River — the story didn’t end there. After reaching out to Johnston while she recovered in hospital to offer his support, Newton committed to launching his own sustained search for Molly. He made multiple initial flights over the search area, but dense vegetation and tricky terrain blocked all efforts to locate the dog.

    Refusing to abandon the mission, Newton and his family launched a public fundraiser to cover the cost of additional flight time and specialized thermal imaging equipment required for a more thorough search. The appeal resonated deeply with the public, and within days, hundreds of strangers from across New Zealand and beyond contributed more than NZ$11,000 (US$6,300), far exceeding the fundraising goal.

    With funding secured, Newton launched a renewed search on March 31, bringing on board a veterinary nurse, trained volunteer searchers, and a tracking dog named Bingo to assist in the operation. Just an hour after the helicopter took to the skies, the team hit a breakthrough: thermal imaging picked up a heat signature matching a dog near the base of the waterfall, just meters from the spot where Johnston had fallen a week prior.

    The helicopter descended to a narrow ledge near the riverbank, allowing a volunteer and tracking dog Bingo to disembark and coax the scared, hungry Molly out of hiding. Rescuers described the border collie as thin, bedraggled, and hungry, but surprisingly steady; she did not run from the team, and allowed them to approach and secure her safely. Newton later shared that he believes Molly survived her seven days alone in the wild by preying on small feral animals that inhabit the river valley.

    After the successful extraction, Molly was brought back to the Precision Helicopters base, where waiting volunteers had planned to rotate into search crews. Instead, they scrapped the scheduled flight rotations, gathered for an impromptu celebratory barbecue, and took turns greeting and cuddling the rescued dog. Just hours later, Johnston — still recovering from her injuries — was able to travel to the base for an emotional, tearful reunion with her long-lost companion.

    Newton noted that the joy of being reunited with Molly is already giving Johnston a major emotional boost as she recovers. “Having your dog back, that’s for sure… that’ll speed up her healing process a whole lot,” he said. Images released by Precision Helicopters captured the tender reunion, as well as the moments of Molly’s extraction from the remote river edge.

    The story has captured hearts across New Zealand, a testament to the power of collective community goodwill to bring about a happy ending that no one expected after the original hiking accident.

  • India has begun its long-delayed population census. Here’s why it matters

    India has begun its long-delayed population census. Here’s why it matters

    NEW DELHI – Nearly three years after its originally scheduled launch, India has kicked off the world’s most extensive national population enumeration exercise, a sweeping data-gathering effort that stands to reshape everything from targeted social welfare programming to legislative representation across the South Asian nation.

    The 2011 national census pegged India’s population at 1.21 billion. Updated demographic estimates now place the country’s total population above 1.4 billion, confirming India as the world’s most populous nation, a title held by China for decades. Planners initially scheduled the new enumeration for 2021, but public health risks from the COVID-19 pandemic and unforeseen logistical hurdles forced a multi-year postponement.

    The massive counting effort is being rolled out in two distinct phases across India’s diverse 28 states and eight union territories. The first phase, which launched this week, will run through September, with field enumerators spending roughly four weeks in every local administrative area to document housing infrastructure, residential conditions and access to basic public utilities. Unlike past paper-only censuses, this year’s exercise combines traditional door-to-door in-person surveys with a new digital self-reporting option: residents can submit their information via a multilingual smartphone app that integrates satellite mapping technology to improve geographic accuracy.

    The second phase, scheduled to run from September through the first of April next year, will collect far more granular demographic and socioeconomic data, including religious affiliation and caste identity. In total, more than 3 million trained government workers will be deployed across the country over the 12-month enumeration period. For comparison, the 2011 census relied on roughly 2.7 million enumerators to collect data from more than 240 million households nationwide.

    A defining and highly anticipated feature of this new census is the expanded caste enumeration planned for the second phase. For the first time in independent India’s history, the government will attempt to count all caste groups across the country, going far beyond the limited enumeration of historically marginalized communities that has been standard since 1951.

    Caste, an ancient hierarchical social system deeply rooted across much of Indian society, particularly within Hindu communities, continues to shape social standing, access to education, economic opportunity, and eligibility for government-mandated affirmative action programs today. Hundreds of distinct caste groups are defined by traditional occupation and socioeconomic status across the country, but modern India has never held a full national enumeration of these groups, leaving policymakers working with outdated, incomplete data. The last full national caste count conducted through a census took place in 1931, when India was still under British colonial rule. Since India’s first post-independence census in 1951, national enumerators have only counted Dalits (Scheduled Castes) and Adivasis (Scheduled Tribes), the two most disadvantaged groups that are legally entitled to targeted government welfare and reservation benefits.

    Successive national governments have resisted calls for a full caste enumeration for decades, with opponents arguing that a full count could exacerbate existing social divisions and fuel inter-caste unrest. But growing grassroots pressure from lower-caste advocacy groups pushed the current government to approve the expanded count for the 2021 (now 2024) enumeration.

    Beyond caste data, the aggregate population numbers collected through the census carry far-reaching implications for India’s political landscape. Census data forms the foundational dataset for distributing national funding for welfare programs and designing a wide range of public policies, from infrastructure development to public health planning. It will also almost certainly trigger a nationwide redrawing of India’s legislative electoral map, as the number of seats allocated to each state in the lower house of Parliament and state legislative assemblies is adjusted to reflect recent population growth. This redistricting will intersect with a 2023 national law that reserves one-third of all legislative seats for women, meaning any expansion in total seats will directly increase the number of positions reserved for female representatives across all levels of government.

  • Chang Ung, North Korean ex-IOC member who brokered Olympic joint marches with South, dies

    Chang Ung, North Korean ex-IOC member who brokered Olympic joint marches with South, dies

    The International Olympic Committee confirmed Wednesday the passing of Chang Ung, North Korea’s first and only member of the global Olympic governing body, who spent decades advancing cross-border sports exchange between the divided Korean Peninsula. He was 87 years old.

    The IOC announced that Chang died on Sunday, releasing a statement expressing “extreme sadness” at the loss of the longtime sports diplomat. To honor his legacy, the Olympic flag will fly at half-mast for three days at Olympic House, the IOC’s headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland. No cause of death was included in the IOC announcement, and as of Wednesday, North Korea’s state-run media outlets had not publicly acknowledged his passing.

    Born in 1938, Chang began his career as an athlete, captaining North Korea’s national basketball team before transitioning to sports administration after retirement. Over decades of service, he rose through the ranks of North Korea’s athletic establishment, holding senior positions including vice sports minister, vice chairman of North Korea’s National Olympic Committee, and vice president of the Olympic Council of Asia. He was elected to the IOC in 1996, becoming North Korea’s sole representative to the organization for the entirety of his tenure.

    For nearly three decades, Chang led the vast majority of negotiations between North and South Korea aimed at expanding sports cooperation, a diplomatic track that often faced obstacles amid broader political tensions between the two rivals. His most high-profile achievement came at the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games, where athletes from both Koreas marched together during the opening and closing ceremonies under a single unification flag depicting the Korean Peninsula. This marked the first unified public appearance by the two Koreas’ athletic delegations since the peninsula was divided into two separate states in 1945.

    Joint marches became a recurring feature of subsequent Olympic Games and major international sporting events, including the 2018 Winter Olympics hosted by Pyeongchang, South Korea. After watching the opening ceremony joint parade in Pyeongchang, Chang told reporters he was “deeply moved” by the moment. Beyond ceremonial parades, Chang’s early dialogue with South Korean counterparts laid the groundwork for the two Koreas to field their first unified men’s and women’s teams at the 1991 World Table Tennis Championships in Chiba, Japan. At the 2018 Pyeongchang Games, the nations competed together for the first time at an Olympic Games, launching a combined women’s ice hockey team.

    In recent years, however, inter-Korean sports ties have stalled alongside a broader collapse in political relations. No cross-border exchange programs of any kind, including sports initiatives, have taken place for years. After the collapse of 2019 nuclear diplomacy between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and then-U.S. President Donald Trump, North Korea has pulled back from talks with both the U.S. and South Korea, with Kim branding Seoul a permanent enemy and ruling out future unification talks.

    IOC President Kirsty Coventry highlighted Chang’s outsized contributions to the Olympic movement in her tribute, noting his work to advance access to sports, cross-cultural dialogue, and the positive role of athletics in civil society. “His efforts to promote cooperation on the Korean Peninsula demonstrated the power of sport to build bridges and inspire hope,” Coventry said.

    During his IOC tenure, Chang served on multiple key committees, including the Sport for All Commission and the International Olympic Truce Foundation. Most recently, North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency mentioned Chang in 2023, when he received the Olympic Order — the IOC’s highest honor, awarded to individuals who make extraordinary contributions to the global Olympic movement — during an IOC session in Mumbai, India. Then serving as an honorary IOC member, Chang participated in the awarding ceremony via video link.

  • Divorced couples in Japan can now share custody of their children

    Divorced couples in Japan can now share custody of their children

    On Wednesday, a historic shift in family law took hold across Japan, as a revision to the country’s Civil Code legalizing joint child custody for divorced couples went into force. Prior to this change, Japan stood out as the only G7 nation that did not formally recognize joint legal custody, a policy position that drew growing criticism from both domestic and international observers for years.

    Under the old framework that dated back decades, Japanese family courts almost exclusively awarded sole custody to one parent when separating couples could not reach a private agreement. In the vast majority of cases, that parent was the mother – and the sole custody ruling granted full power to cut off all contact between the non-custodial parent and their children. While couples were permitted to work out informal visitation or co-parenting arrangements on their own, the court system offered no path to formal joint custody if negotiations broke down, leaving many non-custodial parents permanently estranged from their kids after divorce.

    The new regulation fundamentally rewrites this process: family courts now retain the authority to grant either sole or joint custody based on the specific circumstances of each case. Critically, the policy change is also retroactive: couples who divorced under the previous, restrictive system can now petition a family court to revisit and revise their existing custody arrangements. The revised code also adds a new mandate for formal child support payments, enshrining a right for the custodial parent to claim a baseline of 20,000 Japanese yen (equivalent to roughly £95 or $125) per month from their former spouse.

    Proponents of the reform have pinned long-held hopes on this policy shift as a solution to the high-profile issue of international parental abduction that has put Japan under global scrutiny in recent years. High-profile cases have drawn widespread attention to the harms of the old sole custody system: in 2023, retired Japanese table tennis legend Ai Fukuhara was accused by her Taiwanese ex-husband of abducting their young son, cutting off all contact and refusing to return the child to his home in Taiwan, a case that was eventually resolved through a private settlement. Two years prior, during the 2021 Tokyo Olympic Games, a French father living in Japan staged a public hunger strike to draw attention to his own case, where he claimed his ex-wife had taken their children and cut off all access under the protection of the old sole custody rules.

    Despite the widespread acclaim for the reform as a step toward more equitable family law, the change has not received universal support. Critics, including many domestic gender advocacy groups, raised concerns ahead of the bill’s passage that joint custody mandates could put vulnerable women at risk, forcing them to maintain ongoing contact with abusive former partners in cases involving domestic violence. Lawmakers have addressed these concerns directly in the text of the revised code: the law explicitly requires courts to award sole custody to one parent if evidence of domestic violence or child abuse is confirmed during proceedings.

    This revision marks one of the most significant changes to Japanese family law in modern history, closing a policy gap that separated Japan from other major developed economies and responding to years of pressure to reform a system that critics argued harmed children and non-custodial parents alike.

  • ‘Go take your oil:’ Nato fissure erupts over Iran as allies brush off US

    ‘Go take your oil:’ Nato fissure erupts over Iran as allies brush off US

    The ongoing US-Israeli military campaign against Iran has opened a deep and widening breach between the United States and its longstanding NATO allies, with multiple member states rejecting American requests for military access, basing rights, and defensive assets even as the Trump administration casts new uncertainty over its commitment to the alliance’s core mutual defense pledge.

    Multiple European capitals have now publicly pushed back against Washington’s demands. Spain has barred US military aircraft bound for Iran-related operations from entering its airspace, according to official statements. Leading Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera also reported that Rome has denied landing access to US military aircraft en route to the Middle East at a key Sicilian base, a striking move given Italy’s right-leaning government under Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, traditionally aligned with US foreign policy goals.

    Poland, a central European nation that has stood as one of Washington’s most reliable NATO allies since the end of the Cold War and where former President Trump retains broad popular support amid the country’s powerful right-wing populist movement, also issued a public denial on Tuesday. Warsaw rejected claims it had agreed to redeploy its Patriot air defense systems to the Middle East, confirming it turned down an informal request from the Trump administration for the assets.

    While Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, a leftist leader, publicly opposed the US-Israeli war from its earliest days, the scope of refusals spanning ideologically diverse governments makes clear that Washington’s diplomatic isolation on the conflict is accelerating.

    Trump amplified transatlantic tensions in a post on the social platform X on Tuesday, calling out major European powers for their refusal to back the campaign. He revealed that France, which has long maintained an independent foreign policy agenda in the Middle East, has also denied US aircraft carrying military equipment to Israel permission to transit its airspace. He also publicly criticized the United Kingdom for declining to join the war effort, ending his post with a blunt warning: “The USA will remember !!!”

    The combative posture has been echoed across the Trump administration. When asked about growing alliance tensions, US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth declined to explicitly commit to NATO’s Article 5, the foundational clause that states an armed attack against one member is considered an attack against all, instead deferring any judgment on the commitment to Trump.

    Hegseth defended the US-led campaign against Iran, arguing the operation was launched “on behalf of the free world” and allies whose missile capabilities faced threats from Tehran. “When we ask for additional assistance or simple access, basing and overflight, we get questions or roadblocks or hesitations,” he told reporters.

    But that framing stands in stark contrast to how NATO allies view the conflict, according to Ian Lesser, vice president of the German Marshall Fund in the United States, who spoke to Middle East Eye. “There is a basic concern that Europe is being asked to contribute to and approve of operations they had no role in shaping and a strategy they had no role in shaping,” Lesser explained.

    “This war is both unpopular among the public and, in some cases, the elite, and it could take a direction that European allies can’t shape. That’s not a good recipe for cooperation,” he added.

    Tehran has responded to the US-Israeli offensive with a large-scale retaliatory campaign, launching thousands of missiles and drones targeting Israel and Arab Gulf states. While Iranian strikes on Gulf territory have specifically targeted US military bases with precision, Tehran has also attacked civilian infrastructure and energy facilities in the region in retaliation for similar Israeli strikes on Iranian targets.

    Washington has pushed Gulf Arab states to join the offensive against Iran, and Middle East Eye was first to report that the US has secured access to King Fahd Air Base in western Saudi Arabia after Iranian drone and missile strikes damaged facilities at US bases closer to the Gulf. To bolster its Iran deployment, the Trump administration has also reallocated critical military resources, including marines and air defense systems, away from East Asia.

    For NATO allies, the conflict has already carried a steep economic cost. After Iran seized effective control of the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most critical energy chokepoint, and implemented a new system for approving safe passage for vessels, global oil and gas prices have surged, hitting European economies particularly hard. Roughly 20 percent of the world’s total energy supplies pass through the strait, and NATO countries, which have already cut most imports of Russian energy following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, are facing unprecedented energy market volatility as a result.

    Iran’s consolidation of control over the strait has emerged as a major strategic embarrassment for the Trump administration, which has built its global superpower legitimacy on two core foundations: unwavering commitment to the NATO alliance, and guaranteed security for global energy flows out of the Persian Gulf. Tehran is now working to establish an alternative transit framework that prioritizes non-Western aligned vessels, including ships flagged by neutral countries like Pakistan and cargo carrying energy priced in Chinese renminbi instead of the US dollar, a direct challenge to Washington’s global financial and energy dominance.

    Trump has dramatically shifted his public posture on the crisis in recent days, moving from threatening to “obliterate” Iran’s entire energy grid if Tehran refused to surrender control of the strait, to stepping back and shifting responsibility to US allies. In a social media post directed at Washington’s uncooperative allies including the UK on Tuesday, Trump wrote: “Just TAKE IT. You’ll have to start learning how to fight for yourself, the USA won’t be there to help you anymore, just like you weren’t there for us. Iran has been, essentially, decimated. The hard part is done. Go get your own oil!”

    Analysts warn Trump’s threat to cede control of the strait to Iran is self-defeating if he eventually seeks NATO support to reimpose Western oversight of the waterway. If Tehran retains de facto control over the strait, Lesser said European allies will be forced to reconsider their entire regional security framework, and have little incentive to back the US war effort in the meantime.

    “Why would Nato countries make themselves more exposed by assisting the US war on Iran? They can probably imagine this going in a direction that allows certain traffic through Hormuz, but not all,” Lesser said, adding that European capitals also do not want to be publicly associated with a war that is deeply unpopular at home.

    In a sign that Tehran is actively encouraging NATO allies to break with Washington, Iran has publicly signaled it will reward countries that refuse to back the US campaign. The Iranian embassy in Spain said Thursday that Tehran would accommodate any request from Madrid for Spanish-flagged vessels to receive guaranteed safe passage through the strait. While Spain’s commercial shipping fleet is relatively small, the gesture carries clear symbolic weight for transatlantic relations.

  • ‘My six-year-old has nosebleeds’: Chiang Mai air pollution sparks health fears

    ‘My six-year-old has nosebleeds’: Chiang Mai air pollution sparks health fears

    Once celebrated for its misty mountain vistas, crisp cool air and lush tropical landscapes, Chiang Mai in northern Thailand has now become a city gripped by a recurring public health crisis. Decades of unaddressed seasonal air pollution have pushed long-time residents to the breaking point, with many families weighing permanent departure to protect their children’s health.

    Tirayut Wongsantisuk, a 41-year-old father, never imagined he would leave the city he and his wife chose for its idyllic natural setting when they relocated in the 2010s. Today, that dream has turned into a daily nightmare: two of his young daughters suffer from frequent nosebleeds, and his six-year-old eldest has developed painful skin rashes and swollen, allergy-ridden eyelids. The persistent poor air quality has left Tirayut with no good options. “I’ve been thinking, maybe we really should move during this season… because if something irreversible happens to our child, we’ll feel terrible forever,” he told the BBC in an on-the-ground interview.

    Tirayut’s fear is shared by dozens of other Chiang Mai families caught in this year’s particularly severe fire season. Over the past week, smoke from hundreds of raging blazes has choked the entire northern region, pushing Chiang Mai to the top of IQAir’s global ranking of the world’s most polluted major cities. When a BBC reporting team visited the area last week, a thick, acrid blanket of haze erased the iconic mountain views that draw millions of tourists each year, and a constant smell of burning hung in the air.

    Official satellite data underscores the scale of the crisis: on April 1 alone, the system detected 4,750 active fire hotspots across Thailand, a new record, with the vast majority concentrated in the forested and agricultural lands of the north. By the following morning, Chiang Mai’s average PM2.5 concentration — the tiny toxic particles that penetrate deep into the lungs and bloodstream — was rated “very unhealthy” by global public health standards.

    The annual crisis runs from November to March, a window that aligns with common agricultural practice: many smallholder farmers burn residual crop stubble to clear fields ahead of planting new season seeds. Dry seasonal conditions also fan the spread of spontaneous wildfires across parched forest and grassland areas. Local media has shared dramatic imagery of mountain slopes entirely engulfed in flames, with some residents comparing the blazing lines of fire to erupting volcanoes.

    To curb the spread of blazes, Thai authorities have already implemented emergency measures: all high-fire-risk national parks have been closed to the public, and officials have announced that anyone caught intentionally starting fires in restricted zones will be arrested on site. Under current Thai law, those convicted of illegal forest burning face maximum penalties of 20 years in prison and fines of up to 2 million baht, equivalent to roughly $61,100. Even so, the strict penalties have failed to deter the annual burning that drives the haze crisis.

    Public health experts warn that long-term exposure to PM2.5 haze causes a cascade of health complications, ranging from mild issues like itchy eyes and frequent nosebleeds to life-threatening conditions such as respiratory failure and heart attacks. For Benjamas Jaiparkan, a 35-year-old public school teacher in Chiang Mai, the risk is too great to ignore. She has already sent her two children to stay with relatives in neighboring Phayao province, where air quality remains far better than in Chiang Mai, and is now planning a permanent move. Her four-year-old son began experiencing regular nosebleeds last year, and she fears permanent damage to his developing lungs. “I feel so sorry for him because I don’t know how much more his lungs can take,” she said.

    Frustration with government inaction has been building for years among Chiang Mai residents. Activists and affected communities have repeatedly filed legal action to force systemic change. In July 2023, more than 1,700 Chiang Mai residents brought a lawsuit against former Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha and two leading state agencies, arguing that the government’s failure to curb northern air pollution had cut an average of five years off each resident’s life expectancy. In January 2024, a Chiang Mai court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, ordering the national government to draft a binding emergency action plan to improve air quality within 90 days.

    The crisis is not isolated to Thailand: hazardous seasonal haze has become a regional public health emergency across Southeast Asia. This year, Malaysia and Indonesia have both recorded their highest number of fire hotspots in seven years, spreading poor air quality across borders and affecting millions of people across the region.

  • Food assistance slashed for hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees trapped in Bangladesh camps

    Food assistance slashed for hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees trapped in Bangladesh camps

    More than seven years after hundreds of thousands of Rohingya ethnic minorities fled genocidal violence at the hands of Myanmar’s military, the vulnerable refugee community trapped in overcrowded Bangladeshi camps faces a new crisis: reduced food assistance that aid leaders and residents warn will deepen hunger and push desperate people toward deadly risks.

    Starting Wednesday, the United Nations World Food Program rolled out a new tiered assistance model for the 1.2 million Rohingya residing in the squalid Cox’s Bazar refugee settlements. Under the revised framework, monthly food aid allocations will be adjusted based on assessed household vulnerability. While one-third of the population classified as “extremely food insecure” — including child-headed households — will retain the current $12 per person monthly allocation, roughly 17% of refugees will see their aid cut to just $7 per month, with the remaining population receiving reductions between these two amounts, meaning two-thirds of the entire community will face smaller food assistance stipends.

    For decades, the Rohingya, a stateless Muslim minority group in majority-Buddhist Myanmar, faced systemic discrimination. A 2017 widescale military crackdown that the United States has formally recognized as genocide pushed more than 700,000 additional Rohingya across the border into Bangladesh, where they are legally barred from holding formal employment. With no path to safe repatriation following the 2021 military coup that kept the same leadership responsible for the 2017 violence in power, the entire community remains almost entirely dependent on international humanitarian aid to meet basic needs. Even before the cuts, refugees repeatedly warned the existing $12 monthly stipend was barely enough to avoid hunger.

    “It is very difficult to understand how we will survive now with only $7. Our children will suffer the most,” said Mohammed Rahim, a camp resident and father of three who was already struggling to feed his family before the reduction. “I am deeply concerned that people may face severe hunger and some may even die due to lack of food.”

    The WFP has publicly linked the risk of aid reductions to sweeping 2024 funding cuts from the U.S. and other major donor nations that stripped the agency of one-third of its core budget. However, WFP spokesperson Kun Li rejected characterizing the new policy as a general “ration cut,” arguing the term only applies when assistance falls below the 2,100 daily calories per person that is the global emergency food aid minimum. The agency claims even refugees receiving the $7 monthly stipend will still meet this calorie threshold, framing the tiered model as a step to improve fairness, transparency, and equity by targeting more support to the most vulnerable.

    That framing is rejected by Bangladeshi officials overseeing the refugee response. “But a ration cut is precisely what the change means for the Rohingya,” said Mohammad Mizanur Rahman, Bangladesh’s Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commissioner. Rahman warned the cuts will push already desperate refugees to flee the camps in search of food and work, threatening to unravel law and order in the surrounding region. This is not an idle concern: past aid cuts have already driven a surge in harmful coping strategies, including child marriage, child labor, and kidnapping, as desperate families struggle to get by.

    Funding shortfalls have plagued Rohingya support programs for years. In 2025, core Rohingya assistance programs were only half funded, and so far in 2026, just 19% of required funding has been secured. The WFP was already forced to slash rations to $8 per month in 2023 due to donation shortfalls. By November that year, the agency confirmed 90% of camp residents could not afford a nutritionally adequate diet, and 15% of children suffered from acute malnutrition — the highest rate ever recorded in the settlements. Rations were only restored to $12 per month in 2024.

    Already, the cuts have sparked widespread outcry among the refugee community. Dozens of Rohingya held peaceful protests across the camps on Tuesday, demanding the reversal of the new policy and restoration of full rations. Many carried signs reading “Food is a right, not a choice” and warning that widespread starvation will follow the cuts.

    For Rahim, the new $7 allocation brings impossible risks. The 40-year-old father lives with a chronic illness, and he cannot safely send his children outside the camps to work due to soaring rates of kidnapping, violence, and human trafficking. He said dozens of refugees he knows are already weighing deadly options that they would have otherwise rejected: returning to Myanmar to face persecution and violence, or undertaking dangerous, irregular sea journeys to Malaysia in overcrowded, unseaworthy fishing vessels. Hundreds of Rohingya die or disappear on these risky voyages every year.

    “Ration cuts are pushing people toward life-threatening risks, leaving them with no safe choices,” Rahim said. “I am very worried about the future of our children.”

  • As US gasoline passes $4, Hegseth says ground war still an option

    As US gasoline passes $4, Hegseth says ground war still an option

    WASHINGTON — Five weeks into active hostilities between the United States and Iran, the Biden administration (correction: current Trump administration) has moved to frame skyrocketing national gasoline prices as a temporary side effect of the conflict, while top defense officials have refused to take any military option — including a full ground deployment of U.S. troops — off the table.

    In his first public briefing at the Pentagon since mid-March, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters Tuesday that the timeline for concluding combat operations and achieving U.S. war aims rests solely with President Donald Trump, warning that the coming days will prove decisive for the conflict. He also confirmed that diplomatic negotiations between the two nations remain active, and suggested the talks have gained momentum in recent days.

    The prolonged conflict has already sent shockwaves through both global and domestic U.S. economies, with new data from automotive group AAA showing the national average price for regular gasoline in the U.S. has crossed the $4 per gallon threshold for the first time in four years. Photographic documentation from a Providence, Rhode Island gas station taken March 31, 2026 shows regular fuel priced at $3.89 per gallon, just shy of the national benchmark.

    White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt pushed back against growing public frustration over fuel costs in an official statement, arguing that once the administration’s Operation Epic Fury concludes, gas prices will fall sharply back to the multi-year lows U.S. drivers saw before the current market disruption. She added that President Trump remains dedicated to expanding American energy production to achieve long-term energy dominance, cut household costs, and put more disposable income back into the budgets of working American families.

    Within hours of the White House’s statement, Iran’s parliamentary speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf seized on the price surge to criticize U.S. policy, sharing a link to a U.S. news report on soaring gas prices to the social platform X with the caption: “Sad, but this is what happens when your leaders put others ahead of hard-working and ordinary Americans.”

    The primary driver of the global energy price spike is Iran’s ongoing blockade of commercial and military vessels from the U.S. and its allies at the Strait of Hormuz, a critical chokepoint that carries a large share of the world’s petroleum and liquefied natural gas exports. As of 12:45 p.m. Eastern Time Tuesday, Brent crude, the global benchmark for oil pricing, was trading at just over $119 per barrel. Open source data from MarineTraffic and United Nations estimates show between 2,000 and 3,000 cargo vessels and oil tankers, carrying roughly 20,000 crew members, remain stranded in the Persian Gulf due to the blockade.

    President Trump has claimed in recent public comments that Iran has agreed to allow a small number of third-party oil tankers to pass through the strait, first saying eight to 10 Pakistani tankers would be permitted during a cabinet meeting Thursday, then raising that number to 20 during comments Sunday. But data from the Joint Maritime Information Center contradicts those claims, showing only four large, location-transmitting tankers crossed the strait on Friday and Saturday combined.

    When asked about potential ground operations, Hegseth said the administration would not foreclose any military response to Iranian aggression, but declined to share specific operational details during his public briefing. “You can’t fight and win a war if you tell your adversary what you are willing to do, or what you are not willing to do — to include boots on the ground,” Hegseth said. “Our adversary right now thinks there are 15 different ways we could come at them with boots on the ground. And guess what? There are. So if we needed to, we could execute those options on behalf of the president of the United States and this department, or maybe we don’t have to use them at all. Maybe negotiations work.”

    Trump echoed Hegseth’s comments on diplomatic progress during remarks to reporters aboard Air Force One Sunday, saying talks with Iran are ongoing both directly and indirectly, and that the discussions are “very good.” “We’re doing extremely well,” the president said. “But you never know with Iran because we negotiate with them, and then we always have to blow ‘em up.”

    The president has repeatedly issued public threats to bomb Iran’s critical energy infrastructure, and has set a self-imposed deadline of April 6 for Iran to meet all U.S. demands before launching new strikes. On Monday night, Trump shared video of a recent U.S. strike on an Iranian ammunition depot in the central province of Isfahan to his Truth Social platform. But Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baqaei denied any diplomatic talks are taking place with the U.S., according to Iranian state news outlet Tasmin News Agency.

    U.S. military buildup in the region continues: U.S. Central Command confirmed that up to 3,500 U.S. Marines and sailors arrived in the Persian Gulf region Saturday, bringing total U.S. troop levels in the area to roughly 50,000 — an increase of 10,000 from the standard peacetime deployment of 40,000. Ghalibaf warned Sunday that any U.S. ground offensive into Iran would be met with “severe punishment,” per Iranian state media. For context, the 2003 U.S. ground invasion of Iraq saw more than 300,000 American troops deployed to the region, according to historical archives from the Council on Foreign Relations.