Global Pulse

标签： Asia

亚洲

  • Police officer admits to closing missing person cases to avoid work

    Police officer admits to closing missing person cases to avoid work

    A damaging institutional scandal has rocked South Korea’s law enforcement community, after a senior police officer on the popular tourist island of Jeju admitted to intentionally closing dozens of missing person investigations without completing required work to avoid additional workload pressure. The officer, identified only by his surname Bu, was taken into custody earlier this month following allegations that he falsified records to shut down active cases and lied to grieving family members of missing individuals.

    In the wake of growing public outrage over the revelation, Jeju Provincial Police launched belated search operations for the long-neglected missing persons, recovering four dead bodies in recent weeks. Investigations have confirmed Bu deliberately prematurely closed at least two high-profile cases, for which he now faces three formal criminal charges: forgery of public electronic records, obstruction of official duties, and gross dereliction of duty.

    Court documents and police statements detail that in both confirmed cases, Bu falsely recorded that he had made contact with the missing individuals, then closed the cases without ever verifying their locations or confirming their safety. During interrogation, Bu told investigators his decision stemmed from workload and administrative pressure: he stated, “The missing person was a typical adult so I thought about it carelessly. If the case was not closed, there would have been a lot to take care of, and out of a sense of pressure over the case handover, I falsely closed it.”

    One of the falsified cases involved 37-year-old Jang Mi-ran, who went missing in May after her boyfriend filed a missing person report. Bu told Jang’s boyfriend that he had spoken to her, and that she explicitly refused to meet with police or have any contact with her boyfriend – a claim authorities have confirmed was entirely fabricated. Bu entered the false narrative into official police records, even logged that Jang had been killed in a traffic collision, before permanently closing the case. Last week, search teams found Jang’s remains near a palm tree plantation on Jeju.

    The second confirmed case involved a man in his 60s reported missing in July. Bu repeated the same pattern, falsely claiming he had contacted the man and that the man requested no further contact. The man’s body was discovered earlier this month.

    Investigators now suspect Bu may have improperly closed as many as 25 additional missing person cases, though officials note that some of those individuals have since been independently confirmed alive and unharmed.

    Contextual data on missing persons in South Korea frames the severity of the scandal: while violent crime rates are extremely low across the country, South Korea has one of the highest suicide rates in the developed world. More than 70,000 adults are reported missing every year, and 99% of those cases are officially marked as resolved within 30 days – a statistic that has now come under renewed scrutiny following Bu’s admission.

    The scandal has erupted at an extraordinarily sensitive political juncture for South Korean law enforcement. Just weeks before the arrest, the national government passed landmark legislation shifting full investigative authority from public prosecutors to the national police, a reform designed to reduce prosecutors’ outsized influence over political affairs. However, the transfer of power has already faced widespread public pushback, as many South Koreans have long raised concerns about systemic corruption and institutional incompetence within police ranks.

    In response to the growing outcry over the Jeju scandal, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung has publicly pledged to implement sweeping police reforms. In a formal address Tuesday, Lee expressed regret over the incident, noting that a small number of unethical officers “who muddy the well water” are eroding public trust and damaging the reputation of the vast majority of hardworking, honest law enforcement personnel across the country.

  • More than 1,000 dead from catastrophic Nepal-China floods

    More than 1,000 dead from catastrophic Nepal-China floods

    On Tuesday, disaster management authorities confirmed that the combined death toll from catastrophic flash flooding triggered by a Himalayan glacial collapse has exceeded 1,000 across Nepal and southern Tibet, China, as rescue crews race against time to reach thousands of missing people trapped in cut-off, disaster-ravaged communities. As of the latest official update from Nepal’s national disaster management agency, the country has recorded 987 confirmed fatalities, with another 3,916 people still unaccounted for – a figure that includes 583 foreign nationals. China’s most recent official update, released Sunday, reported 16 confirmed deaths in the Tibetan region affected by the disaster.

    The unprecedented disaster unfolded on August 26, originating high in the Himalayan mountain range in a sequence of catastrophic natural events. The crisis began when a glacial formation experienced a full collapse, sending massive volumes of broken ice, displaced rock, and glacial meltwater surging into lower river valleys, which rapidly triggered powerful downstream flash floods that swept through both Nepalese and Tibetan communities. Researchers analyzing satellite imagery of the disaster site have determined that the collapse was tied to the failure of the bedrock supporting the glacial formation. The force of the resulting massive rockfall was powerful enough to be detected as a magnitude 5.2 seismic event by global monitoring networks.

    The enormous surge of water and debris pushed into transboundary rivers that flow through Tibetan and Nepalese valleys, causing water levels to skyrocket in a matter of hours. Floodwaters and debris wiped out entire residential structures, public buildings, highway networks, and bridge crossings, leaving entire regions isolated with no overland access for emergency response. To date, Nepalese authorities confirm that more than 11,814 people have been pulled from danger and evacuated, with emergency teams relying heavily on helicopter and fixed-wing aircraft operations to reach stranded communities after landslides and flooding destroyed most overland routes.

    The most urgent priority for rescue teams right now is locating roughly 900 missing workers from 12 damaged hydropower development projects across the affected region. Officials estimate that around 500 of these workers may still be trapped inside flooded project tunnels, cut off from outside contact. Footage released by the Nepalese Army shows rescue teams navigating narrow, debris-clogged tunnels, wading through chest-deep muddy floodwater, and climbing over piles of broken rock and rubble in the search for any surviving trapped workers.

    Bimal Sharma, a helicopter pilot who has flown continuous rescue missions since the disaster struck, described the profound scale of destruction to Timure, a remote Nepalese border town near the Tibetan boundary that he has flown to for years. “It felt like I was flying over an entirely different landscape,” Sharma said. The pilot added that while he has had little time to speak at length with the survivors he airlifts to safety, their unspoken grief is impossible to miss. “I can see the pain in their eyes. It’s heartbreaking,” he said.

    As rescue operations continue, teams are also working to deliver food, clean water, medical care, and emergency shelter to thousands of survivors who remain in isolated regions with damaged or destroyed transportation infrastructure. The disaster has already drawn attention to the growing risks of glacial hazard events in the Himalayas, a region that has accelerated glacial melt and retreat driven by rising global temperatures.

  • ‘I’ve never been to Afghanistan’: Six million deportees forced to start over under the Taliban

    ‘I’ve never been to Afghanistan’: Six million deportees forced to start over under the Taliban

    At the Torkham border crossing, dubbed “Zero Point” between Pakistan and Afghanistan, the air shimmers with 41-degree Celsius heat that hangs heavy over a sprawling makeshift transit camp of tattered tarpaulin and plastic shelters. Here, one chapter of displacement closes for millions of Afghans, and another, far more uncertain, begins. Among the first to step across the frontier this week was 35-year-old Nazia, who had lived her entire life in Pakistan, where she was born to a displaced Afghan family. Minutes after crossing into a country she had never seen, she carried a faint sense of bittersweet relief: “It feels good to be in my own country,” she said, her two young children clinging to her hands as she walked toward Taliban-run registration counters draped in the movement’s black and white flag. But the relief quickly faded. “Many people here don’t even have enough bread to eat,” she sighed. Nazia is far from alone. Nearly her entire extended family—eight sisters and all their children—have been deported to Afghanistan from Pakistan and Iran this year alone, part of the largest cross-border population movement on the planet today.

    For decades, millions of Afghans fled decades of conflict, invasion, and political upheaval to seek refuge and work in neighboring Pakistan and Iran. After the Taliban seized control of Kabul in August 2021, that outflow accelerated, swelling the population of Afghan migrants in the two neighboring states to more than 8 million combined. But in recent years, both countries have launched sweeping crackdowns targeting undocumented Afghan migrants, and those operations have expanded far beyond unregistered people to include even Afghans with official refugee documentation, the United Nations and human rights organizations confirm. Pakistan has publicly acknowledged that even holders of longstanding Proof of Registration cards are not exempt from deportation, and there is no sign the expulsions will slow.

    By the end of August this year, more than 1 million Afghans had already been forcibly repatriated from Pakistan and Iran, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). “In a little under three years, we’ve seen six million people return to Afghanistan—That is the size of an entire small country,” said Charlie Goodlake, UNHCR’s Afghanistan spokesperson, speaking from the baking heat of the border transit camp. “We have never documented a return movement of this scale in recent modern history,” he emphasized.

    Many returnees have not set foot on Afghan soil for generations. 60-something Sarwar, who crossed the border just days earlier in a convoy of 40 family members packed into a rickety Pakistani lorry along with all their worldly possessions, left Afghanistan during the 1979 Soviet invasion, and all seven of his brothers were born and raised in Pakistan. “We built a life there over 45 years. It’s heartbreaking to be forced out of the home you knew,” he said. Still, like nearly every other returnee the BBC spoke with at the crossing, he shared a small silver lining: “I’m happy to be free of constant harassment by Pakistan’s police.” Every family interviewed by the BBC reported systemic prejudice and arbitrary harassment at the hands of Pakistani authorities. Pakistan’s government has not responded to formal requests for comment from the BBC, but a foreign ministry spokesperson told a recent Islamabad briefing that the government “undertakes necessary measures to prevent any instance of harassment or maltreatment of Afghan nationals. If such incidents occur, they are sporadic and dealt with fully in accordance with the law.”

    The crackdown gained new momentum after a major escalation in cross-border fighting between Pakistan and the Taliban-led Afghan government in October 2024. In February 2025, Human Rights Watch documented widespread human rights abuses including door-to-door raids, late-night warrantless home searches, and arbitrary mass arrests. In Iran, which has hosted more than 4 million undocumented Afghans in recent years, mass deportations accelerated sharply after the 12-day 2025 war between Iran, Israel, and the United States. The New York-based Centre for Human Rights in Iran has accused Iranian authorities of leveraging post-war national security tensions to target Afghan migrants, branding many as potential Israeli spies and detaining hundreds on baseless espionage charges.

    Both Pakistan and Iran have defended their deportation campaigns, arguing that it is long past time for Afghans to return to their home country. They claim that a portion of Afghan migrants pose domestic security risks, and that the large migrant population places an unsustainable financial strain on national infrastructure and social services. The UN has long maintained that any repatriation of refugees must follow core humanitarian principles: it must be voluntary, safe, and dignified. For the tens of thousands of Afghans now arriving at the border every month, none of those conditions hold.

    Inside the sweltering transit tent at Torkham, 40-year-old Zarina—who crossed with her family just days earlier as part of this year’s 1 million returnees—sits huddled with a group of other anxious women and children. She summed up the precarious future that waits for most arrivals: “We have no money to start a business, no way to earn a living, and we don’t even have a tent to put up to call our own.” When asked if she fears for the future of her daughters, who will be barred from secondary school and university under Taliban edicts, she gestured to the cluster of young girls beside her: “Look at them. Of course I’m worried.”

    For some returnees, that worry curdles into outright terror. A former Afghan government security guard, who was first deported from Iran then pushed across the border from Pakistan, spoke to the BBC from a safe house hundreds of kilometers from the border, asking to remain anonymous for his protection. “None of us leave the house anymore. My wife and children are too afraid to even go outside,” he said. He rejected the amnesty the Taliban announced immediately after seizing power in 2021, which promised no retaliation against former government officials, security personnel, and civil servants. “I do not trust their amnesty. So many of my former colleagues have been killed,” he said. He had registered his case with the UN for resettlement to a third safe country, but was deported before his application could be processed.

    Widespread systemic financial collapse amplifies every other crisis. Deep global cuts to foreign aid have hit Afghanistan particularly hard, as the Taliban government remains locked out of the global financial system by sweeping US and European sanctions tied to terrorism and human rights abuses. While Pakistan recently announced a temporary 16,000-person exemption from deportation for vulnerable Afghans on humanitarian grounds—a move the UN has welcomed—UN and independent sources estimate that as many as 250,000 Afghans currently living in Pakistan remain at severe risk of harm if deported, including thousands of women and girls who face systematic exclusion from education and public life under Taliban rule.

    In Kabul, at the walled, tree-lined foreign ministry compound, Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi struck a defiant, optimistic tone when asked about the crisis. “There is no doubt we need international support,” he admitted. “The mass return does create pressure right now, but in the long run, this will benefit both the returnees and Afghanistan.” This marks a shift from the early days of Taliban rule, when some officials downplayed the unfolding humanitarian crisis and claimed divine provision would meet the population’s needs. Today, the UN estimates that 21.9 million Afghans—nearly half the country’s entire population—require life-saving humanitarian assistance this year just to survive. UNICEF warned last week that 1 million Afghan children face life-threatening severe acute malnutrition.

    “No country in the world could handle a crisis of this scale on its own,” Goodlake said, while acknowledging that the Taliban government has taken limited steps to accommodate arriving returnees. But he added a key caveat: “We also know that many of the restrictions and edicts the Taliban has put in place, particularly those limiting the rights of women and girls, make it far harder for us to mobilize the international support this crisis demands.”

    Muttaqi has repeatedly defended the Taliban’s restrictive gender policies as internal Afghan affairs that do not require international interference. Those policies have left the Taliban diplomatically isolated: five years after seizing power, only Russia has formally recognized the Taliban government. Muttaqi pushed back on that isolation, pointing to deepening economic and diplomatic ties with neighboring powers including China, India, and Central Asian states. When asked about the lack of formal relations with Western nations, he answered with a blunt question of his own: “What have those who refused to engage with us over the past five years achieved?” He answered immediately: “Nothing.”

    That same word “nothing” echoes across the Torkham crossing, but in a far grimmer context. Every family arriving at Zero Point carries with them only the few possessions they could pack onto a lorry, and they leave behind the lives they built over decades. For millions, the long-awaited “homecoming” is actually the start of rebuilding everything from scratch—with almost nothing.

  • Nepal flood survivors fear loss of culture and community

    Nepal flood survivors fear loss of culture and community

    In a makeshift emergency shelter carved out of a Buddhist monastery in Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital, Tsering Gelbu Lama sits on the cold stone floor, brushing away unbidden tears. His 4-year-old daughter sits at his feet, unaware that her mother was swept to her death just days earlier when catastrophic floodwaters burst through mountain valleys along the Nepal-Tibet border. As he coaxes a spoonful of rice into the young girl’s mouth, his biggest fear reaches far beyond the loss of his wife and the home his family built on ancestral land: he has no idea how he will carry forward their centuries-old Indigenous cultural traditions to raise her in their faith and customs.

    For Lama and hundreds of other flood survivors evacuated from remote Himalayan villages in Nepal’s northern Rasuwa district, the disaster has amplified a slow-burning crisis that was already eroding their community identities. Decades of outmigration of young people seeking education and work in Nepal’s cities have already weakened intergenerational transmission of local traditions. Now, the catastrophic floods have erased entire villages, swept away irreplaceable cultural heirlooms, destroyed restored religious sites, and killed dozens of community elders who carried oral knowledge of rituals, languages and customs — leaving displaced survivors questioning whether their unique way of life can survive at all.

    “We’ve become homeless not only because we’ve lost our land — we’ve become homeless with our culture and tradition,” explained 36-year-old Tsering Sherpa, a Rasuwa native now staying at the Kathmandu monastery shelter, as he leaned against the stone steps of the building.

    Nepal is one of the most ethnically diverse nations in South Asia, home to more than 120 distinct Indigenous and ethnic groups, many of which have preserved unique languages, ritual practices, and community festivals passed unchanged through hundreds of generations. Rasuwa district, tucked into the high Himalayan peaks along Nepal’s northern border with the Tibet Autonomous Region of China, is renowned for its tight-knit Indigenous Buddhist communities, whose unique cultural practices have even drawn international tourists to the region’s popular Tamang Heritage Trail, a trekking route that showcases local life and sacred traditions.

    Survivors sheltering in Kathmandu still carry vivid memories of life before the floodwaters arrived. They describe villages nestled between steep forested hills teeming with bears, deer, and brightly colored butterflies, where rivers cut through lush green valleys. In shared photos and videos captured before the disaster, they show moments of daily cultural life: groups of women gathering to chop juniper for ritual incense, community members crafting new decorations for a local monastery that was being rebuilt, and men and women in vibrant handwoven traditional clothing dancing together during annual religious festivals.

    “Now all of it is finished,” said 20-year-old Tenzin Dolma Ghale, a young survivor from Rasuwa.

    When the floodwaters surged following heavy seasonal rains, residents described scrambling up steep hillsides to escape the rushing current, many finding temporary refuge in local monasteries that had only been rebuilt a year earlier — replacing structures that were completely destroyed in the devastating 2015 Gorkha earthquake that shook the Nepalese Himalayas. Most survivors had no time to grab belongings from their homes before evacuating; many were airlifted out by rescue helicopters with nothing more than the clothes on their backs. Others lost centuries-old family heirlooms that were meant to be passed down through generations, objects that carried both cultural and personal meaning for their communities.

    The crisis of cultural preservation predates this year’s devastating floods, according to Alina Lama, a 26-year-old Rasuwa native who now volunteers at the Kathmandu shelter. For years, young people have left remote mountain villages for Nepal’s urban centers to access better education and job opportunities, drawn to the promise of more “modern” lives. This slow outmigration has already broken many intergenerational cultural ties: Alina Lama herself notes that she never learned many small, core details of her community’s traditions because she spent most of her young adulthood away from her village studying and working.

    Now, the disaster has created an urgent new set of concerns, particularly for children who lost their parents in the floodwaters. “We don’t know who will teach them,” Alina Lama said.

    International aid group Save the Children estimates that thousands of children across flood-affected regions are in need of urgent humanitarian assistance, though no official data has been released on how many children have been orphaned by the disaster.

    For religious communities, the loss runs even deeper. With local Himalayan monasteries destroyed by floodwaters and many senior community monks — who carry specialized, localized knowledge of ritual practice — dead or displaced, key annual traditions are already at risk of disappearing. Tsering Sherpa points to the region’s important autumn Buddhist festivals, which for centuries have been held in local village monasteries, as an example of what the community stands to lose.

    “We used to celebrate these festivals in our monasteries. Right now we don’t even have a monastery,” he said. “Culture and tradition are passed generation to generation by practice. If I can’t follow the tradition now, how can I pass it on to the next generation?”

    This reporting on climate and environmental impacts on communities is supported by private philanthropic funding, with The Associated Press retaining full editorial control over all content.

  • Fast-fashion giant Shein’s shares fall after Hong Kong trading debut that spotlights its China roots

    Fast-fashion giant Shein’s shares fall after Hong Kong trading debut that spotlights its China roots

    After years of delays, route shifts, and shifting global market conditions, global fast-fashion giant Shein finally made its public trading debut on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Tuesday — but the opening session brought an immediate downturn, with shares sliding roughly 10% from their IPO pricing. The online retail leader priced its initial public offering at HK$48.56 (equal to $6.19) per share, pulling in a total of $1.7 billion, making it one of the largest new share listings in Hong Kong so far this year.

    Speaking at the official listing ceremony, Shein Chief Financial Officer Leigh Gui framed the Hong Kong listing as a pivotal new chapter for the company. Despite executive optimism, early trading pushed shares down to roughly HK$44, highlighting investor caution over the brand’s mounting challenges.

    Founded in 2012 in Nanjing, China, Shein built its global customer base on a groundbreaking model of ultra-affordable, rapidly produced fashion, with delivery from Chinese factories to Western customers in as little as a few days. But that low-cost business model is now facing growing pressure from multiple interconnected headwinds.

    The elimination of longstanding “de minimis” tariff exemptions for low-value goods in both the United States and European Union has forced higher duties on small parcels shipped directly from China, including the majority of Shein’s product line. Compounding that cost crunch, global logistics expenses have spiked partially due to regional geopolitical instability tied to the conflict in Iran, squeezing the company’s already thin profit margins.

    These added costs have left Shein with no choice but to raise its consumer prices, eroding the core competitive advantage that made it a global hit, according to Jacob Cooke, CEO of WPIC Marketing + Technologies. Financial performance reflects this strain: Shein posted a net loss of $99 million in the first quarter of 2024, a sharp reversal from the $395 million profit it recorded in the same period one year earlier.

    Shein’s path to a public listing has been anything but straightforward. The company originally explored public offerings in New York and London, and relocated its corporate headquarters from China to Singapore in 2021, as it navigated overlapping regulatory scrutiny from both Beijing and Western regulators. Ultimately, the company shifted its listing plan back to Hong Kong, leaning back into its Chinese origins and the deep supply chain advantages that have long powered its operations.

    In a February speech, Shein founder Sky Xu acknowledged the company’s enduring roots: “Guangdong is Shein’s roots, and the starting point of our journey.” William Ma, an analyst at GROW Investment Group, noted that the pivot back to focus on Greater China highlights the unique value of Guangdong’s small-batch, fast-response manufacturing ecosystem that cannot be replicated elsewhere.

    Beyond tariff pressures, Shein continues to face regulatory roadblocks in key Western markets. In February, the European Union launched a formal investigation into the company focused on allegations of illegal products entering the bloc, including claims of material associated with child labor. Just months later, in May, Shein acquired San Francisco-based sustainable apparel retailer Everlane, a move many industry analysts have called a poor strategic fit that does little to address the company’s core challenges.

    At the time of its Hong Kong listing, Shein carries a market valuation of roughly $27 billion, only a small fraction of the peak valuation it reached just a few years ago. Gary Ng, senior economist for Asia Pacific at French bank Natixis, noted the company likely missed its ideal window for a public listing. “Shein has probably missed its golden listing window due to the shift of momentum toward AI and tariffs, which can affect valuations and profitability,” Ng explained.

    Even with the share drop and Shein’s ongoing challenges, the IPO is being seen as a positive win for Hong Kong’s financial sector. The territory has worked aggressively to reassert its status as a leading global financial hub after a downturn in IPO activity in 2023. So far this year, Hong Kong’s stock exchange has seen a strong rebound in new offerings, with total capital raised from IPOs already exceeding $40 billion. Lorraine Tan, an analyst at investment research firm Morningstar, added that there is already a large backlog of companies waiting to list on the exchange, signaling continued momentum for the market.

  • Trump’s vow to escalate on Iran rings hollow amid warnings from top US generals

    Trump’s vow to escalate on Iran rings hollow amid warnings from top US generals

    Fresh geopolitical tensions have erupted across the Middle East after a series of tit-for-tat strikes between the United States and Iran, with President Donald Trump threatening harsh retaliation even as the nation’s most senior military leaders have privately warned that a large, prolonged conflict with Iran would severely undermine U.S. national security.

  • The living care for ancestors and wandering spirits at Malaysia’s Hungry Ghost Festival

    The living care for ancestors and wandering spirits at Malaysia’s Hungry Ghost Festival

    Nestled in the northern Malaysian state of Penang, the town of Bukit Mertajam comes alive every seventh month of the Chinese lunar calendar for one of Southeast Asia’s most enduring traditional Chinese religious celebrations: the Hungry Ghost Festival, centered on the veneration of Da Shi Ye, the Guardian God of Ghosts.

    This year’s festival, which ran for 15 days from mid-August, traces its origins all the way back to 1888, when a devastating plague swept through Bukit Mertajam. In the wake of the outbreak, local Chinese ancestors established the ritual of worshipping Da Shi Ye to appease and care for wandering spirits, a practice that has remained uninterrupted for more than 135 years.

    At the heart of the celebration stands a towering handcrafted effigy of Da Shi Ye, built from paper and bamboo. Following generations-old custom, the effigy is increased by roughly two centimeters every year. In 2025, the effigy stands at nearly 29 feet tall. For 69-year-old artisan Ng Chi Wong, who has devoted more than 40 years of his life to crafting these figures, the construction process is a masterclass in tacit tradition. A team of seven to eight builders spend roughly 45 days completing the work, with no formal blueprints to guide them. “Most of the design and construction details are already in our minds,” Ng explained. Builders start with the intricately detailed head, before assembling the bamboo frame, shaping the body, adding outer paper layers, and finishing with hand-painted details. While small incremental improvements have modernized minor parts of the process, Ng says the craft demands more than technical skill: artisans must also deeply understand the cultural and spiritual roots of the tradition to honor it properly.

    Unlike Qingming Festival (Tomb-Sweeping Day), which centers on honoring one’s own family ancestors, the Hungry Ghost Festival extends care specifically to unclaimed wandering spirits—people who died with no surviving family members to pray for them or offer them sustenance in the afterlife. Lim Han Cong, a Chinese studies graduate from the University of Malaya, explains that the festival weaves together beliefs from Buddhism, Taoism, and Chinese folk religion. “At its core, the Ghost Festival expresses the belief that the living and the dead remain connected through enduring moral and emotional bonds,” Lim said. “The living, therefore, have a responsibility to honor, support and help the deceased attain peace.” During the festival, Taoist priests recite sacred scriptures and conduct ritual ceremonies to guide these lost spirits to peace and salvation.

    This year’s festival culminated in the traditional ceremonial burning of the Da Shi Ye effigy, a ritual that symbolically sends the deity back to the spirit world. Lee Kim Fong, the event’s general affairs coordinator, estimates that more than 10,000 people attended this year’s closing ceremony, with peak crowds swelling to 20,000. Devotees travel to Bukit Mertajam not just from across Malaysia, but also from neighboring Singapore, Indonesia, and Thailand, mirroring similar celebrations held in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan.

    Far from remaining a static ritual locked in the past, the century-old festival has evolved to take on new meaning and roles for the local Chinese community. Since the 1970s, organizers have integrated charitable community work into the festival’s schedule. Auctions of blessed ritual offerings and targeted fundraising campaigns generate funds that support low-income residents with urgent medical needs and sustain local Chinese-language education. “It has also become an important platform for strengthening community solidarity,” Lim noted, explaining that the celebration now extends far beyond its original spiritual purpose of honoring the dead.

    To adapt to modern times and ensure the tradition can be passed to future generations, organizers have also embraced digital innovation. For devotees who live overseas or cannot travel to Bukit Mertajam for the festival, the committee has introduced online worship options, allowing participants to join prayers and submit offerings remotely. A professional media crew documented the entire 15-day 2025 celebration from August 14 to 29, and organizers plan to upload full footage to Facebook to make the Da Shi Ye festival accessible to audiences around the globe.

    “As descendants of the Chinese community, we have a responsibility to preserve this 100-year-old tradition,” Lee said.

    This report was contributed to by AP video journalist Syawalludin Zain, with Hernández reporting from Beijing. Associated Press religion coverage is supported through AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP holds sole responsibility for this content.

  • Sudan’s RSF and Israel held discreet meetings over last two years: Report

    Sudan’s RSF and Israel held discreet meetings over last two years: Report

    A newly published investigation by Africa Intelligence has uncovered ongoing covert diplomatic and intelligence contacts between Israeli officials and senior leaders of Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF), holding meetings and hosting RSF delegations in Tel Aviv throughout Sudan’s brutal three-year civil conflict. The inquiry, which was released Friday, details two official RSF delegations that traveled to the Israeli coastal capital, with the first visit taking place in May 2025 and the second held in February 2026. According to the investigation’s findings, RSF representatives held closed-door talks with senior officials from the Africa Division of Israel’s foreign ministry as well as top leaders from Israeli national intelligence agencies. These high-level contacts are not a new development, the investigation confirms, but rather form part of a broader security and intelligence partnership that was established long before Sudan’s civil war erupted in April 2023. The first RSF delegation was led by Abdul Rahim Hamdan Dagalo, the deputy commander of the paramilitary group and brother of RSF chief Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, widely known by his nickname Hemedti, alongside a third Dagalo brother, Algoney Hamdan Dagalo. For the second February 2026 visit, the Dagalo brothers were joined by Ezzadean Elsafi, the RSF’s top legal advisor, the report notes. Investigators found that the years-long cooperation between Israeli officials and Hemedti’s inner circle has reportedly centered on the transfer of sensitive surveillance technologies to the RSF, a development that could significantly expand the paramilitary group’s operational capabilities on the battlefield across Sudan. Israel has a long documented history of parallel outreach to both of Sudan’s competing warring parties, maintaining ties with the official Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, while cultivating a separate relationship with the RSF through Israel’s national intelligence agency Mossad. Diplomatic relations between Khartoum and Tel Aviv were formally normalized in 2021, when Sudan’s post-uprising Transitional Sovereignty Council signed the US-brokered Abraham Accords, making Sudan the third Arab-majority nation to officially normalize ties with the Jewish state. The revelation of these secret meetings comes as the RSF faces mounting international accusations of mass atrocities, including genocide and ethnic cleansing, during its military campaign across Sudan. Earlier this year, the United Nations’ Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for Sudan released a landmark conclusion that the RSF’s months-long October 2025 siege of el-Fasher, the capital of Sudan’s North Darfur region, carried all the “hallmarks of genocide.” In early July of 2026, an anti-terrorism and state crimes court based in Port Sudan, which is held under SAF control, handed down death sentences in absentia to RSF leader Hemedti and 15 other senior RSF figures. The court convicted the group on multiple charges including their role in the 2023 assassination of West Darfur Governor Khamis Abdullah Abakar, as well as crimes against humanity, war crimes, unlawful warfare, and acts of genocide in the West Darfur capital of el-Geneina. This historic ruling marks the first time RSF leadership has been formally convicted by a Sudanese judicial body since the outbreak of the civil war in April 2023. The trial centered heavily on the assassination of Governor Abakar, who was killed just one day after he publicly condemned RSF shelling attacks on the residential el-Jamarik neighborhood of el-Geneina. In 2024, global human rights watchdog Human Rights Watch released its own investigation concluding that the systematic violence carried out by the RSF in el-Geneina amounted to ethnic cleansing, and likely constituted genocide targeting the Masalit people and other non-Arab ethnic communities in the region. Despite widespread evidence including circulated video footage showing RSF fighters mutilating Abakar’s body, the RSF has repeatedly denied all responsibility for the killing and has instead blamed the atrocities on the SAF. As early as June 2023, just two months after the war began, independent regional outlet Middle East Eye reported that roughly 1,500 civilians had been killed in el-Geneina alone within the first eight weeks of conflict. The violence forced tens of thousands of Masalit civilians to flee their homes on foot, crossing the Sudan-Chad border to seek safety in eastern Chad.

  • UN spotlights nuclear weapon states’ refusal to ratify test ban treaty at divisive time

    UN spotlights nuclear weapon states’ refusal to ratify test ban treaty at divisive time

    On the International Day Against Nuclear Tests, top United Nations disarmament officials have issued a stark public warning: the fragile decades-long global restraint on nuclear explosive testing is at grave risk of collapse, with rising geopolitical tensions pushing major nuclear-armed states closer to resumption that could ignite a dangerous new global arms race.

    Held at U.N. Headquarters in New York, the commemorative General Assembly meeting came amid a rapidly shifting landscape of global distrust. Last year, the world’s two largest nuclear powers — the United States and Russia — both openly raised the possibility of resuming explosive nuclear tests, sending shockwaves through the international nonproliferation community. Then-U.S. President Donald Trump accused Russia and China of carrying out covert nuclear tests, claims both nations have flatly denied. Earlier this year, Russia took the unprecedented step of revoking its ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), the 1996 global agreement designed to permanently ban all nuclear explosive testing.

    Addressing assembled delegates, U.N. High Representative for Disarmament Affairs Izumi Nakamitsu emphasized the gravity of the current moment. The world is facing “deep geopolitical tension, growing division and diminishing trust,” she noted, creating fertile ground for a rollback of decades of progress on nuclear nonproliferation. “Even contemplating such a course is dangerous,” Nakamitsu warned. “Any resumption would erode decades of restraint, deepen mistrust and risk triggering reciprocal tests and an arms race. This must never become reality.”

    The CTBT, which was adopted by the international community in 1996, carries a strict requirement for entry into force: it must be ratified by 44 specific countries identified as possessing nuclear technology or infrastructure. To date, nine of those countries have failed to complete ratification. The U.S., China, Iran, Egypt and Israel have signed the treaty but never moved to ratify it. India, Pakistan and North Korea have neither signed nor ratified the agreement, leaving the treaty stuck in a decades-long limbo that has prevented it from formally entering into force. Even with that barrier, the CTBT has become the cornerstone of global norms against nuclear testing, with nearly all nations adhering to an informal moratorium for nearly 30 years.

    In a small glimmer of progress, Robert Floyd, executive head of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) that monitors global compliance with the treaty, announced that Tonga’s recent ratification has pushed the total number of states party to the agreement to 179. Still, Floyd stressed that the underlying geopolitical risks have never been higher. Since the first atomic test in 1945, more than 2,000 nuclear explosions have been conducted across the globe, he noted. While that number has dropped sharply to fewer than 12 total tests over the past three decades — a testament to the strength of the global moratorium — the shifting global landscape has erased much of that progress. “The international scene is tense, full of mistrust,” Floyd cautioned, “including about nuclear testing.”

    If major powers walk away from the testing moratorium, Floyd warned, the consequences will be catastrophic. A return to regular testing would pave the way for the development of far more advanced, lethal nuclear arsenals, drastically increase the risk of accidental nuclear use, and leave the world facing “devastation from nuclear ‘bad luck.’”

    The International Day Against Nuclear Tests, established to mark the 1991 closure of the Soviet Union’s Semipalatinsk test site — now located in Kazakhstan, where 456 nuclear tests were conducted over decades — also centers the human cost of nuclear testing that is often overlooked in global diplomatic debates. This year, survivors and affected community leaders shared first-hand accounts of intergenerational harm caused by unregulated nuclear testing.

    Tina Cordova, co-founder of the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium, an advocacy group formed to support communities affected by the 1945 Trinity atomic test in New Mexico, told delegates how five generations of her family have suffered from radiation-related illnesses linked to the first ever nuclear bomb test. “We were never warned before or after of the danger, so we lived our lives off the land as we always did,” Cordova said. Every generation of her family has battled cancer caused by radiation exposure from the test, she added, a fate shared by thousands of affected communities around the world.

    Cordova emphasized that New Mexico survivors are not isolated in their struggle. Nuclear testing programs carried out across the globe have left communities in Guam, French Polynesia’s Tahiti, Kazakhstan, and Indigenous Aboriginal lands in Australia, as well as multiple U.S. states including Idaho, Utah, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado and Montana, suffering chronic health impacts from radiation exposure. Uranium miners and processing workers and their families have also faced disproportionate harm from nuclear testing programs. “We’re the people that became the collateral damage to the development and testing of nuclear devices and were left to deal with the consequences on our own,” Cordova said. “It is why we fight for acknowledgment and assistance.”

  • Ben Gvir bars Jewish anti-Zionist movement from carrying guns

    Ben Gvir bars Jewish anti-Zionist movement from carrying guns

    Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir has moved to expand his controversial loosening of civilian firearm regulations to the Jerusalem-adjacent city of Beit Shemesh, while explicitly barring members of the anti-Zionist ultra-Orthodox group Neturei Karta from accessing gun licenses, Israel Hayom reported Monday.

    The expansion of the minister’s signature gun reform forms part of a broader push that began shortly after he took office, which has already upended decades of tighter Israeli regulations on civilian gun ownership. In October 2023, the Israeli government approved a sweeping set of rule changes that drastically lowered eligibility requirements for ordinary civilians to obtain personal firearms. As of the latest reporting, roughly 300,000 additional Israeli citizens have secured gun licenses since Ben Gvir assumed his post, and residents of more than 200 municipalities across the country now qualify for the program.

    Under the latest expansion, most residents of Beit Shemesh – a city with a large ultra-Orthodox population located just west of Jerusalem – will newly qualify to apply for licenses to carry personal firearms. However, the fringe anti-Zionist Neturei Karta community, which maintains a presence in the city, has been completely locked out of the scheme. Eligibility for the program is mapped by residential address, with Israeli police and Ben Gvir’s office specifically removing all streets where Neturei Karta members reside from the eligible zones.

    “I am proud to continue the weapons reform and expand it to Beit Shemesh as well,” Ben Gvir told Israel Hayom. “The residents of Beit Shemesh, like all citizens of the State of Israel who love the State of Israel, have a basic right to defend themselves and their family members.”

    Data from The Jerusalem Post shows that 126 additional communities have been added to the eligible list for expanded gun access in 2026 alone. Ben Gvir has pledged to continue rolling out the reform across the country, saying he will “expand the weapons reform, add more cities, towns and neighbourhoods to eligibility, and ensure that as many citizens as possible can defend themselves and the State of Israel.” Repeating his long-stated policy mantra, he added: “My policy is clear: weapons in the right hands save lives.”

    Justifying the exclusion of Neturei Karta – a small ultra-Orthodox faction whose name translates from Aramaic to “guardians of the city” and which rejects the existence of a Jewish state before the coming of the messiah, routinely advocating for Palestinian causes and rejecting engagement with Israeli state institutions – Ben Gvir argued the group’s positioning makes them ineligible. “Whoever prides himself with the PLO flag and takes photos with terrorists is an enemy, and therefore the neighbourhoods of the extremists have been excluded from eligibility for weapons,” he said.

    The explosive growth in gun ownership under Ben Gvir’s reforms is well-documented. Before he took leadership of the national security ministry, data from Haaretz shows only around 170,000 Israelis held active firearm licenses. That number has more than doubled in the years since the regulations were loosened. By June of last year, total gun license applications filed since late 2023 had surpassed 400,000, the Times of Israel reported.

    The expansion of civilian gun access has drawn widespread criticism from analysts, human rights groups, and independent researchers, who have flagged a range of severe risks stemming from the policy. Experts have repeatedly warned that the spread of unregulated firearms among Israeli civilians has fueled a sharp rise in violence targeting both Palestinians and women within Israel. Critics also note that the reform systematically excludes Palestinian citizens of Israel, who are barred entirely from obtaining gun licenses under the current framework.

    Data from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) underscores these concerns: in the first half of 2026 alone, OCHA recorded more than 1,000 settler attacks against Palestinians that caused injury or property damage across 230 Palestinian communities. The Israel Democracy Institute, an independent Israeli research center, has concluded that Ben Gvir’s gun reform “primarily serves Israel’s Jewish citizens, at times while creating a threat to and endangering those who are not Jewish.”

    This latest expansion of the scheme follows a similar move Ben Gvir made in March, when he announced that all Jewish residents of Jerusalem – including those residing in occupied East Jerusalem – would qualify for gun licenses, adding 300,000 eligible Israelis in the capital.