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  • Spain’s Sanchez slams Israeli minister for attack on Yamal over Palestinian flag

    Spain’s Sanchez slams Israeli minister for attack on Yamal over Palestinian flag

    A diplomatic and public controversy has erupted over a symbolic gesture by Spanish football star Lamine Yamal, drawing in top political leaders from Spain and Israel and sparking fierce global debate online over the meaning of the Palestinian flag. The 18-year-old Barcelona forward, one of the most talented young players in global football, waved the Palestinian flag from an open-top parade bus last Monday as the club celebrated its second straight La Liga title, with roughly 750,000 supporters lining the streets of Barcelona to mark the achievement. Thousands of fans immediately praised Yamal for the public expression of solidarity, but the gesture drew sharp condemnation from Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz four days later.

    Katz took to the social platform X (formerly Twitter) to launch his rebuke, accusing Yamal of direct incitement against Israel and the Jewish people. In his public post, Katz called on the storied Barcelona club to publicly reject the player’s actions, writing: “I expect a great and respected club like @FCBarcelona to distance itself from these statements and make it unequivocally clear that there is no place for incitement or for support of terrorism.”

    Within hours, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez issued a blistering public response in defense of Yamal, pushing back against Katz’s accusations. Sanchez, whose left-wing government has been openly critical of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza and formally recognized Palestinian statehood in 2024, argued that critics of Yamal’s gesture have abandoned fair judgment. “Those who consider waving the flag of a state to be ‘inciting hatred’ have either lost their judgment or been blinded by their own ignominy,” Sanchez wrote. The prime minister added that Yamal’s simple act reflected widespread public feeling across Spain, noting it was “a reflection of solidarity with Palestine felt by millions of Spaniards” and “another reason to be proud of him.”

    Officials at Barcelona have so far declined to issue an official public statement on the controversy. In comments to reporters earlier this week, Barca manager Hansi Flick acknowledged that he does not typically approve of players mixing political expression into title celebrations, but said he ultimately left the decision to Yamal, noting the player is an adult and fully capable of making his own choices. “I spoke with him. I said if he wants this, it is his decision. He is old enough. He’s 18 years old,” Flick said, adding that his top priority during the parade was celebrating the back-to-back titles with the club’s fanbase.

    The clash of words between the two top political officials quickly went viral across social media, drawing widespread reaction from users around the world. A large share of commenters praised Sanchez for his unflinching public support of Yamal, with many echoing the prime minister’s rejection of the claim that waving a Palestinian flag equals incitement or support for terrorism. “In this era, you are truly rare men of honor. Gaza holds profound gratitude for all that Spain has done on her behalf. We love you with all our hearts,” one user wrote. Palestinian writer Mosab Abu Toha echoed that praise, writing: “All respect to you, to Spain, and to Lamine Yamal! And to Barcelona, who I have been a fan of since the age of 13. Barcelona: more than a club. Lamine Yamal: more than a player. Spain: more than a country.”

    Many other users condemned Katz for equating the display of the Palestinian national flag with support for terrorism, arguing that the accusation itself exposes deep prejudice against the Palestinian people. “It is a shame and a disgrace that an Israeli Minister accuses Lamine Yamal of supporting terrorism and attacking his country just for holding a Palestinian flag,” one user commented. “It only evidences the hatred and lies of this genocidal government of Israel.” Another added: “Lamine Yamal didn’t say anything, he just raised a Palestinian flag, but for Israel’s Defence Minister, he ‘incited hatred.’ This only makes sense if you consider the existence of the Palestinian people intolerable.”

    Yamal, who is widely regarded as one of the best active players in global football, is scheduled to represent the Spanish men’s national team in the upcoming 2026 FIFA World Cup, set to kick off in June across North America.

  • Israeli activists protest at New York Times building after article exposes rape of Palestinians

    Israeli activists protest at New York Times building after article exposes rape of Palestinians

    A fresh wave of controversy erupted this week over a high-profile investigative report published by the *New York Times*, which detailed horrific accounts of sexual violence and rape committed against Palestinian detainees by Israeli personnel in state-run prisons. On Thursday, dozens of pro-Israel activists gathered outside the *New York Times* headquarters in midtown Manhattan to stage a public demonstration against the outlet’s coverage, amplifying long-simmering anger over the piece.

    Video footage of the protest, circulated widely on the social platform X, showed demonstrators carrying banners that demanded an end to antisemitic sentiment and framed anti-Zionist ideology as a direct threat to Jewish lives. Central to the protestors’ demands was the immediate firing of Nicholas Kristof, the veteran *New York Times* journalist who authored the controversial report.

    Kristof’s published investigation featured harrowing, firsthand testimonies from survivors that detailed brutal abuse: Palestinian prisoners described being sexually assaulted with dogs, penetrated with carrots, and sustaining severe rectal tearing from beatings with batons. In response to the report, high-profile Israeli influencers and sitting political figures quickly pushed back, dismissing the testimonies as a modern iteration of the blood libel — a centuries-old antisemitic falsehood that was repeatedly used to justify mass violence against Jewish communities across medieval and early modern Europe.

    After the *New York Times* reaffirmed its commitment to the reporting and stood by Kristof’s work, Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced Thursday that it would pursue legal action against the American newspaper.

    Claims of systemic sexual abuse against Palestinian detainees are not new: multiple independent human rights organizations have documented such abuses for years, and allegations featured in Kristof’s report have already been verified by independent regional outlet Middle East Eye. Past incidents of abuse have exposed deep rifts within Israeli society: multiple Israeli media personalities have publicly trivialized the use of dogs in sexual assaults against Palestinian detainees, and when Israeli prosecutors attempted to bring charges against soldiers accused of rape, widespread public backlash from hardline groups ultimately forced the release of the accused. In a high-profile example of public support for the accused soldiers, thousands of Israelis joined so-called “right to rape” demonstrations in the aftermath of the abuse allegations.

    One of the most striking developments in related investigations came in November, when Israeli authorities arrested a military prosecutor charged with leaking footage that documented the rape of a Palestinian detainee. Separately, Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, the Israeli military’s chief military advocate, staged a fake suicide attempt while reportedly attempting to dispose of a mobile phone that held incriminating evidence connected to the case. The Israeli military subsequently launched a formal criminal investigation into the evidence leak.

    Most recently, in March of this year, the United Nations Independent Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory released its own findings, confirming it had uncovered evidence of widespread, systematic sexual violence perpetrated by Israeli officers against Palestinian people, dating back to the start of military operations in Gaza. The commission’s final report documented dozens of cases of rape and sexual assault against male Palestinian detainees, including accounts of abuse involving electrical probes used to burn anal tissue, and the insertion of objects including fingers, sticks, broom handles and vegetables into detainees’ anuses and rectums.

  • The balikbayan box: The way Filipino Americans have sent love all the way back home

    The balikbayan box: The way Filipino Americans have sent love all the way back home

    For nearly five decades, the balikbayan box has stood as one of the most recognizable cultural and emotional touchstones for Filipino communities across the United States, linking millions of immigrant households to their loved ones back in the homeland through carefully packed shipments of American goods. This enduring tradition traces its origins not to grassroots diaspora culture alone, but to a 1973 state-led tourism initiative launched by then-Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Sr., just one year after he imposed martial law across the country.

  • Created as IDs, dog tags became a crucial link between military families and fallen troops

    Created as IDs, dog tags became a crucial link between military families and fallen troops

    For grieving military families across the United States, a small pair of worn metal rectangles often holds more weight than any memorial. Many survivors clench these items in their palms, as if they can still feel the hand of the service member they lost gripping back. Even battle-hardened fellow troops have broken down in tears reading the engraved names and details etched into their surfaces.

    More than a century after an Army chaplain first advocated to make these identification tokens – universally known as dog tags – standard issue for all American service members, they have evolved far beyond a practical tool for battlefield identification to become one of the most sacred and tangible links between fallen troops and their loved ones left behind.

    Stationed at Dover Air Force Base, the facility where the remains of U.S. service members killed overseas are repatriated to American soil from conflicts ranging from Afghanistan to recent tensions in the Middle East, Air Force Major and Chaplain Benjamin Quintanilla Jr. has witnessed this connection firsthand. “What families are searching for when they hold these tags is a connection to the person they lost,” Quintanilla explained. “That is what makes these dog tags such a sacred symbol for them.”

    From the brutal trenches of the World Wars to the jungles of Vietnam and decades of ongoing conflict across the Middle East, military dog tags have also stood as a quiet, enduring emblem of the sacrifice American service members have made in global engagements. Even so, Pentagon historians note that the origin of the common term “dog tags” for these identification tokens remains unconfirmed to this day.

    The urgent need for standardized battlefield identification first emerged into public consciousness during the American Civil War, when tens of thousands of troops were buried in unmarked graves as “unknown” soldiers. National Park Service data underscores this gap: at Vicksburg National Cemetery alone, 75% of the 17,000 Union troops interred there are recorded as unknown.

    It was not until the end of the Spanish-American War, the 1898 conflict that cemented the United States’ status as a rising global power, that a formal push for standard issue identification tags began. Serving as morgue director in the Philippines following the conflict, Army Chaplain Charles C. Pierce became the first official to formally request that all Army service members be issued individual identification tags.

    By the time the United States entered World War I, mandatory dog tag wear was required for all combat troops. The small metal tokens were officially integrated as a required part of the standard military uniform by World War II, a policy that remains in place today.

    In the modern era, dramatic advances in forensic science and biometric identification have reduced the historical reliance on dog tags for confirming the identity of fallen service members. Even so, the small tokens still hold critical practical value for military chaplains deployed to combat zones: the standard listing of religious affiliation allows chaplains to deliver appropriate, respectful end-of-life care and funeral rites for dying and fallen troops, according to Quintanilla.

    It is the deep symbolic meaning of connection, however, that makes dog tags irreplaceable for military communities. Surviving family members treasure the dog tags their loved ones wore during their service, as well as the honorary tags placed on fallen troops’ caskets during formal dignified transfer ceremonies. So profound is this attachment that many survivors choose to wear their loved one’s tags daily, or even get permanent tattoos replicating the engraved text.

    For currently serving troops, dog tags also act as the simplest, most immediate marker of shared belonging. Quintanilla, who originally joined the Air Force as a dental technician before becoming a chaplain, explained this bond: “I can trust somebody who is wearing the same identification as me. It’s a reminder that I was part of something bigger than myself.”

    This story is part of *American Objects*, a recurring series marking the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States that explores the stories of ordinary objects that shaped the nation’s history.

  • Scientists find climate change is reducing oxygen in rivers worldwide

    Scientists find climate change is reducing oxygen in rivers worldwide

    A groundbreaking new research published in *Science Advances* on Friday has uncovered a quiet, growing threat to global river ecosystems: human-caused global warming is driving a steady decline in dissolved oxygen levels across the world’s waterways, putting fish populations and entire aquatic habitats at severe risk. The research, led by environmental scientist Qi Guan from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Nanjing, combines decades of satellite data and artificial intelligence analysis to deliver one of the most comprehensive assessments of river deoxygenation to date.

    Guan’s team tracked changes in oxygen content in more than 21,000 rivers spanning every continent from 1985 onward. The data revealed an average 2.1% drop in dissolved oxygen across all studied systems over the 38-year study period. While this decline may seem modest at first glance, researchers warn that it represents a cumulative trend that will escalate if current warming rates continue. By the end of the 21st century, the study projects an additional average 4% oxygen loss globally, with some vulnerable river basins facing drops close to 5% that would trigger severe ecological harm.

    The basic science behind the trend is well-established: warmer water inherently holds less dissolved oxygen than colder water, and rising water temperatures drive more oxygen out of rivers and into the atmosphere. Guan’s study quantified the share of global deoxygenation driven by warming: nearly 63% of the observed oxygen loss can be traced directly to rising water temperatures from anthropogenic climate change. Other contributing factors include nutrient pollution from agricultural fertilizers, urban stormwater runoff, altered flow patterns from dam construction, and changes in surface wind dynamics, but warming remains the single largest driver of the trend.

    If current deoxygenation rates persist, the study warns that heavily impacted regions including the eastern United States, India, the Arctic and most of tropical South America could see a 10% total oxygen loss from 1985 levels by 2100, even under moderate carbon emissions scenarios, not the most severe worst-case climate projections. Already, one of India’s most important and heavily polluted water systems, the Ganges River, is losing oxygen more than 20 times faster than the global average, according to the analysis. Tropical systems such as the Amazon Basin are particularly at risk: previous research found the number of days with dead zone conditions in the Amazon has increased by nearly 16 days per decade since 1980.

    When dissolved oxygen drops low enough, it creates hypoxic (low-oxygen) or anoxic (no-oxygen) dead zones, areas where most aquatic life cannot survive. Fish suffocate, biodiversity collapses, and water quality degrades in these areas, which already threaten major water bodies including the Gulf of Mexico, Chesapeake Bay and Lake Erie. Outside experts not involved in the study echoed Guan’s team’s alarm over the emerging trend.

    Karl Flessa, a geoscientist at the University of Arizona, noted that deoxygenation is an incremental process that builds over time to create irreversible harm. “Deoxygenation is a very slow process. If we have a long period, the negative impact will attack the river ecosystems,” Guan said. “The low level of oxygen can cause a series of ecological crises such as biodiversity decline, water quality degradation and maybe some fish will die.” Flessa added that many already stressed rivers are just a small temperature increase away from tipping into dangerous hypoxic conditions, which would eliminate sport and commercial fish populations in popular fishing areas.

    Emily Bernhardt, an ecologist and biogeochemist at Duke University, explained that rising river temperatures amplify the harm caused by existing water pollution. “As rivers warm it becomes easier and easier for the same pollution problems as before to cause more severe, more long lasting or more widespread hypoxia and anoxia,” she said. That means cutting water pollution has become an even more critical priority as the climate warms, she added. Marc Bierkens, a hydrology professor at Utrecht University in the Netherlands who also was not part of the new study, has observed similar trends in his own independent research: he found global river oxygen stress has increased by 13 days per decade, and dead zone occurrences by nearly 3 days per decade, since 1980, trends that will accelerate with continued warming.

    The Associated Press’ climate and environmental reporting for this article was supported by funding from private philanthropic foundations, with the AP retaining full editorial control over all content.

  • Salesman Trump leaves China with very little in his bag

    Salesman Trump leaves China with very little in his bag

    For former US President Donald Trump, few experiences rankle more than being overshadowed – especially during a high-stakes appearance on one of the most prominent stages of his second presidential term: Beijing. While Trump’s inner circle has pushed back against the idea, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang did exactly that during Trump’s long-awaited trip this week, a reality that has not gone unnoticed by global financial markets.

    As analysts predicted, the first visit by a sitting US president to Beijing in eight years delivered abundant ceremonial fanfare, but few tangible diplomatic breakthroughs. Chinese President Xi Jinping extended enough concessions to allow Trump to frame the trip as a success back in Washington, including agreements to explore cooperation to ease trade tensions and, critically, pursue an end to the ongoing war in Iran.

    The real center of attention, however, was Trump’s delegation of more than 30 chief executives, whose combined companies hold a total market capitalization of roughly $20 trillion – a sum equivalent to China’s entire annual gross domestic product. This corporate entourage, assembled to push for greater access to the world’s second-largest economy, ultimately drew more global attention and interest than the summit’s headlining political leader, who has long craved the spotlight.

    No corporate leader captured more attention than Huang, a last-minute addition to the delegation who joined the presidential delegation mid-journey, catching up to Air Force One at a refueling stop in Alaska. Huang’s late inclusion has been widely interpreted as a sign that the Trump administration is going to great lengths to accommodate Beijing, as the chip giant seeks regulatory approval to sell its cutting-edge H200 AI chips to Chinese buyers.

    Amanda Hsiao, an analyst at Eurasia Group, notes that Huang’s last-minute participation makes a potential near-term announcement of Chinese approval for a first batch of H200 chip imports far more likely than previously expected – a shift that runs counter to earlier market projections.

    This development carries major implications for the global AI boom that has pushed global stock markets to record all-time highs. For Trump’s Beijing trip, Huang’s progress could end up being the most durable achievement of the entire visit. A breakthrough on AI chip trade would be a landmark win for Nvidia, which is currently approaching an unprecedented $6 trillion market valuation.

    While the summit produced preliminary talks of Boeing aircraft orders, increased Chinese purchases of US soybeans, and a reciprocal visit by Xi to Washington later this year, the most pressing high-stakes issues – including unfettered access to Chinese rare earth minerals, coordinated AI governance standards, and reopening the Strait of Hormuz to commercial shipping – were deferred to future negotiations.

    As former US Congressman Adam Kinzinger observed on his YouTube channel, Xi received Trump like a polite host entertaining a salesperson, and that particular salesperson appears to be returning to the US with very few concrete deals to show for the trip.

    At this stage, global markets are in a holding pattern. It will be several months before it becomes clear whether the diverse delegation of tech, finance, and defense executives – which also includes Tesla’s Elon Musk, Apple’s Tim Cook, and the leaders of Boeing, Citi, and Goldman Sachs – will deliver tangible results from the meetings.

    One major wild card is that Trump enters these negotiations with far less political and economic leverage than he anticipated at the start of 2026. Much of the outcome hinges on whether Trump’s increasingly unpredictable White House avoids disruptive new policies, such as additional sweeping tariffs on Chinese goods, an escalation of the Middle East conflict, or other sudden policy shifts that could roil global markets.

    During his meeting with the US corporate delegation, Xi affirmed that China would continue opening its domestic economy to foreign investment. Trump described his bilateral talks with Xi as “great” and struck a broadly optimistic tone in public remarks, and the warm, welcoming visual of the summit has already provided a modest boost to global investor sentiment.

    Beneath the positive optics, however, significant uncertainty remains. Xi issued a stark warning that mismanagement of the Taiwan question could lead to direct military confrontation, a statement that served as a clear wake-up call for geopolitical risk analysts. The moment also put Trump in an awkward position: standing alongside Xi, he declined to even respond to reporters’ questions about the Taiwan issue.

    Economists are also grappling with the implications of Xi’s reference to the “Thucydides trap,” the theoretical risk that a rising power will inevitably go to war with an established ruling power, framing the dynamic between the world’s two largest economies, which together account for $53 trillion in annual GDP. Even as Xi acknowledged this historic risk, he called for building a “constructive, strategic and stable relationship” between the two global powers.

    To be sure, the simple fact that the leaders of the US and China met face-to-face and held constructive dialogue this week is an unambiguous positive for the global economy. That milestone alone counts as a meaningful economic win after years of escalating tensions.

    Yet what has been lost in much of the post-summit coverage is Trump’s defining policy goal across both of his presidential terms: forcing China into a sweeping “grand bargain” trade deal that would pressure Beijing to make deep structural economic concessions. After days of photo opportunities and diplomatic pleasantries in Beijing, that core goal appears more elusive than ever.

    Carlos Casanova, an economist at Union Bancaire Privee, notes that a major diplomatic breakthrough remains improbable in the medium term. “More plausible are modest gestures, including calibrated moves toward a tariff truce in select categories and assurances on critical-materials access,” he explained.

    As US-China working-level talks resume in the coming weeks, rare earths are a top candidate for a small-scale agreement. Chinese rare earth exports surged 197% year-over-year in April, up from just 3.3% growth in March, a trend that highlights both Washington’s dependence on Chinese supplies and Beijing’s gesture of goodwill ahead of the summit.

    Casanova adds that a “mutual understanding to maintain a stable supply in exchange for restraint on punitive measures would be a logical, market-friendly outcome, especially given vast investments in artificial intelligence that have fueled the stellar performance of equity markets in the United States.”

    Still, just as with unresolved tensions around Iran and the Strait of Hormuz, global markets cannot ignore the underlying risks that remain after the 2025 trade escalation. China retains the ability to at any time restrict exports of rare earth minerals, which are critical inputs for electric vehicles, LED displays, lithium-ion batteries, military radar systems, semiconductors, and smartphones.

    Beijing could also choose to deepen its strategic partnership with Iran, including ramping up crude oil purchases from Tehran, providing military equipment assistance, and expanding intelligence sharing. It could also cancel Boeing’s planned 200-plane order, or shift agricultural purchases back to Brazilian soybean suppliers.

    As Trump returns to a White House grappling with internal disarray, his core MAGA base is unlikely to be impressed by the trip’s outcomes. Since taking office for his first term in 2017, Trump has repeatedly promised to force China into a subordinate trade position and demonstrate US dominance. The results so far tell a different story: China’s GDP has grown by $8 trillion since 2017, even amid years of escalating US tariffs and trade restrictions.

    Despite US tariffs reaching as high as 145% on Chinese goods in 2025, China closed the year with a record $1.2 trillion annual trade surplus.

    For Trump, the political calculus is clear: only a high-profile, transformative trade victory over China can justify the last 15 months of tariff volatility, elevated inflation, and economic disruption to his most loyal supporters. The current trip delivered nothing close to that.

    The Iran war that Trump launched alongside Israel in late February further complicated his negotiating position in Beijing. The resulting surge in global oil prices, combined with ongoing inflation from tariffs, has left Trump’s national approval ratings at historic lows.

    Now, he returns to Washington with little more than an agreement to continue talking about a potential framework for a future deal. In the aftermath, the Trump administration is likely to face critical headlines highlighting the gap between Trump’s bold pre-trip rhetoric and the minimal concrete progress achieved in Beijing.

    Additionally, with Republicans facing midterm Congressional elections this November, the party is vulnerable to attacks that it has been too soft on China, given the deference the Trump administration showed to Xi’s inner circle during the summit. Trump also risks being boxed in by the diplomatic agreement he reached with Beijing.

    Bill Bishop, a veteran China analyst who publishes the Sinocism newsletter, points out that Xi’s inner circle “wants a period of strategic detente and this concept could realize that on terms favorable to them for the rest of Trump’s second term.”

    Bishop adds that “any future US moves to address PRC industrial overcapacity, tighten technology controls, etc. could then be cast by Beijing as violations of the new ‘constructive China-US relationship of strategic stability’ to which the two leaders personally agreed.”

    While China faces significant domestic headwinds, including a persistent property sector crisis, Xi has leveraged the Trump era to position China as a more stable global economic partner open for foreign business. It will take time to determine whether this week’s Beijing summit marks another soft power victory for Xi’s economic governance model.

    What is clear is that Xi will need to do more to convince American households, already grappling with persistent inflation, that China has not undercut US economic interests at home.

  • Takeaways from Trump’s trip to China: Taiwan, a new framework for relationship and flattery for Xi

    Takeaways from Trump’s trip to China: Taiwan, a new framework for relationship and flattery for Xi

    After three days of uncharacteristic public restraint during his official visit to China, former U.S. President Donald Trump broke his silence on the most sensitive topic of the trip only after departing Beijing for Washington. What was expected to center heavily on trade and the U.S.-Israel conflict in Iran instead became dominated by urgent discussion of Taiwan, the flashpoint that continues to shape the core of U.S.-China bilateral relations.

    Chinese President Xi Jinping opened the high-stakes summit with a clear, firm warning: any misstep by Washington in its approach to the self-governing island, which Beijing claims as an inalienable part of its territory, could lead to open confrontation between the two global powers. While Trump made no public response to the warning during his time on Chinese soil, he opened up about the conversation to reporters aboard Air Force One once en route home, revealing that Xi’s strong opposition has pushed him to reconsider a previously planned major U.S. arms sale to Taipei.

    ### Taiwan Policy: Strategic Ambiguity Remains, Arms Sale Decision On Hold

    Heading into the trip, Trump had already signaled growing ambivalence toward U.S. support for Taiwan during his second term, sparking widespread speculation that he might scale back long-standing American backing for the island democracy. Secretary of State Marco Rubio had publicly reaffirmed that there was no shift in Washington’s approach, but observers warned that Trump, famous for unscripted off-the-cuff remarks, could trigger unintended major consequences with a single comment. In the end, he remained publicly silent on the issue while in Beijing, even after Xi framed it as the most critical issue in bilateral ties.

    The $11 billion weapons package for Taiwan was authorized by Trump’s Republican administration back in December, but it has not yet been implemented. A separate $14 billion arms sale was approved by Congress in January, and it cannot move forward until Trump formally submits it for congressional review. When asked if he would move ahead with the sale, Trump told reporters: “President Xi and I talked a lot about Taiwan. He does not want to see a fight for independence because that would be a very strong confrontation. I heard him out, but I didn’t make a comment.”

    Trump struggled to recall the name of Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te during the press exchange, and emphasized that “The last thing we need right now is a war that’s 9,500 miles away.” When pressed on whether the U.S. would intervene militarily if China attacked Taiwan, he declined to give a direct answer — a position that aligns with decades of U.S. “strategic ambiguity” policy, which commits Washington to ensuring Taiwan has the means to defend itself but does not explicitly state what military action the U.S. would take if Beijing launches an attack.

    ### Iran Conflict: Beijing Offers Potential Mediation

    The conflict in Iran, initially expected to dominate the summit agenda, was discussed in substantive terms between the two leaders. The war has already driven a sharp spike in global oil prices, and a prolonged conflict threatens to push the global economy into recession. Trump told reporters that Xi agreed a nuclear-armed Iran would pose a dangerous threat to global security, and that both sides agreed the Strait of Hormuz — a critical global oil chokepoint — must be reopened. Trump added that Xi even offered to help broker a diplomatic end to the conflict.

    Chinese officials have not yet confirmed that mediation offer publicly. Beijing’s public stance has been that any resolution must “take into account the concerns of all parties on the Iran nuclear issue.” Trump has argued that China should play a larger role in ending the conflict, given its heavy dependence on energy imports from the Middle East. If Beijing does step up its engagement, it could mark a major breakthrough for U.S. efforts to reach a sustainable resolution to the war.

    ### A New Framework for Bilateral Ties

    Following the summit, Chinese authorities announced that the two leaders had agreed on a new vision for bilateral ties: a “constructive China-U.S. relationship of strategic stability.” According to the Chinese Foreign Ministry, this framework will guide relations for the remainder of Trump’s current term, focusing on expanding areas of cooperation, setting boundaries for competition, and managing differences through dialogue.

    Helena Legarda, a China analyst at the Berlin-based Mercator Institute for China Studies, described the framework as an effort “to keep the relationship on an even keel” after years of rising tensions. George Chen, a partner at global consultancy The Asia Group, noted that this framing represents a shift from the previous Democratic administration of Joe Biden, which framed the U.S.-China relationship primarily as one of strategic competition.

    ### Trade Deals: Big Promises, Few Concrete Details

    Trump traveled to Beijing accompanied by a delegation of top U.S. business leaders, including Boeing CEO, Nvidia chief Jensen Huang, and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. The president announced that major new trade agreements had been reached, including a pending deal for China to purchase 200 Boeing aircraft. But he left Beijing without any formal, signed announcement of the deal. Earlier proposals for large Chinese purchases of U.S. soybeans and beef also remain pending.

    Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump added that China could eventually purchase up to 750 Boeing aircraft if the initial order proceeds smoothly, with 450 General Electric engines included in any expanded deal. Like all large bilateral accords, the final details will determine the actual impact of any agreements. During Trump’s first term, he oversaw a high-profile signing ceremony in Beijing for nearly $250 billion in deals, but not all of the pledges made at that time were ultimately fulfilled.

    ### Diplomatic Tone: Trump’s Unreciprocated Praise for Xi

    From the start of his visit, Trump offered consistent, effusive praise for Xi Jinping, with no matching level of public flattery in return from the Chinese leader. Trump called Xi a “great leader,” said the two countries would share a “fantastic future together,” and described it as an “honor” to be Xi’s friend, calling the Chinese leader “warm.”

    Xi is not known for public effusiveness, and Trump himself acknowledged in a pre-trip Fox News interview that Xi is “all business.” In his public remarks, Xi called Trump’s visit “landmark” and said it had deepened mutual trust, and offered a more subtle gesture of goodwill: he promised to send rose seeds to the White House, matching the variety grown in the garden of his Beijing residence where the two leaders held talks over tea. Xi noted that hosting Trump at the residence was a gesture to reciprocate the hospitality Trump extended when Xi visited his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida back in 2017.

    Reporting for this article was contributed by Leung in Hong Kong, Mistreanu and Wu in Bangkok, and Superville in Washington.

  • Palestinian ambassador Husam Zomlot to run for Fatah’s central committee

    Palestinian ambassador Husam Zomlot to run for Fatah’s central committee

    On the 78th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba, a landmark date carrying deep collective meaning for displaced Palestinians globally, Husam Zomlot — the long-serving Palestinian ambassador to the United Kingdom — has officially declared his candidacy for a seat on the Central Committee of Fatah, the foundational and most influential Palestinian political movement.

    Zomlot, a Palestinian refugee who was born and raised in the Gaza Strip, shared the formal announcement of his candidacy via his personal Instagram account on May 15, 2026. The date of his declaration was intentionally chosen to align with the annual commemoration of the Nakba, the 1948 event that saw more than 750,000 Palestinians forcibly displaced from their historic homeland during the establishment of the State of Israel, a catastrophe that remains the core trauma of the Palestinian national experience.

    Throughout the ongoing Israeli military campaign in Gaza that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians and triggered a massive humanitarian crisis, Zomlot has emerged as one of the most visible and articulate Palestinian voices in Western media, consistently advocating for the Palestinian perspective to global audiences. His candidacy has already drawn high-profile backing, including an endorsement from Suha Arafat, the widow of Yasser Arafat — the iconic Palestinian leader who founded Fatah back in 1959. Today, Fatah remains the dominant political force governing the occupied West Bank through the Palestinian Authority (PA), which was established under the 1993 Oslo Accords.

    Muhammad Shehada, a commentator and visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, publicly lauded Zomlot’s announcement on the social platform X, formerly Twitter. “Husam has become one of the most prominent Palestinian voices in the West, at the forefront of dismantling decades of lies & myths, leading marches on the streets of London, & excelling at advocacy & strategic communications,” Shehada wrote. “If he succeeds, it’d inject new blood in Fatah & mark a new generation entering the top leadership of Palestinian politics.”

    Fatah has held a central role in Palestinian politics for more than six decades, but the movement’s standing among the Palestinian public has declined sharply in recent years. Critics have pointed to the PA’s security crackdowns on Palestinian militant organizing in the West Bank, as well as its perceived failure to take meaningful action to stop frequent Israeli military incursions and settler attacks on Palestinian communities in the occupied territory. Even amid this dip in popularity, Fatah still retains broad support across Palestinian society, with imprisoned Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti consistently ranked as the most popular political figure among all Palestinians.

    This report was originally published by Middle East Eye, a media outlet that produces independent, on-the-ground coverage of the Middle East and North Africa region.

  • Inside Israel’s Flag March and the erasure of Palestinians in Jerusalem

    Inside Israel’s Flag March and the erasure of Palestinians in Jerusalem

    By midday on Jerusalem Day 2026, the narrow, usually bustling lanes of Jerusalem’s Old City Muslim Quarter had fallen eerily silent. Most storefronts were shuttered with metal security shutters pulled tight, and Palestinian residents who once filled the area had locked themselves indoors or fled entirely.

    Fadi, a 48-year-old local shop owner, summed up the harsh reality facing local traders as he dragged his outdoor display table inside and secured his shop for the day. “If I don’t want to get attacked, I have to close,” he explained.

    Under ordinary conditions, Thursdays draw throngs of visitors and locals to the Old City’s historic markets, turning the quarter into a vibrant hub of commerce and community. This year, however, the annual ultra-nationalist Flag March, a provocative event marking Israel’s capture of East Jerusalem in the 1967 Six-Day War, forced local Palestinians to cede their own neighborhood to the procession. Organizers intentionally route the march directly through the Muslim Quarter as a deliberate show of dominance, turning the area into a flashpoint for sectarian violence year after year.

    Even hours before the official event was set to kick off, far-right Israeli settlers, identifiable by their traditional knitted kippahs and long side curls (peyot), began roaming the quarter. A group of teenage settlers passing a still-open Palestinian shop launched into a torrent of anti-Palestinian slurs, and the confrontation quickly escalated into a physical assault on two shop owners. The shopkeepers defended themselves with plastic chairs while activists from the grassroots group Protective Presence stepped in to de-escalate the clash. The entire confrontation lasted less than 30 seconds, but it set the tone for the rest of the day: the young attackers faced no immediate intervention or arrest, offering an early preview of the impunity that would define the day’s violence.

    Despite a heavy visible deployment of armed Israeli police across the Old City, dozens of Palestinian business owners later reported their storefronts had been vandalized or ransacked by march participants. This pattern of violence repeats annually, tied directly to Israel’s national celebration of its 1967 occupation of East Jerusalem and the formal declaration of Jerusalem as Israel’s unified capital. In recent years, the march has been increasingly dominated by far-right political factions, growing more aggressive and volatile as it is weaponized to assert unchecked Israeli control over the city’s majority-Palestinian resident population.

    Human rights and community activists have repeatedly documented that Israeli security forces rarely intervene to stop attacks on Palestinians or protect their property during the march, even when offenders are young and easily contained. To fill this gap left by intentional state neglect, local and international activist groups have organized volunteer protective presence teams to monitor the event and support Palestinian residents.

    “Every year there is bullying, verbal hate and physical violence,” explained Yonatan Shargian, an organizer with the grassroots movement Standing Together. He noted that while the number of volunteers has grown in lockstep with rising violence, their work serves a broader purpose beyond de-escalation: sending a message that “this place belongs to all of us, and everyone deserves to feel safe and protected”.

    Further tension ignited near the holy site of Al-Aqsa Mosque, when far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir led a group of hundreds of settlers into the mosque compound. The politician waved an Israeli flag and declared “The Temple Mount is in our hands”, echoing the extremist movement’s demand for full Israeli sovereignty over the site, which is the third-holiest in Islam. Joining Ben Gvir was lawmaker Yitzhak Kroizer, who later posted on Facebook calling for the full removal of Al-Aqsa Mosque and the construction of a Third Jewish Temple in its place.

    As the afternoon wore on, hundreds of ultra-nationalist marchers gathered at Damascus Gate, the main entry point to the Muslim Quarter and Al-Aqsa Compound. Groups of teenage boys and adult men took turns chanting virulent hate speech, including calls for “Death to Arabs” and overtly racist, misogynistic slurs targeting Palestinian people. While activist volunteers stayed close to escort the few Palestinians who remained in the area to their homes, both volunteers and on-site journalists soon became the primary targets of aggression.

    At one point, a crowd of young ultra-nationalists surrounded a working journalist, shoved him against a wall, threw his phone to the ground, and spat in his face. As they had after every attack throughout the day, Israeli police intervened only to break up the confrontation after the violence was already over, allowing the attackers to break into celebratory victory chants. In this instance, the crowd jeered “May your village burn” as they dispersed.

    Shortly after the incident, activists and journalists were forced out of the procession route to clear the way for the main Flag March. What began as scattered small groups swelled into a massive sea of participants, moving through Damascus Gate in successive waves toward the Western Wall. The entire area was flooded with Israeli national flags, alongside dozens of the so-called Third Temple flags: a widely recognized symbol of the movement to demolish Al-Aqsa Mosque and build a Jewish temple on the site.

    Provocative signage and accessories dotted the crowd, including a large banner reading, “It’s not Al-Aqsa, it’s the Temple Mount. You want a massacre? You’ll get the Nakba,” referencing the 1948 displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians during the founding of Israel. Many marchers also wore stickers featuring Ben Gvir’s image alongside a noose, a reference to the recently passed death penalty bill for Palestinian political prisoners that the minister championed in the Israeli Knesset.

    Before entering the Old City, each group of marchers paused to sing nationalist and religious hymns, openly celebrating their display of control over the Palestinian neighborhood. While the day was marked by widespread violence, many long-time activist observers noted that 2026’s event felt comparatively less chaotic than previous years—a shift they attributed not to less extremism, but to the fact that most Palestinians had already been forced out of the area, leaving far fewer targets for abuse.

    For a national holiday that celebrates the unification of Jerusalem under Israeli control, the mass absence of Palestinian residents from their own neighborhood offered the clearest possible reflection of what that “unification” actually entails: the quiet, systematic erasure of the Palestinian community that has lived in the city for generations.

  • Trump says Xi is considering a detained pastor’s case, but freeing activist Jimmy Lai is ‘tough’

    Trump says Xi is considering a detained pastor’s case, but freeing activist Jimmy Lai is ‘tough’

    During a media briefing aboard Air Force One while returning from his official visit to China in November 2017, then-U.S. President Donald Trump disclosed that he had raised the cases of two high-profile detained individuals — underground church pastor Ezra Jin Mingri and imprisoned Hong Kong pro-democracy activist Jimmy Lai — with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Trump told reporters that Xi committed to giving serious consideration to Jin’s case, but characterized Jimmy Lai’s legal situation as a far more complex issue that would be difficult to resolve.

    Jin, the leader of Beijing’s Zion Church, one of China’s largest unregistered house churches that operates outside of state-sanctioned religious frameworks, was taken into custody in October 2017. His detention was widely interpreted by international observers as part of a broader, escalating crackdown on unapproved religious practice across the country. “He said he’s gonna strongly consider the pastor,” Trump confirmed to reporters traveling with him.

    In contrast to the tentative openness around Jin’s case, Trump noted that Xi described Jimmy Lai’s situation as a particularly “tough one.” Lai, a 78-year-old former media tycoon and founder of the now-shuttered pro-democracy outlet Apple Daily, has remained a vocal critic of the Chinese Communist Party and Beijing’s policies toward Hong Kong for decades. He was ultimately convicted in February 2021 on charges of conspiracy to collude with foreign forces and publication of seditious material under the sweeping 2020 National Security Law imposed by Beijing on Hong Kong, and sentenced to 20 years in prison. His prosecution and the shutdown of his newspaper came in the wake of large-scale anti-government protests that roiled Hong Kong in 2019, and the crackdown that followed has effectively silenced most organized dissent in the former British colony.

    Despite the very different outlooks Trump outlined for the two men, the families of both Jin and Lai have publicly expressed gratitude to the Trump administration for bringing their cases to the highest levels of diplomatic discussion. Grace Jin Drexel, Jin’s daughter, called the development nothing short of miraculous in a written statement to the Associated Press. “We could not be more grateful to President Trump and his skillful administration for pressing the case!” she wrote, adding that the family and supporters were “overjoyed” by the news.

    Claire Lai, Jimmy Lai’s daughter, also thanked Trump for his administration’s commitment to advocating for her father’s release even amid Trump’s cautious assessment of the case. “He has earned his reputation as liberating the unjustly detained and I am confident he and his administration will be the ones to free my father,” she said in a message to the AP. She framed potential release of her father as a critical opportunity for Xi to demonstrate good will to the international community, calling it the only just and honorable course of action.

    Human rights activists have long noted that under Xi Jinping’s leadership, Beijing has grown increasingly unwilling to release high-profile detainees detained over dissent or human rights-related activities. The most prominent recent example came in 2017, when Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo died of liver cancer in a Chinese hospital despite repeated calls from Western governments to allow him to travel abroad for life-saving treatment.

    International observers widely view Jimmy Lai’s case as a symbolic marker of the erosion of civil liberties in Hong Kong, a outcome that runs counter to the autonomy and protections Beijing promised the territory under the 1997 handover agreement from British rule. Foreign governments including the United States and United Kingdom have repeatedly raised concerns about Lai’s detention and prosecution, though the Hong Kong government has repeatedly maintained that his conviction had no connection to press freedom, framing it as a standard criminal matter. Just days before Trump’s comments, China’s foreign ministry reaffirmed its position that Lai was a key organizer of anti-China activities intended to destabilize Hong Kong, and that all affairs related to Hong Kong are strictly China’s internal business, off-limits to foreign interference.

    This report was compiled from contributions from Tang reporting out of Washington, with additional reporting from AP journalist Emily Wang in Washington.