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  • US sanctions International Criminal Court president, trial lawyer in bid to dismantle body

    US sanctions International Criminal Court president, trial lawyer in bid to dismantle body

    In a sharp escalation of its campaign to disable the International Criminal Court (ICC) over ongoing war crime investigations targeting Israeli and U.S. officials, the second Trump administration announced Tuesday that it has imposed new sanctions on two top ICC personnel: the court’s Japanese president Tomoko Akane and Senegalese senior trial lawyer Abdoulaye Seye.

    This latest action is part of a broader, long-stated White House goal to systematically dismantle the ICC, which launched probes into alleged war crimes committed by both Israeli and American personnel in conflict zones. Neither the U.S. nor Israel are signatories to the 2002 Rome Statute, the treaty that established the international tribunal. Despite the two countries’ non-membership, 125 nations around the world participate in the court, many of which have been affected by unregulated military operations carried out by U.S. and Israeli forces.

    In an official statement announcing the new sanctions, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio laid out the administration’s uncompromising stance, framing the ICC as a corrupted institution deeply compromised by political bias. “The Trump Administration has been clear: the ICC is a corrupt and fatally politicized supranational court that has maliciously abused its authority and exceeded its mandate. We will not tolerate its assault on state sovereignty,” Rubio said.

    Rubio added that Akane and Seye were targeted because they “have directly engaged in efforts by the ICC to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute officials whose government has not consented to ICC jurisdiction… This sets a dangerous precedent for all nations.” Under the terms of the sanctions, all assets held by the two officials within U.S. jurisdiction are frozen, they are barred from entering the U.S., and they are cut off from the global banking system, which relies heavily on U.S. financial infrastructure.

    This round of sanctions is the second major expansion of punitive measures against the ICC since Trump returned to office in January 2025. Just days after his inauguration, the president signed an executive order authorizing sweeping sanctions against the court over its investigations into senior Israeli officials. At that time, then-ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan, a British barrister, was the highest-profile individual targeted. Khan was subsequently removed from his post via a vote of ICC member states, following allegations of sexual misconduct that he has repeatedly denied.

    The first round of sanctions also targeted three ICC judges, two of Khan’s deputy prosecutors, the United Nations special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories, and three leading Palestinian human rights organizations. The three sanctioned judges have since launched a legal challenge against the Trump administration over the measures.

    The executive order targeting the ICC came immediately after a visit to the White House by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who faces an ICC arrest warrant over allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during Israel’s military campaign in Gaza that began in October 2023. In November 2024, the court issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu, his then-defense minister Yoav Gallant, and three senior Hamas leaders—all three of the Hamas leaders have since been killed by Israeli forces.

    Under the terms of the original executive order, any non-U.S. individual or their family members who provide assistance to ICC probes targeting U.S. citizens or U.S. allies are eligible for sanctions. Rubio reiterated Tuesday that the administration is prepared to take further action to achieve its end goal. “The Trump Administration stands ready to take additional measures, if necessary, to systematically dismantle the ICC until it is incapable of threatening American sovereignty,” he said.

    The administration’s expanding sanctions campaign has already sparked multiple legal challenges from U.S. advocacy and rights groups. Last week, four prominent U.S.-based human rights organizations filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, arguing that the sanctions regime is blatantly unlawful under U.S. law. The groups—American Friends Service Committee, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Human Rights Watch, and the Open Society Institute—argue the sanctions force them to cut back on core human rights and legal work, violating their First and Fifth Amendment rights under the U.S. Constitution, as well as the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Any individual or group that maintains even loose ties to ICC investigations or personnel now faces the risk of legal retaliation, the groups noted.

    This legal challenge follows a similar lawsuit filed in July by Palestinian rights advocates in a New York federal court, which asks the court to issue an injunction blocking the administration from enforcing sanctions against groups and individuals that cooperate with the ICC. The plaintiffs in that case include Democracy for the Arab World Now, an organization founded by the late journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was assassinated by Saudi agents in 2018, and the Taxpayer Alliance Against Genocide. The groups said they moved forward with legal action after Rubio wrote an opinion piece confirming the administration’s intent to dismantle the ICC “brick by brick.”

    The escalating confrontation between the U.S. and the ICC comes alongside new explosive allegations from a former top ICC official about improper Israeli pressure to halt the Palestine war crimes probe. Earlier this year, former ICC chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda, who held the role from 2012 to 2021, revealed that the former head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency repeatedly pressured her to drop the investigation into alleged war crimes in the occupied Palestinian territories. In an interview with Al Jazeera published Sunday, Bensouda added that after she opened a preliminary examination into the situation in Palestine in 2015, unidentified men visited her private home in The Hague.

    “They came directly to my house,” Bensouda told the outlet. “I got the message that they’re sending.” The men left her an envelope containing $500, claiming it was a gift from someone she had previously assisted. Bensouda said she later concluded the visit was an intentional intimidation tactic, designed to make clear that those opposed to the investigation knew where she lived.

  • Erin Patterson appeals 3 murder convictions in Australia over death cap mushroom lunch

    Erin Patterson appeals 3 murder convictions in Australia over death cap mushroom lunch

    One of Australia’s most high-profile murder cases has entered a new phase, as convicted triple-killer Erin Patterson has formally appealed her convictions over the 2023 death cap mushroom poisoning that killed three members of her estranged husband’s family.

    The appeal hearing kicked off Wednesday at the Victoria state Court of Appeal, where three judges will examine arguments over two days against both Patterson’s convictions and her original sentence. Patterson, 51, was found guilty last September on three counts of murder and one count of attempted murder stemming from a lunch she hosted at her rural Leongatha home in July 2023. She prepared beef Wellington pastries laced with toxic death cap mushrooms for the gathering, which claimed the lives of Don Patterson, Gail Patterson—parents of her estranged husband Simon—and Gail’s sister Heather Wilkinson. Heather’s husband, Ian Wilkinson, survived after weeks of intensive hospital care.

    Simon Patterson was invited to the fatal meal but ultimately did not attend. In a twist that emerged after the original trial, pretrial testimony from Simon, only made public post-conviction, revealed he suspected his estranged wife had deliberately poisoned him on multiple occasions before the 2023 lunch. Initially, Patterson was charged with three counts of attempted murder for alleged incidents between November 2021 and September 2022 targeting Simon. She denied all of these accusations, and prosecutors ultimately dropped all charges related to these claims before the main trial got underway in April 2025. Investigators never found trace of any poison in Patterson’s home or possessions beyond the toxic mushrooms recovered from the victims.

    Following her 2024 conviction, Patterson was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum non-parole period of 33 years. Prosecutors have launched a cross-appeal, arguing that this original sentence was overly lenient, and are pushing for the court to impose a life sentence with no possibility of parole.

    Patterson did not appear in the Melbourne courtroom for the first day of the appeal hearing, and instead watched proceedings via video link from her prison cell. Her legal team has laid out multiple legal grounds to challenge her convictions, starting with a major procedural error during the original trial: jury members were sequestered in the same hotel as a key police witness and the prosecution’s legal team. Defense barrister Richard Edney emphasized to the court that this mistake amounted to a very serious breach of sequestration rules designed to protect a defendant’s right to a fair trial.

    A second key argument from the defense centers on contested cellphone evidence used to connect Patterson to areas where death cap mushrooms had been spotted. Prosecutors presented testimony from a telecommunications expert that showed Patterson’s phone connected to cell towers near the regional towns of Loch and Outtrim, where social media posts had noted local sightings of the toxic fungi. Defense barrister Veronika Drago told the court there is no actual evidence that Patterson ever saw those online posts, and the tower connection evidence only proved her phone may have been in the area—not that she was actively foraging for poison mushrooms. Drago argued that this circumstantial evidence was inherently unfair and dangerous to the defense’s case, creating undue bias against Patterson in the eyes of the jury.

    Two additional grounds for appeal contend that lead prosecutor Nanette Rogers’ five-day cross-examination of Patterson was unnecessarily unfair and oppressive, and that original trial judge Christopher Bale unfairly prejudiced the case against Patterson when he allowed testimony from Patterson’s Facebook friends to be entered as evidence.

    If the appeal court finds merit in Patterson’s arguments, judges have the power to overturn her convictions and order a new trial. The two-day hearing is expected to conclude Thursday, with the judges reserving their decision for a later date.

  • Husband and mother-in-law charged over Indian bride’s death

    Husband and mother-in-law charged over Indian bride’s death

    Five months after her wedding, 33-year-old Indian model and actor Twisha Sharma was found dead at her matrimonial home in Bhopal, central India, on May 12, triggering a months-long nationwide media firestorm that has gripped public attention. Now, India’s top federal investigation agency, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), has formally filed criminal charges against Twisha’s husband, Samarth Singh, a practicing lawyer, and her mother-in-law, Giribala Singh, a retired high court judge, on counts of abetment to suicide and domestic cruelty.

    The high-profile nature of the case has sparked extraordinary public interest across India, because the accused include a former member of the country’s judicial establishment — an institution that citizens widely expect to uphold standards of ethical conduct and public probity. Competing claims from the two sides over whether Twisha’s death was murder or suicide have kept the case on front pages and news cycles since May.

    Twisha, who won the Miss Pune beauty pageant in 2012, built a career spanning brand advertising, a starring role in a Telugu-language feature film, and later corporate marketing work. She first met Samarth Singh on a popular dating app in February 2025, and the pair tied the knot five months later that December, according to details included in the CBI’s 600-page chargesheet submitted to a local court last week.

    Twisha’s birth family has alleged that the couple faced escalating abuse from Samarth and Giribala almost immediately after marriage, driven by unmet dowry demands. Tensions boiled over in April, when Twisha discovered she was pregnant. Her family claims the in-laws publicly questioned Twisha’s character, falsely alleged the pregnancy was the result of an extramarital affair, and coerced her into undergoing an abortion in the first week of May. Just one week later, Twisha was dead.

    In its formal charges, the CBI has backed the core account of persistent abuse, writing that “due to continuous mental cruelty at the hands of both the accused, she was left with no option but to end her life.” The investigation document details that Samarth repeatedly used demeaning and derogatory language toward Twisha, while Giribala regularly encouraged her son to continue the emotional abuse. Both accused have remained in police custody since shortly after Twisha’s death: Samarth surrendered after a brief period when he could not be located, and Giribala was arrested within days of the death.

    The legal team for the Singh family has rejected all charges, arguing that investigators have uncovered no evidence to support the original claims of dowry harassment and murder. “The investigation has found no evidence of the earlier allegations of dowry harassment and murder… We have been saying this from the beginning but the media never listened to us,” defense lawyer Inosh George Carlo told the BBC. Giribala Singh has maintained that Twisha struggled with untreated mental health issues and died by suicide, adding that the pregnancy abortion was Twisha’s own personal choice, not a forced procedure.

    Weeks after Twisha’s death, Giribala sparked widespread public outrage when she held an unsolicited press conference and gave multiple media interviews where she publicly discussed her late daughter-in-law’s mental state and made derogatory comments about her personal character. When pressed to explain a dismissive reference to Twisha as “liberal,” the retired judge clarified the term to mean promiscuous, a claim that Twisha’s father called a deliberate, posthumous smear campaign against his daughter.

    Ankur Pandey, the lawyer representing Twisha’s birth family, noted that the abetment to suicide charges formalized in the CBI chargesheet mean the agency has provisionally classified Twisha’s death as a suicide driven by abuse. The CBI has also requested the court’s approval to continue ongoing investigation, leaving open the possibility that additional suspects could be named or new charges added in a supplementary filing if further evidence comes to light.

  • Iranian-American comedian Max Amini sparks backlash over ‘species’ remarks on Iranian people

    Iranian-American comedian Max Amini sparks backlash over ‘species’ remarks on Iranian people

    A controversial public appearance on Bill Maher’s popular podcast *Club Random* has landed Iranian-American comedian Max Amini at the center of a heated online firestorm, after his dehumanizing comments about groups fighting the United States and Israel sparked widespread outrage across social media platforms.

    In the episode, which was released to the public on August 17, Amini attempted to draw a sharp line between Iran’s ruling government and the country’s general population, claiming that ordinary Iranian citizens bear no connection to the leadership’s policies. “We are not our government. Those are not our people… because the people that are fighting today against the US and Israel are not the Iranians. They are this species that have no sense of morals,” Amini stated during the conversation. He also echoed former U.S. President Donald Trump’s framing of the ongoing conflict, asserting that Washington’s military campaign targets only Iran’s governing establishment, not its civilian population.

    Clips of Amini’s remarks spread virally across major social media platforms within hours of the episode’s release, drawing angry pushback from Iranian users and other commentators across the globe. Many critics accused the comedian of dehumanizing Iranians and implicitly legitimizing U.S. and Israeli military strikes that have killed thousands of civilians in Iran. Online critics have labeled Amini a “sellout” to Western interests, with many calling for widespread boycotts of his work. Some commentators also pointed out that Amini has barely maintained proficiency in Farsi, the official language of Iran, and has not visited the country for decades, questioning his credibility to speak on behalf of Iranian people.

    The controversy also renewed scrutiny of the podcast host, Bill Maher, who has a long track record of making inflammatory and controversial statements about Islam and Muslim communities. Maher has repeatedly argued that core Islamic beliefs are fundamentally incompatible with modern liberal values, a position that has sparked major public confrontations for years. One of the most high-profile clashes occurred during a 2014 episode of Maher’s HBO show *Real Time*, when Maher and author Sam Harris faced pushback from guest Ben Affleck after they claimed Western liberals were overly hesitant to criticize Islam over topics including women’s rights, LGBTQ+ rights, and freedom of expression. Affleck publicly denounced the pair’s comments as “gross” and “racist” overarching generalizations about Muslims. Maher has continued to defend his views over the years, claiming his criticism targets only religious doctrine rather than Muslims as an ethnic or cultural group. Even so, his repeated remarks have drawn consistent condemnation for promoting broad, harmful stereotypes about Muslim people and majority-Muslim nations.

    The backlash to Amini’s comments comes against the backdrop of an ongoing active conflict that has roiled the Middle East. The United States and Israel launched a joint military campaign against Iran on February 28, carrying out extensive airstrikes across Iranian territory, which prompted retaliatory strikes from Iran against Israeli targets and U.S. military positions across the region. While Trump has repeatedly framed the military operation as targeting only Iran’s government and military forces, not civilian populations, the assault has already caused massive civilian casualties, contradicting that framing.

    By March 23, just under a month after the war began, the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency recorded that at least 1,407 Iranian civilians had been killed in the strikes. Iranian authorities later released an overall death toll of 3,468 people across all categories since the start of the conflict on February 28. Civilian infrastructure and public spaces have been repeatedly hit in strikes, with one of the deadliest incidents being the bombing of the Shajareh Tayyebeh primary school in the southern Iranian city of Minab on the first day of the war. Middle East Eye originally reported that at least 175 people, the vast majority of them children, were killed in that attack, which has been investigated by both the United Nations and the U.S. military. U.S. investigators reportedly concluded that an American strike was most likely responsible for the bombing, and Iranian authorities later revised the official death toll from the attack to 155.

    The heavy civilian death toll has undermined repeated claims from U.S. and Israeli officials that the military campaign is limited exclusively to Iranian leadership and military assets, as ordinary Iranians continue to account for a large share of those killed and injured in strikes across the country.

  • US mulls shrinking military footprint in Gulf as a result of war on Iran: Report

    US mulls shrinking military footprint in Gulf as a result of war on Iran: Report

    In the wake of the ongoing U.S.-Israeli campaign against Iran, the Trump administration is conducting a high-stakes review of whether to withdraw a substantial portion of American military forces from the Persian Gulf, as the Pentagon assesses growing security risks to large U.S. military installations that have come under repeated drone and missile strikes from Iranian forces, according to a recent exclusive report from The Washington Post.

    The policy review is being spearheaded by the Department of Defense’s policy office, with senior defense officials framing the current conflict as a generational turning point that creates an unprecedented opportunity to overhaul the United States’ decades-long military posture in the Middle East, the Post reported Tuesday. Early signals from the administration already indicate the U.S. may not reconstruct Iranian-attacked bases to their pre-war operational capacity, the outlet added.

    The Post’s new reporting corroborates an exclusive investigation published by Middle East Eye (MEE) in June, which quoted multiple current and former senior U.S. officials confirming that the conflict would prompt a fundamental reckoning with the outdated Cold War-era basing structure that has anchored American military presence in the region for decades. Discussion of a significant drawdown has been circulating among former national security leaders for months, with multiple retired top officials publicly calling for a major shift in deployment strategy.

    David Petraeus, who previously led U.S. Central Command (Centcom) — the military combatant command that oversees all American forces in the Middle East — and later served as CIA director, told Bloomberg in May that the persistent threat of long-range Iranian drone and missile attacks has fundamentally undermined the case for maintaining large, static bases in the Gulf. “The truth is that we are not as inclined to occupy these bases now that we have seen what the Iranians can throw at them,” Petraeus said, noting that the current threat landscape is far more severe than when he led Centcom decades earlier.

    Another former Centcom commander, retired General Frank McKenzie, doubled down on that assessment in July, arguing that the U.S. should relocate core Gulf-based military assets to Israel and other western neighboring countries to shield critical infrastructure from Iranian strikes. McKenzie pointed to al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar — which currently hosts Centcom’s forward headquarters just 100 miles from Iranian territory — as a major strategic vulnerability, saying, “No one in their right mind would ever put the Centcom forward headquarters […] yet that’s where it is.”

    McKenzie characterized the current U.S. basing network in the Middle East as a Cold War-era relic, designed initially to deter Soviet expansion into the oil-rich Gulf and later adapted for counterinsurgency campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, a mission that no longer matches the current threat environment dominated by Iranian long-range strike capabilities. “[The U.S.] strategy does not match the reality on the ground,” he added.

    Notably, even the current top Centcom leader, U.S. Admiral Bradley Cooper, has thrown his support behind discussions of shifting American military forces westward away from the Gulf, the Post reported. So far, shifting threat dynamics have already pushed a partial U.S. repositioning: Iran has systematically targeted key U.S. installations across the Gulf, including Bahrain (home to the U.S. Fifth Fleet), Qatar (Centcom headquarters), and major air bases in Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.

    Smaller Gulf states positioned close to Iran, such as Kuwait and Bahrain, have proven to be the most exposed to Iranian attacks, prompting the U.S. to begin gradual repositioning westward since the outbreak of the current conflict. MEE was the first outlet to report that the U.S. secured access to Taif Air Base in Saudi Arabia back in March, after Iranian strikes heavily damaged Prince Sultan Air Base located southeast of Riyadh.

  • Chinese robotics giant Unitree soars in stock market debut

    Chinese robotics giant Unitree soars in stock market debut

    On Wednesday, Unitree Robotics, the world’s largest manufacturer of humanoid robots, made history as the first publicly listed humanoid robot developer on mainland China’s stock exchange, capping a landmark day with shares skyrocketing more than 600% above their initial offering price. Trading on Shanghai’s tech-focused Star Market, often dubbed China’s answer to Nasdaq, the Chinese firm opened at 1,100 yuan ($163.12) per share, a massive jump from the 150.8 yuan initial public offering (IPO) price. The milestone debut comes amid an intensifying global race between the United States and China to dominate the fast-emerging market for humanoid robots and the artificial intelligence systems that power these machines, aligning directly with Beijing’s long-term strategic goal to establish global leadership in advanced robotics technology.

    Founded in 2016 and headquartered in Hangzhou, a city at the heart of eastern China’s government-backed robotics industry cluster, Unitree Robotics (officially registered as Yushu Technology Co Ltd) has grown from a startup to a global industry leader in less than a decade. The company offers a diverse product line spanning robotic sensors, automated industrial arms, quadruped robot dogs, and fully functional humanoid machines, and it shipped more than 5,500 humanoid units in 2025 alone amid surging global demand for the technology. Unlike many early-stage robotics firms that operate at a loss, Unitree has already achieved profitability, posting a net profit of 278 million yuan in 2025. A key competitive advantage for the firm is its ability to deliver robots with comparable capabilities to leading U.S. developers at a fraction of the price: Unitree’s entry-level quadruped robot dog starts at just $2,700, while Boston Dynamics’ comparable Spot robot carries a $70,000 price tag. While researchers note the models differ in size and capability, the cost gap remains a major market differentiator. Unitree launched commercial sales of humanoid robots in 2023, releasing its $13,500 child-sized G1 model in 2024 – a milestone that puts it years ahead of major U.S. rivals like Tesla, which has yet to begin commercial deliveries of its own Optimus humanoid robot.

    The successful IPO follows a high-profile global marketing push for Unitree’s technology that has cemented its reputation as a trailblazer in the sector. Earlier this year, the company’s G1 robots went viral after performing a coordinated martial arts routine live on China’s national Spring Festival Gala, a display that impressed researchers with the robots’ fluid range of motion and real-time performance. This week, Unitree robots are competing in the 2026 World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing, where hundreds of teams test capabilities across athletic challenges like running and football, as well as practical everyday tasks such as opening boxes and sorting library books.

    Industry analysts frame Unitree’s public listing as a pivotal moment for the global humanoid robotics sector, as it gives retail and institutional investors their first widespread opportunity to invest in the fast-growing emerging industry, and will likely set a valuation benchmark for future robotics IPOs. China has seen explosive growth in its robotics sector over the past five years, with government investment driving a more than threefold increase in the number of domestic robotics firms between 2020 and 2024, according to state-run media China Daily. Beyond technological ambition, Chinese policymakers see robotics as a key solution to demographic challenges, particularly the shrinking workforce caused by the country’s ageing population. Fei Qin, an associate professor at the University of Bath, notes that Beijing has designated the robotics sector a “strategic priority,” arguing that “robots are where AI leaves the screen and enters the economy” across factories, healthcare settings, and eventually residential homes. Unitree’s listing paves the way for a wave of other Chinese robotics firms going public in the coming months; smaller rival UBTech Robotics already listed in Hong Kong nearly three years ago, and drew global attention earlier this year when it unveiled a hyper-realistic humanoid companion robot, with other developers including Leju Robotics and AgiBot expected to launch IPOs soon.

    Despite widespread investor optimism, some industry researchers have sounded notes of caution about the timeline for widespread consumer adoption of humanoid robots. Harold Soh, a robotics researcher at the National University of Singapore, points out that practical humanoid robots for home use are still years away from commercial viability, as developers still need to solve key challenges including extending battery life, improving reliability, and building robust privacy safeguards. For the near future, most demand is expected to come from industrial and commercial settings including factories, warehouses, and healthcare facilities.

    The growth of China’s robotics industry has become the latest flashpoint in U.S.-China technological rivalry, with the Trump administration announcing a ban on new imports of Chinese-made humanoid and quadruped robots in July, citing unsubstantiated national security concerns and a goal to protect domestic U.S. manufacturing. Beijing has rejected the claims, accusing Washington of politicizing ordinary trade issues, and the ban is part of broader U.S. restrictions on a range of Chinese advanced technology including AI models, electric vehicles, semiconductors, and drones. Christine Wan, an analyst at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, notes that Chinese robotics firms have become deeply integrated into global supply chains, meaning many countries are reluctant to cut ties with Chinese suppliers out of fear of major domestic manufacturing disruptions. So far, Western robotics firms have failed to match China’s impact on both industrial and consumer markets: U.S. developers including Boston Dynamics, Tesla, and Amazon are still in the testing or early production phase for humanoid robots, with full commercial rollouts not expected for years. Many industry analysts agree that China has overtaken the U.S. to become the global leader in commercial robotics development. “We no longer hear about American robotics companies in the news. It’s the Chinese robot companies that are making news today,” said robotics researcher David Hsu. “They have replaced America as the cool kids on the block.”

  • Once shaped by court rituals, China’s imperial cuisine lives on today

    Once shaped by court rituals, China’s imperial cuisine lives on today

    Nearly a century after its founding, a historic Beijing restaurant remains one of the last guardians of China’s imperial culinary legacy, keeping alive dishes, rituals and handcrafting techniques that trace their roots directly to the palaces of the Qing Dynasty.

    One of its most beloved delicacies carries a story that stretches back to the final years of imperial rule. Legend holds that Empress Dowager Cixi once dreamed of a savory pancake late in her reign, and when the identical treat was served to her for breakfast the next morning, she was so delighted that she rewarded her head chef with a silver ingot. Originally named minced pork pancake, the dish was renamed “dream pastry” to honor its connection to Cixi’s vision, explains Zhou Tong, a veteran pastry chef at Beijing’s iconic Fangshan Restaurant.

    Founded in 1925 by former Qing Dynasty court chefs inside Beihai Park, a centuries-old imperial garden where dynastic royals once relaxed, conducted state affairs and held sacred rituals, Fangshan’s core mission is written directly into its name: Fangshan translates literally to “imitating imperial cuisine.” While a small number of other Beijing establishments also offer their own interpretations of imperial court dining, and the Palace Museum preserves Qing-era dining artifacts ranging from ornate pastry molds to serving vessels, Fangshan stands out for its commitment to passing down original recipes and techniques from generation to generation of chefs.

    Imperial cuisine is far more than a collection of fancy dishes: it encompasses the strict rituals that structured every meal, from the emperor’s daily breakfast to grand state banquets and sacred ceremonial feasts. For example, drinking milk tea was always the formal opening step at Qing Dynasty banquets, notes Teng Deyong, a researcher specializing in court culture at the Palace Museum. During grand events, the emperor would bestow portions of wine and food to assembled princes and high officials, and recipients were required to perform full formal rites of respect before they could partake.

    Sacrificial ceremonies, a core part of imperial court life, followed their own separate set of culinary rules. One of the most important Qing rituals, held at the Palace of Earthly Tranquillity inside the Forbidden City, centered on unseasoned boiled fatty pork. After the ceremony concluded, the pork was distributed to attendees, and receiving this sacrificial meat was considered a high honor. This tradition of unseasoned ritual food stretches back even further in Chinese cultural history: Wandi Wang, a professor of Chinese studies at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, points to the *Book of Rites*, an ancient Confucian text detailing ceremonial customs, which describes an unseasoned meat broth called “grand stew” served during sacrificial rituals.

    “The absence of added flavoring was itself meaningful: the unseasoned dish evoked an earlier and simpler way of cooking and thus expressed a ritual ideal of honoring antiquity and remembering cultural origins,” Wang explained.

    Pastries held a special place in imperial dining, with a dedicated palace institution solely responsible for crafting sweet and savory treats for the court. At Fangshan, Zhou still makes the original imperial versions of dream pastry and small steamed corn buns following century-old recipes, and servers share the dishes’ rich histories with every table. “People enjoy them even more because they carry such meaningful history,” Zhou said.

    His craft is passed down through an unbroken line of master-to-apprentice training, and traditional methods strictly require all work to be done by hand — no modern blenders or food processors are permitted. Beans are pulverized by hand using fine sieves, and specialty flours are mixed and aged in custom-made copper pots. “A machine may be more convenient, but the texture is completely different,” Zhou explained. “You lose the delicate graininess and sandy mouthfeel that handcrafted pastries are supposed to have.” That commitment to craft has paid off: pea flour cakes and red bean rolls, two of Fangshan’s most popular pastries, sell more than 200 orders per day during peak tourist seasons.

    For Fan Liangliang, Fangshan’s current executive chef, adapting to the restaurant’s traditional standards required unlearning everything he had been taught in modern culinary school. Instead of prioritizing speed and efficiency, he had to master slow, labor-intensive techniques unique to imperial cuisine, such as “Nizihuo” — a method that involves mincing ingredients like fish, shrimp or chicken into a smooth paste, then reshaping the paste into intricate decorative forms like frogs, birds or flowers.

    “This is one of the hallmarks of imperial cuisine,” Fan said. “Every dish had to be innovative, visually beautiful, nutritious and worthy of presentation on the imperial dining table.”

    As times have changed, the restaurant has made thoughtful adaptations to align with modern norms: rare, protected ingredients like bear paws are no longer served, and other ingredients have been substituted to fit contemporary availability and dietary preferences, all while retaining the core spirit and flavor of each original dish.

    Scholars note that Chinese culinary traditions have always carried layered meaning beyond sustenance, reflecting broader cultural, political and aesthetic values that evolve over time. Wang points to a famous poem by Tang Dynasty poet Du Fu, who wrote about cold noodles made from pagoda-tree leaves. “The poem is not simply a description of a dish,” Wang said. “Du Fu turns the verdant, fresh, yet modest dish into an expression of his political loyalty and thwarted ambition to serve the emperor.”

    “Preserving a culinary tradition begins with taking its history seriously,” Wang added. “Culinary heritage tells us not only how people ate in the past, but also how people in the present choose to remember and give meaning to that past.”

    Fan emphasizes that at its core, Fangshan’s imperial cuisine is a historic fusion of Manchu and Han Chinese culinary traditions, bringing together the food culture of the Qing Dynasty’s Manchu rulers and China’s Han majority. “It’s not simply a collection of dishes from the two cultures,” he said. “It represents the blending of their different approaches to food into a unified cuisine.”

    While core techniques like stir-frying, braising and stewing have remained intact, and some ingredients have been updated for accessibility and modern palates, the team’s commitment to preserving this unique cultural heritage remains unshaken. “When people dine at Fangshan Restaurant, I hope they experience more than just a meal,” Fan said. “They experience the weight of history.”

  • Israeli strike on Gaza port kills at least seven, including a child

    Israeli strike on Gaza port kills at least seven, including a child

    A deadly Israeli drone attack on a coastal cafe in Gaza City’s western port district has left at least seven Palestinians dead, one child among the victims, and sparked renewed scrutiny of Israeli military actions amid a fragile ceasefire framework, Gaza health authorities confirmed Tuesday.

    The brutality of the strike left one victim’s body so severely damaged that medical teams have not been able to identify the person, officials added. Most casualties, multiple of whom are in critical condition, were transported to Gaza’s al-Shifa Hospital, the territory’s largest medical facility. Al-Shifa initially received six corpses and 13 injured people, with a 13th wounded person dying of their injuries later the same evening. Hospital staff noted that one victim suffered a direct missile strike that left the body unidentifiable.

    According to Al Jazeera Arabic, the force of the blast threw several dead and injured people into the adjacent Mediterranean Sea, leading observers to warn that the final casualty count could climb higher than currently recorded as recovery operations continue along the coastline.

    One eyewitness, Mohammed Alghoul, told Agence France-Presse that Israeli military aircraft launched two missiles directly at the “Sweet and Bitter” cafe, a popular gathering spot located on Gaza’s fishermen’s port in the western part of the city.

    The Israeli Defense Forces confirmed the strike in a statement posted to the Telegram messaging platform, framing the operation as a “precise aerial strike” targeting several Hamas commanders in the Shati district west of Gaza City. The IDF claimed the group was plotting an attack against Israeli troops deployed inside the Gaza Strip, saying the airstrike was carried out “to remove the threat to the forces” and that Israeli forces had “taken steps to mitigate harm to civilians”. The military has not yet issued any comment on the dead child, nor has it released any evidence to back up its claims that the people killed in the cafe were Hamas commanders.

    Hamas condemned the attack, labeling it a “massacre” that exposes Israel’s open disregard for calls from U.S. President Donald Trump to uphold the existing ceasefire agreement between the two sides. The group has called on international mediators to ramp up pressure on Israel to honor the signed ceasefire deal and the previously agreed roadmap for peace.

    The targeted strike comes just 24 hours after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave approval to the next phase of the U.S.-backed “Board of Peace” plan for Gaza, following talks that Netanyahu described as “deep and constructive” with a delegation led by U.S. Special Envoy Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law. The U.S.-brokered plan requires Hamas to fully disarm in exchange for a full Israeli military withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. Israel initially rejected Trump’s 15-point proposal even after Hamas agreed to lay down its weapons and transfer administrative control of Gaza to an independent technocratic governing body.

    As of Monday, medical sources in Gaza report that the total death toll in the territory has reached at least 73,399 people, with an additional 174,310 injured, since Israel launched its large-scale military campaign in October 2023. Of those fatalities, 1,265 have been killed since the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas went into effect in October 2025.

  • Trump envoy ‘deeply concerned’ by Israeli strikes on Syrian air base

    Trump envoy ‘deeply concerned’ by Israeli strikes on Syrian air base

    In the wake of an Israeli air strike targeting the Abu al-Duhur military air base in northern Syria, the United States’ special envoy for Syria, Tom Barrack, has publicly broken with common US framing to defend the new Syrian administration, labeling the attack an unnecessary escalation of regional tensions.

    Barrack, who met one day prior with Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani in Istanbul, Turkey, laid out his assessment in a public post on the social platform X. “The Al-Sharaa government has neither adopted a predatory posture nor maintained proxy forces,” he wrote. “It has, in fact, repeatedly indicated a preference for de-escalation with Israel.” Barrack added that Washington views the strike with deep concern, noting “[This] does not advance regional stability.” While Israeli officials have not officially acknowledged responsibility for the attack, Barrack explicitly confirmed Israel carried out the operation.

    Details released by the Syrian government confirm that eight precision strikes targeted the runway of the currently defunct air base in the early morning hours of Tuesday, local time. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights later contextualized the strike, noting that the attack came days after a Turkish military delegation visited the airfield as part of ongoing efforts to reactivate the facility for operational use.

    The strike is part of a consistent pattern of Israeli military activity inside Syria following the December 2024 departure of former president Bashar al-Assad, who fled to Russia amid a government transition. Since that leadership change, Israel has launched repeated strikes on targets across northern Syria and along the country’s western border, with a stated goal of degrading what remains of the Syrian Air Force. Israeli ground forces have also pushed into the UN-patrolled buffer zone that has separated the two countries under the terms of a decades-old disengagement agreement.

    Despite this sustained military pressure, Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa confirmed last year that indirect diplomatic talks have been held between the two neighboring states. Syria and Israel have not maintained formal diplomatic relations since the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, when Israel seized control of Syria’s Golan Heights and later unilaterally annexed the territory in a move not recognized by the international community. Under the rule of former president Hafez al-Assad, the two sides signed a 1974 disengagement agreement that established a formal border security regime to reduce the risk of open conflict.

    In comments previously given to The Washington Post, Sharaa explained his administration’s deliberate choice to avoid immediate retaliation for the thousands of Israeli air strikes that have hit Syrian territory in recent years. “Because we want to rebuild Syria, we didn’t respond to these aggressions,” he said. Sharaa also pushed back on Israel’s longstanding justification for its strikes, the claim that it targets Iranian-aligned Shiite militant proxies operating inside Syria. “we are the ones who expelled those forces out of Syria,” he noted, adding that Israeli incursions into Syrian territory stem not from legitimate security concerns but from clear expansionist ambitions.

    Just last month, Foreign Minister Shaibani issued a formal condemnation of ongoing Israeli military activity, warning that Israel’s unlawful occupation of Syrian territory beyond the 1974 disengagement line poses a direct threat to overall regional security. Israeli officials reaffirmed as recently as last week that they intend to keep military forces deployed inside Syrian territory indefinitely.

    Outlining the United States’ formal policy position on Tuesday, Barrack said Washington would continue to facilitate diplomatic discussions to encourage both nations to prioritize dialogue over military confrontation. “The United States has in the past, and will continue in the future, to host discussions to encourage diplomatic cadence over kinetic frustration for both nations,” Barrack said. “The United States continues to believe that restraint and engagement offer the more constructive course. We encourage all parties to prioritize logical discourse over further military incidents.”

  • After deadly floods in India’s Assam, experts call for better warnings and long-term planning

    After deadly floods in India’s Assam, experts call for better warnings and long-term planning

    GUWAHATI, India — In the remote village of Hulang Katoni in India’s northeastern Assam state, what began as a routine errand on July 19 ended in a devastating loss. When heavy monsoon rains cut power to his home, Rojo Neog set out on his bicycle to buy candles. By the time he headed back, the swelling Dikhow River, a major tributary of the Brahmaputra, had surged beyond its banks with terrifying speed. Floodwaters tore Neog away, and his family recovered his body three days later.

    Neog’s death is one of more than 100 fatalities linked to this year’s catastrophic flooding in Assam, an event state officials have labeled the worst the region has seen in nearly 60 years. For Neog’s niece Priyakshi Gogoi, the disaster was not just deadly, it was shockingly sudden. Flood levels near the village jumped from knee-deep to neck-deep in just 30 minutes, she said, and no advance warning reached the community. “In the morning we thought it’s fine, there is little flooding but it will subside, but we didn’t expect it to become so bad,” Gogoi told reporters.

    The tragedy repeats across hundreds of flood-ravaged communities in Assam. Just kilometers away in Nepalikhuti village, 42-year-old Krishna Karamkar lost his life saving his 12-year-old son, who had accidentally stepped into the churning overflowing Dikhow. Karamkar pulled his son to safety but was swept away by the powerful current, leaving his wife Sumi Karamkar to navigate an uncertain future. “I have received some assistance from the government but that’s not enough. Our family’s future has suddenly become so uncertain,” she said. Nepalikhuti is one of the hardest-hit villages, reporting more than 1,000 livestock washed away and 200 homes completely destroyed.

    Across the state, the full scale of the disaster is staggering: more than 700,000 people have been displaced, thousands are still sheltering in overcrowded relief camps even as waters slowly recede, vast swathes of farmland have been submerged, and critical road and utility infrastructure has been heavily damaged. Local resident Shravan Kumar, 26, from Bihubor village, described rushing his elderly parents to higher ground before returning with five small boats to rescue trapped neighbors. “People were clinging to trees, and rescuers had to break through a home’s roof to pull out two children and their parents,” Kumar said. “I have grown up in the area and have never seen such severe flooding before.”

    For dairy farmer Prakash Sharma in Nepalikhuti, the surge caught the village completely off guard. By 10 a.m. on the day the flood hit, the only road connecting the village to the outside world was already underwater. By mid-afternoon, the entire settlement sat under roughly 9 feet of churning water, forcing residents to climb to rooftops and tree canopies for safety. Rescuers pulled Sharma and his family out that same day, but he is still reckoning with catastrophic losses. “For me, it was not just floods, it was a natural calamity of humongous proportion we had never seen before,” he said.

    While seasonal flooding during the June-to-September monsoon has long been a fact of life in Assam — where roughly 40% of the land is inherently vulnerable to inundation from the Brahmaputra river system — climate and disaster experts warn that floods are growing far more unpredictable, destructive, and deadly due to a mix of human-caused climate change and harmful land use practices. Each year, monsoons bring critical moisture that cools the country, irrigates farms, and replenishes river systems, but rising global temperatures have made rainfall far more erratic and intense, creating the conditions for extreme flood events. India, one of the world’s top greenhouse gas emitters, is also one of the countries most vulnerable to the accelerating impacts of climate change.

    A recent analysis from World Weather Attribution (WWA) confirmed that unplanned rapid urbanization, upstream deforestation, unregulated sand mining, widespread wetland loss, and overreliance on hard engineering flood control structures have dramatically worsened risk across Assam and neighboring northeastern states. The Brahmaputra and its tributaries naturally carry massive volumes of sediment eroded from the Himalayas, constantly reshaping their channels, banks, and river islands, meaning seasonal flooding can never be fully eliminated. But human alteration of the natural landscape has overwhelmed the river system’s capacity to absorb heavy rain, leaving communities with almost no time to react when waters surge.

    For decades, Assam has poured millions of dollars into building embankments, flood walls, and erosion-control structures to hold back rivers. Experts agree this infrastructure still serves a purpose in densely populated areas, but they warn it creates new risks when it replaces natural flood absorption systems like forests, wetlands, and floodplains. While India has expanded national flood forecasting and early warning systems in recent years, researchers say critical gaps remain: warnings often get stuck in government bureaucracy and never reach at-risk rural communities, and even when alerts are delivered, there is rarely sufficient preparedness planning or accessible safe shelter for residents.

    “India is very good at rescuing people or providing relief after the disaster, but is particularly bad in doing anything significant to reduce the possibilities of such disasters,” said Himanshu Thakkar, coordinator of the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People, an environmental advocacy group. “It’s very important to study and understand flood risks better in Assam. Once we understand, we can also forecast well. Then we can prepare well and less people will be affected.”

    Experts are now calling for a fundamental paradigm shift in how India manages flood risk, moving beyond a focus on building infrastructure to control rivers toward a strategy of working with natural systems and living with seasonal flooding. “True adaptation requires moving towards living with rivers through wetland restoration and proactive early action before floodwaters strike,” said Emmanuel Raju, director of the Copenhagen Centre for Disaster Research at the University of Copenhagen and a co-author of the WWA report.

    Independent researcher Mirza Zulfiqar Rahman, who has spent years studying the Brahmaputra basin, noted that flood risk management must cross administrative boundaries, since upstream changes including deforestation, mining, and urban development directly impact downstream water flow and sediment levels in Assam. “Flood planning should follow the natural contours of river basins rather than state and international borders,” he said, adding that disaster policy remains far too focused on post-flood response rather than pre-flood risk reduction.

    Climate change is already pushing flood events beyond the adaptive limits of communities that have lived with seasonal inundation for centuries, said Nihal Ranjit, a climate and disaster expert at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements. Historically, communities in flood-prone areas structured their farming and daily routines around seasonal flooding, but more frequent extreme events are making that traditional adaptation unworkable, driving rising displacement. “This always existed, but climate change and climate impacts like floods are increasing this movement,” Ranjit noted.

    Reporting for this story was contributed by Sibi Arasu from Bengaluru, India. The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations, with AP retaining full editorial control over all content.