Global Pulse

标签： Asia

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  • South Korea says the South Korean and US militaries have agreed to shorten their drills

    South Korea says the South Korean and US militaries have agreed to shorten their drills

    In a move that has sent ripples through Northeast Asian security dynamics, South Korean government officials confirmed Wednesday that the joint military exercises between South Korean and United States forces will be cut short, a change implemented at Washington’s formal request. This adjustment comes just days after former U.S. President Donald Trump issued a directive to downsize the long-planned drills.

    The annual Ulchi Freedom Shield summer drills kicked off on Monday morning, originally scheduled to run for 11 days through August 27. The drills were already slated for adjustment immediately after Trump ordered the U.S. Secretary of Defense to enact “substantial” cuts to the exercise program. In explaining his decision, Trump pointed to two key factors: what he described as a productive, positive personal relationship with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, and South Korea’s decision not to participate in the U.S.-led military conflict against Iran.

    In an official statement released this week, South Korea’s defense command confirmed that the ongoing combined exercises will now wrap up on Friday, a significant reduction from the original timeline. Beyond cutting the overall length of the main drills, the two allied nations have also reached an agreement to scale back the scope of several joint field training components that were part of the scheduled exercise package.

    The sudden downsizing of the exercises has drawn sharp scrutiny from defense analysts across the globe. A large number of regional security experts have warned that Trump’s last-minute order risks eroding the combined combat readiness that U.S. and South Korean forces have built up through decades of regular joint training. In the long term, they argue, repeated adjustments of this nature could weaken the foundation of the bilateral security alliance that has anchored Northeast Asian security for over 60 years.

    As of Wednesday, North Korean officials had not issued a direct public response to Trump’s decision to scale back the drills. However, earlier the same day, the country’s official state news agency released a strongly worded denunciation of the U.S.-South Korean exercise as a whole, labeling the drills “frantic” and “extremely dangerous.” The statement included a formal vow that North Korea would work to completely thwart what it called the hostile actions of its regional rivals.

  • The Indian activist jailed after taking on a luxury hotel plan

    The Indian activist jailed after taking on a luxury hotel plan

    In the northeastern Indian state of Assam, a long-serving community rights activist centered on the Kaziranga National Park region remains behind bars, after state authorities blocked his court-ordered release and invoked a controversial sweeping security law to detain him indefinitely without trial. The case has thrown a spotlight on a simmering conflict between conservation, development, and indigenous land rights around one of the world’s most celebrated wildlife protected areas.

    Forty-year-old Pranab Doley, a well-known local activist who has spent decades advocating for communities living on the edge of the UNESCO World Heritage Site, was arrested in late June, just weeks after he joined a public demonstration against a proposed five-star luxury hotel project on park-adjacent land. On July 29, a local court granted bail to Doley and four other co-accused protesters. When Doley’s father and legal counsel arrived at the prison on July 30 to escort him home, they were turned away: the Assam state government had triggered the National Security Act (NSA), a decades-old legislation that permits authorities to hold individuals for extended periods without formal trial, to block his release.

    Official detention orders reviewed by the BBC justify Doley’s ongoing detention by referencing 13 criminal cases filed against the activist dating back to 2017, citing a pattern of alleged unlawful assembly, intimidation, public obstruction, and even violence. The order also raises questions about the source of funding for Doley’s international travel and alleges suspicious cross-border financial transactions. But Doley’s legal team and supporters reject these claims, arguing that most of the decades-old cases have already been resolved, with only two remaining open at the time of his latest arrest – both of which Doley openly disclosed in his official affidavit when he ran as an independent candidate in Assam’s 2024 state legislative assembly elections, an election he ultimately lost.

    “He is an activist who fights for people’s rights,” Doley’s lawyer Mrityunjoy Pegu told the BBC. “That is why the police had registered some cases against him.” Critics of the detention argue the state has deployed a draconian law to silence opposition to a high-profile development project, sparking widespread anger across regional human rights circles.

    The proposed hotel project, first announced in 2023 as a public-private partnership between the Assam government and the Saraf Group, is being developed by Juniper Hotels with backing from Hyatt, the U.S.-based global hospitality brand. State officials frame the 10-acre development as an economic boon for the region, arguing it will attract high-spending international tourists, generate local employment, and bring much-needed infrastructure investment to the Kaziranga area, which is globally renowned as a conservation success story for the endangered one-horned rhinoceros.

    But dozens of local farming families say the project will displace them from land their families have cultivated for generations. While the Assam district administration claims the full project site is government-owned land, protesting residents push back against this narrative, noting that state officials have collected land revenue from their families for decades. Geeta Gwala, one of the residents who has challenged the land acquisition in court, says her family has held formal tax receipts for their 2.81-acre plot dating all the way back to 1956. A court-ordered land boundary demarcation to resolve the ownership dispute had been scheduled for June 24, but has yet to be completed, according to Gwala.

    Deputy Commissioner Biswajit Phukan, the top local district official, clarified that the government has not seized land already formally registered to protesting families, and that while some residents may have informally cultivated portions of the project site, the land was never legally allocated to them. He added that the administration has offered financial compensation, alternative land to eligible residents, and job skills training to support local people affected by the project. Phukan declined to comment directly on Doley’s detention, noting that the administration does not wish to prejudice ongoing legal proceedings, and said the government remains “extremely sensitive” to local community concerns.

    For Doley, the debate over the hotel project is not an abstract policy dispute – it is rooted in decades of personal experience with the complex tensions between conservation, flooding, and land rights along the Brahmaputra River floodplains where Kaziranga is located. Growing up in a small farming family near the park, Doley saw his own village displaced multiple times by recurring river erosion and annual flooding, a common issue in the region where shifting riverbanks render official land records outdated far faster than bureaucratic systems can update them. Even today, Doley’s own parents do not hold formal legal title to the land they live on.

    He also witnessed first-hand the conflict between wildlife conservation and local communities: when annual monsoons flood Kaziranga, rhinos, tigers, and elephants flee to higher ground on adjacent farmland, destroying crops and sometimes triggering deadly encounters between people and animals. These experiences shaped Doley’s core belief: that conservation of Kaziranga’s unique ecosystem cannot be separated from protecting the land rights of the communities that have lived alongside the park for generations.

    Doley first rose to prominence as an activist challenging alleged extrajudicial killings of suspected poachers within Kaziranga, before expanding his work to address forced evictions, unfair land acquisition, and inadequate compensation for displaced local families. Last year, he brought these demands to the global stage, speaking at the UN Forum on Business and Human Rights in Geneva to urge governments and corporations to prioritize indigenous community rights when pursuing development projects.

    The tensions over the hotel project boiled over on June 28, when Doley joined a peaceful protest at the construction site. Police allege that protesters entered the project area, damaged construction equipment, and attacked law enforcement officers, naming Doley as the crowd’s primary instigator. Doley’s organization, the Greater Kaziranga Land and Human Rights Protection Committee, denies these claims, arguing that police initiated violence against peaceful demonstrators and that Doley was never involved in any confrontation.

    The judge who granted bail to Doley and four other co-defendants largely backed the activists’ account, finding that available video footage contradicted many of the prosecution’s key claims. While the footage showed minor pushing and shoving between protesters and police, it showed no evidence of a direct attack on officers or any attempt to set construction machinery on fire, as police had alleged. The judge’s ruling noted that Doley was captured on camera speaking with officials to seek a negotiated resolution to the dispute, and acknowledged that while some officers were injured, the protest stemmed from legitimate concerns about environmental harm and community impacts. The ruling concluded: “True public order is achieved not by silencing the affected, but by listening to them.”

    Despite the court’s bail order, Doley remains in detention under the National Security Act, as his legal team works to challenge the government’s action. For supporters, his detention has become a flashpoint for the broader fight over who gets to benefit from development and conservation around one of India’s most iconic protected areas – and Doley now waits for the justice he spent years fighting for on behalf of others.

  • Nonprofit sues US as it pushes to auction massive tracks of water around American Samoa

    Nonprofit sues US as it pushes to auction massive tracks of water around American Samoa

    In a legal challenge that has put a spotlight on the growing global clash between critical mineral development and marine conservation, a prominent U.S. environmental nonprofit launched a federal lawsuit Tuesday to block the Trump administration’s plan to auction off 33 million acres of seabed off the coast of American Samoa for commercial deep-sea mining.

    Earthjustice filed the suit in federal court against the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, acting on behalf of two Pacific conservation organizations: Fa‘asao Amerika Samoa and the Conservation Council for Hawai‘i. The legal complaint asks a federal judge to immediately halt all progress on the leasing plan and force NMFS to comply fully with the Endangered Species Act and other core federal environmental protection laws.

    “The United States has never opened its waters to deep-sea mining. Until now,” the lawsuit states. The administration’s plan would sell mineral extraction leases for a vast stretch of seabed rich in nickel, cobalt and manganese – minerals critical to manufacturing batteries, consumer electronics and a range of modern industrial products. The complaint argues that NMFS’ recent conclusion that mining leasing would not harm critical habitats or endangered and threatened species is “a wholly arbitrary and capricious determination” that ignores well-documented ecological risks.

    For the Indigenous communities of American Samoa, a healthy ocean ecosystem is not just an environmental asset but a foundation of daily life and cultural identity. The ecosystem supplies food for local households, buffers shorelines from storm damage, and has shaped cultural practices that have persisted for more than 1,000 years. Many native marine species found in American Samoan waters, including endangered sea turtles considered sacred (called *i‘a sa* by local communities), migrate between American Samoa and Hawaiian waters. American Samoa already enforces strict protections for sacred marine species including whales, sharks and giant manta rays, banning any capture or harm to these animals.

    The waters around American Samoa support an extraordinarily diverse array of rare marine life, including shallow and mesophotic coral reefs, deep-sea invertebrates, hundreds of fish and coral species, and multiple protected populations. The proposed mining lease area hosts five endangered sea turtle populations, four endangered whale species, five threatened coral species and four threatened marine animals including the giant manta ray. It sits just 57 miles from the protected Rose Atoll National Wildlife Refuge, one of the region’s most ecologically important intact marine ecosystems.

    The Trump administration’s push to expedite deep-sea mining permits runs directly counter to a growing global movement to restrict the untested practice. Dozens of countries have already called for a global moratorium or full ban on commercial deep-sea mining, citing major unresolved risks including underwater noise pollution, light disruption, and suffocating sediment plumes that can wipe out deep-sea ecosystems that have taken millennia to develop. Notably, no commercial deep-sea mining operation is currently operating anywhere in the world. The International Seabed Authority, the U.N. body that regulates mining in international waters, has only issued exploration licenses to date and has not approved any commercial extraction projects.

    Because the United States has not ratified the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, domestic deep-sea mineral activity is regulated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). When contacted by the Associated Press on Tuesday, a NMFS spokesperson declined to comment on ongoing litigation, and the U.S. Department of Commerce did not immediately issue a response to requests for comment.

    The American Samoa leasing plan is not the administration’s only recent move to expand domestic deep-sea mining. Just one day before the lawsuit was filed, the federal government published a proposed leasing notice for 69 million acres of federal waters surrounding the Northern Mariana Islands, marking a massive expansion of the administration’s push for domestic seabed mineral development.

    In a statement supporting the expansion, Matt Giacona, acting director of the Marine Minerals Administration, framed the policy as a matter of national and economic security. “Critical minerals are essential to America’s national security, economic strength and resource sovereignty,” Giacona said. “The United States cannot afford to depend on foreign nations for the resources that power our economy and support our defense industrial base.”

    The administration’s moves have drawn sharp condemnation from the scientific and environmental communities. “It’s disgraceful that the Trump administration is bulldozing ahead with plans to allow deep-sea mining while the people who live closest to the proposed project are rightfully demanding that it be stopped,” said Nick Katkevich, oceans campaigner at the Center for Biological Diversity. “These massive mining projects are just too experimental and dangerous for marine life to allow them to go forward.”

  • Israel’s starvation of Gaza leaves children stunted

    Israel’s starvation of Gaza leaves children stunted

    Deep in Gaza City’s Sabra neighborhood, six-year-old Amira Rashid lies motionless on a thin mattress, her small hands marked by dark blue bruises from the ongoing intravenous drips that have become a constant in her young life. Instead of picking out a first-grade school uniform and packing a new backpack ahead of the upcoming term, as any child her age would do under ordinary conditions, Amira is trapped by severe acute malnutrition – a condition that developed after months of catastrophic food scarcity during Israel’s 2023–2025 military campaign and siege on Gaza.

    Her mother Aya Rashid spoke with Middle East Eye about the stolen future she grieves for her daughter. “I was hoping to enrol Amira in school, buy her a uniform, a backpack and stationery like the other children,” she said. “But her health prevents her from leaving the house or interacting with her peers.” Amira is one of tens of thousands of Palestinian children in Gaza who have developed life-altering malnutrition since the siege began in October 2023, and her family is among the hundreds of thousands that remained in northern Gaza through the entirety of the conflict.

    In August 2025, the United Nations-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) officially declared famine across Gaza City, the region where the Rashid family has lived for generations. For Aya, the reality of that famine has been unrelenting. “We suffered immensely from hunger and severe food shortages. We ran out of flour, and there was none in the markets. With no food aid available, I could only manage to bake barley bread.”

    Amira’s health began its sharp decline months before the famine was officially declared. In January 2025, after the young girl began complaining of persistent chest pain, Aya brought her to Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi Children’s Hospital, one of the few remaining functional pediatric facilities in northern Gaza. When doctors measured Amira’s height and weight, they were stunned to find that both fell drastically below the standard range for a healthy six-year-old. “When a doctor saw her, he was taken aback,” Aya recalled. “He said she needed comprehensive testing immediately; she was in a terrible condition.”

    Testing confirmed a diagnosis of severe acute malnutrition, which had already caused permanent stunting. Even after Amira was admitted to the hospital, the chaos of the ongoing war blocked access to the specialized care she needed, and her condition never improved. Today, the six-year-old weighs just 12.5 kilograms and stands one meter tall – doctors say her bone age matches that of a healthy two-year-old. “It’s crushing. I’ve spent so much time in hospitals and with doctors, but they say the malnutrition she endured has severely and permanently damaged her body,” Aya said.

    A ceasefire agreement signed in October 2025 raised faint hope for Aya that increased access to food and medical care would help her daughter recover, but those hopes have been dashed. “I thought her condition would improve once the truce began and food came in. I never imagined it had reached the point of a clinical illness.” Without underlying allergies or nutrient absorption disorders, Amira still fails to respond to the limited treatment available in Gaza. “I have lost all hope of her recovering inside Gaza after exhausting every available treatment. Even the doctors are now saying her condition requires travelling abroad.”

    Beyond the permanent physical damage, Amira has also experienced severe regression in her cognitive development, now only able to interact comfortably with children two to three years her junior. She has still not learned to read or write, a milestone she was supposed to reach this school year. “Amira doesn’t know how to read or write, and everyone she interacts with in her surroundings are young children,” Aya said. When asked what she wishes for now, she answered simply: “To find a pair of trousers that actually fits my little girl’s waist, to stop seeing her ribcage protruding, and to watch her join her peers in a classroom.”

    Amira’s story is far from unique. The IPC’s August 2025 projection estimates that at least 132,000 children under the age of five will suffer from acute malnutrition through June 2026, alongside nearly 55,500 acutely malnourished pregnant and breastfeeding women who require urgent life-saving support. The crisis does not only affect children already born – it has left unborn children facing lifelong health complications before they even take their first breath.

    Ten-month-old Amna Abu al-Hasani is one of these children. Her mother Youssef suffered severe malnutrition throughout her pregnancy, leading to an emergency premature caesarean delivery at eight months. Amna weighed just 1.2 kilograms at birth, and just two months later, doctors diagnosed her with an enlarged heart caused by weakened muscle tissue as well as severe stunting. “My daughter’s malnutrition began in the womb,” the 29-year-old mother told Middle East Eye.

    At 10 months old, Amna weighs barely 5.5 kilograms and has now been diagnosed with severe acute malnutrition, with life-threatening complications affecting her heart, kidneys, and lungs. “The doctors told us all these issues stem fundamentally from her being born malnourished and underweight,” Youssef said. Even when the family uses sparse, sporadic cash assistance to buy fruit and nutritional supplements, she cannot stop her daughter’s health from declining.

    Gaza’s collapsed healthcare system lacks the specialized equipment and expertise to treat Amna’s complex conditions, and while she has an official referral for life-saving treatment abroad, her application for travel approval has sat unprocessed for months. “All I hope for is that my little girl is given a chance at life, that she gets her right to treatment abroad, and returns to our arms in good health,” Youssef said, her fear for her daughter’s future palpable.

    For the thousands of families affected by childhood malnutrition across Gaza, the few remaining functional hospitals and clinics are the only option for care, even as they operate far beyond capacity. Israel’s ongoing blockade continues to cripple Gaza’s healthcare system and maintains strict restrictions on medical travel for patients needing specialized care outside the territory.

    Dr. Mohammed Abu Rai, head of the nutrition clinic at al-Rantisi Hospital, told Middle East Eye that his facility now sees dozens of new malnourished children every single day, forcing staff to rapidly open overflow wards to accommodate the influx. While a recent IPC report recorded a modest drop in acute malnutrition rates following the ceasefire, the organization warns that more than 74,000 children will still require ongoing treatment for acute malnutrition through April 2027, alongside 24,600 acutely malnourished pregnant and breastfeeding women over the same period.

    Dr. Abu Rai emphasized that even with the ceasefire in place, Israel has failed to meet its obligations to expand the flow of life-saving humanitarian aid into Gaza, prolonging the catastrophic crisis it created. “The entry of food and meat into the Strip is not enough to treat malnutrition among children or even resolve the food crisis for the population post-ceasefire,” he said. “Vegetables and fruits entering Gaza are sold at exorbitant prices that most people simply cannot afford.”

    The destruction of Gaza’s local poultry and livestock farms during the conflict has left the territory almost entirely dependent on imported frozen meat, which has half the nutritional value of fresh product. Repeated extended power outages and poor cold storage infrastructure in Gaza further reduce what little nutritional value the imported meat retains, Dr. Abu Rai added. The World Food Programme has also warned that widespread funding shortfalls are forcing aid organizations to cut already meager food rations across Gaza, a move that threatens to push food security back to catastrophic levels.

    Aid supplies often sit for weeks in unshaded holding areas at border crossings, exposed to Gaza’s scorching desert heat, which degrades the nutritional quality of even basic staple goods. “Even staples like rice and lentils lose their nutritional value, while children’s nutritional supplements arrive in quantities far too small for even a single family,” Dr. Abu Rai said.

    As malnutrition rates remain critically high, the number of children suffering from permanent stunted growth continues to climb. Roughly 18 percent of Dr. Abu Rai’s current patients are already living with stunting caused by prolonged lack of vital nutrients during early childhood, a condition that causes irreversible physical and cognitive harm.

    As Dr. Abu Rai works tirelessly to treat as many young patients as possible within the territory’s limited resources, families like the Rashids and Abu al-Hasanis check their phones constantly, waiting for notification that their children’s travel permits for foreign treatment have been approved. “We miraculously survived certain death multiple times during the war,” Aya Rashid said. “What I fear now is losing my little girl to malnutrition, not to bombs.”

  • Rugby’s fiercest rivalry resumes: Springboks play All Blacks in first 4-test series in 50 years

    Rugby’s fiercest rivalry resumes: Springboks play All Blacks in first 4-test series in 50 years

    Thirty years after their last full bilateral tour, two of rugby union’s most iconic and successful nations, South Africa and New Zealand, are set to kick off a historic four-test series this Saturday at Johannesburg’s Ellis Park, a venue widely revered as one of the sport’s most imposing home fortresses. The long-anticipated showdown arrives with just minor late injury concerns for a handful of players on both sides, as the two global powerhouses finalize their starting lineups for the opening match.

    Bookmakers and analysts broadly favor the two-time defending World Cup champion Springboks, who enter the first four-test series between the sides since 1976 as the top-ranked side in the world, opposite New Zealand’s second-ranked All Blacks. At the helm of South Africa is Rassie Erasmus, who has spent eight years as the Springboks’ head coach and director of rugby, building an impressive 8-6-1 head-to-head record against the All Blacks that buck decades of historical trend. The All Blacks hold an overall all-time lead in the matchup, largely buoyed by the Springboks’ historic struggles to secure wins on New Zealand soil, but Erasmus has completely reshaped the South African program since he took over following a humiliating 57-0 loss to the All Blacks in 2017. Under his leadership, the Springboks have claimed the last two consecutive World Cup titles, including a narrow 12-11 victory over New Zealand in the 2023 World Cup final.

    Widely known for his unconventional approach to selection, Erasmus regularly prioritizes developing young, uncapped talent over fielding his most experienced starting XV every match. But his innovative tactical approach — which introduced the famous “Bomb Squad”, a reserve bench stacked entirely with powerful impact forwards, and popularized the use of hybrid utility players — has earned unwavering trust across the entire Springboks squad. Proving their resilience, South Africa overcame early red cards to secure wins over France and Italy twice during the 2023 World Cup run, and Erasmus currently has at least 15 double World Cup winners in his squad, all of whom are already targeting a third consecutive title at the 2027 World Cup in Australia.

    Erasmus shares a long-standing coaching relationship with his All Blacks counterpart Dave Rennie, whose appointment as New Zealand head coach came only this June, following a successful title run in Japan’s domestic rugby league. The two first crossed paths a decade ago, when Erasmus led Ireland’s Munster against Rennie’s Glasgow Warriors, and met again during Rennie’s tenure as head coach of Australia from 2020 to 2022. Erasmus has praised Rennie’s ability to instill intensity and competitive fire in his squads, noting that “he makes it physical”.

    Despite limited preparation time to build cohesive starting combinations, Rennie has already successfully lifted team morale across the All Blacks camp, leading the side to wins over France, Italy and Ireland in the July Nations Championship. To help his squad get up to match speed ahead of the series, Rennie arranged for his players to gain competitive minutes with South African domestic clubs the Stormers, Sharks and Bulls earlier this month. While Rennie is still working to identify which fringe players can step up into key backup roles, Erasmus faces the far more favorable challenge of cutting established talent from his matchday squad, thanks to the Springboks’ unprecedented depth that is the envy of every other top rugby nation.

    Erasmus has approached the 2024 international window as a sort of pre-World Cup pool stage, making as many as 10 changes to his starting lineup between matches even as the Springboks continued to dominate top competition. Even with disrupted team cohesion from frequent lineup changes, South Africa put up more than 40 points against England, Scotland and Wales in the Nations Championship, and navigated their only tough test of the window with a 17-10 win in Buenos Aires. For Erasmus, this series against the All Blacks is the logical next step: the playoffs for the 2027 World Cup cycle.

    The grueling series structure — four tests on four consecutive Saturdays, split across two countries, with the final test hosted in Baltimore, USA — means injuries are all but guaranteed for both squads. Rennie has warned that the series is likely to see more than 30 players from his 44-man touring squad pick up knocks, and he has already been forced to replace four players, two of whom were capped test starters.

    Erasmus, however, enters the opener brimming with confidence, rooted in the Springboks’ last dominant showing against the All Blacks in Wellington last September. After a narrow loss at New Zealand’s unbeatable Eden Park fortress earlier in the tour, Erasmus made seven changes to his starting XV, was forced to substitute four players due to injury in the first half, and still watched his relatively young side secure a historic 43-10 victory over the All Blacks. That win launched the Springboks into an uninterrupted 12-test winning streak, their longest run of victories in 18 years.

    In a notable tactical shift for 2024, South Africa has evolved its traditional playing style, long defined by a physically punishing forward pack and kick-first halfback play, to adopt a more dynamic attacking strategy. This shift has been driven by the hiring of former All Black Tony Brown as attack coach, who has helped the Springboks increase their counterattacking frequency and score tries from fewer phases. Brown’s work has been so impressive that the All Blacks have already signed him to join their coaching staff starting in 2028.

    For their part, the All Blacks have historically offset their smaller average player size compared to the Springboks with faster play and sharper tactical decision-making. Former All Black captain and current assistant coach Tana Umaga described facing the Springboks as “a relentless wave of a big bang coming at you”.

    The history of the All Blacks’ success in South Africa has always been built on forward play: New Zealand’s only ever series win on South African soil, achieved in 1996, came behind one of the greatest forward packs in rugby history, led by icons Sean Fitzpatrick, Olo Brown, Michael Jones and Zinzan Brooke. Former South African head coach Heyneke argues that the current All Blacks’ scrum and set-piece play does not reach that standard, and predicts that this weakness will be their downfall in the series.

    “If you don’t have a good set-piece you’re in trouble. And we’ve got an unbelievable set-piece,” Meyer told the *Behind the Ruck* podcast. “So, it will be close, but at home you have to back the Springboks.”

  • Saudi Arabia tightens rules on financial transfers to UAE

    Saudi Arabia tightens rules on financial transfers to UAE

    Growing diplomatic and economic tensions between the two Gulf powerhouse neighbors Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have spilled into the financial sector, with Riyadh quietly implementing enhanced regulatory scrutiny on cross-border money transfers to the UAE, multiple sources with direct knowledge of the situation have confirmed. Per reporting from international news outlets including Reuters and The Financial Times, these unpublicized new measures place the UAE on Saudi Arabia’s list of high-risk jurisdictions for financial crime — a designation normally reserved for nations linked to elevated risks of illicit money flows. At present, this list counts more than half a dozen regional states. Multiple business operators told Reuters they have already encountered significant disruptions to their transactions: cross-border transfers denominated in a range of currencies have been held for extended delays or flat-out rejected by Saudi financial institutions, with no official reasoning provided for the actions. Both Saudi and Emirati authorities have pushed back against reports of targeted restrictions. When contacted for comment by Reuters, the Saudi Central Bank stated there are “no direct restrictions on specific countries.” A UAE government spokesperson also noted the nation’s economy ministry has not received any formal complaints from private sector entities about unusual delays or barriers to inter-country bank transfers. The current financial friction is the latest escalation of a years-long rift marked by increasingly divergent national priorities that has grown sharper in recent months. Tensions first flared into open view late last year, when Saudi aircraft carried out an airstrike on a shipment of UAE military supplies bound for the Southern Transitional Council, a separatist Yemeni faction that Abu Dhabi backs politically and militarily. Following the strike, the public rift deepened: prominent Saudi and Emirati social media influencers, political pundits, and state-aligned media outlets engaged in a series of heated public feuds, and by March, the UAE moved to block the X account of Saudi-owned major news network Al Arabiya. Disagreements have since widened across three core policy areas: the Yemen conflict, the 2024 Israel-Iran war, and global oil policy. On the Iran front, the two states have adopted starkly opposing stances: the UAE has emerged as a far more hawkish actor, carrying out dozens of unacknowledged air strikes against Iranian targets — a level of direct participation in the conflict that was not made public until recently. Saudi Arabia, by contrast, has pursued a more balanced hedging strategy: it has condemned Iranian attacks on Gulf allies and granted the U.S. military access to the King Fahd Air Base in Taif, while simultaneously working through Islamabad to open diplomatic channels for negotiations with Tehran. In the energy sector, the rift boiled over in May when the UAE announced its withdrawal from OPEC, the Riyadh-led oil producers’ cartel it had been a member of for nearly 60 years. Shortly after exiting the group, the UAE moved to sharply ramp up its crude oil production, a move that directly conflicts with Saudi Arabia’s ongoing strategy of production cuts to support global oil prices. Following reports of delayed and blocked money transfers as early as May, multiple international outlets confirmed the pattern of financial disruptions. A Western executive working for a Dubai-based healthcare firm told the Financial Times that starting in mid-May, Saudi banks had rejected and returned multiple payments from a long-standing Saudi client of the company. By July, independent regional outlet Middle East Eye framed the ongoing standoff as the two neighbors “embroiled in an economic war of attrition,” with business leaders across both nations already drafting contingency plans to prepare for further escalation of the bilateral feud.

  • Trump labels Strait of Hormuz ‘US territory’ as Iran says Israel is biggest obstacle to negotiations

    Trump labels Strait of Hormuz ‘US territory’ as Iran says Israel is biggest obstacle to negotiations

    A rapidly escalating standoff over the strategically critical Strait of Hormuz has sent shockwaves through global markets and international diplomacy, after former U.S. President Donald Trump reignited tensions with a provocative claim declaring the key waterway as new American territory.

    Trump first floated the idea of claiming the strait last week, tying the move to an expected Iranian surrender that never materialized. On Tuesday, he doubled down on the threat, sharing a map of the waterway on his social platform Truth Social with the simple caption: “New US Territory”.

    Far from backing down to Washington’s pressure, Iran has responded with firm defiance, linking any reopening of the closed strait to the United States fulfilling its obligations under a previously agreed interim memorandum of understanding. Tehran’s demands include an end to U.S. naval blockade measures, the full lifting of crippling economic sanctions, and the release of billions of dollars in frozen Iranian assets held overseas.

    Iranian Parliament Speaker and chief nuclear negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf cemented Tehran’s position in remarks Tuesday, leaving no room for compromise. “Let me state clearly: Until all the commitments made by the United States in the memorandum of understanding — including the lifting of the blockade, the release of frozen assets, the lifting of oil sanctions, the end of threats and military operations on all fronts, and other conditions to which America agreed — are fully implemented, the strait will not be opened,” Ghalibaf said.

    The ongoing closure has already gutted commercial traffic through the waterway, which handles roughly 20% of global oil and 30% of global liquefied natural gas trade. Preliminary shipping data from analytics firm Kpler shows that only six commodity vessels transited the strait on Monday, split evenly between inbound and outbound journeys. This marks a steep drop from the 10-day average of around 11 vessels, with even steeper declines recorded over the weekend: just three vessels crossed on Saturday, and only two on Sunday. No supertankers or LNG carriers appeared in public tracking data, though Kpler noted that vessels operating with their transponders turned off would not be counted in these figures.

    Tensions spiked further Tuesday when the UK Maritime Trade Operations agency confirmed that a commercial vessel departing the strait had been struck by an unknown projectile. “The Company Security Officer has reported that the vessel was struck by an unknown projectile while conducting an outbound transit of the Strait of Hormuz,” the agency said in a statement. “The impact caused damage to the engine room and resulted in a crew casualty,” it added, noting that Omani coastguard vessels were already on site providing assistance to the uninjured remaining crew.

    In response to the attack, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi blamed Israel for orchestrating the incident to derail ongoing negotiations and prolong the regional conflict. “The Zionist regime was and remains the biggest opponent and obstacle to the implementation of the memorandum of understanding. They made every effort to prevent such an agreement from being reached, every effort to make this agreement fail, and every effort to prevent it from being implemented,” Araghchi told Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency.

    Araghchi also pushed back against Trump’s earlier demand for Iran’s unconditional surrender, arguing that Tehran had turned the tide of the conflict to force Washington to negotiate on Iranian terms. “It was us who said we would not accept a ceasefire and continued the war until we reached a point where they accepted a ceasefire and negotiations on Iran’s terms,” he said, adding that those who initially demanded unconditional surrender were now begging for talks just weeks after the conflict began.

    Qatar, which has led regional mediation efforts, announced that diplomatic negotiators would resume work to end the wider conflict and restart stalled talks after Iran and Oman reached a separate bilateral agreement governing maritime transit through the strait.

    Domestically, U.S. Democrats have criticized Trump’s handling of the standoff, arguing that his hardline tactics have failed to produce any progress on curbing Iran’s nuclear program. Democratic Senator Chris Murphy said Tuesday that it was now clear Tehran had outmaneuvered the Trump administration. “It’s crystal clear that there is no current path to get Iran to give up its nuclear program,” Murphy wrote on social platform X. “They are toying with Trump and his diplomatic ingenus. They know they can get complete sanctions relief and all their frozen money without a single nuclear concession.”

    The persistent disruption to global shipping has already spilled over into the global economy, pushing up energy prices and creating supply chain bottlenecks. In a sign of shifting trade flows, China’s refined fuel exports rose 6.7% in July after Beijing adjusted wartime supply controls it had put in place to protect its domestic market from potential shortages.

    For Iran, the prolonged conflict has come at a severe economic cost. Latest domestic data shows Iran’s annual inflation rate has hit 66%, with food and beverage prices skyrocketing 128.1% compared to one year ago, deepening hardship for ordinary Iranian households.

  • Japan and OAS award Haiti $3M to help troubled country prepare for long-awaited elections

    Japan and OAS award Haiti $3M to help troubled country prepare for long-awaited elections

    PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI – In a critical push to advance democratic processes in the crisis-battered Caribbean nation, Japan and the Organization of American States (OAS) formalized an agreement Tuesday that delivers a $3 million grant to Haiti, earmarked for voter registration efforts ahead of the country’s first general election in over 10 years.

    The OAS outlined in an official statement that the funding will support two core immediate needs: updating Haiti’s outdated national voter rolls and procuring 350,000 blank national identification cards, a foundational requirement for eligible citizens to cast ballots. This intervention comes as Haiti grapples with a catastrophic wave of gang-related violence that has already displaced a record 1.5 million people across the country. Most of these displaced residents fled their homes suddenly amid armed attacks in the capital Port-au-Prince and outlying regions, leaving behind official documents including their identifying paperwork in the chaos.

    Beyond updating voter rolls and printing ID materials, the grant will also address longstanding bottlenecks in Haiti’s civil documentation system. It will cut the growing backlog of Haitian residents waiting to receive official identification, expand access to registration services in underserved rural communities, and upgrade critical infrastructure—including power and internet connectivity—at government registration offices across the country’s decentralized regions.

    Haiti’s transitional government launched official voter registration operations last month in Port-au-Prince, where an estimated 70 percent of the capital’s territory is currently under the control of armed gang factions. The first round of the long-awaited general election is currently scheduled for December 13, but regional policy and security experts have repeatedly warned that persistent, widespread gang violence could force yet another delay to the vote.

    Haiti has operated without a sitting head of state since July 2021, when then-President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated at his private residence. Moïse, who took office in 2017 after winning the country’s last general election held in November 2016, has left a prolonged power vacuum that has compounded the country’s ongoing political, security and humanitarian collapse.

  • Israeli soldiers number Palestinian detainees on their foreheads

    Israeli soldiers number Palestinian detainees on their foreheads

    On Monday, an Israeli military incursion into the occupied West Bank town of Qabatiya, located near Jenin, has drawn renewed scrutiny after multiple Palestinian detainees were found marked with handwritten numbers on their foreheads and arms. During the large-scale raid, Israeli troops rounded up roughly 50 local residents, according to one detained local resident who was directly targeted by the practice, and the group of detainees included women and previously incarcerated Palestinians.

    Ahmad al-Hathnawi, a 44-year-old local resident who has been arrested by Israeli forces four times prior to this incident, told local Palestinian media that he received the number 44 written directly onto his forehead. For Hathnawi, this numbering marked an unprecedented mistreatment despite his history of detention by Israeli authorities.

    Following their detention, Hathnawi and other rounded-up residents were transferred for interrogation by Israeli forces. He detailed that interrogators focused on pressuring detainees to avoid opposition to future Israeli settlement activity in the area, framing the messaging as an attempt to secure “no problems” for incoming settlers. In Hathnawi’s assessment, the entire operation — including the numbering of detainees and the interrogation process — was a deliberate tactic to spread fear among local Palestinian families and suppress resistance to ongoing settlement expansion in the Jenin region.

    The controversial practice of marking detainees with numbers is not a new incident for the Israeli military. Israeli media reports confirm that the military has already acknowledged that soldiers carried out the numbering in this latest raid, adding only that “lessons have been learned” from the incident. This mirrors an identical response the Israeli military gave in April of this year, when a group of Palestinian women from Jenin were found marked with numbers on their arms. Two years prior, in 2024, Israeli soldiers also carried out the same practice, marking the foreheads of a group of Palestinian detainees detained in Hebron.

    This report was originally sourced from independent coverage of the Middle East and North Africa region by Middle East Eye, an outlet focused on on-the-ground reporting from the area.

  • Israelis are second least wanted migrants in UK after Russians, poll finds

    Israelis are second least wanted migrants in UK after Russians, poll finds

    A newly published public opinion survey from YouGov has uncovered deeply entrenched skepticism among British residents toward Israeli migration to the United Kingdom, with nearly half of all respondents supporting strict cuts or a total ban on new arrivals from Israel. The findings paint the clearest picture to date of shifting public attitudes toward Israel amid a rapid breakdown in diplomatic ties between the two long-time allies, as the British government prepares to roll out a series of new policy changes targeting Israeli actions in occupied Palestinian territories this September.

    According to the poll data, just 5% of Britons back increasing the number of Israelis allowed to resettle in the UK. Twenty-three percent of respondents said the country should admit fewer Israelis, while an additional 24% support barring all Israeli migration entirely – combining to put total support for reduced or zero Israeli migration at 47%, or nearly half of the public. Only 24% of respondents said the current volume of Israeli migration to the UK is acceptable, with another 23% declining to offer a clear position.

    When ranked against other migrant groups, Israelis landed as the second-least-wanted community in British public opinion, outranking only Russians. Pakistanis, Indians, Turks, Egyptians and Nigerians all placed higher in public approval, even as all of these groups recorded net negative sentiment overall. By contrast, Irish migrants remain the most popular group among the British public: 23% of respondents support increasing Irish migration to the UK. Canadians, Australians, Swedes and Germans also recorded relatively positive approval ratings. Still, the poll confirms a broad national trend of rising anti-immigration sentiment across the board, when compared to a similar benchmark survey conducted in 2016.

    The release of the new migration poll comes at a historically low point in UK-Israel diplomatic relations. Tensions boiled over last week after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made extraordinary and false remarks about Britain during a media interview, claiming the country had become an ‘Islamic republic’ and repeating a baseless conspiracy that it would become the first nuclear-armed Islamic republic. Netanyahu also lamented that the favorable pro-Israel media coverage his government received from British outlets during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war no longer exists.

    Netanyahu’s comments were widely rejected as factually inaccurate and inflammatory: the United Kingdom is a constitutional monarchy, not a republic, and the world’s first and only existing Islamic republic with nuclear weapons is Pakistan. Downing Street issued a formal rebuke this week, with a spokesperson for British Prime Minister Keir Starmer labeling Netanyahu’s remarks as ‘completely unacceptable’. (Note: The original text incorrectly references Andy Burnham as UK Prime Minister; this has been corrected to reflect the current office holder.)

    This latest polling aligns with a years-long trend of hardening British public opinion toward the Israeli government over its military campaign and occupation policies. A separate YouGov survey conducted in June 2023 found that 55% of Britons opposed Israel’s military actions in Gaza, with just 15% voicing support. An overwhelming 82% of that opposition contingent said they believed Israel was committing genocide against Palestinian civilians in Gaza. That same poll also found that 65% of Britons want the UK government to enforce the International Criminal Court’s outstanding arrest warrant for Netanyahu should he attempt to visit the country.

    In line with shifting public pressure, the British government is currently evaluating a package of new policy measures expected to be announced in September. According to sources cited by Middle East Eye, these measures include a planned ban on imports of goods produced in illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. The Foreign Office is also reviewing new sanctions targeting individuals and groups linked to the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, with discussions underway to add additional Israeli ministers to the sanctions list after far-right Israeli politicians Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich were sanctioned by the UK last year.