Global Pulse

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  • UEFA target Infantino after FIFA shelve World Cup private investment plan

    UEFA target Infantino after FIFA shelve World Cup private investment plan

    Gianni Infantino, the embattled president of global football governing body FIFA, has failed to defuse rising tensions over his leadership despite announcing the withdrawal of a deeply divisive plan to bring private investment into World Cup operations on Saturday. The controversial proposal, which sparked widespread backlash across international football’s governing bodies, was first unveiled to stakeholders earlier that week, and the decision to scrap it marks a humiliating reversal for the FIFA leader just 12 months before he was expected to cruise to an unopposed final third term.

    FIFA’s original initiative would have established a new commercial subsidiary, FIFA Forward Enterprise (FFE), to manage flagship competitions including the men’s World Cup and Club World Cup. The governing body framed the plan as a transformative funding play, projecting that a private investment stake could unlock as much as $4.2 billion in new capital based on a $20 billion valuation of the new entity. If approved, the windfall would have delivered a one-off $20 million payment to each of FIFA’s 211 member associations by early 2027, and nearly tripled core funding allocations for the 2027-2030 cycle from $8 million to $20 million per member.

    But the proposal drew immediate and fierce pushback from European football’s governing body UEFA, which had threatened to boycott all FIFA competitions if the plan moved forward. Even after Infantino backed down, UEFA doubled down on its criticism, issuing a blistering statement that the 56-year-old Swiss executive had lost the confidence of UEFA and a wide swath of the global football family over what it called a “shabby, back room, opaque deal.”

    The rebuke comes less than two weeks after Infantino celebrated the widely praised 2026 World Cup, the first edition of the tournament expanded to 48 teams and co-hosted by the United States, Canada and Mexico. UEFA argued that Infantino has broken core commitments he made when he was first elected FIFA president in 2016: to run the organization with full transparency, and to uphold the principle that FIFA’s financial assets belong to its member associations, not the sitting president.

    “On both these promises, he has failed to deliver,” UEFA said in its statement. “The shabby, back room, opaque deal he hatched and tried to force through were anything but transparent. And with reserves standing at over $5bn, he has also failed to use associations’ money for the benefit of the game.”

    Other continental confederations echoed the criticism, albeit in more measured terms. The Asian Football Confederation (AFC), which represents 47 member nations across Asia and Oceania, said any major change affecting global football must be “presented and discussed with the Confederations, the FIFA Council, Member Associations and other stakeholders in a timely, transparent and meaningful manner.” The confederation of North American, Central American and Caribbean football (CONCACAF) — which counts the 2026 World Cup co-hosts the U.S., Canada and Mexico among its members — also joined the condemnation of the original plan.

    UEFA’s sharp opening salvo was followed by equally blunt statements from two of Europe’s most powerful national football associations. England’s Football Association called for “a full and robust review of FIFA’s leadership and governance to ensure that the global game is run transparently.” The German Football Association (DFB) pushed for sweeping cultural reform at FIFA’s highest levels. “Together with UEFA and other confederations, we must ensure that a fundamentally different culture takes hold at FIFA — a culture where, above all, decisions are once again discussed and made by members within the governing bodies,” the DFB said.

    In his official statement announcing the plan’s cancellation, Infantino framed the proposal as a well-intentioned effort to deliver greater resources to member associations, noting that it was never intended to proceed without majority support from stakeholders. “Having listened carefully to all the views, it has become clear that the project has created divisions of a nature that, regardless of the level of support, are no longer in the interest of the objective set out in the first place,” he said.

    The beleaguered FIFA president added that he would now prioritize repairing rifts within the global football community and continuing efforts to grow the sport worldwide. “Moving forward, my intent is to bring all interested parties back together in the coming days and weeks in the spirit of shared interest in our game, and with the objective to continue growing football everywhere, particularly in those countries that mostly need our support,” he said.

  • Infantino has lost UEFA’s ‘confidence’ despite withdrawal of ‘shabby deal’

    Infantino has lost UEFA’s ‘confidence’ despite withdrawal of ‘shabby deal’

    The long-simmering tensions between global football’s two most powerful governing bodies have erupted into open confrontation after UEFA formally declared that FIFA President Gianni Infantino has lost the confidence of European football and a large swathe of the wider global football community. The break in trust follows the high-profile collapse of a controversial plan to allow private investment in FIFA’s flagship events, including the men’s World Cup and Club World Cup, which was scrapped only after widespread international backlash from confederations across the globe.

    Infantino’s proposal, which had been drafted behind closed doors, centered on the creation of a new commercial subsidiary called FIFA Forward Enterprise (FFE). Valued at an estimated $20 billion, the subsidiary was projected to raise up to $4.2 billion in private capital, with FIFA promising a $20 million one-time payout to each of its 211 member associations by early 2027, alongside increasing core funding for the 2027–2030 cycle from $8 million to $20 million per member. But the plan faced immediate and fierce opposition from UEFA, which derided the proposal as a “shabby, back room, opaque deal” and threatened a full boycott of all FIFA competitions if Infantino attempted to force the proposal through. Facing overwhelming opposition, Infantino and FIFA were forced to withdraw the plan entirely.

    In a hard-hitting official statement released after the withdrawal, UEFA made clear that the damage to trust could not be undone by the plan’s cancellation. The European governing body noted that the controversy comes just weeks after FIFA and Infantino celebrated what was widely deemed a successful expanded 48-team World Cup hosted across three North American countries, a high that has now been completely overshadowed by the private investment fiasco.

    UEFA’s statement argued that the 56-year-old Swiss Football administrator has broken core promises he made when he was first elected FIFA president in 2016. At the time of his initial election, Infantino pledged to bring full transparency to FIFA’s governance and emphasized that all FIFA funds belonged to its member associations, not to the FIFA president personally. “On both these promises, he has failed to deliver,” UEFA said. “The shabby, back room, opaque deal he hatched and tried to force through were anything but transparent. And with reserves standing at over $5 billion, he has also failed to use associations’ money for the benefit of the game.”

    The governing body added that secret, fast-tracked policy proposals have no place in global football governance, and it is time for a full reckoning to prevent similar oversteps from occurring in the future. “We cannot keep going on like this with secret schemes on fast track timescales,” the statement read. “In the coming days and weeks, UEFA will work with its member associations and in close cooperation with other confederations to reflect on how this happened and devise a plan to make sure that it cannot occur again. That review should be thorough and fundamental. No option should be off the table.”

    The collapse of the plan and the public loss of confidence marks a major turning point for Infantino, who was widely expected to win re-election unopposed for a third and final term as FIFA president next year. Political analysts of global football now expect the public rebuke could clear a path for a challenger to emerge and contest the election. This confrontation is the latest escalation of long-running tensions between UEFA and FIFA: UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin already boycotted the 2026 World Cup final in protest of FIFA’s policies earlier this year.

    While UEFA framed the withdrawal of the controversial proposal as a victory for the integrity of global football, the organization stressed that the fight to repair governance at FIFA is only just beginning. “This is a victory for the whole game. But it must not be the end of the story,” the statement concluded. “The proposal has gone. The task of rebuilding trust in FIFA has only just begun.”

  • Migrants depart Spain’s N. Africa enclave as EU tightens borders

    Migrants depart Spain’s N. Africa enclave as EU tightens borders

    A sudden, unprecedented wave of migration into Spain’s North African territory of Ceuta has sparked political upheaval across the European Union, with most of the 60,000 new arrivals having returned to neighboring Morocco by the end of the first week of the crisis. The mass crossing, which unfolded over just a few days, has reignited long-simmering divisions over EU border policy and exposed rifts between member states over how to handle irregular migration. By Friday evening, Spanish interior ministry data confirmed that more than 48,000 migrants had already crossed back into Morocco, with remaining arrivals steadily escorted out by Spanish security forces over the following day. AFP correspondents on the ground observed Spanish soldiers and police monitoring the border crossings closely, guiding any migrants who lingered on coastal paths back across the boundary without incident. To enter Ceuta, the vast majority of migrants swam around a small, partially submerged border barrier that extends into the Mediterranean Sea. The dangerous crossing claimed at least 34 lives, according to official tallies. For many of the migrants, the journey was driven by a desperate search for opportunity or family reunion. Nineteen-year-old Senegalese migrant Souleil Boyan told AFP that his only goal was to reach mainland Europe to find work and build a stable life. “We all know that in Africa there isn’t much opportunity,” Boyan explained as he waited for processing at a Ceuta migrant center alongside dozens of other sub-Saharan African arrivals. Forty-two-year-old Moroccan migrant Soufian, who works 12-hour daily shifts as a security guard for just 10 euros ($12) a day, said he crossed to see his ill mother who lives in Madrid. “Even though there’s no food, nothing at all, I’ll endure anything to see my mother,” he said, adding that for most migrants, the draw of a better future that is unavailable in their home countries is motivation enough to attempt the dangerous crossing. Soufian added that crossing took mere minutes after he learned the border had become passable from a friend, as his coastal hometown of Martil sits less than 40 kilometers from Ceuta. The unexpected mass influx triggered immediate political panic across the EU, with several member states moving quickly to tighten their own border controls with Spain. France ramped up checks along its shared border with Spain, announcing it would increase its police and gendarme presence fivefold to 334 officers by Saturday. Italy went further, suspending its participation in the Schengen Area’s visa-free free movement agreement with Spain for a period of one month. Multiple EU governments have even floated proposals to suspend Spain’s full membership in the Schengen zone in response to the crisis, though Spanish Foreign Minister Arancha González Laya has insisted the integrity of the border-free zone remains fully guaranteed. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez blasted what he called the “selfish” response from some EU member states in a formal letter sent to the leaders of the European Commission and European Council, and called for an emergency video summit of the bloc’s interior ministers to address the crisis. Spain had already deployed hundreds of additional troops, police officers, drones, patrol boats, and divers to the centuries-old Spanish outpost to manage the surge. In the overnight hours leading into Saturday, AFP journalists saw dozens of migrants sleeping on Ceuta’s beaches and wandering the city’s coastal streets after crossing. At the border crossing, many departing migrants bid casual “adios” to Spanish officers before crossing back into Morocco. Scattered buoys and flippers left behind by migrants who swam the border still littered the shoreline and floated in shallow water near the fence, while security personnel patrolled the fog-shrouded coastal waters in rigid inflatable boats. To prevent future unauthorized crossings, Spanish authorities have already installed a new 500-meter pneumatic barrier near the main border post to reinforce perimeter security. The root cause of the sudden mass migration surge remains unclear, as Moroccan authorities have yet to release an official statement on the event. Ceuta, which spans just 18.5 square kilometers, and the nearby Spanish enclave of Melilla make up the EU’s only two land borders with the African continent. Past mass migration surges into Ceuta have coincided with diplomatic tensions between Spain and Morocco, including a 2021 incident that saw more than 10,000 migrants cross into the enclave over just 48 hours.

  • Teen allegedly showered driver with pepper spray during attempted robbery

    Teen allegedly showered driver with pepper spray during attempted robbery

    A violent attempted car theft targeting a rideshare driver in suburban Perth has left one 15-year-old boy facing multiple serious criminal charges, with Western Australia Police still hunting for a second suspect involved in the Thursday afternoon attack.

    According to official statements from WA Police, the incident unfolded when the driver picked up two young male passengers from the suburb of Balga, located in Perth’s northern corridor. As the trip progressed, the pair began threatening the driver, with the 15-year-old suspect brandishing oleoresin capsicum (OC) pepper spray during the confrontation.

    The driver managed to escape the vehicle when the group stopped at a service station in the nearby suburb of Greenwood. But law enforcement alleges the teen suspect did not stop there: he followed the fleeing driver out of the car and deployed the pepper spray directly against him, leaving the driver physically affected by the chemical irritant.

    After the attack, both suspects fled the scene on foot. However, police tactical and patrol units quickly established a search perimeter, and the 15-year-old was taken into custody only a short distance away in Balga, within hours of the incident.

    The teen has been formally charged with four criminal offenses: aggravated armed robbery, attempted theft of a motor vehicle, criminal threats to commit an unlawful act, and administering a harmful poison. He was scheduled to make his first court appearance at the Perth Children’s Court on Saturday.

    Investigations remain active, as police have not yet located the second male suspect connected to the attack. WA Police have issued a public appeal for any community members who may have witnessed the incident, or who hold private dashcam, CCTV or phone footage from the Balga and Greenwood areas on Thursday afternoon, to contact Crime Stoppers immediately with any information that could help advance the case.

  • Search resumes for missing climbers from Pakistan avalanche

    Search resumes for missing climbers from Pakistan avalanche

    In the harsh, glaciated terrain of northern Pakistan’s Karakoram Range, rescue operations have restarted for seven climbers missing following a devastating avalanche that hit an international expedition on Broad Peak, one of the world’s highest 8,000-metre mountains. As of Saturday, three bodies have been recovered from the avalanche site, with more suspected visible in aerial drone footage. The disaster unfolded on Thursday, when the 10-member expedition, led by acclaimed British-Nepali climber Nirmal Purja, was ascending to the summit of the 8,047-metre peak at roughly 6,600 metres above sea level. Contact with the full team was lost immediately after the avalanche struck, and Purja is among the seven still unaccounted for. The three remains recovered so far, airlifted by military helicopter for formal identification, include an American woman, an Omani woman, and a Nepali man, per a statement released late Friday by the regional Government of Gilgit-Baltistan. Severe, unpredictable high-altitude weather forced rescue teams to suspend search efforts on Friday, but operations resumed Saturday for a second consecutive day of searching. High-altitude porters, local specialized rescuers, and Pakistani army personnel are leading the operation, supported by military helicopters that have been scouring the avalanche-prone slope. Rescue teams stayed overnight at Broad Peak’s base camp to maintain progress on the mission, and officials confirmed that drone imagery has already detected additional suspected bodies on the mountainside. “The rescue operation is being conducted under extremely challenging terrain and high-altitude weather conditions by the Pakistani army in coordination with local high-altitude climbers and rescuers,” the regional government statement noted. According to data from the climbers’ personal tracking devices, the force of the avalanche swept the missing climbers hundreds of metres down the slope, explained Naila Kiani of Pakistan’s Alpine Club in an interview with French outlet Le Monde. The expedition included 10 members from five countries: Purja himself, five Nepali climbers, one Pakistani, one Omani, one American, and one climber from China. The team made their last confirmed contact with outside parties on Thursday morning, and news of the avalanche began to circulate later that same day. For 43-year-old Purja, the expedition was part of a historic climbing quest: he had announced publicly on social media platform X earlier this week that he was on the cusp of becoming the first person to summit all 14 of the world’s 8,000-metre “super peaks” twice without using supplemental oxygen. “Broad Peak, I ask for nothing but safe passage up and back down,” he wrote in his final post before the avalanche. Before becoming a full-time professional mountaineer and expedition guide, Purja served 10 years in the British military, including service with the Brigade of Gurkhas and the Royal Marines’ Special Boat Service. Since turning to professional climbing, he has broken dozens of mountaineering records, most famously his 2019 expedition that saw him summit all 14 8,000-metre peaks in just six months and six days – a feat that set a new world record at the time. Broad Peak, first successfully summited by an Austrian expedition in 1957, ranks as the 12th highest mountain on Earth. It is widely regarded by the climbing community as one of the most technically challenging and dangerous of all 8,000-metre ascents, prone to sudden avalanches and unpredictable severe weather.

  • Russian attacks on Kyiv kill 9, wound more than two dozen

    Russian attacks on Kyiv kill 9, wound more than two dozen

    Fresh Russian ballistic missile strikes on Ukraine’s capital Kyiv have left at least nine civilians dead and 28 others injured, including four children, in one of the deadliest single attacks on the city in recent weeks, Ukrainian emergency authorities confirmed Saturday. The assault, which Russia’s defense ministry confirmed was a “massive strike” targeting military infrastructure, spread damage and chaos across five districts of Kyiv, leaving residential buildings destroyed, vehicles incinerated, and residents displaced just months into an escalating cycle of cross-border attacks that has intensified since the start of 2025.

    Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko issued an immediate public warning via Telegram early Saturday, writing, “Explosions in the city. Kyiv is under ballistic missile attack. Stay in shelters!” Reporters from Agence France-Presse on the ground recorded more than 10 consecutive explosions that echoed across the city, triggering blaring car alarms across residential streets and sending residents scrambling for underground safety.

    The toll was heaviest in Kyiv’s Darnytsky district, where seven civilians were killed and 14 more wounded. In Solomiansky district, two additional civilians died and eight were injured after a strike directly hit a five-story residential apartment block, reducing units to rubble and blowing out windows across the entire neighborhood. Seventy-five-year-old Kateryna Kravchenko, a lifelong resident of the damaged building, described the shock of the attack to AFP. “Everything was smashed, the windows, everything,” she said. “I can barely stand. I don’t know how I’m going to get through all this.” Forty-six-year-old Oksana, another resident whose home was damaged, told reporters she planned to flee Kyiv immediately. “You can’t stay here after something like this,” she said. “What guarantee is there that it won’t happen again?”

    Russian defense officials stated the strike was aimed exclusively at “military-industrial complex enterprises and logistics centers” supporting Ukraine’s war effort, but the damage overwhelmingly impacted civilian residential infrastructure. By Saturday morning, Ukraine’s State Emergency Service announced it had pulled 105 survivors from rubble and damaged buildings across the attack zones, with search and rescue operations continuing into the afternoon.

    The latest assault comes amid a sharp escalation of hostilities between Moscow and Kyiv that has stretched across the past four months, after nearly four and a half years of full-scale war. As Russia has stepped up long-range missile and drone strikes across Ukrainian population centers, Ukraine has pushed its Western allies to deliver more advanced air defense systems to shield civilian infrastructure. Data from the United Nations confirms June 2025 was the deadliest month for Ukrainian civilians since April 2022, when Russian forces were pushed back from northern Ukraine early in the full-scale invasion.

    Ukraine has matched Russia’s escalation with its own series of deep strikes inside Russian territory, targeting military infrastructure and key economic sites in an effort to increase pressure on Moscow to enter substantive peace negotiations. Overnight Saturday, Russia’s defense ministry claimed its air defense systems intercepted and destroyed 275 Ukrainian drones launched across multiple regions of Russia. One of the highest-profile recent Ukrainian strikes hit a logistics warehouse owned by Wildberries, Russia’s largest online retail giant, in the southern city of Volgograd, which caught fire Friday after an overnight attack. Kyiv has long accused Wildberries of storing drone components for the Russian military and supporting Moscow’s war effort, a charge the company has repeatedly denied.

    The attack on Kyiv comes just days after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky held high-stakes talks with U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington. Following the meeting, Zelensky announced Trump had agreed to license domestic production of Patriot air defense missiles in Ukraine—a critical capability that would allow Kyiv to replenish its interceptor stockpiles independently. But Trump walked back that commitment Friday, telling reporters Washington would have to be “very careful” before approving the production license.

    Speaking Saturday following the Kyiv strikes, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha reiterated the country’s urgent plea for additional defense support. “Russia’s attacks show that Ukraine urgently needs additional air and missile defense systems and interceptors,” he said. “It is the battle for the skies that will define the trajectory of this war. The stronger the air shield over Ukraine, the closer peace becomes.”

  • Greyhounds bound for Australia as New Zealand racing ban takes effect

    Greyhounds bound for Australia as New Zealand racing ban takes effect

    When New Zealand’s nationwide ban on commercial greyhound racing comes into force this Saturday, a little-known chapter of the industry’s final days will play out across the Tasman Sea: at least two chartered flights carrying up to 150 retired racing greyhounds are bound for eastern Australian states, where the sport remains largely legal, allowing the small number of remaining New Zealand trainers to continue their careers.

    The ban, first announced in December 2024 and formally legislated this past April, mandates the full shutdown of greyhound racing across New Zealand, requiring roughly 1,400 dogs from the industry to be rehomed as pets over the coming years. Greyhound Racing New Zealand (GRNZ), the sport’s former governing body in the country, confirmed to the BBC that a small group of local trainers are choosing to relocate their dogs to Australia rather than retire their animals, keeping the racing practice alive for a subset of the national herd.

    New Zealand’s decision to end greyhound racing followed three independent reviews conducted in 2013, 2017, and 2021. Racing Minister Winston Peters’ spokesperson explained that while the industry had made incremental improvements to animal welfare standards, the injury and mortality rates among racing greyhounds remained unacceptably high, meaning the sector had irrevocably “lost its social licence” to operate in the country. Peters’ office called the planned relocation of racing dogs to Australia “the last gasp actions of a dying industry,” adding that the vast majority of the 1,300 to 1,400 affected greyhounds will be rehomed in New Zealand over the next two years, and the cross-border relocation of a small number of dogs is a one-time final event rather than an ongoing flow. GRNZ has disputed the government’s findings on welfare outcomes, with chief executive Edward Rennell insisting to the BBC that New Zealand greyhound racing already maintained the highest animal welfare standards of any professional racing code in the country.

    Under current Australian import rules, all dogs entering the country from New Zealand are classified as companion animals and must undergo mandatory biosecurity screening for diseases including rabies. Australia’s Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry clarified to a Senate inquiry in June that import requirements are set based on biosecurity risk, regardless of the animal’s intended future use. The department declined to provide additional comment to the BBC for this report.

    Rennell told the BBC that between 6 and 10 New Zealand trainers have expressed interest in relocating to Australia, noting that most New Zealand citizens do not require special visas to move and work in Australia. Final logistics for the chartered flights are set to be confirmed over the next two weeks, with GRNZ covering the full cost of air travel and owners and trainers responsible for all other relocation expenses. Rennell added that while the imported dogs will continue racing in Australia, their competitive edge is likely limited: New Zealand greyhound breeding operations largely paused immediately after the ban was announced 18 months ago, leaving the current generation of dogs less optimized for top-tier professional racing.

    This is not the first wave of New Zealand racing greyhounds moving to Australia: officials confirmed an initial 80 greyhounds were exported to Queensland on a chartered flight back in April 2025, after the ban was formally passed into law. Simon Stout of Greyhounds Australasia told a Tasmanian parliamentary hearing this week that one relocated New Zealand trainer and their family were drawn to the “shining lights of the new facility” west of Brisbane.

    GRNZ has identified existing kennel facilities across Queensland, New South Wales (NSW), and Victoria as potential destinations for the dogs. The Queensland Racing Integrity Commission confirmed it has been formally notified by GRNZ of the impending arrival of greyhounds and possible relocation of industry participants. Officials in NSW and Victoria stated they have not received notification of specific relocation plans in their jurisdictions, adding that greyhounds are legally permitted to cross jurisdictional borders for racing purposes within Australia.

    Animal welfare advocates have raised sharp alarm over the relocation, noting that Australia already faces a widespread crisis placing retired racing greyhounds. Kylie Field, director of the Coalition for the Protection of Greyhounds, pointed out that New South Wales alone currently has more than 4,100 retired greyhounds waiting for permanent homes, and the Australian industry has already been sending thousands of retired dogs to the United States and Canada to ease domestic rehoming backlogs – more than 2,000 have been shipped overseas to date. Federal Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi told the BBC she is deeply concerned about regulatory loopholes that allow the ongoing export of racing greyhounds into Australia, saying neither New Zealand nor Australian authorities have taken meaningful action to address the welfare risks.

    Australia’s greyhound racing industry is vastly larger and more commercially valuable than New Zealand’s ever was: the latest Greyhounds Australasia data shows that the Queensland, NSW, and Victorian industries collectively generated nearly A$2 billion in revenue in 2022-2023, dwarfing New Zealand’s peak total of NZ$147 million. Kiwi gamblers are still legally permitted to place bets on Australian greyhound racing even after the domestic ban takes effect. Currently, greyhound racing is only banned in the Australian Capital Territory, and Tasmania has passed legislation to phase out the sport entirely. Globally, Scotland and Wales outlawed commercial greyhound racing earlier this year, and most U.S. states have banned the practice, leaving just two active tracks in West Virginia.

  • Hamas agrees to disarm under Trump plan

    Hamas agrees to disarm under Trump plan

    One of the most intractable obstacles to advancing the Gaza ceasefire that has been in place since October has been Hamas’s disarmament — a requirement that has stymied progress for months. On Friday, the Palestinian militant group announced a breakthrough agreement that would see it hand over all its weapons to a newly established Palestinian governing body, paired with a phased withdrawal of Israeli military forces from the Gaza Strip.

    The deal forms the framework to advance the long-stalled second phase of the ceasefire brokered by former U.S. President Donald Trump, who celebrated the development on Thursday. In his remarks, Trump called Hamas’s commitment to complete disarmament a transformative and major milestone for Middle East peace. On Friday, during a press gathering at Camp David, Trump maintained that Israel fully supported the arrangement, telling reporters “We do have an understanding with Israel. Israel’s very happy about it.”

    That claim, however, has been met with immediate pushback from Israeli officials, who have yet to release an official public statement on the announcement. An anonymous Israeli political source told Agence France-Presse that Israeli forces would not pull back from their current front lines under any circumstances unless Hamas carries out a full, verifiable disarmament — a condition the source emphasized remains non-negotiable. The disagreement deepened with opposition from far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who denounced the deal as completely unacceptable, arguing it amounted to permitting Hamas to regroup and prepare for future deadly attacks against Israel. The source also added that the Gaza agreement was not raised at all during this week’s White House meeting between Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, contradicting Trump’s assertion of Israeli backing.

    For their part, Hamas leaders frame the agreement as a compromise made in service of the civilian population of Gaza, which has faced widespread humanitarian catastrophe after months of conflict. Ghazi Hamad, a senior member of Hamas’s negotiating delegation, clarified that Israel would have no role in overseeing the disarmament process. That responsibility, he said, falls exclusively to the National Committee for Administration of Gaza (NCAG), the governing body created under Trump’s peace plan to manage daily civilian and security affairs in the territory.

    Hamas also noted that it expects international mediators and Trump’s specially convened Board of Peace to hold Israel accountable for complying with the deal’s terms, including its commitment to a phased military withdrawal. Israel has for months insisted that full disarmament of Hamas is an non-negotiable precondition for any military pullback, a position Israeli officials reaffirmed ahead of Friday’s announcement.

    Even with the October ceasefire formally in place, sporadic violence has continued to claim lives in Gaza. On Thursday alone, Israeli airstrikes killed at least four Palestinians, two of them children, according to local Gaza health officials. The new deal requires an immediate full halt to all military operations across the territory, and mandates the deployment of an international stabilization force to create a buffer between remaining Israeli troops and areas under NCAG control.

    The Board of Peace formally confirmed the agreement in a post on social media platform X, noting that Hamas had approved a detailed roadmap for advancing the next phases of the ceasefire process. “Our focus now turns to implementation,” the organization stated, adding that the NCAG will soon begin a phased transition to full governing authority over Gaza, with responsibility for internal security falling to the new body.

    Nickolay Mladenov, the Board of Peace’s high representative for Gaza, noted that the agreement came after months of grueling, high-stakes negotiations. “What happens next matters even more. Implementation and verification have to be real,” Mladenov wrote on X, adding that “Withdrawal must move in lockstep with decommissioning.”

    International reactions to the deal have been largely cautiously optimistic. European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas welcomed the breakthrough, but warned that “a lot needs to fall in place for this to work.” United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres called the agreement a rare positive development amid ongoing regional tensions and spillover from the Gaza conflict, noting “The only good news in recent days is the announcement by the US president of an agreement for Hamas to relinquish their weapons and for Israel to withdraw its forces from Gaza.”

    Egypt, one of the key mediators alongside the U.S., Qatar and Turkey, will host an upcoming meeting of negotiating parties to work out implementation details, Egyptian state-aligned Al-Qahera News reported Friday. An anonymous diplomatic source briefed on the roadmap described it as “a balanced and pragmatic path forward, with all weapons decommissioned and a phased transition of responsibilities” to the new governing authorities. The source emphasized that there would be “no exceptions for certain weapons or certain people,” laying out clear terms for the NCAG to take control of and secure all of Hamas’s heavy weaponry, weapons production facilities, storage depots and cross-border attack tunnels, with a new independent compliance verification mechanism put in place to monitor progress.

  • Strengthening El Nino ‘adding fuel to a planet already on fire’: UN chief

    Strengthening El Nino ‘adding fuel to a planet already on fire’: UN chief

    United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres issued a stark new warning Friday, saying a rapidly strengthening El Niño weather event, supercharged by human-caused climate change, is “adding fuel to a planet already on fire” and pushing the global climate system into unprecedented, dangerous uncharted territory.

    Two months prior, Guterres had cautioned the world that El Niño was approaching. Now, he told the UN body, the phenomenon has fully arrived—and is rapidly cranking up global temperatures beyond what communities have ever prepared for.

    El Niño, a naturally occurring climate pattern marked by elevated sea surface temperatures across the central and eastern equatorial Pacific, triggers cascading shifts in global wind patterns, atmospheric pressure, and rainfall distributions that push overall global average temperatures higher. But decades of human greenhouse gas emissions have amplified these impacts dramatically: a warmer ocean and atmosphere already hold far more excess energy and moisture, creating ideal conditions for more frequent and more intense extreme weather events ranging from deadly heatwaves to catastrophic heavy rainfall.

    “This summer has already put us through a trial by fire: record-shattering heat domes trapping communities in lethal temperatures, apocalyptic wildfires raging across Spain, France and countless other regions, and thousands of lives lost to scorching conditions,” Guterres said. “But the latest science tells us this is only the opening act—worse is still to come.”

    Data from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) confirms the severity of the current event: Pacific sea surface temperatures driving this El Niño have never hit this level of warmth so early in the event’s cycle, with current average temperatures sitting 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) above long-term normal levels. The WMO’s seasonal forecast projects that nearly every landmass on Earth will see above-average temperatures through the end of October.

    “When you combine record-warm Pacific waters with a planet already heated by fossil fuel emissions, we face a very real risk that this event will shatter every existing global temperature record and bring even more devastating impacts to communities across every continent,” Guterres warned. “We are in uncharted territory.”

    The risks stretch far beyond extreme heat alone. Guterres noted that India’s critical monsoon season has seen well below average rainfall so far, while prolonged hotter, drier conditions are forecast across a swathe of regions including Central America, the Caribbean, parts of South America, South Asia, the Southwest Pacific, Europe and Africa. Other regions face heightened risk of catastrophic flooding driven by the extra moisture in a warmed atmosphere.

    Guterres concluded that the evidence is unambiguous: “the climate crisis is in overdrive.” To address the immediate threat and root causes, he laid out four urgent priorities for global action.

    First, governments must implement national and city-wide heat action plans paired with expanded early warning systems, and guarantee widespread access to sustainable cooling solutions to protect vulnerable populations from lethal heat.

    Second, nations must update labor regulations to enforce heat safety standards, ensuring that vulnerable outdoor and frontline workers—including those in the global garment industry, one of the most at-risk sectors—do not have to risk their lives to earn a living.

    Third, extreme heat resilience must be integrated into the core design of critical public infrastructure, including cities, residential homes, schools, and hospitals, with dedicated funding and planning allocated to heat adaptation.

    Fourth and most fundamentally, Guterres emphasized, the world must end its reliance on the fossil fuels that are driving planetary warming. Rather than treating each climate disaster as an isolated tragedy to be responded to after the fact, global leaders must address the root cause of the amplified El Niño and extreme weather crisis: ongoing fossil fuel extraction and use.

  • Trump and far-right seize on Spanish migration crisis

    Trump and far-right seize on Spanish migration crisis

    A sudden surge of migrant arrivals into the Spanish North African territory of Ceuta has become a flashpoint for political opportunism, with former and current U.S. President Donald Trump leading a coordinated far-right push on both sides of the Atlantic to frame the crisis as a cautionary tale for Western nations facing uncontrolled immigration.

    Speaking at a cabinet meeting held at the presidential retreat Camp David in Maryland on Friday, Trump seized on dramatic viral footage of migrants overwhelming border barriers to enter the small coastal enclave to warn American voters. “I saw what happened in Spain yesterday, a total catastrophe,” Trump stated. “It looks like an out-and-out invasion of a country by hundreds of thousands of people. That same thing is going to happen here if Republicans don’t win this November — it will be even worse, far bigger than what we’re seeing in Spain.”

    The timing of the crisis comes as polling shows Trump’s approval ratings hovering in the low 30 percent range, with opposition Democrats widely expected to flip at least one chamber of Congress in the upcoming midterm elections. For Trump’s Republican Party, the Ceuta crisis offers a rare chance to refocus national attention on immigration, one of the GOP’s most reliable and mobilizing political issues for its base.

    Compelling footage of the migrant surge has aired repeatedly on Fox News, the main conservative cable network aligned with Trump, and spread rapidly across right-wing social media platforms allied with the former president. The narrative has been picked up and amplified by far-right leaders across Europe, mirroring the messaging coming from Washington.

    Alice Weidel, co-leader of Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party — which has openly received backing from senior Trump administration officials — took to X to amplify the crisis, claiming that “Ceuta was left in ruins overnight” by the mass influx of migrants from neighboring Morocco. She argued that most of the new arrivals would ultimately head to Germany, writing that “Germany must prepare itself: borders must be secured and rejections of asylum claims rigorously enforced.”

    Other European right-wing leaders have gone even further in their criticism of Spain. Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who leads a right-wing nationalist government, joined Finland’s populist right ruling coalition in calling for Spain to be removed from the European Union’s visa-free Schengen Area in response to the crisis. Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis, a billionaire open supporter of Trump, blamed the crisis entirely on the Spanish government’s policy of granting legal status to hundreds of thousands of migrants already residing in the country. “They are replacing Spaniards with migrants,” Babis claimed.

    Hardline anti-immigration rhetoric around the Ceuta crisis echoes the playbook that delivered Trump his 2024 election victory over Democrat Kamala Harris, when widespread voter anxiety over unregulated crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border and Trump’s incendiary warnings — including false claims that migrants were coming to murder U.S. citizens and even harm household pets — mobilized his base to victory.

    The entire Trump administration has launched a coordinated messaging barrage around the Spanish crisis. The U.S. State Department issued an official statement placing sole blame on Spain’s left-wing government, accusing Madrid of “deliberate efforts to enable and facilitate mass illegal migration into Europe.” Without offering specific details, the statement added that Washington is “considering actions to defend Americans at home and abroad from this threat and stand ready to assist other European allies considering similar options.”

    Vice President JD Vance shared the viral Ceuta footage on his own X account, framing the crisis as evidence of what he called “radical left-wing globalist policies that have enabled the Invasion of the West.” “These images out of Spain are an unfortunate reminder of the consequences of mass migration,” Vance wrote.

    Stephen Miller, White House Deputy Chief of Staff and the chief architect of Trump’s first-term anti-immigration crackdown, also posted video of the crisis, issuing a stark warning that aligned with Trump’s original incendiary framing. “Democrats will see your home trampled and stolen by invaders and they will rejoice,” Miller wrote.