TODAY

Orban’s government has been rocked by several child-abuse scandals in recent years.

Tens of thousands of Hungarians have taken part in a demonstration in Budapest demanding Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s resignation over his inaction towards repeated child-abuse scandals in the country.

Since returning to power in 2010, Orban has promised to prioritise the protection of children in Hungary, but multiple high-profile child abuse scandals have rocked his government in recent years.

Saturday’s protests, led by opposition party TISZA’s leader Peter Magyar, came after new allegations regarding a juvenile detention centre in the country’s capital Budapest surfaced in September. Security camera footage from the centre showed the director of the Szolo Street juvenile detention centre kicking a boy in the head.

Earlier this week, four staff members were taken into custody, and the government announced that it would place all such child facilities under direct police supervision.

On Saturday, thousands of protesters walked through Budapest’s frosty streets behind a banner reading “Protect the children!” and called on the government to take more action against the perpetrators. Some people also carried soft toys and torches in solidarity with victims of physical abuse in a case dating back several years.

On Friday, Magyar also released a previously unpublished official report from 2021, which found that more than a fifth of children in state-run care institutions have been abused.

“We should be outraged at what is being done with the most vulnerable children,” Zsuzsa Szalay, a 73-year-old pensioner who took part in Saturday’s protest, told the AFP news agency.

Orban’s government has insisted that action was being taken against suspected child abuse.

The prime minister, who faces what could be the toughest challenge to his 15-year rule in an election likely to be held in April, has also condemned the abuse in an interview with news outlet Mandiner, and called it unacceptable and criminal. He added that “[even] young criminals should not be treated this way”.

But protesters on Saturday said Orban’s response was inadequate.

“Normally, a government would be toppled after a case like this,” 16-year-old David Kozak told AFP.

Last year, the country’s president, Katalin Novak, also bowed down to public pressure and resigned after pardoning the deputy director of a state-run children’s school who was convicted of covering up sexual abuse by its director.

“For them, the problem is not that the abuses happened, but that they were revealed,” Kozak added.

The United States and the United Nations have warned that violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo could escalate into a regional conflict.

Hundreds of people were killed as Rwandan-backed M23 rebels seized another city, just over a week after the US brokered a peace deal.

How dangerous is the situation?

Presenter: Adrian Finighan

Guests:

Gatete Nyiringabo – Political commentator and governance and advocacy consultant

Kambale Musavuli – Analyst at the Center for Research on the Congo-Kinshasa

Richard Moncrieff – Project director for the Great Lakes region at the International Crisis Group

For more than a century, Warner Bros has been one of Hollywood’s biggest players, a legacy studio that helped define the Golden Age of cinema with iconic blockbuster movies. Now, it’s at the centre of a contentious, billion-dollar bidding war between Netflix, the world’s leading streaming platform, and Paramount Skydance, owned by the powerful Ellison family, which has close ties to President Trump.

Whichever way this goes, the outcome isn’t looking great.

Contributors:
Matt Craig – Reporter, Forbes
Daheli Hall – Writer and director
Lee Hepner – Antitrust lawyer
Dominic Patten – Executive editor, Deadline

On our radar

This week, Australia became the first country in the world to impose a social media ban for children less than the age of 16. The Australian government says it is taking on Big Tech and safeguarding children, but some young people were able to quickly bypass the new rules. Ryan Kohls reports.

The Imran Khan rumour mill

Despite being in jail for more than two years, Imran Khan continues to occupy airtime in Pakistan. After the army restricted access to Khan, rumours of his death ricocheted across social media.  Pressure from his supporters and family forced the military to lift the restrictions and grant Khan’s sisters access to speak to him. Meenakshi Ravi reports on the showdown between Imran Khan and powerful Field Marshal Asim Munir, and what it reveals about power, politics and narrative control in Pakistan.

Featuring: 
Amber Rahim Shamsi – Pakistan Editor, Nukta
Moeed Pirzada – Political YouTuber
Mohammed Hanif – Author and journalist

Switzerland will cut back its order for 36 Lockheed Martin F-35A Lightning II fighters in response to the program’s ballooning costs. The announcement puts a question mark over the future of the procurement. It also comes at a time when other customers are also looking at the stealth jet in terms of the value it gives for the considerable investment, not just in terms of upfront costs, but especially sustainment throughout the aircraft’s service life.

Following a cabinet meeting, the Swiss government today said it had instructed the defense ministry to buy the highest possible number of F-35As within the previously agreed budget of six billion Swiss francs ($7.54 billion). Reports suggest that, while the Swiss government viewed this as a fixed price, the United States later refuted that and claimed it was a misunderstanding.

“Due to foreseeable cost overruns, maintaining the originally planned number of 36 F-35As is not financially feasible,” the government said in a statement.

It’s presently unclear how many jets the Swiss budget will cover, but it’s worth noting that Finland’s order for 64 F-35As, budgeted at $9.4 billion, worked out with an equivalent cost-per-jet of around $82 million. However, additional costs of infrastructure, weapons, maintenance equipment, spare parts, training, and other systems and services need to be factored in. In the case of the F-35, in particular, these costs are uniquely high.

The original Swiss budget for a new fighter was narrowly approved by the public in a 2020 referendum.

A referendum is an unusual quirk of Swiss procurement, with the most expensive arms purchases first having to win the backing of the country’s voters. In this way, the maximum spend of six billion Swiss francs was approved before the type had been selected.

The F-35 fought off competition from the Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, Dassault Rafale, and Eurofighter Typhoon.

After what was described as a “comprehensive technical evaluation,” Switzerland’s Federal Council announced in 2021 that it planned to recommend to the country’s parliament that it procure 36 F-35As as part of the Air2030 program. The package also includes five Patriot air defense systems from Raytheon, which will provide the Alpine nation with a new long-range ground-based air defense capability.

“An evaluation has revealed that these two systems [F-35A and Patriot] offer the highest overall benefit at the lowest overall cost,” the Federal Council explained in a statement. “The Federal Council is confident that these two systems are the most suitable for protecting the Swiss population from air threats in the future.”

The F-35 will replace the Swiss Air Force’s existing fleet of 30 ‘legacy’ F/A-18C/D Hornets, scheduled to be withdrawn in 2030, as well as its aging F-5E/F Tiger II jets, which are slated for retirement in 2027. The first new F-35As were once expected to arrive in the country from 2025, a date that has already been pushed back.

Ironically, Swiss media reports at the time suggested that the F-35 was selected as it offered the best value for money.

“According to insiders, Switzerland can buy a larger number of F-35s with the budgeted six billion Swiss francs [$6.53 billion] than would be the case with the three competitors,” Swiss broadcaster SRF reported, citing anonymous sources.

According to the Federal Council’s findings, as of 2021, the fleet of 36 F-35As would cost around $5.48 billion, well within the price cap.

Now, at the current exchange rate, the budget cap stands at 7.54 billion, which is no longer sufficient for 36 of the stealth jets.

Meanwhile, regardless of unit price, the cost of actually sustaining the jets once in service has long been a cause for concern.

There’s also the issue of the delayed Block 4 upgrade and the lack of clarity around how much customers will actually pay for this. Block 4 supports a brand-new radar and a host of other capabilities. Among them are increased missile capacity, new weaponry, advanced electronic warfare capabilities, and improved target recognition. 

As we pointed out in the past, Block 4 might only start to become available after the Swiss begin receiving their jets, which would require them to either upgrade or decide against getting that capability boost.

It’s also far from clear what will happen next in Switzerland’s F-35 procurement; a lot will depend on how many of the jets can actually be obtained within the stipulated budget.

In the past, Switzerland has not been averse to walking away from fighter procurements entirely.

A previous fighter competition that sought a partial replacement for the F-5 fleet saw the Saab Gripen E/F being chosen, with a decision to buy 22 examples, before the entire project was rejected by a referendum in 2014.

At the same time, it’s likely that at least some Swiss Cabinet members would prefer a European fighter, and critics of the F-35 have previously suggested another referendum to potentially overturn the decision to buy American. This issue has only become magnified since the Swiss decision, with European countries increasingly uncertain about buying U.S. defense products.

There’s also a big question over whether Switzerland needs such a sophisticated, low-observable multirole fighter, since its primary responsibility will be day-to-day air policing. The Swiss Air Force also sits outside of NATO, so it doesn’t make operational deployments outside of its borders.

Another option could see a push for a cheaper ‘complementary’ fighter, or light combat aircraft, to provide additional combat (and advanced training) ‘mass’ alongside a reduced fleet of F-35s. This would parallel the existing order of battle in which F-5s operate alongside F/A-18s.

There is also the possibility that Switzerland determines that it needs the full 36 F-35s. The Swiss government also recently said that the deteriorating security situation in Europe means that the Swiss Air Force could need between 55 and 70 new fighter jets.

If that becomes policy, another referendum might be required on the total budget. The question could be put to the Swiss public, with a decision again to be made independent of aircraft type.

Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com

Tourism has been said to be The Gambia lifeline. The Smiling Coast has been receiving thousands of visitors who come to the region due to its warm reception and lively culture. Tourism has been touted as one of the greatest success stories in the country with almost a fifth of the national GDP and with thousands of employees in the formal and informal sectors. But it is a silent fact, seldom admitted, that beneath the smiling faces and the colorful postcards there is a lot more to be lost than gained by the Gambia in its tourism business. Tourism appears as a treasure of the state, however, to a great extent it turned out to be a trap in the economy.

The Gambia imported into its own country has followed an economic paradigm of liberalism, despite the fact that it idealizes open markets, deregulation, and foreign investment as the fastest way to development. The premise was straightforward, with opening up the tourism industry to foreigners, the nation would acquire employment, expertise, competition and eventually general prosperity. The tourism situation in Gambia today however tells a different story. It is not romantic, empowering or lucrative as many make it out to be. Interdependence has not brought about mutual prosperity; it has brought dependence.

 A report released by UNCTAD (2022), the Gambia is losing up to 70 percent of its tourism income to foreign owned hotels, offshore booking systems, imported goods, airlines and repatriation of earnings. Most of the payments that are made by many tourists are made in Europe prior to getting on the plane. The government of Gambians has lost most of the potential earnings by the time they find themselves in Banjul.

This trend in the economy is not solely possible. It is indicative of a world dynamic as such as defined by dependency theorist Andre Gunder Frank (1966) who opined that developing countries tend to provide labour, culture, and even resources, as wealth and power is drained to more dominant players in the global arena.

Control of tourism in Gambia by the foreigners is not merely a matter of cash but a question of power. Major tour operators, international booking networks and foreign hotel chains are often in charge of the decisions of marketing, pricing, target groups and national branding. The industry involves local stakeholders, such as guesthouse owners, tour guides, craft sellers, musicians, farmers, taxi drivers, etc., who are not architects of the industry.

According to Robert Gilpin, a political economist (1987) cautioned that the global marketplace does not operate in terms of morality and fairness but on the basis of power, interests and strategic advantage. The adoption of liberal optimism in Gambia presupposed that the openness would bring about prosperity by default. But openness lacks strategy, and interdependence has no bargaining power; it is easy to exploit such weaklings. Well-intended policies without strategic protection are now yielding their results on the Gambia.

This does not imply that The Gambia should isolate and give up tourism. Tourism is one of the most feasible pillars of development of the country with limited natural resources, small domestic market, small industrial capacity and its geographical location. The problem of the model is not its structure, but its structure. The problem is not the existence of the foreigners but the lack of Gambians in the core of the industry. The issue is with ownership and control, unequal distribution of ownership, control and value.

Here the contemporary mercantilistic approach applies. Global engagement is not rejected in mercantilism but there must be strategic engagement.  It does not see national wealth as the by-product of open markets, but a resource that has to be maintained and nurtured. A state that is mercantilist does not just watch over markets, it controls them. This is not to shut the borders but to make sure that national interests take precedence, relationships have to be founded on equal footing and economy has to feed its own citizens before it feeds others.

According to Peter Evans (1995), a political economist, refers to this as embedded autonomy a model, in which the state is strong, capable and visionary, but is also tightly related to society and local industries.

Three strategic pillars on which a mercantilist turn in Gambian tourism must be based are:

The ownership of the Gambians should be central and not peripheral.

The government assistance should be in form of available financing, taxation reforms, tourism incubators, land protection policies, investment literacy and procurement reforms which will favor Gambian owned hotels, lodges, transport organizations, tour agencies and tourism academies. No country can establish long term prosperity based on leased platforms.

Tourism has to be associated with agriculture, manufacturing, and creative industries.

Importation of food, drinks, furniture, art, souvenirs, and building materials has been a significant missed opportunity to most tourist hotels. The hospitality industry should be provided by Gambian farmers, carpenters, craft makers, tailors, artists, and designers. Once tourism sustains other industries, the money circulates and multiplies and is retained in the country.

The Gambia has to regain its tourism identity and branding.

It is now being promoted as a cheap winter resort to the rest of the world instead of a cultural giant. The Gambian culture, heritage, and values should become the driving force of the new tourism narrative, developed by Gambians themselves.

Critics tend to believe that The Gambia is too small to make bargaining power. However, size is not as important as strategy in international politics. Through ECOWAS and the African Union, small states are able to form regional blocs and speak with one voice.

The current trends in the world are not towards economic liberalism blindly. Even countries that were once the proponents of open markets are currently reshoring their industries, subsidizing, and empowering national value chains.

The army claims the member was working to re-establish Hamas’s capabilities in the Strip.

The Israeli military has said it struck a “key” Hamas member in the area of Gaza City, without elaborating on who they may be.

In a post on Telegram, the army alleged that the member had been operating to re-establish Hamas’s capabilities, which have been severely depleted by more than two years of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

There was no immediate comment from the Palestinian group.

The Wafa news agency reported that an Israeli drone hit a vehicle at the Nabulsi junction in the west of Gaza City, resulting in casualties.

The agency did not report on specific numbers, and it was not clear if the attack was the one that allegedly killed the Hamas member.

Since the ceasefire started in October, Israel has continued to attack Gaza daily – reaching nearly 800 times – in a clear breach of the agreement, according to authorities in Gaza.

Israel also continues to block the majority of aid trucks from entering the enclave. The United Nations General Assembly on Friday overwhelmingly backed a resolution demanding that Israel open unrestricted humanitarian access to the Gaza Strip, stop attacking UN facilities, and comply with international law, in line with its obligations as an occupying power.

Lionel Messi’s tour of India got off to chaotic start in Kolkata as fans vented their anger over the Argentina legend’s brief appearance at a city stadium. Fans paid up to $150 for a ticket to see their football idol – but many barely caught a glimpse of him.

Last month, I was waiting for a shared taxi at the Nuseirat roundabout when I witnessed a heartbreaking scene. As I stood by the side of the road, I felt a small hand tugging at my clothes.

I looked down and saw a little girl, no older than eight. She was barefoot, her shirt was torn, and her hair was messy and unwashed. Her eyes were beautiful, and her face showed innocence, yet exhaustion and despair clouded it.

She pleaded: “Please, please, give me just one shekel, God bless you.”

Before I gave her the money, I decided to speak with her. I knelt down and asked, “What is your name, my dear?”

She replied in a frightened voice, “My name is Nour, and I am from the north.” Her name, which means “light” in Arabic, stood in stark contrast to the darkness surrounding her.

I asked her, “Why are you asking for money, Nour?”

She looked at me hesitantly, then whispered, “I want to buy an apple… I crave one.”

In Gaza, a single apple now costs $7; before the war, a kilogramme of apples was less than a dollar.

I tried to ignore the pain rising in my chest. I thought about the circumstances we now face, where young children are forced to beg in the street just to buy an apple.

I gave Nour one shekel ($0.30), but as soon as I did, the situation worsened. A large group of children, all Nour’s age or younger, gathered around me, repeating the same request. I felt immense distress.

For more than two years, we have faced genocide. We have witnessed countless tragedies and horrors. But for me, the sight of children begging in the streets is particularly unbearable.

Before the war, Gaza was still a poor place. We used to see child beggars, but they were few, mostly roaming in a few areas. Now, they are everywhere, from the north to the south.

The genocidal war has destroyed families and livelihoods across Gaza. The carnage has orphaned more than 39,000 children, and the enormous destruction has deprived more than 80 percent of the workforce of their jobs, driving countless children into extreme poverty and forcing them to beg for survival.

But child begging is not just a result of poverty; it is a sign of a deep disintegration affecting the family, the education system, and the community. No parent sends their child to beg because they want to. The war has left many families in Gaza without options, and in many cases, there are no surviving parents to keep the children away from the streets.

Child beggars do not just lose their childhood; they also face exploitation, harsh labour, illiteracy and psychological trauma that leaves a lasting effect.

The more begging children increase in number, the more the hope for this generation diminishes. Houses can be rebuilt, infrastructure can be restored, but a young generation that is deprived of education and hope for the future cannot be rehabilitated.

The strength Gaza possessed before the war was not just about military power; it was about human power, the main pillar of which was education. We had one of the highest levels of literacy in the world. The enrolment rate for primary education stood at 95 percent; for higher education, it reached 44 percent.

Education stood as a counterforce to the debilitating siege that dispossessed the people of Gaza and crippled the economy. It nourished skills and ingenuity within the young generations to help them cope with an increasingly harsh economic reality. More importantly, education gave children a sense of direction, security and pride.

The systematic attack on Gaza’s education system – the destruction of schools, universities, libraries and the killing of teachers and professors – has pushed what used to be a remarkably resilient and effective educational system to the brink. The pillar that protected children and guaranteed them a clear future is now falling apart.

After I left the Nuseirat roundabout, Nour’s eyes stayed with me. It was not just because of the pain of seeing an innocent child being forced to beg. It was also because of the realisation that this encounter brought about: That the capacity of the next generation to rebuild Gaza one day is being taken away.

The world allowed Israel to carry out genocide in Gaza for two years. It knew what was going on, and yet it chose complicity and silence. Today, it cannot erase its guilt, but it can choose to redeem itself. It can take all necessary action to save the children of Gaza and to grant them the rights they are inherently given by the Convention on the Rights of Children: The right to food, water, healthcare, a safe environment, education, and protection from violence and abuse.

Anything short of that would mean continuing support for the slow genocide of Gaza.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Australian TV network Seven has accused a member of the England staff of a physical confrontation at Brisbane Airport.

England were travelling from Brisbane to Adelaide on Saturday afternoon before the third Test.

While the team moved through the airport, a member of the England security staff attempted to place himself between a cameraman and the squad.

The back-and-forth continued through the airport and the footage was broadcast by Seven.

Throughout the series Cricket Australia has issued instructions to media that teams will not be available for interview in transit through airports and all images should be captured from a respectful distance.

In the Seven report, journalist Tom Wilson said cameraman Nick Carrigan was “well within his rights to be filming” and “respects the unwritten rules of not getting too close”.

A spokesperson from Seven said: “There was an incident at Brisbane Airport involving a 7NEWS camera operator and a member of the England cricket team’s travelling party.

“While conducting routine filming in a public space, the camera operator was physically confronted despite acting respectfully and professionally.

“The safety and wellbeing of our staff is paramount. This matter is being taken seriously and is now being managed through the appropriate channels.”

England have not commented, but it is understood Seven has raised the incident with the touring team.

Cricket Australia has also declined to comment.

The episode comes as England ended their break in Noosa and prepare to return to training on Sunday before the crucial third Test.

England, 2-0 down after defeats in the opening two Tests, must win at the Adelaide Oval to keep their hopes of regaining the Ashes alive.

The U.S. Navy says it is aiming to have the first of a new class of frigates based on an existing American design “in the water” by 2028. The U.S. Coast Guard’s Legend class National Security Cutter is reportedly the basis for the design in question. This all follows a decision to cancel the Constellation class frigate, a program marred by major delays and cost growth, which has now further exposed a highly concerning gap in the service’s future force structure plans. Constellation, meant to right the wrongs of the disastrous Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) program by buying a largely off-the-shelf frigate, had turned into a boondoggle of its own.

Navy Secretary John Phelan had announced the cancellation of Constellation just over two weeks ago. The Navy had awarded the first contract for a fleet of at least 10 of those warships in 2020. The service picked a design based on the existing Franco-Italian FREMM frigate, with the expectation that only relatively minor changes would be needed, and that this would help keep the program on track. However, over the past five years, the Constellation design morphed into almost a completely different vessel with only 15 percent commonality with its ‘parent.’ As of April, construction of the future USS Constellation was only around 10 percent complete, and the delivery timeline had slipped to 2029.

Finally deciding to axe Constellation, though driven by harsh realities, is the latest addition to now decades-long struggles the Navy has had in bolstering its surface fleets. As noted earlier, the frigate debacle follows on from the acquisition of two chronically underperforming classes of Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) and the decision to slash purchases of Zumwalt class stealth destroyers (also known as DDG-1000s) down to just three hulls. The service currently relies heavily on its Arleigh Burke class destroyers and Ticonderoga class cruisers, the last of the latter of which are set to be retired in 2029. As such, the service has a very pressing need for additional smaller, but more capable surface combatants, as well as more surface warships overall.

“We believe the future frigate can be in the water in 2028,” Jason Potter, the official currently performing the duties of the Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development, and Acquisition, told attendees at the U.S. Naval Institute’s annual Defense Forum Washington on Wednesday, according to Breaking Defense.

“We will be building a frigate. It will be based on an American design,” Phelan had said last weekend at the Reagan National Defense Forum, according to Defense One. “It is something we can build that we think, actually, will be done before the old Constellation.”

Phelan also said the follow-on frigate effort was part of a larger naval force structure and shipbuilding plan the Navy has been crafting under the current Trump administration, referred to as the “Golden Fleet.”

In addition, Breaking Defense reported that Phelan recently told individuals at a private dinner that the Legend class National Security Cutter, developed by U.S. shipbuilder Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII), would be the basis of the new frigate, citing two unnamed sources. That outlet said the Navy and HII declined to confirm or deny any connection between the National Security Cutter design and the post-Constellation frigate plans.

TWZ has also reached out for more information. In response to our queries, HII declined to speak to the Navy’s current frigate plans.

Starting with the National Security Cutter, 10 of which were built for the Coast Guard between 2005 and 2024, would not necessarily be a surprising choice. HII notably entered a variation of its Patrol Frigate concept, derived from the National Security Cutter, into the Navy’s FFG(X) competition that led to the Constellation class, something we will come back to later on.

As TWZ has explored in the past, the 4,600-ton-displacement Legend class ships are themselves modern and capable, and are intended for open-ocean ‘blue water’ operations. In Coast Guard service, the cutters have often operated far from America’s shores and regularly integrate with elements of the Navy and other branches of the U.S. military.

At the same time, the National Security Cutter design would have been modified significantly to meet Navy mission requirements for a frigate. The primary armament of each one of the Coast Guard’s Legend class cutters consists of a single 57mm gun in a turret on the bow. They also have a Phalanx Close-In Weapon System (CIWS) with a 20mm Vulcan cannon, and mounts for crew-operated machine guns at various points around the ship. The possibility of arming them with Harpoon anti-ship cruise missiles has come up in the past, but there has been no actual movement to integrate that capability.

In comparison, the Constellation class frigate design, with a displacement approaching 7,300 tons (at least per the original target), included a 32-cell Vertical Launch System (VLS) intended to fire SM-2 Block IIICs and Evolved Sea Sparrow Missiles (ESSM). These are both surface-to-air missiles. Some of those VLS cells were also expected to be loaded with a vertically-launched anti-submarine warfare weapon, likely a member of the RUM-139 Vertical Launch Anti-Submarine Rocket (VL-ARSOC) family or a follow-on design. All variants of the VL-ARSOC carry lightweight anti-submarine torpedoes as their payloads. There had been talk of integrating SM-6 multi-purpose missiles and Tomahawk land attack cruise missiles onto Constellation in the future.

There had been much discussion in the past about whether even the 32-cell VLS was sufficient for the Constellation‘s expected combination of anti-air, anti-surface warfare, and anti-submarine mission profiles, as you can read more about in detail in this past TWZ feature.

Beyond the VLS, each Constellation class frigate was set to be armed with launchers for 16 RGM-184 Naval Strike Missile (NSM) cruise missiles (which have anti-ship and land-attack capabilities), a single launcher loaded with RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missiles (RAM) for close-in defense, a 57mm main gun, and mounts for multiple crew-operated machine guns.

Navy requirements for sensors and other systems missions, as well as other design features, would also differ from what the Coast Guard has laid out for the Legend class, which would require significant changes to the existing design. As one example, the Constellation class frigates were expected to feature a version of the Aegis Combat System, a key capability not found on the Coast Guard’s cutters.

There is also the matter of the Navy’s distinct shipbuilding and survivability standards for surface warships. Power generation, cooling, and even tweaks to propulsion could be needed.

It is important to remember, as mentioned, that a central factor in the collapse of the Constellation class program was the excessive changes between that design and the Franco-Italian FREMM (which stands for Fregata Europea Multi-Missione, meaning European Multi-Mission Frigate in English), from which it was derived. The Navy had expressly intended to reduce risks for that program by starting with a proven, in-production warship.

As mentioned, HII has already done significant design work on the Patrol Frigate concept over the past decade or so. HII has put forward multiple variations of that design, including ones with 12 and 16-cell VLS arrays, as well as various other weapons and mission systems beyond what are found on the Legend class configuration.

Patrol Frigate Variants – Information Video

“Regarding the original frigate competition, we did bid a variation of the NSC [National Security Cutter] that was lethal, low risk, and affordable,” an HII spokesperson had told Breaking Defense when asked about Phelan’s reported comments. “We look forward to partnering with the Navy on designs for the ships they need.”

There is also a question of whether the Navy might be able to more directly leverage the Coast Guard’s National Security Cutter program in its new frigate plans. In June of this year, HII confirmed to USNI News that it had stopped work on what was expected to be the 11th member of the Legend class, set to be named the USCGC Friedman, following the settlement of a contract dispute with the Coast Guard. How far along work on that ship was at the time, and whether it would be feasible to complete it in a new Navy-specific configuration, is unclear. Fabrication of the future Friedman had started in 2021. In addition, Congress previously approved funding for the Coast Guard to purchase long lead time materials in relation to an option to buy a 12th Legend class cutter, which has never been executed.

The National Security Cutter’s career with the Coast Guard to date has not been entirely smooth sailing, either. The service has been open about the challenges it has been facing in operating and sustaining its Legend class ships.

“When a National Security Cutter pulls into port, we do a controlled parts exchange, which is a fancy term for cannibalizing our readiness,” Acting Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Kevin Lunday had said at the Navy League’s annual Sea Air Space conference earlier this year. “You can only cannibalize your readiness and eat your own readiness for so long in that downward death spiral, and that’s where we’re at.”

Lunday made clear that this was reflective of broader readiness issues facing his service, compounded by budgetary challenges. The Navy fielding a fleet of National Security Cutter-derived frigates might help here by spreading cost burdens differently across a shared supply chain. The Navy already has a history of cooperating with the Coast Guard on major shipbuilding efforts.

Though the Navy’s plan to use the National Security Cutter as a starting place for a new frigate does remain unconfirmed, it’s unclear what other options there might even be for a new warship in this category that is “based on an American design.” The U.S. subsidiary of Australian shipbuilder Austal and Lockheed Martin did compete for FFG(X) with expanded versions of their respective Independence and Freedom class Littoral Combat Ships (LCS). Lockheed Martin dropped out of the running early, reportedly because it could not rework the Freedom design enough to meet the Navy’s requirements. Austal USA had continued on, but the Navy passed on its offer, as well. Variations of the Freedom class LCS are still being built, including four Multi-Mission Surface Combatant (MMSC) derivatives for Saudi Arabia. The last Independence class LCS was delivered to the Navy earlier this year.

The FFG(X) effort was itself widely seen as a rebuke of the long-troubled LCS program. Independence and Freedom class ships have both suffered from a variety of major issues over the years that have called their basic utility into question, though the Navy has made certain strides in expanding their operational employment in recent years. This all underscores the Navy’s clear, continued desire for new frigates, despite Constellation‘s cancellation.

It should also be noted that there are several modern frigate designs available on the open market elsewhere in the world. Japan’s futuristic Mogami class stands out particularly in this regard, with examples of an expanded version with a larger 32-cell VLS array now being built and a historic export deal for additional hulls for Australia secured earlier this year. This means two U.S. allies in the Pacific are now set to have fleets of these ships, which could offer operational and sustainment benefits, especially in the context of a major conflict or other contingency that both nations might find themselves involved in. Finding ways to maximize that kind of commonality would also be advantageous for the U.S. Navy when selecting a new frigate.

There are two more frigate designs, the Type 26 and Type 31, in active production in the United Kingdom, and there are export orders for both on the order books already. There is also South Korea’s Daegu class, export versions of which are set to be built in Peru, and the F110 from Spanish shipbuilder Navantia, among others.

A version of the Type 26 now in development for Canada, called the River class, as well as the F110, both notably feature the Aegis Combat system, as well as versions of Lockheed Martin’s still very new AN/SPY-7 radar. It’s also worth pointing out that the Canadian armed forces also refer to the future River class warships as destroyers rather than frigates, reflecting a particular view of their expected capabilities and mission sets. In the context of the U.S. Navy’s new frigate plans, being able to leverage an existing design that already has key desired systems baked in, at least in certain subvariants, could be highly beneficial. Integrating Aegis, and the radar arrays that go along with it, in particular, is a major design driver for any warship, and having to modify an existing type to incorporate those features would come along with costs and complexities.

This all can only prompt questions about whether the Navy may be hamstringing itself now by centering its new frigate plans on an existing American design. The U.S. shipbuilding sector, overall, faces significant challenges at present, especially around workforce retention, after decades of contracting in size. This contributed to delays with Constellation, and continues to impact other Navy shipbuilding programs. These issues have become increasingly concerning from a broad national security perspective, especially given the huge gap now that exists in shipbuilding capacity compared to that of China, and the U.S. government has been trying to take steps to reverse the worrisome trends. The prospect of leveraging foreign yards to help build future Navy warships, as well as sustain existing fleets, has been raised. American authorities have also been courting foreign investment in the shipbuilding industry in the United States. A U.S.-South Korean trade agreement announced in November notably included a pledge by the latter country to pump $150 billion into America’s shipbuilding sector.

Given what happened with the Constellation class, any future Navy frigate program is likely to face significant scrutiny, including from Congress, in general, and be seen as a major test of the service’s ability to avoid past pitfalls. Since he was confirmed to the post in March, Navy Secretary Phelan has been consistently pledging to shake up how the service buys ships and submarines, especially when it comes to accelerating delivery timelines and cutting costs.

“The requirements are going to be put in and done before we start building the first one,” Phelan also said about the new frigate plans at the Reagan National Defense Forum this past weekend, according to The Washington Times. “When we start building the first one, any change order will have to be put through me.”

“The Constellation class frigate was canceled because, candidly, it didn’t make sense anymore to build it,” Phelan also said. “It was 80 percent of the cost of a destroyer and 60 percent of the capability. You might as well build destroyers.”

Locking in the design of any future class of frigates for the Navy, and doing so relatively quickly, will be absolutely key to avoiding what happened with Constellation. This, in turn, will require the service to accept the fact that frigates are not destroyers, and the tradeoffs and risks that come with that, especially when it comes to potentially employing the ships more independently in a higher threat environment.

How the Navy proceeds in its push now to right the wrongs of the Constellation class program, and have the first example of a still sorely needed class of new frigates launched by 2028, will be an area of keen interest going forward.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

I recall how, when I was still teaching EU law at ULB, I used to point to Article 122 TFEU with a certain pride bordering on mischief. “Students,” I would say, “we always complain that the treaties leave us powerless in a crisis—but look, quietly hidden in plain sight, there is this little Swiss-army-knife provision that lets the Council act fast, by qualified majority, in a spirit of solidarity, when severe economic difficulties arise.” I presented it as one of the smartest pieces of constitutional engineering in the entire treaty. Today, I am no longer so proud.

The European Commission is now invoking that very Article 122(1) TFEU in December 2025 to make the immobilization of €210 billion of Russian central bank assets permanent and to transform them into collateral for massive loans to Ukraine. Yet Article 122 is an economic-policy tool—not a foreign-policy or sanctions instrument. Freezing a third country’s sovereign reserves is, by definition, a restrictive measure governed by Article 215 TFEU, which requires unanimity under the CFSP.

The objective behind this legal switch is transparent: to bypass the vetoes of Hungary and possibly Slovakia. But this is a textbook evasion of the unanimity rule, the very type of maneuver the Court of Justice has repeatedly condemned—most famously in its 2012 ruling on sanctions against Zimbabwe.

Nor are the textual prerequisites of Article 122(1) even remotely satisfied. Its triggers—“severe difficulties in the supply of certain products, notably energy” or threats to the balance of payments—simply do not correspond to political inconvenience in renewing sanctions. And the Court has never equated a geopolitical stalemate with an “economic emergency.”

The Commission’s approach also stretches the Union’s powers far beyond their constitutional limits. The EU does not possess a general emergency competence and has no authority to adopt quasi-confiscatory measures against the central bank of a third state. Under customary international law, central-bank assets enjoy near-absolute immunity; using them as loan collateral without judicial process or a peace treaty amounts, in many experts’ view, to unlawful expropriation.

Such a precedent would be economically reckless. The ECB has repeatedly warned—if mostly behind closed doors—of the catastrophic effects this could have on the euro’s status as a reserve currency. The “without prejudice” clause in Article 122 does not grant it supremacy over more specific legal bases that deliberately require unanimity.

And even if one were to ignore these structural limits, the litigation risk is enormous. Should the Court annul the regulation—a highly probable outcome once Belgium files—the assets will need to be released, the loans will become illegal, and both the Union and Euroclear could face joint liability in the hundreds of billions.

For all these reasons, the overwhelming majority of independent EU and international-law scholars view the attempt to rely on Article 122(1) as legally indefensible. The political majority may still force the measure through in December 2025, but litigation is inevitable. When the action for annulment reaches Luxembourg, the court is likely to strike it down within one or two years. And in the process, my once-beloved Article 122—the provision I used to celebrate as a masterpiece of flexible, solidarity-driven drafting—may emerge severely damaged, perhaps permanently.

I never thought I would live to see the day when this provision would be twisted into what the Belgian Prime Minister has openly called “theft.” One further doctrinal point makes the misuse even clearer: Article 122(1) defines its object and purpose with remarkable precision. It authorizes Council action “in a spirit of solidarity between Member States” when Member States face severe economic difficulties. This solidarity clause is not decorative; the Court has repeatedly affirmed its binding nature.

A systemic reading reinforces this conclusion. Article 122(1) cannot be used to grant financial assistance—a power explicitly reserved for Article 122(2), which functions as a lex specialis. Measures under paragraph 1 therefore cannot include loans or any other form of financial aid, let alone the conversion of a third country’s frozen sovereign assets into collateral for a €100–200 billion lending operation to another third country. The Commission’s proposal is not merely constitutionally illegitimate for hijacking a CFSP sanction; it is textually impossible.

Recent developments only underscore the trend toward abusing Article 122 as a general crisis-financing mechanism. On 19 March 2025, the Commission proposed a Council regulation establishing the “SAFE instrument” (Security Action for Europe) to rapidly expand Europe’s arms industry. Although the proposal generically cites “Article 122 TFEU,” it is clear from its substance—providing financial assistance to Member States to support urgent, large-scale defense investments—that it relies on Article 122(2).

The SAFE regulation would mobilize €150 billion from the EU budget in the form of subsidies and subsidized loans for national defense projects. Since Member States may receive financial aid from the Union budget on account of severe difficulties only under Article 122(2), the proposal cannot be grounded in Article 122(1). Its explanatory memorandum invokes the “exceptional security context” and the need for “massive investments” in defense manufacturing—but these are political arguments, not legal ones.

Taken together, the Russian-assets plan and the SAFE proposal amount to a systematic attempt to transform Article 122 into a universal crisis and security financing clause—a purpose it was never designed to fulfill.

The European Parliament, while strongly supportive of assisting Ukraine, has raised alarm over this distortion of a 1957 economic-emergency provision, adopted in secret, by a qualified majority, without parliamentary scrutiny. When the case reaches Luxembourg, the Parliament will argue—rightly—that the Emperor has no clothes. And on current jurisprudence, the Court is likely to agree.

Article 122 allows the Council to legislate alone. That was grudgingly tolerated for €3 billion of extraordinary own resources during COVID. For €210 billion of another state’s sovereign assets in peacetime, it is constitutionally explosive.

The real motive remains the neutralization of Hungary’s veto in the CFSP. But the Court has annulled every previous attempt to launder a CFSP measure through a non-CFSP legal basis (see Case C-130/10). And while the war undeniably harms Europe’s economy, the Court has never accepted “we need to bypass a veto” as equivalent to an energy-supply crisis or a balance-of-payments emergency.

If the General Court or the ECJ strikes down the €150 billion defense fund for exceeding the scope of Article 122, then the Russian assets regulation—which is even further removed from classic economic policy grounds—has virtually no chance of surviving judicial review.

ELN conducts military drills, orders civilians indoors, as Trump warns drug-producing nations face potential attack.

Colombia’s largest remaining rebel force has told civilians living under its authority to stay at home for three days while it stages military drills in response to burgeoning United States threats.

The National Liberation Army (ELN), a left-wing rebel group, ordered the lockdown on Friday, instructing residents to keep off major routes and rivers from Sunday morning as fighters conduct what the group describes as preparations to defend the country against “imperialist intervention”.

The announcement follows warnings from President Donald Trump that nations manufacturing and exporting cocaine to the US could face military strikes or even land attacks.

“It is necessary for civilians not to mix with fighters to avoid accidents,” the ELN said.

Colombia’s Defence Minister Pedro Sanchez rejected the rebel directive as “nothing more than criminal coercion”, pledging that government troops would maintain presence “in every mountain, every jungle, every river”.

The move underscores a deepening confrontation between Washington and Bogota as Trump escalates rhetoric against Colombian President Gustavo Petro.

Earlier this week, Trump told business executives that Petro had “better wise up, or he’ll be next”, citing cocaine production as justification for potential action, and alluding to the US military build-up near Venezuela amid threats to remove its President Nicolas Maduro.

In recent days, the Trump administration has imposed new sanctions on Venezuela, targeting three nephews of President Nicolas Maduro’s wife, Cilia Flores, as well as six crude oil tankers and shipping companies linked to them, as Washington steps up pressure on Caracas, following the US seizure of a Venezuelan oil tanker.

Petro has responded to Trump’s actions, including sanctioning the Colombian president, with equal defiance, warning Trump earlier this month against “waking the jaguar” and insisting any assault on Colombian territory would amount to a declaration of war.

The left-wing president has invited his US counterpart to witness laboratory demolitions firsthand, claiming his administration destroys drug facilities every 40 minutes. In late November, the government hailed what it said was its largest cocaine bust in a decade.

The rebel group, ELN, which fields roughly 5,800 fighters, maintains control over significant drug-producing areas, including the Catatumbo region along the Venezuelan frontier.

Al Jazeera correspondent Teresa Bo, who visited ELN-held territory in November, found the group exercising unchallenged authority, with fighters openly displaying banners declaring “Total peace is a failure” and no government soldiers visible.

Commander Ricardo, a senior figure interviewed during that visit, suggested the rebels might join wider resistance should Trump attack Venezuela. Such an intervention could provoke an armed response across Latin America, he warned, describing US actions as violations of regional self-determination.

The organisation has attempted peace negotiations with Colombia’s last five governments without success.

Discussions with Petro’s administration collapsed after the ELN launched a January assault in Catatumbo that killed more than 100 people and forced thousands from their homes.

Despite claiming ideological motivation, the group derives substantial income from narcotics trafficking, competing with former FARC fighters who refused to disarm under a 2016 peace settlement for control of coca cultivation zones and smuggling corridors.

Relations between Colombia and the US have deteriorated sharply since Trump returned to office.

Washington has imposed personal sanctions on Petro, cancelled his visa after he joined a pro-Palestinian demonstration in New York, and removed Colombia from its list of reliable counter-narcotics partners.

Meanwhile, Trump has deployed the nation’s largest aircraft carrier and nearly 15,000 troops to the Caribbean and has ordered more than 20 military strikes in recent months against alleged drug trafficking vessels in the Caribbean and off Latin America’s Pacific coast, killing more than 80 people.

Human rights groups, some US Democrats, and several Latin American countries have condemned the attacks as unlawful extrajudicial killings of civilians.

Witnesses at the hospital and the UN say the attack killed medics, patients and may ‘amount to a war crime’.

Myanmar’s military has acknowledged it conducted an air strike on a hospital in the western state of Rakhine that killed 33 people, whom it accused of being armed members of opposition groups and their supporters, but not civilians.

Witnesses, aid workers, rebel groups and the United Nations have said the victims were civilians at the hospital.

In a statement published by the state-run Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper on Saturday, the military’s information office said armed groups, including the ethnic Arakan Army and the People’s Defence Force, used the hospital as their base.

It said the military carried out necessary security measures and launched a counterterrorism operation against the general hospital in Mrauk-U township on Wednesday.

However, the United Nations on Thursday condemned the attack on the facility providing emergency care, obstetrics and surgical services in the area, saying that it was part of a broader pattern of strikes causing harm to civilians and civilian objects that are devastating communities across the country.

UN rights chief Volker Turk condemned the attacks “in [the] strongest possible terms” and demanded an investigation. “Such attacks may amount to a war crime. I call for investigations and those responsible to be held to account. The fighting must stop now,” he wrote on X.

World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he was “appalled”. “At least 33 people have been killed … including health workers, patients and family members. Hospital infrastructure was severely damaged, with operating rooms and the main inpatient ward completely destroyed,” he wrote on X.

Myanmar has been gripped by attritional fighting in a raging civil war.

Mrauk-U, located 530km (326 miles) northwest of Yangon, the country’s largest city, was captured by the Arakan Army in February 2024.

The Arakan Army is the well-trained and well-armed military wing of the Rakhine ethnic minority movement, which seeks autonomy from Myanmar’s central government. It began its offensive in Rakhine in November 2023 and has seized a strategically important regional army headquarters and 14 of Rakhine’s 17 townships.

Rakhine, formerly known as Arakan, was the site of a brutal army counterinsurgency operation in 2017 that drove about 740,000 Muslim-majority Rohingya to seek safety across the border in Bangladesh. There is still ethnic tension between the Buddhist Rakhine and the Rohingya.

The Arakan Army pledged in a statement on Thursday to pursue accountability for the air strike in cooperation with global organisations to ensure justice and take “strong and decisive action” against the military.

The military government has stepped up air strikes ahead of planned December 28 elections. Opponents of military rule charge that the polls will be neither free nor fair and are mainly an effort to legitimise the army retaining power.

Myanmar has been in turmoil since the army took power in 2021, triggering widespread popular opposition. Many opponents of military rule have since taken up arms, and large parts of the country are now embroiled in conflict.

China has marked the anniversary of the 1937 massacre by Japanese soldiers, as tensions soar over Taiwan.

China has held a low-key memorial ceremony for the Nanjing Massacre, as a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan continues to simmer.

President Xi Jinping did not attend the ceremony on Saturday commemorating the 1937 attack, in which China says Imperial Japan’s troops slaughtered 300,000 people in the eastern city of Nanjing.

A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll at 142,000, but some conservative Japanese politicians and scholars have denied that a massacre took place at all. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history.

Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has infuriated Beijing after her remarks last month in which she projected that a hypothetical Chinese attack on the self-governed island of Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan.

Doves flew over the national memorial centre in Nanjing after the ceremony, which was completed in less than half an hour, in front of an audience that included police officers and schoolchildren.

Shi Taifeng, head of the ruling Communist Party’s powerful organisation department, made far less combative remarks than recent rhetoric from Chinese government officials.

“History has proven and will continue to prove that any attempt to revive militarism, challenge the post-war international order, or undermine world peace and stability will never be tolerated by all peace-loving and justice-seeking peoples around the world and is doomed to fail.”

He did not mention Takaichi but alluded to China’s previous assertions that the Japanese leader seeks to revive the country’s history of militarism.

On Saturday, the Eastern Theatre Command of China’s People’s Liberation Army put out a picture on its social media accounts of a large bloody sword, of the type used by many Chinese soldiers during the war, chopping off the head of a skeleton wearing a Japanese army cap.

“For nearly 1,000 years, the eastern dwarves have brought calamity; the sea of blood and deep hatred are still before our very eyes,” it said, using an old expression for Japan.

Dispute over Taiwan

Last month, Japan’s Defence Minister Shinjiro Koizumi announced that Tokyo was moving forward with plans to deploy a missile system on Yonaguni, the country’s westernmost island located 110km (68 miles) off Taiwan’s east coast, which has hosted a Japanese military base since 2016.

China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs blasted the announcement, describing Japan’s plan as a “deliberate attempt to create regional tension and provoke military confrontation”. Koizumi pushed back, saying the Type 03 guided missile system was purely defensive and “intended to counter aircraft and missiles invading our nation”.

Beijing views Taiwan as its own territory and has promised to unite the island with the Chinese mainland, an aspiration that Taipei says infringes on its sovereignty and that only Taiwan’s citizens can decide their future.

Both countries have since traded quarrelsome accusations, with Japan summoning China’s ambassador earlier this month over an incident in which Chinese military aircraft allegedly twice locked fire-control radar onto Japanese fighter jets.

Illuminating aircraft with radar signals a potential attack that could force targeted planes to take evasive measures, making it among the most threatening actions a military aircraft can take.

For its part, the Chinese embassy denied Tokyo’s claims, saying in a statement that “China solemnly demands that Japan stop smearing and slandering, strictly restrain its frontline actions, and prevent similar incidents from happening again”.

Beijing has summoned the Japanese ambassador, written to the United Nations, urged citizens to avoid travelling to Japan and renewed a ban on Japanese seafood imports, while cultural events involving Japanese performers and movies have also been hit.

US President Donald Trump’s overseas envoy will travel to Germany this weekend to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and European leaders for the latest round of high-level talks on ending the war.

Steve Witkoff, who has been leading White House attempts to mediate between Ukraine and Russia, will discuss the latest version of the proposed peace agreement in Berlin.

The Trump administration is pushing for a deal to be in place by Christmas and has held several rounds of talks with Ukrainian and Russian representatives in recent weeks, though there has been little sign a breakthrough is imminent.

It has not yet been confirmed which European leaders will attend the Berlin talks.

The Wall Street Journal, which first reported details of the meeting, said UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz would all take part.

Confirmation of the Witkoff-Zelensky meeting comes days after Ukraine gave the US its revised version of a 20-point peace plan, the latest iteration of a proposal which first emerged in late November and has triggered a flurry of diplomatic activity.

The fate of territory in eastern Ukraine remains one of the most intractable topics in the negotiations, with Kyiv refusing to cede land which has been illegally occupied, and Moscow repeating its intention to take the Donbas region in full by force unless Ukraine withdraws.

Zelensky has reacted sceptically to the White House’s latest proposal on resolving the territorial question, which is for Ukraine’s army to pull out of the region and for it to be turned into a “special economic zone”.

The Ukrainian president told reporters that under the US-proposed terms, the Kremlin would undertake not to advance into the areas vacated by Ukraine’s forces, with the land between Russian-controlled parts of the Donbas and Ukraine’s defensive lines effectively turned into a demilitarised zone.

The proposal, seemingly an attempt to resolve the question of legal ownership by creating a new status for the land, has been publicly questioned by Zelensky, who said: “What will restrain [Russia] from advancing? Or from infiltrating disguised as civilians?”

Ukraine and allies in Europe have said publicly that the US-led talks have been fruitful, and have hailed progress on securing amendments to a plan which was widely viewed as favouring Russia when it first emerged.

But there have been signs in recent weeks that Trump is losing patience with Zelensky and his backers on the continent.

In a scathing interview with Politico earlier this week, the US president labelled European leaders “weak” and renewed his calls for Ukraine to hold elections.

Zelensky said elections could be held within 90 days if the US and Europe provided the necessary security. Elections have been suspended since martial law was declared when Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.

As the White House’s diplomatic push continues, attention in Europe is focused on how to support Ukraine in the event of a peace deal, with talks ongoing over security guarantees and funding.

The Ukrainian government faces a stark financial situation: it needs to find an extra €135.7bn (£119bn; $159bn) over the next two years.

On Friday, European Union governments agreed to indefinitely freeze around €210bn (£185bn; $247) worth of Russian assets held in Europe.

It is hoped that agreement paves the way for the funds to be loaned back to Ukraine if a deal can be reached at an EU summit next week, providing Kyiv with financial help for its military and efforts to rebuild parts of the country left devastated after nearly four years of all-out war.

That move has been condemned as theft by the Kremlin, and Russia’s central bank has said it will sue Euroclear, a Belgian bank where the vast majority of Russian assets frozen after the invasion are held.

Officials were still negotiating the exact structure of a deal to repurpose the Russian assets on behalf of Ukraine, with the Belgian government being particularly sceptical due to its particular legal exposure as the main holder.

Elsewhere, it was reported that the latest version of the peace plan being circulated envisions Ukraine rapidly joining the European Union.

The Financial Times said Brussels backed Ukraine’s swift accession to the bloc, an idea proposed by Ukraine in the latest draft it has given to Washington.

Ukraine formally applied to join the EU days after the 2022 invasion but despite promises of an accelerated process is still several years away from becoming a member.

Under the plan, Ukraine would become a member as soon as January 2027, AFP reported, citing an unnamed senior official. It was unclear whether Washington had approved that element of the draft.

Welcome to Bunker Talk. This is a weekend open discussion post for the best commenting crew on the net, in which we can chat about all the stuff that went on this week that we didn’t cover. We can also talk about the stuff we did or whatever else grabs your interest. In other words, it’s an off-topic thread.

This week’s second caption reads:

25 July 2022, Hamburg: In front of an entrance to the Steintor underground bunker, yellow and black pressure doors can be seen. The inscription “Stand back from the door” can be read on the doors. The 140-meter-long and 17-meter-wide facility near the main train station had been built from 1941 to 1943. During the Cold War, it had been converted into a nuclear bunker and would have provided shelter for 2700 people in an emergency. Since 2007, the Hamburg Underworlds association has organized guided tours and cultural events in the underground bunker so that the history of this place is not forgotten. Photo: Julian Weber/dpa (Photo by Julian Weber/picture alliance via Getty Images)

Also, a reminder:

Prime Directives!

• If you want to talk politics, do so respectfully and know that there’s always somebody that isn’t going to agree with you. 
• If you have political differences, hash it out respectfully, stick to the facts, and no childish name-calling or personal attacks of any kind. If you can’t handle yourself in that manner, then please, discuss virtually anything else.
• No drive-by garbage political memes. No conspiracy theory rants. Links to crackpot sites will be axed, too. Trolling and shitposting will not be tolerated. No obsessive behavior about other users. Just don’t interact with folks you don’t like. 
• Do not be a sucker and feed trolls! That’s as much on you as on them. Use the mute button if you don’t like what you see.  
• So unless you have something of quality to say, know how to treat people with respect, understand that everyone isn’t going to subscribe to your exact same worldview, and have come to terms with the reality that there is no perfect solution when it comes to moderation of a community like this, it’s probably best to just move on. 
• Finally, as always, report offenders, please. This doesn’t mean reporting people who don’t share your political views, but we really need your help in this regard.

China has successfully achieved economic development in recent years by shifting towards a model that relies on stimulating domestic demand. This not only ensures economic stability but also addresses crucial considerations related to China’s national security and international competitiveness. China has indeed succeeded in this by focusing on four key factors that are the main determinants of its remarkable economic growth: economic reform policies, the government’s commitment to Chinese-style reform, the government’s dedication to integrating into the global economy, and industrial upgrading and technological innovation. The Chinese government has also unveiled measures to boost service consumption and pledged to open up more sectors, such as the internet, culture, and the promotion of hosting international sporting events, in an effort to bolster the Chinese economy and connect it globally.

 China’s Fifteenth Five-Year Plan further spurred this shift from high-speed growth to high-quality growth, placing science and technology at the forefront of national priorities.  Over the past five years, China has strengthened its comprehensive opening-up policy, implementing practical measures to improve the business environment and fostering continued cooperation with all countries, especially developing nations of the Global South, through its Belt and Road Initiative. The Belt and Road Initiative has become a model for a new type of international cooperation and has been recognized as such by international organizations, including the United Nations. During this same period, China has also made concerted efforts to improve the ecological environment and fulfill its international commitments through its “green economy” policy. This policy emphasizes the Chinese government’s commitment to environmentally friendly economic projects worldwide, particularly in African, developing, and Globally Southern countries. China is rapidly advancing a cleaner and greener economy, with strong commitments to environmental protection, clean energy, ecological protection, and the development of green industries.

 China’s economic development has achieved remarkable success in recent years through a long-term plan focused on economic reforms. This plan involved transitioning from a centrally planned economy to a market-oriented one, adopting a policy of openness to foreign investment, establishing special economic zones to attract foreign investment, and investing heavily in infrastructure development, particularly in transportation, energy, communications, information technology, and artificial intelligence. China has also become the world’s largest exporter of advanced technology, with the Chinese government allocating approximately 2.6% of its GDP to research and development across various economic sectors. Furthermore, China boasts the world’s fastest-growing consumer market and is the second-largest importer of goods.  China’s industrial output is double that of the United States. The Chinese government has addressed poverty through development, guided by market principles, economic restructuring, the utilization of domestic resources, peaceful production development, and the strengthening of self-reliance and development capabilities. It has employed various methods and approaches to reduce poverty through self-reliance and hard work, building infrastructure in agriculture, industry, roads, and irrigation, providing the necessary funds for development and training, and allocating all necessary resources for technological advancements in each sector. Simultaneously, efforts have been made to protect the environment by conserving soil and water, promoting ecological construction, and implementing the sustainable development strategy set by the central government. China has not only eradicated poverty but has also raised the standard of living in all areas, enabling it to compete with developed nations in many fields.

 One of the most prominent strengths of the Chinese economy in recent years is its success in achieving high levels in education and scientific research. China spends 2.5% of its GDP on research and development.  The number of people employed in research and development sectors is approximately 1,687 per million inhabitants, enabling China to remain a leading exporter of high-tech goods globally. This has been achieved while the Chinese government has encouraged the formation of rural and private enterprises, liberalized foreign trade and investment, eased state control over certain prices, and invested in industrial production and workforce education.

A New York Times reporter told Jeffrey Epstein that he could write an article that would define the financier on his own terms as he faced allegations of sexually abusing minors in the months leading up to his 2008 conviction, newly uncovered emails reveal.

After a negative article about Epstein was published in September 2007, then-New York Times journalist Landon Thomas Jr advised Epstein to “get ahead” of more bad publicity by doing an interview that would define the story “on your terms”.

“I Just read the Post. Now the floodgates will open — you can expect Vanity Fair and NYMag to pile on,” Thomas wrote to Epstein in an email dated September 20, 2007, referring to the magazines Vanity Fair and New York Magazine.

“My view is that the quicker you get out ahead of this and define the story and who you are on your terms in the NYT, the better it will be for you.”

Thomas, who left the Times in 2019, urged Epstein to quickly do an interview to prevent the “popular tabloid perception” about him from hardening, and expressed sympathy over his legal troubles.

“I know this is tough and hard for you, but remember jail may [be] bad, but it is not forever,” Thomas wrote.

As part of his pitch to Epstein, Thomas recalled a 2002 profile he wrote about the financier for New York Magazine, titled Jeffrey Epstein: International Moneyman of Mystery.

Written before Epstein’s first arrest in 2006, the profile portrayed the financier as an enigmatic but highly successful businessman with the appearance of a “taller, younger Ralph Lauren” and a “relentless brain that challenges Nobel Prize-winning scientists”.

The piece contained glowing appraisals from Epstein’s many high-profile associates, whose praise-filled descriptions included that he was “very smart”, “amazing”, “extraordinary”, and “talented”.

“Remember how for a while my NY Mag piece was the defining piece on you? That is no longer the case after all this,” Thomas wrote to Epstein.

“But I think if we did a piece for the Times, with the documents and evidence that you mention, plus you speaking for the record, we can again have a story that becomes the last public word on Jeffrey Epstein.”

A little more than a week later, on September 28, Thomas sent Epstein an email reiterating the importance of “getting out ahead” of other publications.

Thomas suggested that he begin reaching out to associates of Epstein who could talk about the financier’s business activities and scientific and philanthropic work, including former Harvard President Larry Summers and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.

“Before I get a glimpse of the legal material, I was thinking that I should at least start calling around to people who know you. Again to focus on the business and scientific/philanthropic aspect of the piece,” Thomas wrote.

“Could I start to do that — call people like Larry Summers, Jess Staley, George Mitchell, Ehud Barak, Bill Richardson and others?” Thomas finished the email expressing his hope that Epstein was “holding up okay” and stating his view that “we need to move on this.”

It is not clear how Epstein responded to Thomas’s emails, which were included in a trove of emails from Epstein’s personal accounts that were made available to Al Jazeera by the whistleblower website Distributed Denial of Secrets.

Thomas did not respond to a request for comment.

Following Thomas’s correspondence with Epstein, the Times went on to publish an article by the journalist detailing the financier’s downfall the following year.

The article, published a day after Epstein’s guilty plea on June 30, 2008, drew from in-person and phone interviews that Thomas had conducted with the financier, including during a visit to Epstein’s island of Little St James several months earlier.

In the article, Thomas described the financier sitting on the patio of his island mansion as he likened himself to the eponymous character of the satirical novel Gulliver’s Travels.

“Gulliver’s playfulness had unintended consequences,” Epstein was quoted as saying.

“That is what happens with wealth. There are unexpected burdens as well as benefits.”

A 2019 report by NPR said colleagues of Thomas at the Times had been “appalled” by the article when they reviewed it years later, following the journalist’s admission that he had solicited a $30,000 donation from Epstein for a cultural centre.

The emails obtained by Al Jazeera also show that Epstein emailed an error-strewn Word document to himself in which Thomas is described discussing the legal case against Epstein with then-Florida prosecutor David Weinstein.

The purpose and origin of the document, which describes Thomas and Weinstein discussing technical aspects of the charges facing Epstein, is unclear. Weinstein said he spoke to Thomas in January 2008, but that the document did not contain an accurate description of their conversation.

Weinstein said they had spoken about the “criminal justice process and general state and federal statutes”, but not Epstein’s case specifically.

He said he did not know where the information in the document came from or who provided it to Epstein.

“I never spoke with him about the specific facts of the late Mr Epstein’s case, nor did I offer any opinion about that matter,” Weinstein told Al Jazeera.

The emergence of the emails between Thomas and Epstein comes after correspondence the two men shared from 2015 to 2018 came to light last month in a batch of documents released by US lawmakers.

Among other revelations, those emails showed that Thomas let Epstein know that the late investigative journalist John Connolly had contacted him for information for Connolly’s 2016 book Filthy Rich: The Jeffrey Epstein Story.

“He seems very interested in your relationship with the news media,” Thomas wrote to Epstein in an email dated June 1, 2016. “I told him you were a hell of a guy :)”.

A spokesperson for the Times said Thomas had not worked for the newspaper since early 2019 “after editors discovered his failure to abide by our ethical standards”.

BREAKINGBREAKING,

Cambodia’s Ministry of Defence said Thai F-16 fighter jets continued to bomb targets inside country.

Cambodia has accused Thailand of continuing to drop bombs in its territory hours after United States President Donald Trump said Bangkok and Phnom Penh had agreed to stop fighting.

“On December 13, 2025, the Thai military used two F-16 fighter jets to drop seven bombs” on a number of targets, the Cambodian Defence Ministry said in a post on social media on Saturday.

“Thai forces have not stopped the bombing yet and are still continuing the bombing,” the ministry said, listing aerial attacks on hotel buildings and bridges earlier in the morning.

The reports of continued bombing follow after President Trump said that Thailand and Cambodia had agreed “to cease all shooting” on Friday.

“I had a very good conversation this morning with the Prime Minister of Thailand, Anutin Charnvirakul, and the Prime Minister of Cambodia, Hun Manet, concerning the very unfortunate reawakening of their long-running War,” Trump said on his Truth Social platform.

“They have agreed to CEASE all shooting effective this evening, and go back to the original Peace Accord made with me, and them, with the help of the Great Prime Minister of Malaysia, Anwar Ibrahim,” he said.

This is a breaking news story. More to follow soon.

Dili, East Timor – On the 50th anniversary of Indonesia’s invasion of East Timor, longtime independence advocate and now the country’s President Jose Ramos-Horta reflected on the last half-century of politics and diplomacy in his country.

Ramos-Horta was serving as the foreign minister of the newly declared Democratic Republic of East Timor in the days leading up to Indonesia’s invasion in December 1975.

Formed by the independence party Fretilin after colonial Portugal’s withdrawal from the country, the new government in East Timor’s capital Dili was under pressure from Indonesia and its threat of invasion.

As the danger intensified, Ramos-Horta flew to the United Nations in New York to plead for international recognition and protection for East Timor’s fragile independence. Despite unanimous support at the UN for Timorese self-determination, Indonesian troops launched their invasion on December 7, 1975.

Ramos-Horta’s colleagues, including Prime Minister Nicolau Lobato and other Fretilin leaders, either went into hiding or were killed in the ensuing attack. Unable to return home, Ramos-Horta became East Timor’s voice in exile for the next 24 years.

During his exile, Ramos-Horta lobbied governments, human rights organisations, and the UN to condemn Indonesia’s occupation, which resulted in the deaths of an estimated 200,000 Timorese through conflict, famine, and repression.

Silenced by a military-imposed media blackout for much of the 1980s, it was only in the 1990s that reports of Indonesian atrocities – including the 1991 Santa Cruz massacre – began to filter out and East Timor’s struggle for independence gained international attention.

Ramos-Horta’s tireless advocacy earned him a Nobel Peace Prize, along with Bishop Carlos Belo, in 1996.

A UN-sponsored referendum delivered an overwhelming vote for independence in 1999, leading to a fully independent East Timor in 2002. However, the country continues to face economic challenges and remains one of Southeast Asia’s poorest nations.

In the years overseeing his country’s transition from conflict to reconciliation, Ramos-Horta has held the roles of foreign minister, prime minister and now president.

Al Jazeera’s Ali MC sat down with Ramos-Horta on a recent trip to East Timor, where the president spoke about his country’s long road to peace and hopes for it to prosper from membership of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), increased trade with China, and development of the offshore Greater Sunrise gas field.

Al Jazeera: Reflecting on your role as an ambassador for East Timor after Indonesia’s 1975 invasion, what were some of the key challenges that you faced while advocating for your country on the international stage?

Ramos-Horta: First, we were in the midst of the Cold War with that catastrophic US engagement in the wars against North Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.

Then, you can say – the US defeat, if not military defeat, it was a total political defeat at the hands of the Vietnamese. So, it was in the midst of all of this that Indonesia invaded Timor-Leste [the official Portuguese-language name for East Timor], on December 7, 1975. The day before, US President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Kissinger were in Jakarta, and they officially gave the green light to President Soeharto to invade – immorally – with the use of American weapons.

So, it was within this context that it was very challenging for us to mobilise sympathy, support and the media. The invasion merited only one small, short column in The New York Times.

In Australia, there was more coverage. But the coverage didn’t last long, because Indonesia did a very good job, with Australian complicity, in blocking any news out of East Timor. At that time, not a single journalist came – the first foreign journalist to come here was in 1987.

The absence of [proof of] death is the worst enemy of any struggle. There were terrible massacres on the day of the invasion, hundreds of people shot and dumped into the sea, including an Australian, Roger East [a journalist killed by Indonesian forces on the day of the invasion].

Many, many countless people shot on the spot. Many were alive and dragged to the port of Dili, shot and fell into the sea. Many more killed randomly around town. And zero media coverage, not a single camera.

AJ: How did that lack of media coverage make it difficult for you, as an ambassador overseas, to describe to the international community exactly what was happening in East Timor?

Ramos-Horta: Terribly difficult.

To mobilise people who are potentially sympathetic, you can do so effectively if you have a backup for what you say, what you allege, what you report. This must be backed up with visuals.

But people were sympathetic and listened to me. I was persuasive enough for them to believe what might be going on.

AJ: Given your own personal experience in the struggle for independence in East Timor, does that influence the way that you advocate? Does that bring a more personal response to your diplomacy?

Ramos-Horta: My personal instinct as a person is not shaped by anyone, by any school, any religion. It is me, always, against injustice and abuse.

Then came our experience and the fight for independence. When we fought for independence and for freedom, I went around the world begging for support, begging for sympathy. Then, we became independent.

Well, how can I not show sympathy in a real way towards the Palestinians? Why would I not show sympathy in a real way towards the people of Myanmar? Just showing sympathy, because we cannot do much more.

What can we do? We are not even a mid-sized country. But speaking out – a voice – is very important.

AJ: What are your reflections on what has occurred in Gaza?

Ramos-Horta: It is one of the most abominable humanitarian catastrophes in modern times, in the 21st century, next to the killing fields in Cambodia during Pol Pot’s regime.

The amount of bombs dropped on Gaza is more than the combined amount of the bombs dropped on London and Dresden during World War II, and more than the bombs dropped on Cambodia by the Americans during the Vietnam War.

The suffering inflicted on civilians, women and children is just unbelievable.

How we, human beings in this 21st century, can descend so low and how Israel, a country that I always admired, first out of sympathy for what Jewish people went through, through their lives, through their history – always persecuted, always having to flee, and then culminating in the horrendous Holocaust. When you survive a Holocaust experience, like the Jews, I would think that you are a person that is the most sympathetic to anyone yearning for freedom, for peace, for dignity. Because you understand.

They [Israelis] are doing the opposite.

And you have to understand, also, the people who are on the other side. You know the Palestinians, who had 70 years of occupation and brutality, they are not going to show any sympathy to the Jews or Israelis. So, this whole situation has generated hatred and polarisation as never before.

AJ: What can the international community learn from the experience of East Timor and people such as yourself?

Ramos-Horta: I am thoroughly disillusioned with the so-called international community, particularly the West, that enjoy entertaining themselves lecturing Third World countries on democracy, human rights, transparency, anticorruption, etc, etc.

They could never find the case to help poorer countries getting out of extreme poverty. But they found billions of dollars for the last three years to pump into the war in Ukraine.

I don’t condemn that. It is white people supporting white people being attacked. But then they are silent on Israel as it bulldozes the whole of Palestine; carpet bombing, killing tens of thousands of civilians.

And yet, with incredible, nauseating hypocrisy, when they are asked to comment on this, they say Israel has the right to defend itself!

Defend itself against children, against women, against students, against academics, against universities, that they bulldoze completely. Defend themselves against doctors and nurses in hospitals that they bulldoze.

And in an incredible contortion, you have the secretary-general of NATO say Iran presents a threat to the whole world. I know the whole world, literally, and I don’t know of anyone in the whole world that I know that considers Iran a threat to them.

I feel nauseated with such dishonesty, such inhumanity. So, I’m thoroughly disappointed. And I was always an admirer of the West.

AJ: Reflecting on many decades in politics in East Timor, is there anything that stands out to you as a personal success or something that you feel most proud about?

Ramos-Horta: I feel proud that we have been able to keep the country at peace. We have zero political violence. We have zero ethnic-based or religious-based tensions or violence. We don’t have even organised crime. We have never had a bank robbery or armed robbery in someone’s home. We don’t have that. And we are ranked among having the freest media in the world and the freest democracy in the world. I’m proud of my contribution in that.

AJ: East Timor is set to join the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). What will be the benefits of being a part of that?

Ramos-Horta: We’ll be part of a community of 700 million people, a community whose combined GDP is at least $4 trillion.

And that means the possibility of Timor-Leste benefitting from our neighbours is greater. There will be more free movement of capital. There’ll be more people attracted to visit Timor-Leste and more embassies opening.

These are the benefits of being associated with an organisation like ASEAN. There are concrete, material benefits besides the importance of the strategic alliance, the strategic partnership, with our neighbours.

AJ: China is really emerging in the Southeast Asia and Pacific regions. Are there any tensions over East Timor’s relationship with China?

Ramos-Horta: We don’t view China as an enemy of anyone, unlike some in America.

The US is not able to digest the fact that China today is a global superpower, that China today is a major global financial and economic power. That it is no longer the US that rules this unipolar world, that it has a competitor.

But the Chinese are very modest, and they say they are not competing to be number one with the US.

Any rational, intelligent person who is informed about China – even if a leader emerged in China that would view Australia and the US with hostility – would, in his right mind, think that you can overpower the US economically and militarily.

AJ: What is the projected benefit economically for East Timor from the Greater Sunrise Gas Field?

Ramos-Horta: The existing studies point to it taking seven years for the whole project to be completed and deliver gas and revenue to Timor-Leste.

But long before that, the day we sign the agreement, within the following few months, two years, a lot of investments already start to happen. Because we have to build all the infrastructure on the south coast that will run into the tens of millions of dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars.

The pipeline will take its time to reach Timor, but the pipeline will be served by all the infrastructure built on the south coast, plus housing. Hundreds, maybe thousands of houses for workers, for people and so on. Then improvement in the agriculture sector. Farmers in the community benefitting because they will sell produce to the company, to the workers and so on.