News Desk

A vast oil spill from a leaking tanker reached Oman’s coastline on Wednesday, its environment agency said.

This oil spill threatens to become one of the world’s worst in years after spreading largely unchecked for several weeks, experts say.

On Monday, Oman said it was working to contain the spill, which had by then affected roughly 390 square kilometres (150sq miles), according to analysis by the country’s environment agency.

The slick now covers an area of more than 2,000sq km (770sq miles), said John Amos, an oil spill specialist who reviewed satellite imagery obtained by Reuters. It could affect about 40km (25 miles) of coast near Ras Madraka, as well as Masirah Island, Oman’s Environment Authority said.

Here’s what we know.

What happened?

Oil has been leaking from the tanker Caroline Bezengi since it ran aground about 22 nautical miles (41km) from the Omani coastal town of Sharbithat some time after the crew reported a suspected explosion on June 8. It had been en route from Russia to India.

Reuters reported that the tanker was carrying an estimated 800,000 barrels of sanctioned oil and that it ran aground on June 30.

An investigation by the news agency AFP found that the ship had been stranded for several weeks near Oman’s al-Qibliyyah Island.

In the meantime, the oil has been spreading towards Oman’s coastline.

The Oman News Agency (ONA) quoted the country’s environment authority saying that “today’s monitoring results showed that some beaches in the Ras Madrakah area were affected by oil pollution”.

The Indian Ocean town sits about 200km (125 miles) from al-Qibliyyah.

The slick is now concentrated around the Hallaniyat Archipelago off the southern coast, where a marine reserve was established last year to protect sensitive ecosystems home to diverse marine life, including rare sea turtles.

On Wednesday, the ONA reported that “a coastal stretch of up to 40 km in the [Ras Madrakah] area is expected to be affected”.

The southern beaches of Masirah Island, which lies 15km (nine miles) off the coast of Oman, could be contaminated “in the coming hours”, affecting a 10-20km (six-to-12-mile) stretch of coastline, it said.

An unnamed spokesperson for the United Nations International Maritime Organization said it was “closely monitoring” the leakage.

How did this happen?

British maritime security company Vanguard told AFP that the tanker had suffered “explosions” in early June as it sailed off the coast of Yemen, causing water to enter several sections of the vessel. It ran aground off the coast of Oman some time after this.

There has been no official explanation for the explosions and no party has claimed an attack. However, the vessel was navigating two separate wars on its journey from Russia to India. Tankers have been frequently targeted in the Gulf region in recent months as the US war on Iran has continued.

In April, the Caroline Bezengi sailed from the Russian port of Novorossiysk on the Black Sea, a flashpoint in the Russia-Ukraine war.

It is believed to be part of Russia’s “shadow fleet” used to circumvent Western sanctions on its oil exports. It last sailed under a Cameroonian flag.

Rentoor Shipmanagement and Villar Shipmanagement, both based in China, are registered as the ship’s owner and operator, respectively, according to the open-source database OpenSanctions.

Russia’s shadow fleet includes ageing vessels that have often been criticised for poor maintenance, lack of insurance and lacklustre safety standards.

Ukraine has previously carried out assaults on shadow fleet vessels believed to be carrying Russian oil.

The Caroline Bezengi then passed through the Suez Canal at the end of May, ship-tracking data shows, before sailing through the Red Sea and past Yemen, where the Iran-aligned Houthi fighters have entered a wider regional war between the United States, Israel and Iran and are targeting Saudi Arabia-flagged ships.

What damage could the oil spill cause?

Last week, advocacy group Greenpeace warned that the spill was on the verge of causing an “environmental disaster”.

Christopher D’Elia, a specialist in oil spills and a professor emeritus at Louisiana State University in the United States, told Al Jazeera the estimated 800,000 barrels of crude on board the Caroline Bezengi would amount to a “fairly large spill”.

“This spill raises a lot of issues,” D’Elia told Al Jazeera.

“These illegal tankers don’t comply with the ‘polluter pays’ principle that is the basis for how the US and other developed nations regulate spills,” D’Elia said.

“The ‘responsible party’ must finance the cleanup in the US. In this case, there is no responsible party.”

Meanwhile, Iranian media reported on Wednesday that a separate oil spill in the Strait of Hormuz had reached the island of Qeshm, affecting beaches and an environmentally sensitive mangrove forest.

State-run news agency IRNA said the slick had affected areas on Qeshm’s southern coast, as well as parts of the smaller neighbouring island of Hengam.

Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said pollution had been observed at three locations and on the sea surface, adding that its source seemed to be a “foreign bulk carrier”, without specifying the name of the ship.

The risk of oil spills in the Gulf has risen sharply because of strikes on tankers during the five-month US-Iran war. The International Maritime Organization (IMO) has reported 65 incidents in the Strait of Hormuz and across the Middle East since the beginning of March.

“Any party that benefits from commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz is legally and morally obligated to take action to compensate for and remedy the environmental damage caused to the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman,” he said.

The ITV crime series is returning with a familiar face leading the expos command

Trigger Point will soon return to television screens with a much-loved actress joining the bomb disposal experts.

The fourth season of the ITV crime drama sees Vicky McClure’s Lana Washington and her bomb defusal unit take on an explosive new case as they seek to keep the people of London safe from explosive devices and terrorist threats.

McClure has shared her excitement about the new episodes ahead of the release: “I love working with the team, we have a great time making the show, and I cannot wait to continue Lana’s journey on Trigger Point.”

The first look trailer confirms the team’s new challenge is “unprecedented”, with Lana noting that they seem to know how her team works. The scale of the attacks is made even clearer when Lana confirms, “The threats feel bigger, the bombs are closer.”

Returning on-screen alongside Lana is Eric Shango as Danny, Nabil Elouahabi as Hassan “Hass” Rahim, Natalie Simpson as DS Helen Morgan, and Maanuv Thiara as DCI Amar Batra.

Shetland star Julie Graham has also joined the star-studded cast as Commander Nia Quentin.

In the trailer, viewers see Nia confirm that this could be “the biggest terror attack this country has seen,” as the expo team battles to save the capital.

Away from Trigger Point, fans of crime dramas will know Julie as Rhona Kelly in the BBC series Shetland between 2014 and 2022.

The show is based on the bestselling crime novels by award-winning author Ann Cleeves and follows a dedicated police team as they investigate grisly murders and long-buried secrets within the tight-knit, remote island community of Scotland’s Isles.

Scottish actress Julie, 61, has been a seemingly near-permanent fixture on our screens since a Taggart appearance in the mid-1980s.

Her other long-running series commitments include portraying Megan Hartnoll in At Home With The Braithwaites, Abby Grant in Survivors, and playing Sheron Dawson in the adored sitcom, Benidorm.

Most recently, period drama fans saw Julie transform into Ma Hardacre in the Channel 5 show The Hardacres, which follows the sweeping rags-to-riches journey of a working-class family in 1890s Yorkshire.

She also played Annie Marling in Ridley and Elain Phelan in This City is Ours.

Trigger Point series 1-3 is available to stream on ITVX

Three nations to group ministers, hold ⁠joint exercises and deepen defence industry cooperation under the pact signed last week.

Turkiye, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan will group senior ministers, hold ⁠joint exercises and deepen defence industry cooperation under a military pact signed between the regional powers last week, Turkiye’s defence ministry says.

The three countries on August 7 signed the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement on August 7, which stipulates that an armed attack against any member would be regarded as ‌an attack on all, similar to NATO’s Article 5 collective defence clause.

At a weekly briefing in Ankara on Thursday, the Turkish defence ministry said the pact’s fundamental goal was to ensure defence and military ties were put on a “more institutional and sustainable” footing.

“Under the accord, strategic political and military mechanisms plan to be established involving the Defence Ministers, Foreign Ministers, and Chiefs of General ⁠Staff/Armed Forces Commanders, and that coordination among the three countries will ⁠be conducted at the highest level,” it said.

The ministry added that joint military exercises involving land, naval and air forces, as well as air defence and unmanned systems were planned, in ⁠addition to deeper defence industry cooperation.

“The aim is to provide not only product and system supply, but also joint ⁠development and production, technology cooperation, and sustainable maintenance and ⁠logistics support,” it said, adding that unmanned and autonomous systems, electronic warfare and artificial intelligence capabilities would be prioritised.

Turkiye, which has NATO’s second-largest army, has said the pact with nuclear-armed Pakistan and top oil ‌exporter Saudi Arabia was open to expansion — with Egypt as a potential candidate — and did not seek to replace any existing alliances.

The ministry also said Turkiye ‌was ‌participating in meetings in Jeddah aimed at establishing an international coalition to protect Red Sea shipping.

On developments in the Middle East, ministry spokesperson Rear Admiral Zeki Akturk said lasting peace and stability in the region would be possible if Israel ends its occupation and attacks in Gaza and Lebanon.

He said Israel continues attacks that have deepened the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, as also reflected in United Nations reports.

“Israel’s rejection of the 15-point Gaza Plan has been another indication that it is pursuing a policy of regional expansionism. On the other hand, despite the framework agreement that was signed, Israel similarly continues its attacks and military activities in southern Lebanon,” Akturk said, referring to the plan proposed by the United States.

“We once again emphasise that it is essential for the international community to take a more determined and stronger stance against Israel’s actions by upholding international law and humanitarian values in order to establish peace and stability in the region,” he said.

The tournament from February 2 to 7 will feature Barcelona, Real Madrid, Atletico Madrid and Real Sociedad.

The 2027 Spanish Super Cup will be held in Turkiye at Istanbul’s Ataturk Olympic Stadium, the Spanish Football Federation has announced.

The Final Four tournament will take place from February 2 to 7 and feature Barcelona, Real Madrid, Atletico Madrid and Real Sociedad, the federation said in a statement on Thursday.

Saudi Arabia has hosted the competition since 2020 but was ruled out as the dates coincide with the Asian Cup, the continent’s premier men’s international football tournament.

Barcelona, the reigning Super Cup champions after beating Real Madrid in the 2026 final, said in a statement that the Superr Cup will return to Saudi Arabia in 2028.

The Spanish Super Cup features the winners and runners-up of La Liga and the Copa del Rey.

It will take someone better versed in finance, corporate law, family psychology and, perhaps, the impact of great wealth on brain chemistry than I to analyze the recent actions of Paramount Skydance Chief Executive David Ellison.

To a cultural journalist, however, it seems like he continues to make himself the best argument yet for opposing his company’s proposed acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery.

Mere days after taking to the media to insist that he is a misunderstood film buff who just wants to save Hollywood, he threatened to help destroy it.

If California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and state attorneys general from 11 other states, including New York, New Jersey, Washington and Colorado, refuse to negotiate a settlement of their antitrust lawsuit, Ellison said he will yank Paramount Studios, and potentially Warner Bros., out of California.

Um, OK, Ultron.

So that’s how Ellison wants to prove that he will be a steward of the flailing entertainment industry — by threatening to rip out a big part of its still-beating heart and implant it in Texas or Tennessee?

Will he be taking the Hollywood sign as well, to stick atop the Grand Ole Opry or, better yet, the Alamo?

Not only does this grant Bonta VIP access to the moral highground, it all but negates Ellison’s recent New York Times guest essay. Especially the part in which he wrote: “The states claim this deal will give one company too much influence over theatrical releases and cable operators, while the W.G.A. argues that our combined market power will hurt writers.”

If one man can decide, in a fit of pique, to scoop up a huge portion of the entertainment industry and float it thousands of miles away, I’d say that’s a decent argument for “too much influence.”

Also, good luck with the landing. Texas and Tennessee are both fine states with vibrant cities, undeniable corporate incentives and lower costs of living, but their draconian abortion laws and restrictive LGBTQ+ legislation may give many in the entertainment industry pause.

Still, according to Ellison, it’s Bonta and his gang who are trying to make things political, not him; in his essay, Ellison claimed that the suit is mostly about preventing his ownership of CNN, despite his insistence that (the hiring of Bari Weiss to oversee CBS News to the contrary) the news network would remain autonomous.

As a journalist, I would love to believe that Bonta and the other attorneys general are simply going to bat for the Fourth Estate; with President Trump openly longing for the day when Ellison controls CNN, it is no doubt a concern. But as Ellison seems intent on personally underscoring, the bigger issue is how to prevent a dwindling number of individuals from controlling enormous portions of an industry that not only employs millions, but also plays a vital role in shaping the nature of art and culture in this country and the world.

(Never mind the queasy fact that Ellison is being bankrolled by his billionaire father Larry, who is putting many, if not all, of his eggs in the AI basket, to the detriment of his employees.)

Shaping art and culture is, of course, precisely why Ellison wants to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, almost literally at all costs. When he first lost the bid for Warner Bros. to Netflix, he (and his dad) responded by offering enough money (including a $7-billion payout should the deal not clear antitrust regulation) to make Ted Sarandos blink. Money has always been a ladder to power and influence in this country, and the widening wealth gap, not to mention the current administration, has turned the ladder into a rocket ship. (See please Elon Musk.)

Ellison has continually stressed his love of cinematic storytelling. Under the proposed Paramount Warner, he promises to produce 30 theatrical films and 170 television series a year and create more work for everyone.

That would be lovely (if fiscally difficult) to believe. If only he hadn’t just tried to hold the state that gave birth to cinematic storytelling hostage by threatening to kidnap one of its kids.

As negotiating tactics go, it certainly undermines whatever public approval he hoped to gain with his “I’m just a guy, standing in front of the movie biz asking it to love me” bit.

Change is coming for Paramount Studios — the lot on Melrose Avenue — either way. If Paramount Skydance acquires Warner Bros., production will likely shift to the Warner Bros. lot, with Paramount leased or sold.

Now, it seems, Ellison is willing to have a fire sale — he’ll certainly need to raise a bunch of cash if he’s going to quickly flee to redder pastures. As for the thousands of local workers who depend on Paramount production to make a living, well, Ellison and his executives may be able to afford to relocate or (more probably) commute out of state, but most of the people who actually make movies and television cannot.

Business, of course, is business and it has become financially and politically fashionable to desert California to avoid whatever local law, regulation or tax you now find unfair. Tech mavens, including Musk, have ditched California for the Lone Star State. Ellison’s father recently took Oracle out of Redwood City, first to Austin, Texas, then to Nashville, workers be damned.

But Ellison taking Paramount and potentially Warner Bros. out of Los Angeles isn’t about business. It’s pure politics, of the savage, oligarchical variety.

Given the stakes, it’s difficult to imagine that some sort of deal won’t be struck that allows the sale to go through. But Ellison isn’t saving the entertainment industry, he’s leveraging it.

And if he has to spit in Hollywood’s face to save his own, well, apparently that’s fine too.

Iran continues to deny claims by the United States that it controls the Strait of Hormuz as talks aimed at negotiating a peace deal between the two sides falter.

US President Donald Trump repeated his claim that the US is in “total control” of the critical waterway on Wednesday, but was met with angry denials from Iran, which has stated that it will not reopen the strait until demands regarding US aggression, reparations and sanctions are met.

“Claims and repeated posts by US officials that the Strait of Hormuz is no longer blocked do not change the reality,” Iran’s Persian Gulf Strait Authority (PGSA) posted on X on Wednesday.

“The Strait of Hormuz remains blocked and will not be reopened until Iran’s conditions are accepted,” it added.

Here’s what we know about the latest developments in the strait, through which one-fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) supplies are shipped during peacetime, and the prospects for ongoing talks.

What’s the latest on the US-Iran standoff?

Iranian forces are currently preventing ships that do not have its express approval from navigating through the narrow strait, which passes through territorial waters of Iran and Oman.

Despite Trump’s claim that the US has control over the strait, shipping traffic through the key waterway has dropped to a one-week low as a result of Iran’s blockade.

Meanwhile, the US is operating a naval blockade on Iranian ports both in and around the strait. On Tuesday, US forces targeted a Panama-flagged vessel they said was headed for an Iranian port, in the Gulf of Oman, and which they alleged had failed to respond to warnings.

On Thursday, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the US “has long miscalculated due to intelligence failures”, including when launching its war on Iran, which it did alongside Israel with strikes on Tehran on February 28.

In a post on X, Araghchi said Washington’s actions in the Strait of Hormuz were “an even bigger miscalculation”.

“Worse than fake news is fake intelligence,” he said.

Hojjatoleslam Hossein Taeb, the commander of the paramilitary Basij Organisation – an affiliate of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) – reiterated that the strait is “under Iran’s control and management”.

“Today you see that the Strait of Hormuz is under the management and control of the Islamic Republic, and our country continues on its path in complete security,” Taeb said on Thursday, according to Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency.

“The Americans saw the power of the Islamic revolution,” he added.

What do we know about Iran-Oman talks?

Iran says it is not talking directly to the US about the strait. Instead, it says it is holding talks with Oman, which it proposes to share in the future management of the strait.

Following the signing of a memorandum of understanding between Iran and the US on June 17, under which Iran undertook to keep the strait open for 60 days, there were soon disagreements about control of the waterway and the routes that ships should take. Iran fired on some ships it said had not followed its permitted route, leading to a renewal of hostilities with the US.

Iran also disagreed with the US over whether it could charge fees to ships passing through the strait. As a result, the strait – which was fully and freely open to all shipping before the US launched its war on Iran – has become the main obstacle to the progression of wider peace talks.

Now, talks between Iran and Oman are aimed at ironing out these issues.

On Tuesday, Qatar said negotiations between Iran and Oman over the strait had reached “an advanced stage”.

“As mediators, we want the Strait of Hormuz reopened as soon as possible,” Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesman Majed al-Ansari said during a news conference.

Negotiators are trying to reach a compromise that would allow commercial shipping to resume while addressing the security concerns of both Iran and Oman.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman has said talks with Oman are focused on “establishing safe inbound and outbound shipping lanes” that “uphold sovereign rights while also addressing the national security considerations of both Iran and Oman”.

Last week, Iran said it had agreed on the coordinates for these shipping lanes with Oman.

What do we know about broader peace talks between Iran and the US?

Iran says it is not speaking directly to the US because it has violated the June 17 MoU by restarting strikes on Iran in July.

Now, Pakistan is making efforts to mediate peace talks. It said on Tuesday it was working to bring the US and Iran “to the negotiating table”, as Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi held talks with senior Iranian officials in Tehran.

In April, the US and Iran held face-to-face negotiations, with US Vice President JD Vance and Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf attending talks in Islamabad. On June 17, the two sides remotely signed the MoU, which was supposed to kick-start a 60-day negotiation process. However, various disagreements prevented that process from getting off the ground, and talks have stalled since then.

Alan Eyre, a distinguished diplomatic fellow with the Middle East Institute in Washington, DC, told Al Jazeera earlier this month that the only important negotiations taking place right now are Iran-Oman talks over the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran says it is not worth talking directly because it “can’t count on anything the US says”, Eyre said.

Commenting on the possibility of future talks between the longtime foes, Negar Mortazavi, senior fellow at the US-based Center for International Policy, said the key question is whether the escalatory rhetoric from both sides is “opening negotiating positions or actual red lines”.

“If both sides are prepared to compromise, there is still a path towards ending the conflict and reopening the strait,” Mortazavi told Al Jazeera on Wednesday.

“If they are not, Hormuz could remain restricted, and the confrontation risks becoming another prolonged, open-ended conflict in the Middle East.”

What are the latest demands from Iran and the US?

At the end of last week, Iran’s Supreme National Security Council set out new conditions it says the US must meet before the Strait of Hormuz can fully reopen.

The six conditions include an end to US threats against Iran and insults to what Zolghadr described as the country’s national and religious values; a permanent end to attacks against Iran and its allies in Lebanon, Palestine, Yemen and Iraq; the lifting of the US naval blockade and withdrawal of naval and air forces from around Iran; compensation for damage from what he called two “imposed wars”; the lifting of sanctions; and the unconditional release of frozen Iranian assets.

Trump told reporters at the White House on Monday that his administration was going to seek payment for “50 years” of damage caused by Iran, framing the move as a direct response to Tehran’s claims.

The payments, he said, would cover deaths among US forces in the region as well as civilian protesters in Iran, claiming that 52,000 people have been killed in Iran in the past four months. Tehran says some 3,117 people died in antigovernment protests that swept the country in January, prior to the launch of the US-Israel war. In February, the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) reported about 7,000 deaths, including 6,500 protesters.

On Thursday, Al Jazeera’s Tohid Assidi reported, citing observers, that Iran is focused on two primary issues.

“First was the security assurances Iran sought, ensuring that a reached deal could pave the way for a period of stability in the country,” Assidi said.

“Second were economic concerns, primarily articulated in demands for the US naval blockade to be removed and sanctions frozen, which represented the key demands coming from the Iranian side,” he added.

Despite the rhetoric from Trump, analysts have told Al Jazeera that the US may have to concede to some of Iran’s demands as it faces growing pressure domestically to avoid another escalation.

The US media have reported that concerns over dwindling defensive munitions have contributed to Trump’s decision not to carry out his threatened large-scale strikes against Iran.

On hearing that new Prime Minister Andy Burnham will be embarking on a monthlong “cost of living” tour across the United Kingdom, one user of the social media chat platform Reddit commented: “Housing is too expensive, energy is too expensive, food is too expensive etc. There you go, Andy, I’ve saved you some fuel (very expensive).”

Like much of the world, the UK is grappling with the rising cost of living. The Bank of England expects inflation to climb further in the second half of the year as the fallout from the United States-Israel war on Iran pushes up energy prices and household bills.

How high is inflation in the UK? Who is hardest hit? And how does it compare with other countries?

How high is inflation in the UK?

The annual rate of inflation in June was 2.8 percent, down from 3 percent in May. That means prices are still rising, but they are going up a bit more slowly than they were earlier in the year. In practical terms, if something cost 100 pounds (about $135) in June last year, that same item now costs 102.80 pounds ($138.65).

Before the US and Israel attacked Iran on February 28, the Bank of England had forecast that inflation as measured by the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) would fall from 3.4 percent in 2025 to 2.3 percent in 2026. Instead, inflation was again 3.4 percent in March this year, largely driven by higher fuel and heating costs.

Petrol and diesel up more than 20 percent

The closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a route for about one-fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) supplies, has pushed up the cost of petrol, transport, food and other goods.

Petrol prices in the UK have hit a three-and-a-half- year high. According to data from the RAC Foundation, the price of petrol and diesel rose by 22 percent and 27 percent, respectively, between February 25 and August 11.

The average price of a litre (about a quarter of a gallon) of petrol increased from 1.32 pounds ($1.78) to 1.61 pounds ($2.17) while diesel rose from 1.42 pounds ($1.92) to 1.81 pounds ($2.44) per litre.

Who is being hardest hit?

Not every household feels inflation in the same way. For the average UK household, about 677 pounds ($914) is spent each week on goods and services with some of the biggest costs being housing, fuel and power, transport, food and recreation.

The impact is much greater for households on lower incomes. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) found that the poorest 20 percent of households spent an average of 407 pounds ($549) a week compared with 1,084 pounds ($1,462) for the richest 20 percent of households. Proportionally, the poorer households will feel the rise in prices more keenly.

That’s because the difference is particularly important when prices are rising. Someone spending a larger portion of their income on rent, energy, food and transport has far less of a cushion to absorb any increase in those costs.

According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, a charity that conducts and funds research aimed at fighting poverty in the UK, the cost of living crisis is widespread with 7.4 million low-income families unable to afford essential items this year – the highest since 2021 when its cost-of-living tracker began.

Is the UK worse off than other Western countries?

The UK’s 2.8 percent inflation rate in June puts it in the middle of the other Group of Seven  advanced-industrial democracies: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the US.

The US has the highest inflation rate at 3.5 percent, followed by Italy (3 percent), Canada (2.8 percent), the UK (2.8 percent), Germany (2.3 percent), France (1.8 percent) and Japan (1.7 percent).

Countries have different exposures to inflation through energy prices, wage pressures and government policies. For the UK, inflation is primarily being driven by the energy triggered by conflict in the Middle East; services inflation, which in June was 3.6 percent, driven by higher costs at restaurants and hotels; and slowing wage growth.

Wages barely keeping up

For Britons, the weekly food shop is still more expensive than it was a year ago, but the latest figures show that food price inflation has slowed. This doesn’t mean prices are falling, of course – just not rising so quickly.

According to the ONS, food and nonalcoholic drink prices were 1.7 percent higher in June than a year earlier, down from 2.2 percent higher in May.

There could be more pressure ahead as the Bank of England says food prices are likely to be affected by higher energy costs affecting the production and transport costs of food. It predicts that food inflation will rise to nearly 3.5 percent by December while supermarkets have said they expect food inflation of 4 to 5 percent by the end of the year.

Weekly regular real earnings, which measure workers’ standard pay adjusted for inflation, have also dipped in recent months, from about 0.4 percent at the start of the year to 0.1 percent after the Iran war began, again making it harder for people to afford price rises.

OLIVIA Dean broke down in tears while singing her song ‘Let Alone The One You Love’ live on stage.

The singer, 27, performed in Boston earlier this week as part of her ‘The Art of Loving’ tour but became overcome with emotion during the poignant track.

The moment was shared on TikTok, with Olivia looking stunning in a gorgeous red dress with a lace detailing.

As she belted out the track, she struggled to keep her emotion in as she began to cry.

She wiped the tears away from her face as the audience cheered loudly for her.

Olivia continued singing as she attempted to hold it together during the performance.

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The song in question was released in September last year as part of her critically acclaimed studio album of the same name as her tour.

The track delves into the painful realisation that a partner is trying to stop your personal growth.

It explores the heavy emotional toll of romantic disappointment, capturing the grief of choosing self-love over a relationship where you feel small or disposable.

The lyrics include: “Though I’ve tried to hold on, and, if you knew me at all, you wouldn’t try to keep me small.

“Who would do that to a friend, let alone the one you love?”

Fans flocked to TikTok to share their thoughts as one asked: “Who hurt her?”

Another person demanded: “OK s**t just got real. Who hurt my baby?”

Somebody else commented: “NAAAH she’s singing it like she’s talking to someone.”

Yet another penned: “It’s okay, I cry during her songs too.”

While a fifth added: “These lyrics are real as f**k and that pain is DEEP!”

It comes after she turned down the chance to headline Glastonbury next year – where Harry Styles is topping the bill.

She was romantically linked to the former One Direction star two years ago, although they always denied they dated.

She is said to be opting to work on new music in 2027 instead and hopes to perform at the music festival in 2028.

An insider told The Sun: “Olivia’s team had conversations with Glastonbury about headlining in 2027 and she was extremely flattered.

“But after some reflection, she said she wants to take some time to work on new music next year, with a rough plan to return when her third album is ready.

“Of course, if she did it next year, her name would be right next to Harry’s and she just wants to move on from that now.

“She’s happy for him to have his moment, but she doesn’t feel like next year is hers.”

JEJU ISLAND, South Korea, Aug. 12 (UPI) — The Korea Heritage Service announced Wednesday that Jeju Island’s Darangshi Cave was under final consideration for registration as a national cultural heritage site, highlighting its importance in exposing the government’s role in an early Cold War-era massacre and catalyzing a decades-long truth and reconciliation movement.

The cave was discovered on Dec. 22, 1991, in Jeju’s northeastern Sehwa village by researchers investigating the Jeju Massacre, the slaughter of some 30,000 islanders from 1947-54 mainly by government forces in an effort to snuff out a communist uprising. Inside were the remains of 11 people, including three women and a 9-year-old boy, local villagers who were hiding from the government’s scorched-earth operations of 1948.

The Korea Heritage Service described the site in a statement as being of “considerable academic value as a vivid historical location of the Jeju 4.3 Incident because it served as a catalyst for the movement to uncover the truth about the incident, became widely known to the general public through media coverage, and preserves much of the original form of the refuge.”

In the fall and winter of 1948-49, government forces under the government of newly inaugurated President Syngman Rhee conducted a scorched-earth campaign through Jeju’s mid-mountain region. Under an October order, all but a 5-kilometer band of the island’s coast was prohibited and anyone found within that quarantine zone would be considered a rebel and shot on sight.

On Dec. 18, 1948, residents of Hado and Jongdal villages were living inside Darangshi Cave when it was discovered by punitive forces. Fires were lit at the cave’s mouth and all inside asphyxiated.

Thousands of islanders fleeing government repression took to hiding in the mountains and were killed during the four-month scorched-earth operation. Hundreds of villages in the zone were razed, many never to be restored. For decades after, public discussion of the state’s responsibility was suppressed while families of victims and survivors were forced to live stigmatized as communists and communist sympathizers.

After the cave was publicized, the government sealed its entrance and forced the families of the victims to cremate the bodies of their loved ones who were found inside, and to scatter their ashes at sea.

The discovery of the cave is considered a watershed moment in literally unearthing the truth of the Jeju Massacre and galvanizing a truth movement that would culminate in President Roh Moo-hyun offering Jeju an official state apology on Oct. 31, 2003.

Ko Chang-hoon, a retired professor at Jeju National University, was the head of the Jeju 4.3 Research Institute at the time when it discovered the cave. He told UPI that he and his team publicized the cave’s discovery on April 2, 1992, so reports would be published in newspapers the following day, the 44th anniversary of the start of the massacre.

The discovery of Darangshi Cave was “the cornerstone” of the movement, he said.

Compared to other massacres and incidents of state violence, the Jeju Massacre had little evidence up until that point that the majority of the deaths were committed by the government, he said.

“It is a first as a whole document,” he said.

According to a statement from the Jeju Special Self-Governing Province, artifacts illustrating the circumstances at the time and what life in hiding from government forces was like remain in the cave, while the area around it has been transformed in recent years into a site of education and remembrance.

The province last year applied to the Korea Heritage Service to register the cave as a National Registered Cultural Heritage propertty after it obtained approval from the provincial Cultural Heritage Committee.

“Darangshi Cave is a historic site that bears the pain of residents seeking refuge and being killed en masse during Jeju 4.3,” Kim In-young, director general of Jeju Province’s Special Self-Governing Administration Bureau, said in a statement.

“We will actively cooperate with the Korea Heritage Service so that, following the Suak Garrison Post, it can become the second Jeju 4.3 site to be formally registered as National Registered Cultural Heritage.”

The Suak Garrison Post used in operations against communist guerrillas was designated in 2018.

The Korea Heritage Service will seek to register Darangshi Cave as national cultural heritage after a 30-day notice period to collect public opinions on the registration.

For Ko, who was among those who helped find the cave and make it nationally known, this recognition is “very, very important,” he said.

Fulham’s friendly in Malaga turned sour as the Premier League club walked off ahead of a penalty shootout.

Fulham’s preseason match against Malaga turned out to be not too friendly when the English club walked off and coach Alvaro Arbeloa was red-carded for complaining to the referees.

La Liga host Malaga scored a 90th-minute equaliser to make the score 2-2. Malaga said a penalty shootout was scheduled. Fulham said there wasn’t. Malaga kicked a penalty into an open net and claimed the Costa del Sol trophy on Wednesday.

The scenes were an echo of the Africa Cup of Nations final in January when Senegal walked off the field in protest at the awarding of a penalty to Morocco.

In response to the events on the southern coast of Spain, Fulham said on the social media platform, X: “We can confirm that prior to the match, both teams agreed that there would not be a penalty shootout in the event of a draw.”

Former Real Madrid coach Arbeloa was sent off for arguing with the officiating crew at the end of the match.

Malaga said a penalty shootout was scheduled but “Fulham left the pitch claiming that a shootout had not been included in the contract”.

Senegal’s match against hosts Morocco at the 2025 edition of AFCON, which extended into 2026, did eventually resume with the Atlas Lions missing the penalty that had been awarded to them.

The Lions of Teranga went on to win a penalty shootout to claim the trophy.

The title has since been withdrawn from them by the Confederation of African Football after an appeal by Morocco.

Senegal have taken that case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

NATALIE Imbruglia has candidly admitted she “ran out of money” after finding fame on Aussie soap Neighbours – and was forced to bunk in a basement.

The actress and singer, who played Beth Brennan in the hit series from 1992 to 1994, with a brief comeback in 2022, fell on hard times shortly after leaving Ramsay Street.

The Neighbours legend, who later went on to find fame in the music industry, told the Davina McCall Begin Again podcast she simply “ran out of money”.

Now 51, Natalie recalled trying to bag further acting jobs after moving to the UK, yet admitted “things didn’t fall into my lap”.

She told host Davina: “I went to England and I couldn’t get a visa to work as an actress and thats when they really cracked down on Neighbours stars getting English actors’ roles.

“And that was a hard time because I ran out of money.

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“For a few years I was very famous from Neighbours and was doing appearances and appearing in clubs and signing autographs, and just getting wads of cash in envelopes and living like that.

“But that was the first time in my life where everything didn’t fall in my lap and so I just partied – but then the money ran out”.

The Torn hitmaker, who was in her Twenties at the time, talked of penning her first album and said: “I had run out of money and was living in the basement of someone’s house in Chelsea.

“Which was weird because I had no money and I am in Chelsea in this big mansion but I was just in the basement”.

Natalie admitted meditation and “a lot of conversations with God” had seen her through.

She released her debut album, Left of the Middle, in 1997.

It was the same year in which she released debut single Torn.

Previously, Natalie has spoken about her struggle to be taken seriously as a singer and said: “There was a lot of stigma attached to being in a soap. I thought I’d blown any chance of making a serious record because I had been in Neighbours.

“I turned down two record deals because they were very poppy. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do but I knew I didn’t want to be manipulated. I may not have had a direction, but I wasn’t stupid.

“My profile dropped off and so did my bank balance, and that was the best thing that ever happened to me.

“I was forced to struggle, which is a normal, healthy part of growing up. I hadn’t gone through that.”

Aug. 13 (UPI) — Japan issued a stern rebuke to Moscow on Thursday after Russian President Vladimir Putin visited a disputed chain of islands off Hokkaido that were occupied by Russia at the end of World War II.

Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi in a post on X strongly condemned Putin’s visit to Etorofu Island — Iturup to the Russians — the third of the four southernmost Kiril Islands about 80 miles northeast of the Japanese mainland, saying it was part of Japan.

“We have received reports today that Russian President Putin has visited Etorofu Island. The Northern Four Islands, including Etorofu Island, are an inherent part of Japan’s territory — both historically and under international law — and Japan strongly protests this visit,” said Motegi.

Russia’s state-run TASS news agency said Putin visited Iturup as part of a trip to Russia’s Sakhalin region.

On the island, he met with Sakhalin region Governor Valery Limarenko, toured a fish-packing factory, visited a secondary school and spoke with residents.

Prior to visiting Iturup, Putin attended the final stage of drills of Russia’s Pacific Fleet off Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk.

TASS said it was his first visit to the islands which Russia calls the Kurils, and claims as part of its far eastern Sakhalin province, and Japan calls its Northern Territories.

The last senior Russian government official to visit the area was in 2021 when Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin visited Iturup.

The dispute is over the four islands at the southern end of the volcanic archipelago with Russia claiming them under the post-World War II world map that came out of the 1945 Yalta Agreement, months before the war ended, first in Europe, and then in the Pacific.

Japan’s position is that Yalta only contained a non-binding recommendation that the islands should go to Russia, that it was not a party to the agreement and that Russia’s invasion of the Kirils in 1945 was in breach of a neutrality pact signed by the two countries in 1941.

The long-running dispute means that as far as Russia and Japan are concerned, World War II hostilities technically never ended as they never formally signed a peace treaty.

Westbrook, a former NBA Most Valuable Player, holds the record for the most career triple-doubles in league history.

Triple-double king and former NBA MVP Russell Westbrook ‌announced his retirement after 18 seasons on Wednesday via social media.

“Sometimes you don’t even know when you’ve already ⁠watched the end. You ⁠had to be there. And now it’s over,” Westbrook wrote on his social media post.

Westbrook’s decision was announced during a three-and-a-half-minute video. He didn’t respond to any of the questions by the ⁠narrator, but the theme made it clear Westbrook was leaving on his own terms.

At the end of the video, the screen read: “The greatest thing he left behind couldn’t fit inside a museum. It never had to be said.”

Westbrook, 37, ⁠recorded 209 triple-doubles, including a record 42 during his stellar 2016-17 Most Valuable Player (MVP) season. He averaged a career-high 31.6 points to go with 10.7 rebounds and 10.4 assists that season to become the first player since the legendary Oscar Robertson (1961-62) to average a triple-double over a full season.

A nine-time All-Star, he ranks fifth all-time in career assists (10,351) and 14th in scoring (27,176). Westbrook led the NBA ‌in assists three times and scoring twice.

In 2021, Westbrook was named to the NBA’s 75th Anniversary Team. He was named All-Star Game MVP in consecutive seasons (2015, 2016) and won a gold medal with the United States in the 2012 Olympics in London.

He averaged 20.9 points, 8.0 assists and 6.9 rebounds in 1,301 regular-season games with seven franchises.

In 135 career playoff games, Westbrook averaged 22.5 points, 7.1 assists and 6.7 rebounds.

Oklahoma City and Westbrook’s run to the NBA Finals

Westbrook was selected fourth overall by the Seattle SuperSonics in the 2008 NBA Draft, and the franchise relocated to Oklahoma City before his rookie season.

Westbrook spent 11 seasons ⁠with the franchise and teamed with Kevin Durant to make the Thunder one of ⁠the top teams in the NBA. Oklahoma City reached the NBA Finals in 2012, when James Harden was also on the team, before losing to the Miami Heat.

Westbrook made eight of his All-Star appearances with the Thunder. His other was when he averaged 27.2 points for the Houston Rockets ⁠in 2019-20, his lone season with the team.

“Russell Westbrook is the ultimate competitor,” Oklahoma City general manager Sam Presti said in a statement. “His internal belief and unbridled fearlessness helped establish the ⁠foundation of our organization from day one in 2008 and he elevated ⁠the confidence and inspired our community in every year thereafter.

“Russell will be as successful in his life after basketball as he was during his career because his qualities and gifts transfer. His impact on our community is still felt today, and he is beloved for his devotion as much as his ‌talent.

“He built a Hall of Fame career not by making statements or simply by breaking records, he did it by showing us all the power of asking one simple question: Why Not?”

Westbrook bounced around to five teams over his last ‌six ‌seasons. He averaged 15.2 points and 6.7 rebounds in 64 games (with 58 starts) for the Sacramento Kings last season.

Westbrook was a college star at UCLA before leaving for the NBA after two seasons. He was the Pac-12 Defensive Player of the Year as a sophomore.

In the private home studio left behind by his father, Shane Hawkins is hitting the drums hard. The teenager behind the kit is locked into “Driven to Tears,” the Police’s reggae-charged protest song, channeling its sharp, syncopated beats with controlled fury.

His long blond hair swings across his face as Hawkins loses himself in the moment, tapping into a brisk echo of ’80s rock. He then shifts into the thundering blues of Black Sabbath’s “The Wizard,” driving into the heavier groove while surrounded by the instruments, gear and treasured memorabilia of his late father, Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins, who died in 2022.

Joining him in this rehearsal are bassist Wiley Hodgden and guitarist Brent Woods, who played hard-rocking cover songs in Taylor’s side project Chevy Metal for more than two decades. After Taylor’s death, the Foo Fighters carried on, but Chevy Metal were certain they could not. Shane changed that.

“Wiley and I were in agreement, like, it’s done,” says Woods. “Shane was the one that said, ‘I want to do Chevy.’”

For Taylor’s son, the band was one more thing he didn’t want to let go.

“It was a part of my childhood and it’s like, my dad was gone and these people that I’ve watched my whole childhood, they’re still there,” says Shane, 19. “Why not keep something going? And it’s just honoring my dad, you know?”

Most of the music world first saw Shane behind the drums during Foo Fighters’ performance of “My Hero” at the Taylor Hawkins tribute concert at Wembley Stadium on Sept. 3, 2022. He was 16 and already obsessed with drums, but he says it wasn’t until that moment that he knew he wanted to devote his life making music.

“It was a gnarly time,” Shane recalls. “You had to pull that off. You can’t really f— that up.

“I played for a lot of people, and there’s only one feeling like that — especially playing the drums. Once you do that, you never want to do anything else.”

With Chevy Metal, Shane is in a band committed to playing songs mostly created before he was born, with a typical setlist including songs by Van Halen, Led Zeppelin, Queen, the Rolling Stones, Talking Heads, Rush and the Doors. His presence now means leaning more often into classic punk rock. During their live sets, Shane will usually take the mic to growl through the Bad Brains’ speedy “Big Takeover,” pacing the stage and banging his head.

“We’re playing the Germs now,” says Woods. “We’re playing Black Flag, which we never did before.”

Shane Hawkins plays drums with Chevy Metal at the Viper Room.

(Steve Appleford)

Chevy Metal shows routinely feature surprise guests. Dave Grohl and other Foos have frequently appeared. So have Mick Jagger and players from Queen, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Guns ‘N Roses and more. Even tennis star John McEnroe once joined the band on guitar at a Malibu gig, alongside his wife, singer Patty Smyth.

One regular guest is Lee Ving, singer for the pioneering L.A. punk band Fear. “Lee is like the elder statesman, and then we got Shane, who is so young,” Hodgden says of the age range. “You never see that unless it’s maybe a church band or something.”

Another regular is Anthrax guitarist Scott Ian, a family friend whose son Revel also plays music with Shane.

“He’s a great dude and he is a monster drummer,” Scott says of Shane. “I sit and I watch him and Revel play together. It’s so great to see, especially in a world where a lot of younger kids don’t pick up instruments anymore. They live, eat, sleep, breathe, bleed, rock music.”

Until this month, the resurrected Chevy Metal could only perform during Shane’s breaks from his boarding school on the East Coast, but he is newly graduated and ready to play. The trio performs Saturday at Alex’s Bar in Long Beach as part of a series of shows that will take the band to the U.K. Shane is also working with other young players on new material.

“He’s already jamming with kids his own age and friends that he’s had for years, and starting his own project,” says Woods. “But this is good for him to learn, just to play in different venues and travel around and get his feet wet playing covers.”

Chevy Metal once served a similar purpose for Taylor, a favorite pastime alongside his Foo Fighters work. Hodgden has been part of the Foo Fighters crew for 24 years, both on the road and at their studio 606, starting as Taylor’s drum tech. Before that, he was a bartender newly arrived from Oklahoma that the drummer befriended.

In 2002, Hodgden and original guitarist Achim “Dange” St. Dangerfield started the band as an acoustic duo doing cover songs. Taylor was a regular, Hodgden says, turning to Shane. “There’d be two drunks at the bar, and then your dad sitting there heckling us,” Hodgden says with a laugh. “We go into ‘Hotel California,’ and he’s like, ‘Oh, great song choice, guys.’”

The Foos drummer soon wanted in.

“Taylor was trying to come up with names and he’s like, ‘How about Chevy Metal?’ And I said, ‘Well, you can’t really name the band. You’re not in it,’” Hodgden adds. “But we jammed all the time up at his house, and then one day we’re playing and it sounded good. And Taylor stood up and said, ‘I’m gonna be your drummer and we’re gonna call it Chevy Metal.’ And I was like, that’s a rad name.”

“He got to be the boss in this band and steer the ship and do whatever he wanted,” says Hodgden. “But also it was low pressure and it was all about fun.”

Taylor filled much of his downtime making more music. Aside from Chevy Metal, he recorded new songs with the Coattail Riders (which included Woods) and, earlier, the Birds of Satan (including Hodgden).

“He never stopped,” Woods recalls. “He would call me at 7 a.m. and go, ‘What are you doin? Get up here!’ He’d go to bed probably at midnight, one o’clock, and he’s up taking the kids to school, he’s mountain biking, and he’s ready to roll. I was still sleeping, but he would be up every day wanting to create and work.”

Woods saw Chevy Metal’s first show with Taylor at Abuelitas in Topanga Canyon in 2002. After Dange moved up north to work as a teacher, Woods eventually became Chevy Metal’s new guitarist. Woods grew up in Burbank and took guitar lessons from Randy Rhoads, best known for his work on Ozzy Osbourne’s early solo albums.

“He was such a great lead player, but he was adamant that if you can’t play rhythm, it doesn’t matter how great of a lead player you are,” Woods says of Rhoads, who emphasized “rhythm and feel.”

“I wouldn’t be sitting here right now if it wasn’t for Randy teaching me.”

Growing up initially in Topanga Canyon, the first beat Shane learned to play was the thunderous drum fill from Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight.” Then came Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water” and the Rolling Stones’ “Miss You.” By 13, he was spending hours each day practicing alone in the basement at his boarding school.

“There were no other kids that really played at the school, so I’d just sit down and play,” he says.

Shane grew up watching both Foo Fighters and Chevy Metal shows. “I’d sit behind my dad and watch him play and watch people just go crazy,” says Shane. “And as a kid, you think that’s the coolest thing in the world, because it is. It’s the best feeling.”

The band Chevy Metal — bassist Wiley Hodgden, left, drummer Shane Hawkins and guitarist Brent Woods — gestures downstairs at the Viper Room on the Sunset Strip.

(Steve Appleford)

Taylor’s home studio was built in a guest house behind his family’s home in Hidden Hills, a gated community on the northern edge of the San Fernando Valley. Inside, the walls are still covered with his guitars, posters, photographs and other relics from his favorite artists: Aerosmith, Rush, Bowie, Jane’s Addiction and Soundgarden.

The reborn Chevy Metal still rehearses in what Woods describes as Taylor’s “man cave.”

“He put a lot of work into making this room what it is right now,” says Shane. “I remember him precisely making sure every picture was hung up in the exact place. And every banner was hung perfectly and every speaker was placed perfectly for your ear.”

The band recorded a lot of songs here with Taylor, and they hope to release some of that material from the vault. They plan on more recording with his son.

Before Shane graduated high school, the last time Chevy Metal played a hometown show was at the Viper Room on New Year’s Eve. It was also a gathering of rock ’n’ roll families, as second-generation musicians took turns onstage with Chevy Metal, representing the offspring of Guns ‘N Roses, Jane’s Addiction and Anthrax.

During the sound check, the band ran through songs by U2 and Foreigner, and Shane hammered the drums at full volume. Afterward, he was chatting with Scott Ian, who advised him: “You never want to be great at dress rehearsal. You want to be good at dress rehearsal, and then be great at the show.”

Shane nodded, but for now, he says he can only play at one level: loud.

As Shane sat in the dressing room before Chevy Metal’s set, Jane’s Addiction drummer Stephen Perkins walked in, asking, “Where’s the drummer?” Then he spotted Shane, smiled, grabbed his hand and said, “There he is!”

Aug. 13 (UPI) — The Trump administration’s decision to close the U.S. Consulate in Medan, Indonesia, may save relatively little money. But it risks weakening American influence in one of the Indo-Pacific’s most strategically important regions at a time when Washington says competition with China is its foremost foreign policy priority.

The Medan consulate is small compared with the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta or major diplomatic posts elsewhere in Asia. Yet, its strategic value has long exceeded its size.

Situated on the island of Sumatra, the consulate serves roughly 60 million Indonesians across 10 provinces, supports U.S. commercial interests, advances educational and environmental partnerships and provides Washington with a permanent presence near the Strait of Malacca — one of the world’s busiest maritime corridors.

The proposed closure comes as the United States seeks to deepen its Comprehensive Strategic Partnership with Indonesia, Southeast Asia’s largest economy, the world’s largest Muslim-majority democracy and an increasingly influential G20 member.

Those ambitions sit uneasily alongside a shrinking American diplomatic footprint in one of Indonesia’s most important regions.

For years, U.S. officials have argued that competition with China extends beyond military deployments and naval exercises. It also depends on trade, investment, educational exchanges, environmental cooperation and people-to-people ties.

Those objectives require diplomats on the ground, particularly outside national capitals where many of today’s political and commercial relationships are forged.

“The administration should reconsider closing a strategically located consulate near the Strait of Malacca,” Patrick Cronin, chair for Asia-Pacific Security at the Hudson Institute, told UPI. “Recent tensions around the Strait of Hormuz remind us how indispensable the Strait of Malacca remains to global commerce.”

Sumatra is one of Indonesia’s economic engines, producing energy, palm oil, coffee, rubber and other commodities, while anchoring important shipping and trade routes across the Malacca Strait and the Indian Ocean.

The island accounts for a large share of Indonesia’s palm oil production, while its provinces are also major exporters of rubber, coal, agricultural products and manufactured goods.

North Sumatra recorded more than $3.5 billion in exports in 2025, while South Sumatra recorded $6.3 billion. American companies operating in energy, agribusiness, manufacturing and logistics therefore have commercial interests that extend well beyond Jakarta, including relationships with provincial governments, suppliers, ports, industrial estates and local business communities.

A diplomatic presence in Medan provides U.S. officials with a base for supporting those relationships, monitoring commercial conditions and helping American companies navigate regulatory and administrative issues in a region central to Indonesia’s trade and resource economy.

“It will reinforce the perception that the United States is shrinking its footprint in Southeast Asia,” Murray Hiebert, head of research at BowerGroupAsia, told UPI. “Closing Medan also removes the only permanent U.S. diplomatic presence near the Strait of Malacca.”

Unlike many countries where political authority is concentrated in one capital, Indonesia’s decentralized system gives provincial governments considerable influence over investment, environmental management and economic development. Relationships built through a regional consulate cannot easily be replicated through periodic visits from embassy officials based in Jakarta.

Indonesia also occupies a distinctive place in Washington’s Indo-Pacific strategy. It is neither a treaty ally nor a strategic adversary, but an independent regional power that has consistently pursued its long-standing “free and active” foreign policy. Jakarta has resisted choosing sides between Washington and Beijing, preferring to cultivate strong ties with both.

Ted Osius, former U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam, who also served as president and CEO of the U.S.-ASEAN Business Council, said Washington has spent years strengthening its partnership with Indonesia as both countries seek closer trade and defense cooperation.

“The annual cost of operating the U.S. Consulate in Medan, staffed by just two American diplomats serving an island of more than 60 million people, is roughly equivalent to one minute of Pentagon spending during the conflict with Iran,” Osius told UPI. “The modest savings from closing the post would come at a disproportionate strategic cost.”

China has long recognized that influence is built through sustained local engagement as much as national diplomacy. Over the past decade, Beijing has expanded its presence across Indonesia through infrastructure projects, mining investments, industrial cooperation and Belt and Road financing.

Chinese companies dominate Indonesia’s rapidly growing nickel-processing industry, while the Jakarta-Bandung high-speed railway has become Beijing’s flagship infrastructure project in Southeast Asia.

Chinese engagement extends well beyond Jakarta. Provincial governments across the archipelago work directly with Chinese companies, universities and local officials, allowing Beijing to deepen relationships through consistent local engagement rather than high-profile diplomatic initiatives alone.

Against that backdrop, reducing the American presence outside the capital risks reinforcing perceptions that Washington’s commitment is narrowing rather than expanding.

The implications extend beyond geopolitics. Sumatra contains some of the world’s richest tropical forests, including the Leuser Ecosystem, one of the few places where orangutans, elephants, rhinos and tigers still co-exist in the wild. These forests also rank among the world’s most important carbon sinks, making them central to global biodiversity and climate efforts.

“We should not be closing the U.S. Consulate in Medan,” Robert Blake, a former U.S. ambassador and now senior managing director at McLarty Associates, told UPI. “Despite its relatively small operating cost, the consulate punches well above its weight.

“It enables U.S. diplomats to engage with Sumatra’s 60 million people, promotes American business in a region rich in energy, palm oil and coffee, and supports Indonesia’s efforts to protect Sumatra’s unique biodiversity — a globally significant natural heritage and one of the world’s most important carbon sinks.”

That work has included support for conservation partnerships, scientific cooperation, educational exchanges and civil society initiatives. As climate change increasingly intersects with national security and economic policy, environmental diplomacy has become another arena in which countries build long-term influence.

The Medan consulate has served as a regional presence in North Sumatra, providing U.S. diplomats with direct access to local officials, business leaders, universities, civil society organizations and other institutions outside Indonesia’s capital.

Its location also gives Washington a base for monitoring developments across a strategically important part of the country, including trade, investment, maritime activity and regional ties.

Closing or consolidating that presence would shift more of those functions to the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta and other regional posts, potentially changing how frequently American officials engage with counterparts in Sumatra.

Supporters of consolidation argue that modern communications and periodic travel can substitute for permanent regional offices, particularly during a period of fiscal restraint. But diplomacy remains fundamentally relational. Trust develops through sustained interaction, familiarity with local institutions and networks that cannot be built through occasional visits.

Whether the closure ultimately proceeds is less important than what it signals. Throughout the Indo-Pacific, Washington contends that strategic competition with China will be won not only through military strength, but also through sustained economic, diplomatic and societal engagement. That strategy depends on people, institutions and local relationships built over decades — not only on high-level summits or defense agreements.

The annual savings from closing a small consulate in Medan are likely to be modest. The strategic cost may be harder to measure.

James Borton is a non-resident senior fellow at Johns Hopkins SAIS Foreign Policy Institute and the author of Harvesting the Waves: How Blue Parks Shape Policy, Politics, and Peacebuilding in the South China Sea. Borton is the editor-in-chief of the South China Sea NewsWire. The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.

The Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (Ucas) runs a clearing process matching students with university and college courses which still have spaces., external

Students can use it if they:

Clearing opened on 2 July and closes on 19 October.

Universities make an offer to a student to join a course based on qualifications and grades or the Ucas tariff points system., external

Each A-level grade is worth a certain number of Ucas points. For example, an A* at A-level is worth 56 points and a D is worth 24 points.

BTecs, T-levels and other qualifications are worth Ucas points too – you can work out how many points your results are worth using the calculator tool on their website, external.

Many students may decide not to go to university and start an apprenticeship or go straight into work.

Others take a gap year, external so they have more time to decide what to do next.

OLIVIA Attwood has sparked engagement rumours to Pete Wicks after she was spotted wearing a band on her ring finger.

Olivia and Pete’s eight-year-long friendship recently developed into a romantic relationship, and now it looks like their bond has heated up even further.

Olivia has been seen outside a studio in North London sporting a band on her engagement finger.

This comes after she got her ring finger tattooed in dedication to Pete.

The star had her latest inking was done by an artist booked for the launch of her new cocktail brand, Savano.

After she got her inking and showed it off recently, one fan commented beneath the uploaded snap: “This is sooo for @p_wicks01.”

ATTA GIRL

Olivia Attwood takes new swipe at ex Bradley Dack as she shares sweary rant

cosmetic clash

Pete Wicks takes on Olivia Attwood with a rival show on extreme treatments

Olivia was previously married to footballer Bradley Dack however it has since been revealed that the marriage was not legally binding.

Romance rumours about her and Pete being in a relationship first surfaced in March.

The rumours were sparked when Olivia, 35, and Pete, 37, were spotted kissing during a night out at rooftop bar Flute.

Their smooch came just weeks after her split from Bradley became public.

Olivia recently revealed that the pair went from platonic to romantic “very quickly” after Pete confessed his feelings and made the first move following her split from Bradley.

Speaking to The Sun about Olivia and Pete’s relationship last month, a source revealed: “What they have right now is special.

“Because her other relationships have played out so publicly, she’s making a conscious effort to keep it close to her chest.

“She’s aware that in the industry she’s in, people want to know details, but this time she wants to keep something back, to herself.

“It’s serious and a more grown up relationship.”

Olivia had always downplayed her friendship with Pete, and even branded him “repulsive” two years before they got together.

The couple have shared subtle hints that they are now together, but are still keeping things on the downlow.

Pete has hard-launched their relationship a couple of times, but Liv’s approach is much more lowkey.

Aug. 13 (UPI) — The Trump administration has filed fraud-related charges against a former Southern Poverty Law Center official who testified during the Jan. 6 insurrection investigation, as its crack down on the anti-hate group and President Donald Trump‘s perceived opponents.

The Justice Department originally charged SPLC in an 11-count indictment in April, alleging that the frequent target of right-wing criticism had defrauded donors by using their money to pay informants within hate groups they were monitoring. The Trump administration has framed the payments as paying the hate groups it was supposed to monitor, such as the KKK. SPLC vehemently denies the allegations.

On Wednesday, federal prosecutors unveiled a superseding indictment against Heidi Beirich, 59, a political extremism expert and former SPLC chief financial officer, and the SPLC, charing them with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to submit false statements to a federally insured bank.

Beirich, of Palm Springs, Calif., was arrested Wednesday morning, FBI Director Kash Patel said in a statement.

“The indictment unsealed today reflects the continued work of federal investigators and prosecutors in examining this alleged scheme,” U.S. Attorney Thomas Govan said in a statement.

“We look forward to presenting the evidence in court and allowing the judicial process to determine the facts and the defendants’ responsibility for the alleged crimes.”

The SPLC has long faced criticism from some Republicans and conservatives, who say the prominent anti-hate group has drifted from its mission of fighting extremism and White supremacy by labeling several right-wing organizations as hate groups.

Pressure from the White House has mounted on the group since Trump returned to the helm of the government. The Trump administration has brought a number of federal and civil prosecutions against the president’s perceived opponents, attracting criticism from judicial and civil rights advocates as well as Democrats who accuse it of weaponizing the Justice Department.

As an expert in far-right extremist political violence, Beirich, in her role as co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, testified before the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection attempt by Trump supporters, stating that there was substantial political and personal overlap between the Proud Boys and Trump’s movement.

In October, FBI Director Kash Patel severed ties with the SPLC, saying it had “long abandoned civil rights work and turned into a partisan smear machine.”

The April indictment alleges that between 2014 and 2023, SPLC paid some $3 million in donated funds to members of violent extremist groups. In the superseding indictment unveiled Wednesday, the Justice Department no contends that it paid more than $4 million between 2007 and 2023.

During an unrelated press conference on Wednesday, newly confirmed Attorney General Todd Blanche, a former personal lawyer of the president, said Beirich is believed to have been part of an effort “to open bank accounts in completely fictitious companies’ names to make payments to individuals for reasons that were not accurate as described.”

Michael Proctor, Beirich’s attorney, accused the Trump administration of using the justice system to silence its political opponents.

“Heidi Beirich has dedicated her life to fighting hate groups and extremist movements like the KKK, neo-Nazis and other White supremacists,” Proctor said in a statement, NBC News reported.

“She has combatted these hateful, ugly and un-American extremists and their repeated uses of violence and intimidation in order to promote a fairer, safer and more just America. Her decades-long record of success dismantling hate groups — and the resulting threats to her life — speak volumes. For this, she has been indicted.”

An apprenticeship combines paid work with study towards a recognised qualification.

Apprentices usually spend most of their time working and part of their time completing training with an employer, college, university or online provider.

People often choose apprenticeships because they know the career they want to pursue, or because they want to gain new skills without studying full-time.

Any employer can hire apprentices. They are responsible for ensuring apprentices work with experienced staff and receive time away from their job to complete their studying.

Apprenticeships are available across a wide range of industries, including business, engineering, construction, healthcare, digital, hospitality and creative sectors.

Heartbreaking true crime doc A Child of My Own has landed on Netflix and fans are wondering where Alejandra is now.

A Child of My Own explores what happened when a woman faked a pregnancy and kidnapped a newborn.

Netflix has released the one-off true crime special A Child of My Own, telling the story of Mexican native Eleonor Alejandra Marin Mendoza who committed the unspeakable crime in June 2009.

Alejandra was already pregnant when she married Arturo Calderon Gamino at just 17, but suffered the first of several miscarriages and went through IVF in her 20s.

Facing pressure from her family and society to become a mother, she didn’t tell anyone about her miscarriage at 26 and instead faked a full-term pregnancy.

Working as an administrator at a hospital, she came up with a plan to steal a newborn from the maternity ward with CCTV footage showing her walking out with a baby girl in a large gift bag.

After seeing the baby, Arturo realised that Alejandra hadn’t been pregnant and, after authorities were able to track her down a few hours later, the couple were arrested at a hotel in Mexico City.

Is Alejandra from A Child of My Own still in prison?

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Alejandra was convicted of kidnapping, specifically of the illegal deprivation of liberty of a minor, in 2011 and given a 13-year prison sentence.

Alejandra has now served her time and is no longer in prison, having been released in 2023, while her husband Arturo was acquitted of any wrongdoing after spending two years behind bars.

At the end of A Child of My Own, which was filmed two years after her prison release, Alejandra is still residing in Mexico but a lot has changed.

She shared that Arturo didn’t want to give up on his dreams of being a father but Alejandra didn’t want to go through with another pregnancy or more treatment.

The pair briefly broke up and Arturo then began another relationship, welcoming a baby son with a different woman before they also split.

However, Arturo and Alejandra rekindled their romance shortly after as she explained: “It makes me very happy to see him smile and to be fulfilled as a father.

“It makes me even happier that he sees me in his life as a mother or a parent to his son.”

The Netflix documentary ends with Arturo and Alejandra happily playing with his young son in the park.

A Child of My Own is available to watch on Netflix.

Ein el-Hilweh, occupied West Bank – Adel Daraghmeh lies on his side on a thin mattress laid straight onto the dusty ground, one arm flung out, a sandal hanging half off his foot. “We don’t sleep, we barely drink, we barely eat,” he says weakly.

Above him, a patchwork of dark tarpaulins and old blankets is tied together between a few bent wooden poles – the only thing standing between his family and a sun pushing past 43 degrees Celsius (109 degrees Fahrenheit) in the early afternoon.

They are homeless again – their home destroyed days before by an Israeli bulldozer despite a court injunction they believed protected them. Beside him, his wife, Kheirieh, sits on a chair, a small plastic cup of water cradled in both hands.

About 30 metres up a slope, a settler-built fence now cuts across the hillside, cutting Adel and his brothers off from land their flocks grazed for generations. Past the fence, on the crest of the hill, an Israeli flag flies – visible from where Adel lies. “Isn’t this a disgrace, what we are living in?” he asks, more than once, over the course of an hour.

Adel manages diabetes with daily medication, but it’s been a struggle to obtain it in recent days. “They bulldozed the medication [in the house],” says Adel. “Our things, our household goods – all gone. They destroyed us. Our phones, the solar panels – no electricity, no water.”

As the family has learned in recent weeks, as Israel gears up for fiercely contested elections in October, even an Israeli Supreme Court injunction may not stop the bulldozers from coming now.

‘Five minutes to clear the whole area’

The wreckage of the Daraghmehs’ house is still scattered: clothes, a pulverised medicine cabinet, a hollowed-out mini-fridge with its door hanging open, and split cinderblocks.

Even after their son Hilal’s home was demolished shortly before without warning, the July 28 demolition of Adel and Kheirieh’s home came as a shock. With Adel a short drive away in Tubas collecting medication, Kheirieh was home with their daughter, Hanaa, when Israeli soldiers, settlers and Civil Administration officials arrived with a bulldozer and about 10 other vehicles. “They came while I was asleep,” she says.

Kheirieh walked out to meet them with the family’s legal papers – proof, she believed, that the home was protected by an earlier Israeli Supreme Court order barring demolition until the family’s case was resolved.

The court had suspended a 2022 demolition order while a case brought forward by the family progressed.

Soldiers took the documents, read them, conferred among themselves, and handed them back.

Then the bulldozer started anyway.

“Five minutes to clear the whole area,” one of them told her, she says.

“I told him: I can’t. I can’t clear the area. I’m on my own, and I’m ill,” she says. Already sick, and now seeing the bulldozers bearing down on her home with nearly everything she owned inside, she blacked out, waking up three hours later in an ambulance.

“And before I knew it, the bulldozer had started,” she says. “The whole house – all of it. All our belongings. Gone.”

“No order, no law,” added Adel weakly from the ground. “No humanity.”

‘Discriminatory’ system

“The army and the settlers demolished … despite the existence of a court order prohibiting it,” says Tawfiq Jabareen, the lawyer representing the Daraghmeh family, referring to the initial July 2 demolition of Hilal’s home. “The prosecution claimed it was a mistake by the army, and that it would not happen again – but the demolition was repeated.”

“The law and court rulings mean nothing to the settlers,” adds Jabareen, “who try to circumvent them by every means, believing that imposing facts on the ground is stronger than any law or court ruling.”

The Daraghmehs are herders of livestock who have lived along the Ein el-Hilweh spring, in the northern Jordan Valley, for generations. Four brothers and their families live in the area. “I was born here,” Adel says. “My father was born here.”

Nearby are the illegal Israeli settlement of Maskiyot and several settler outposts established in recent years, subjecting the extended family to numerous attacks, thefts and raids.

Like herding communities across Area C of the West Bank – under complete Israeli military and administrative control – the family has spent years navigating demolition orders under a planning system that leaves Palestinians almost no legal path to build.

Adel has had his home demolished before and spent significant money to rebuild it, he explains. What’s different now, they say, is that even that limited process – a warning, a demolition order, followed by a chance to appeal – has stopped applying to them at all. No demolition order was presented for either Hilal’s home or Adel’s when they came to bulldoze them despite the court injunctions.

Soldiers, settlers and Civil Administration officials arrived together during the demolitions, according to the family and activists present.

Allegra Pacheco, chief of party of the West Bank Protection Consortium and a lawyer who has represented Palestinians before Israeli courts for decades, says the irregularity of such demolitions is no aberration in an otherwise functioning system.

“This is a continuation of the deterioration of any pretence of legal protection for Palestinians,” she says. Even the ordinary planning process was built to fail Palestinians, she argues. Under a zoning system inherited from Jordanian and British Mandate-era law, Israel changed some of the laws to the detriment of Palestinians, leaving most Palestinian areas in Area C without approved building plans, while Israeli settlements – illegal under international law – are zoned and built freely.

“The Israelis set up the system to be discriminatory and to fail Palestinians,” says Pacheco. “So people build anyway, get the stop-work order, then demolition [order] – which you can appeal. But you’re appealing to the one who made the rule to discriminate against Palestinian construction.

“There’s no way for Palestinians in general to win under the current Israeli legal framework.”

As lines blur between authorities and settlers, who exactly spearheaded the demolition – soldiers, settlers, the Civil Administration – was unclear even to the family. “They’re all the same when they come,” says Hilal. “They’re all together.”

According to the United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), since January 2023, more than 6,200 Palestinians, including more than 3,000 children, have been forcibly displaced, including more than 2,300 people since the beginning of 2026 alone. More than 907 Palestinian structures in the occupied West Bank have already been demolished this year.

Al Jazeera reached out to Israeli authorities and the military for comment on the events described in this article, but no response has yet been received.

‘Nothing is holding them back’

A short walk from the rubble of his parents’ home – and his own – Hilal sits under the shade of a tree beside the spring that sustained his family for generations, one that he and his flocks can no longer use.

Minutes earlier, he’d watched two settlers cool off at the spring, dousing themselves with water as one of them changed into a military uniform on the bank.

Hilal’s own remaining cattle – most of the herd already stolen, confiscated or sold – scrounge instead for whatever run-off is left once the settlers are gone. “We used to drink from this spring, and carry water on the donkey,” he says. “But they stopped us. The settlers fenced it off.”

Later, he rides his donkey across the road to what remains of his home. What had been walls and a roof is now a field of scorched rubble and gnarled metal piping, bent and knotted where the bulldozer dragged it. On his donkey, Hilal points to where each room had stood. He estimates the losses at 170,000 shekels ($57,000).

“Not a single thing I got to take – all of it is gone,” he says.

Next door, at the home of Adel’s brother, Qadri – which was previously demolished in August last year – several relatives, who asked not to be named for fear of reprisal, describe an extended family bracing for its turn.

“Nothing is holding them back now,” one son says. “They don’t even need an order any more. Of course we are scared they will come for us next.”

Prevented from rebuilding by nearby settlers and soldiers, Adel and Kheirieh now rely on relatives for help getting basic supplies. “All of our family helps each other,” says one relative, “but it is so hard when we don’t have enough, and we might be next.”

Following earlier thefts by settlers and confiscations from authorities a year and a half ago, the family had another 50 head of cattle stolen by settlers, they say.

Amid deteriorating health, an exhausted, heat-stricken Adel sits up from lying on the ground only when the topic of past weddings comes up. His hoarse voice strengthens, and he breaks into a wide smile. Softly, he begins clapping out the rhythm of a dahiyyeh – the sung, chanted line-dance of Bedouin celebrations – his wavering voice rising over the sound of his own hands.

“What beautiful times together,” he says. “Beautiful.”

Then, as if that singing expended the last of his dwindling energy, he sinks back onto the sweat-stained mattress and exhales. “Inshallah those times will return,” he says. “Inshallah.”

Gaza City, Gaza Strip – Sohair al-Bordani was displaced and living in central Gaza’s Nuseirat camp, trying to take care of her four children, as war raged all around her.

And while she survived, her 10-year marriage has not. Al-Bordani, 30, explained that the arguments between her and her ex-husband had intensified since the war began in 2023, as the stress of merely existing in Gaza weighed down on them.

But al-Bordani encountered a problem. Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza – in which Israel has killed more than 73,000 Palestinians – has devastated many aspects of the Palestinian enclave’s administration, including its legal system.

To get a court-ordered divorce, with the accompanying financial claims she would be eligible for, al-Bordani would have to go before a religious court and establish her case. She said that she initiated legal proceedings in February 2025. But, because of delays to the judicial process brought on by the war, the case dragged on.

And so, al-Bordani chose the speedier option available to her – khulu, a form of divorce initiated by the wife that can involve relinquishing financial rights. In her case, this meant that she returned her dowry to her ex-husband and gave up the financial support she would have been entitled to.

“I gave up everything because obtaining my rights under these circumstances had become extremely difficult,” al-Bordani said. “I only wanted to find peace and start a new life away from everything I experienced during that period.”

Legal delays

Al-Bordani’s story reflects the experience of many women in Gaza who have found themselves trapped between delayed legal cases and a war that has disrupted access to the justice system, leaving decisions that are supposed to determine their futures suspended until conditions allow courts to resume their work fully.

Some personal status cases – including divorces – have reached Gaza’s religious courts, which oversee the matters.

According to Sheikh Hassan al-Jojo, the head of the Supreme Council of Sharia Judiciary in Gaza, courts have handled more than 8,700 divorce cases from the beginning of the war in October 2023 until the end of May.

That is despite the many challenges they face, including – but not limited to – damage to court buildings and shortages of judges and other staff.

Al-Jojo also said that courts had returned to near-full judicial work, while services continued even during periods when court buildings were closed.

But he also pointed out that the courts were operating with severely limited resources. Each court – according to al-Jojo – has only one computer, while repeated power cuts, shortages of printed materials and a lack of basic office supplies continue to affect their work.

“Essential services, including marriages and divorces, and other procedures needed by citizens, did not stop,” al-Jojo said. “But the priority at this stage is to keep providing the service, rather than improving it.”

Troubling consequences

Yet divorce figures alone do not reflect the full impact of the war on families. The delays in accessing the legal system have meant that women like al-Bordani have been unable to pursue their legal rights after separation, particularly in cases involving child custody, spousal and child maintenance, and other financial payments that are typically due to the wife.

Mohammad al-Talaa, a lawyer in Gaza, says that the war has significantly affected the functioning of judicial institutions, leading to the postponement of thousands of hearings and the suspension of many cases.

He added that thousands of files and documents have been lost due to Israeli bombing and the destruction of offices, making it difficult to prove rights, particularly in civil and property-related cases.

And with regard to personal status cases, al-Talaa pointed out that the suspension of enforcement departments in courts has left women entitled to payments without that financial support, and has also affected child visitation and custody cases, leaving some parents unable to implement decisions related to maintaining contact with their children.

The problems are not just legal. Al-Talaa explained that the continued delay in divorce and separation cases has left some women trapped in marriages they want to get out of. It has also prevented them from moving on with their lives, while delays in access to financial payments they are owed have increased the burden on families, and a lack of resolution on cases involving children has led to increased psychological stress for all involved, alongside the trauma caused by the war itself.

Suad al-Naami was not willing to deal with being stuck in limbo, and decided to get a khulu divorce even if it meant giving up on the rights a court-mandated divorce would have granted her.

The 22-year-old had only been married for five months, but with disputes with her ex-husband increasing, she left.

“I never imagined my married life would begin this way,” al-Naami said. “I hoped we would have a home and a stable life, but displacement and living in a tent made everything more difficult.”

For the young woman, the promise of a new start, amid all the destruction around her in Gaza, was better than a drawn-out case.

“Giving up on my rights was not an easy matter, but I felt that entering a long legal process and waiting for years would only increase my suffering,” al-Naami said. “I only wanted to end the disputes and start over, because staying in a relationship full of problems under these circumstances would have been harder than the decision to separate itself.”