TODAY

Espionage, sabotage, cyberattacks, and covert operations are a ‘constant reality’, says Germany’s interior minister.

Germany is facing daily “hybrid warfare” attacks from abroad, an official has said, days after an explosive-laden drone was discovered at Leipzig/Halle Airport.

Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt told the local newspaper Bild am Sonntag on Sunday that foreign powers wanted to subdue Germany politically and socially by stirring up fear.

“We’re not at war, but we are the daily target of hybrid warfare,” Dobrindt said.

“Espionage, sabotage, cyberattacks, or covert operations by foreign powers aimed at destabilising Germany or inflicting direct harm are a constant reality.”

He did not identify any countries behind the alleged attacks.

The minister’s comments come after a drone loaded ‌with explosives was discovered at the Leipzig/Halle Airport in eastern Germany on Tuesday.

Some German lawmakers pointed the finger at Russia, which has been at war with Ukraine since its full-scale invasion of the country in 2022.

The Russian embassy in Berlin on Friday dismissed the Leipzig event as a “fabricated provocation”, saying it was another example of unsubstantiated accusations against Moscow.

Germany plans to boost anti-drone capacity

Germany is planning to strengthen its ability to counter drones amid concerns over the threat, Bild reported, citing government sources.

The newspaper said Dobrindt’s ministry wanted to double the federal government’s team of anti-drone experts from 150 to 300 and increase its network of related bases from four to eight.

Germany’s armed forces said on Saturday that two drones were spotted late on Thursday over a German military base site in Mechernich, in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia.

Separately, a drone exploded on Saturday in Bulgaria near the Trans-Balkan gas pipeline.

Bulgaria’s defence ministry said there was no reason to suspect the incident was intentional. Ukraine said it was working with Bulgarian authorities to clarify the circumstances.

The drone incidents across Europe have renewed concerns that Russia’s war in Ukraine could increasingly affect neighbouring NATO states.

NATO and European Union officials have blamed Russia for previous drone sightings. Russia has rejected all the allegations.

Kuwait has since the beginning of the Iran War in February been targeted by Iranian drones and missiles 1,400 times. Why has this state—smaller than the US state of New Jersey—been targeted more than any of its larger neighbors including Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates?

A military node

This question takes us all the way back to 1991 when the US intervenes when Iraq under Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait. In return, Kuwait has since hosted one of the the largest US armies in the Middle East of 13,000 troops, and has the fourth biggest deployment of the US military globally. Furthermore, Kuwait is one of five U.S. Army Prepositioned Stocks (APS) sites across the world— a cornerstone of the US’ global military strategy as it allows for rapid deployment and display of influence. And not only does Kuwait not charge the US for its land use, or restrict US troop movements on its territory—unlike most other host countries—but indeed pays the US for its troop presence, and subsidies energy and water costs for the military bases.

A geostrategic asset  

In exchange, Kuwait’s geostrategic location on the Arabian peninsula and along the air corridor between Asia and Europe makes the country an important location for the US to secure its interests and exert influence in the region and beyond. Indeed, the US has designated Kuwait as a Major Non-Nato Ally since 2004, and has located its biggest air logistics facility in the Middle East in conjunction with Kuwait international airport. Thus, Kuwait has proven a key logistical hub for US military operations in the region including against the Islamic State and during the withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.

Furthermore, Kuwait holds 7% of the world’s oil reserves, reinforcing its importance for the US and other oil consuming countries, while also making it strategically vulnerable to Iranian attacks on energy plants in late July, as this adds to the ongoing energy insecurity created by the closure of the key oil trade route through the Strait of Hormuz.

The end of diplomatic balancing?

Despite these far-reaching strategic links with the US, Kuwait has long maintained a diplomatic balancing act, refusing to normalise relations with Israel while simultaneously refraining from condemning the Iranian regime. Moreover, Kuwait has often assumed the role of neutral mediator in the Middle East. For example, Kuwait mediated the 2021 rapprochement between Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, and has contributed to peace efforts in Yemen. In addition, Kuwait has been much more cautious in its statements concerning the Iranian regime, unlike its vocally critical, yet less targeted neighbors such as the United Arab Emirates, and has even refused to allow the US to use military bases in Kuwait for launching attacks on Iran.

Geographic liabilities

Even so, Kuwait has fallen prey to its geography. For one, its geographical proximity to Iran makes Kuwait a comparatively cheap and easy target for Iranian missiles, while its lack of naturally occurring fresh water and consequent reliance on desalination provides Teheran an additional pressure point, as illustrated by Iranian attacks on desalination plants in late July. Furthermore, its proximity to Iraq has exposed it to attacks by Iraqi Shia militias, allied with Teheran.

And the risk of further attacks in the future is high. On 1 August, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi declared that it would react ”decisively” against any US strikes, and warned Gulf states against permitting the US and Israel to use bases on their territories to launch attacks against Iran. Similarly, Iraq announced that its military forces stood ready to ‘thwart any attempts at targeting neighbouring countries within our regional sphere.’ Thus, recent developments suggest that Kuwait might no longer be able to remain an independent diplomatically oriented actor that can stay out of the conflicts in the Middle East.

Ideology

While Iran’s official rationale for the attacks has been to target US military targets and assets, the attacks on energy and desalination plants are neither; these are civilian infrastructures. Hence it is Kuwaiti civilians—not the US military capacity—that bear the brunt of the attacks. This suggests that Iranian attacks have not only immediate military objectives in context of the current war, but also underlying psychological and ideological motives, as these attacks can be seen as a way of scaring countries that go against Iran’s exhortations—reiterated since 1979–to its Gulf neighbors to cut ties with the US. In addition, the attacks expose the limitations of US security guarantee, and undermine the credibility of the US promises of stability and protection to its allies.

A change of strategy

Consequently, Kuwait may pivot toward building up more national military defence capabilities, as the deterrence guarantee that the well-accommodated US presence was supposed to provide has ostensibly failed, while Kuwait’s lack of domestic military resources to retaliate further enticed Iranian attacks.

Hence, it appears that the security order in the Middle East is set to become even more fragile, with the US increasingly proving incapable or unwilling to ensure what has long been considered a stabilising presence, and with regional actors increasingly divided and polarized, making neutral mediation harder.

Stalled for months, the peace process in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo appears to be gaining momentum.

The Rwandan-backed M23 rebel group has accepted 15 prisoners released by the government in Kinshasa. The handover is part of a framework agreement signed last year, after talks mediated by Qatar.

It may be a small step, but it could pave the way to ending the fighting in the eastern DRC. Previous attempts have failed to bring peace to the region.

Could this mechanism address the core issues of the long-running conflict?

Presenter: Per Nyberg

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

Felix Ndahinda – Researcher on the Great Lakes region, specialising in conflict resolution, peace and transitional justice

Abdulla Al Etaibi – Assistant Professor in International Affairs at Qatar University

Wildfires have spread near Albania’s capital and in parts of southern Spain, prompting hundreds to evacuate. As firefighting teams attempt to contain the blaze in both countries.

Number one ranked player in men’s tennis will miss the tournament due to a knee issue, he says via organisers.

World number one Jannik Sinner has pulled out of the Cincinnati Open due to a right knee injury, the Italian has announced.

“After consulting with my doctors and my team, I have to announce that I need to withdraw from the Masters 1000 tournament in Cincinnati,” he said in a statement posted on the ATP website on Sunday.

“My right knee has been bothering me and even though we have been working hard with my medical team, I have to accept that I’m not ready to compete yet.”

The tournament begins on Thursday, the same day as the end of the Masters event in Montreal, which Sinner also missed.

The five-time Grand Slam winner had been on a six-tournament winning streak at 1000 level heading into the North American hard-court swing, before skipping the event in Canada.

The 24-year-old said then that the decision was taken to “prioritise my health”.

Sinner’s subsequent withdrawal from Cincinnati follows that of world number two Carlos Alcaraz as the Spaniard continues to battle a wrist injury.

The Cincinnati Open and Montreal Masters are the two principal warm-up events ahead of the final Grand Slam of the season, the US Open, which starts in New York on 30 August.

Iran says the Strait of Hormuz will remain restricted unless the US meets a series of demands. The UAE accuses Tehran of targeting an oil tanker, while Yemen’s Houthis claim an attack on a Saudi refinery. Al Jazeera’s Nour Hegazy reports.

Central Gaza – Sahar al-Bardini prepares breakfast for her three children in a tent at the al-Zawaida camp in central Gaza. She watches them eat but is already worried about finding their next meal.

The 35-year-old is the sole breadwinner for six-year-old Omar, four-year-old Sama and Mahmoud aged three since her husband was killed in Israeli shelling of northern Gaza three years ago.

Like many families in Gaza, they are struggling with soaring food prices, largely due to Israel’s long-running siege, with concerns that the population could be plunged into famine again.

During last year’s famine, the whole family – Omar and Sama in particular – suffered from a lack of food and vital nutrients. Eggs and vegetables were difficult to find in markets and when available, almost impossible to afford.

Even though the family can eat more regularly today, they still only have one meal a day. Omar and Sama’s bodies are still counting the cost of the months of famine between August and December 2025.

“Omar and Sama became very weak during the famine and lost a lot of weight. Even after food became more available, it took them around six months to gradually regain their health and weight,” she told Al Jazeera.

“My biggest fear is that my children will become weak again. I want to see them healthy, but the food they need isn’t easy for me to provide every day.”

Their plight comes as the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) warned last week that Gaza faces a severe food emergency that could develop into another famine.

Justin Brady, head of OCHA in Palestine, warned that 67 percent of Gaza’s population was suffering from food insecurity. More than 200,000 people – around 10 percent of Gaza’s population – were living in conditions that usually precede a formal famine declaration by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification.

In the area where Sahar lives, community kitchens have become the main source of food for many families. The meals they serve – mostly rice and other basic ingredients, but very rarely meat – are enough to stave off starvation, but children still lack essential nutrients and protein that are essential for growth.

“The meal fills their stomachs, but it doesn’t contain everything a child’s body needs to be properly nourished and regain strength,” Sahar said. “The children need a more varied diet – they need eggs, vegetables, fruit, meat and other things. I try to provide whatever I can but my means are limited.”

With little money, Sahar makes the most of any food vouchers or assistance she receives, but it is never enough. That means prioritising the family’s most urgent needs which begin with food, followed by clothes, medicine and then other basic necessities for the youngsters.

“When I receive food vouchers, I try to make the most of them. Everything is expensive, and I’m carrying the responsibility of three children on my own,” she said.

Shimaa, 25, was unable to find enough milk for her two-year-old daughter, Selina, during the last famine, so was forced to find any alternative to fill her stomach.

“I tried to feed her whatever I had. Sometimes I gave her lentils instead of milk because I didn’t have milk to give her,” she told Al Jazeera. “I work day and night so I can provide her with food and everything she needs – everything I do is so I can see her in better health.”

Still, the family struggle to afford enough money for food and so Selina remains weak and severely malnourished.

“Even after the famine eased, its effects didn’t go away for my daughter,” Shimaa said. “I’m worried about her and I’m trying to do everything I can to help her get better.”

Nutrition specialist, Dr Ghada Jibril, said the current food crisis has forced parents to rely on rice and lentils to feed their infants. While they contain some nutrients, it means a gap in kid’s diets, particularly for those who starved during the famine.

“A child who has experienced severe malnutrition needs a period of regular nutrition and follow-up care to regain their weight and resume healthy growth,” Jibril said.

“The end of acute hunger does not mean that the effects of malnutrition disappear immediately. Children need a varied diet, not simply enough food to fill their stomachs – protein, iron, vitamins and minerals are essential for growth, brain development and a strong immune system. Recovering from malnutrition takes time, appropriate food and follow-up care.”

Sudan’s prolonged war is creating risks that extend well beyond its borders. The growing role of Islamist armed groups, including the Al-Baraa Bin Malik Brigade, could further complicate the country’s political and security landscape while creating new challenges for China’s economic and strategic interests in the Red Sea, East Africa and the Horn of Africa.

The Al-Baraa Bin Malik Brigade, an Islamist militia associated with the Sudanese Islamic Movement, has been one of the armed formations supporting the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) during the conflict. In September 2025, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned the brigade over its involvement in Sudan’s civil war and alleged connections to Iran. In March 2026, Washington designated the Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood, also known as the Sudanese Islamic Movement, as a terrorist organization and updated the brigade’s designation accordingly.

These measures have increased the international pressure on Sudanese Islamist networks and could complicate their future role within the country’s political and security institutions. For China, however, the issue is less about the ideological orientation of these groups than about the possibility that their growing influence could contribute to a broader fragmentation of Sudan’s security environment.

A security vacuum with regional consequences

The continuing conflict has already weakened Sudanese state institutions and created space for armed groups to expand their influence. The danger for Beijing is that prolonged fragmentation could transform Sudan into an environment in which local, regional and external actors compete through armed proxies.

Such a development would have consequences beyond Sudan itself. The country occupies a strategically important position on the Red Sea, while its internal conflict is increasingly interconnected with developments in neighboring states and wider regional security dynamics.

China has consistently called for a ceasefire, protection of civilians and a political settlement in Sudan. Following attacks on Port Sudan in May 2025, Beijing called for the protection of civilian facilities and civilians and urged all parties to work toward an early ceasefire and the restoration of peace and stability.

This approach reflects a broader Chinese preference for protecting its economic and diplomatic interests without becoming directly involved in Sudan’s internal conflict.

For Beijing, therefore, the emergence of increasingly autonomous armed formations represents a potential strategic problem. The greater the fragmentation of Sudan’s security institutions, the more difficult it becomes to protect infrastructure, commercial interests and Chinese nationals while maintaining a policy of non-interference.

Why the Red Sea matters to Beijing

Sudan’s Red Sea coastline gives the conflict a significance that extends far beyond the country itself.

The Red Sea is a critical maritime corridor linking Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Any deterioration in security along Sudan’s coast could add to the risks already affecting commercial navigation in the wider Red Sea and Bab el-Mandeb area.

For China, the issue is particularly important because the country is heavily dependent on secure maritime trade routes. Instability along the Red Sea can increase shipping costs, disrupt supply chains and complicate the movement of Chinese goods between Asia, Europe and Africa.

The risks are therefore not limited to projects formally identified with the Belt and Road Initiative. They extend to China’s wider commercial, energy and logistical interests across the region.

Sudan’s instability could also affect Chinese companies operating in infrastructure, energy, mining and other sectors. The safety of Chinese workers and businesses becomes increasingly difficult to guarantee when state authority is fragmented and armed groups operate with greater autonomy.

The South Sudan connection

One of the most important dimensions of Sudan’s instability for China is its potential impact on South Sudan.

South Sudan’s economy remains heavily dependent on oil exports, while much of the country’s oil reaches international markets through infrastructure crossing Sudan. Any prolonged disruption to Sudanese territory, oil infrastructure or export facilities could therefore have consequences for South Sudan’s production and revenues.

This matters to China because Beijing has significant economic and diplomatic interests in South Sudan. China and South Sudan established a strategic partnership in 2024, and China remains one of South Sudan’s major trading partners, with crude oil constituting a major component of bilateral trade.

Consequently, instability in Sudan could create an indirect risk to China’s interests in South Sudan even without any direct Chinese involvement in the Sudanese conflict.

The relationship between the two countries also demonstrates why Beijing is unlikely to view Sudan solely through the lens of the Sudanese civil war. Developments in Sudan can affect neighboring states, energy flows, infrastructure networks and regional trade routes in which China has invested for decades.

China’s limited but expanding security footprint

China has sought to protect its interests in the region while avoiding direct military involvement in Sudan’s war.

Its military presence in Djibouti provides Beijing with an established logistical and security position around the western Indian Ocean and the Red Sea. At the same time, China’s broader commercial presence in Djibouti has continued to expand, reinforcing the country’s importance as a regional trade and logistics hub.

This does not mean that China is preparing to intervene militarily in Sudan. Rather, the existence of a Chinese military and commercial presence in the wider region gives Beijing additional capabilities for protecting its nationals, supporting maritime security and responding to emergencies if regional instability intensifies.

China’s activities in South Sudan also demonstrate a gradual expansion from purely economic engagement toward broader cooperation in areas such as security and public-sector capacity. In June 2026, for example, China handed over a Chinese-aided digital forensic laboratory to South Sudanese authorities, describing improved public-security management as important to national stability.

Beijing is therefore building relationships and capabilities that can help it protect its interests without becoming a direct party to regional conflicts.

The Islamist factor

The future role of Sudanese Islamist organizations remains an important variable.

The international designation of the Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood and the Al-Baraa Bin Malik Brigade could make it more difficult for these networks to operate openly through political or institutional channels. At the same time, pressure on an armed or ideological movement does not necessarily eliminate its influence. It can instead encourage the movement to adapt, fragment or seek alternative forms of political and social organization.

For China, this creates an additional layer of uncertainty.

Beijing has little incentive to become involved in Sudan’s ideological disputes. Its primary concern is whether political fragmentation and the proliferation of armed groups will threaten the stability required for trade, investment, energy flows and the safety of Chinese citizens.

The more Sudan’s conflict develops into a competition involving multiple armed and externally supported actors, the more difficult it becomes for China to maintain its preferred strategy of pragmatic engagement with all sides.

What China is likely to do

China’s response is likely to remain cautious and pragmatic.

Beijing is unlikely to seek a direct military role in Sudan unless its citizens, facilities or broader maritime interests face a severe and immediate threat. Instead, China is likely to continue supporting diplomatic efforts, calling for dialogue and a political settlement while maintaining relations with Sudanese institutions and neighboring countries.

China’s recent diplomatic position toward Sudan and South Sudan reinforces this approach. At the United Nations, Beijing has continued to emphasize political solutions and stability in the region, while maintaining engagement with both Sudan and South Sudan. In May 2026, China’s permanent representative to the UN warned that the continuing conflict in Sudan and instability in South Sudan were delaying the Abyei political process and called for greater attention to the security situation.

This suggests that Beijing sees the Sudanese conflict increasingly as part of a wider regional security problem rather than an isolated domestic crisis.

The central challenge for China is therefore not simply the rise of one Islamist militia. It is the possibility that Sudan’s institutional fragmentation will produce a durable security vacuum connecting the country’s internal conflict with instability in South Sudan, threats to Red Sea navigation and competition among regional and international powers.

If that happens, Sudan could become a much more serious strategic problem for Beijing.

China’s interests in the region depend on stability without requiring China itself to become responsible for providing it. The longer Sudan’s war continues, the harder that balance becomes to maintain.

Taiwan’s newest M1A2T Abrams main battle tanks have deployed to Taoyuan International Airport, the main hub serving Taipei, the capital of Taiwan, for the first time. The deployment is part of the ongoing Han Kuang 42 exercise and reflects a growing emphasis on denying critical infrastructure to an invading force from the Chinese mainland.

The airport defense drill simulated an attempt by enemy airborne forces to seize Taiwan’s largest international airport and establish it as an airbridge for follow-on troops and logistics. Alongside M1A2T tanks, Republic of China Army (ROCA) Clouded Leopard 8×8 infantry fighting vehicles occupied defensive positions around the airfield while engineers erected obstacles across key approach routes.

During the exercise, armored vehicles from the ROCA’s 584th Armored Brigade, including four M1A2Ts and six Clouded Leopard vehicles in three different variants, established firing positions while engineering units emplaced temporary obstacles intended to prevent the landing of enemy aircraft, airborne troops, and special operations forces.

Combat engineers assembled steel “hedgehog” anti-vehicle obstacles in three-man teams, creating a defensive barrier along the airfield. Additional obstacles were constructed using cargo containers and airport vehicles provided by airport authorities, demonstrating how civilian infrastructure is incorporated into wartime defensive planning.

The scenario focused on preventing an airborne assault from establishing control of Taoyuan Airport, a long-recognized strategic objective in China’s People’s Liberation Army invasion planning because of its proximity to Taipei. Taiwanese military planners assess that if an attacking force secured the airport intact, it could serve as a hub for reinforcements, logistics, and the rapid advance of mechanized forces toward the capital.

The exercise also rehearsed casualty treatment and evacuation under combat conditions, with medical personnel conducting battlefield trauma procedures before evacuating simulated wounded. Meanwhile, Taoyuan Airport Fire Department firefighting vehicles participated by spraying water across parts of the training area to simulate decontamination and firefighting operations following chemical incidents or attacks.

Military officials said the drill was designed to validate joint military-civilian coordination during wartime while ensuring normal airport operations continued uninterrupted. Commercial flights continued to arrive and depart throughout the exercise.

The airport defense scenario also included a final escalation phase. Should defending forces prove unable to hold the airfield, other ROCA units would coordinate with the 53rd Engineer Group and airport authorities to demolish runways and other critical infrastructure, denying their use to an occupying force.

For a deeper look at how Taiwan plans to counter a Chinese invasion, you can read our detailed analysis here.

Suffice it to say, the Han Kuang 42 scenario echoes the battle for Hostomel Airport during the opening phase of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Russian airborne forces succeeded in capturing the airport after an initial helicopter assault, but the airfield was heavily contested and damaged in the ensuing fighting, preventing it from functioning as the airbridge Moscow had envisioned for rapidly flying in large numbers of reinforcements and heavy equipment. Ukrainian counterattacks ultimately forced Russian troops to abandon Hostomel as they withdrew from the Kyiv region weeks later.

Returning to Taiwan, the ROCA has received all 108 of the M1A2T tanks it ordered as part of the modernization of its armed forces, which face an expanding military threat from Beijing. Generally speaking, the M1A2T is equivalent to the M1A2 SEPv3 version — or System Enhancement Package version 3 — which you can read more about here.

Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense (MND) confirmed today that the first shipment of M1A2T tanks had arrived from the United States in December 2024, as we reported here. The final examples were reportedly delivered in April of this year.

U.S. M1A2T Abrams Tanks Arrive in Taiwan | TaiwanPlus News

The M1A2T procurement led to some questions about how suitable the big and heavy Abrams is for Taiwan’s very particular defensive requirements.

The Abrams is arguably not ideal for the kinds of urban warfare that the ROCA might have to engage in if it meets a PLA invasion — something that it already regularly trains for in these kinds of settings. Scenarios like this also pose a particular challenge for main battle tanks.

However, the drill at Taoyuan Airport reflects the reality that, were it to face a PLA invasion, Taiwan could not afford to leave any armored vehicle on the sidelines. Beijing continues to claim the self-governed island as its own and has repeatedly threatened to seize it by force if necessary, compelling Taiwan to keep even aging armored vehicles in service.

Despite questions about the utility of heavy armor in potential conflicts in the Indo-Pacific region, the ROCA is clearly looking at how the M1A2T and other armored vehicles could help defend key objectives in urban areas.

It’s also worth noting that the M1A2Ts are only one element of Taiwan’s layered defense. The ROCA also fields AH-64 Apache attack helicopters, long-range artillery, multiple-launch rocket systems, coastal anti-ship missile batteries, and air defenses intended to disrupt and attrit an invasion force well before it can land troops and armored vehicles on the island. Increasingly, drones, too, are part of this defensive equation.

Should the ROCA have to fight the PLA in its cities, this is another area in which specialist tactics are regularly trained.

We have reported in the past how Taiwan has demonstrated the extraordinary measures it is prepared to take to keep its armored forces alive in a conflict with China. During combat readiness drills, the ROCA conceals tanks and other armored vehicles throughout urban areas using improvised camouflage, disguising them as piles of scrap or civilian construction equipment in an effort to complicate PLA targeting.

Taiwan’s military has also begun incorporating Taipei’s subway system into its wartime planning. During exercises last year, troops — including teams armed with Stinger shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles — used the Taipei Metro to move around the capital in what appeared to be the first public demonstration of the concept. In a conflict with China, the underground network could provide a comparatively protected route for shifting troops, air defense teams, and supplies between key sectors while roads and other infrastructure above ground come under attack.

Military, civil forces team up in Taipei Metro drill

At the same time, it is clear that the PLA, too, would expect to take on Taiwanese forces in urban settings, and there is plenty of evidence of its units training accordingly.

The Han Kuang exercise has increasingly emphasized defending Taiwan’s critical infrastructure against airborne and special operations attacks. The appearance of the M1A2T at Taoyuan Airport marks the first time Taiwan’s newest and most capable tanks have participated in this high-profile airport defense mission, highlighting their growing operational role beyond conventional armored warfare.

Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com

Umm al-Khair, Occupied West Bank — There were weddings in Umm al-Khair this week, but almost no one danced. The small Bedouin village, located in Masafer Yatta, was marrying off two of its sons. Cauldrons of slow-cooked lamb meat for mansaf – a large platter of traditional Arabic food – fed the whole community. But there was no dahiyya, the line dance and chant that normally opens a Bedouin wedding.

Residents said it did not feel right coming so soon after the first anniversary of the killing of Umm al-Khair activist and community leader Awdah Hathaleen, allegedly by Israeli settler Yinon Levi. The community continues to endure daily settler attacks, arrests and incursions by Israeli soldiers, and the threat of further demolitions by Israeli authorities looms.

During celebrations, families spread out in different areas rather than gathering in one place, wary of drawing any attention that, in the past, has brought soldiers to disrupt the celebrations.

“There is a wedding, but they are not letting us celebrate quietly,” said Tariq Hathaleen, an English teacher and community leader in Umm al-Khair.

On Thursday, the first day of the wedding, Shimon Atiya – the Israeli settler behind the illegal outpost of Havat Shorashim, established roughly 800 metres from the village in 2022, and who has been under a restraining order since July 2025 for harassing Umm al-Khair families — crashed the wedding in the only style he knows. He brought his livestock to graze in a resident’s vegetable garden, escorted by Israeli soldiers who stood by as it happened.

When villagers told the soldiers that the plot is recognised as Umm al-Khair land, they were told the maps had changed; when they asked to see the new maps, they were refused. That night, the outpost’s fence towards the village homes was torn down – a prelude to pushing the boundary further in, residents believe.

Hathaleen says the settlers’ timing was a reaction to Levi’s indictment days earlier — one of the few times an Israeli has been charged with the killing of a Palestinian in the occupied West Bank since October 2023.

Just a couple of days before, on Thursday, Hathaleen watched as buildings and vehicles in the nearby Palestinian community of Khirbet Tuba were set ablaze by settler arsonists.

“The occupation always tried very hard to erase the Palestinian Indigenous people and their history, their legacy, their heritage,” Tariq said. “This really reminds me of the Nakba, and how the Israelis destroyed Palestinian cities and villages”, he noted, even planting cactus over the ruins to bury the evidence. “Back then it wasn’t documented. Nowadays, it’s happening, but it is documented.”

Sunday marks the United Nations’ International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples. In Umm al-Khair, the wedding felt symbolic of the threats to Indigenous Palestinians’ way of life and their basic presence on their own land.

‘They try to imitate us’

According to local Palestinians and watchdog NGOs, the threats facing Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip include detentions, killings, demolitions, restrictions on movement and evictions.

Since October 2023, Israel has killed 1,100 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, including 242 minors, according to the Israeli NGO B’Tselem. Israel has also demolished more than 3,000 Palestinian homes since October 2023, the vast majority due to a lack of Israeli-issued permits that Palestinians in Area C are routinely denied.

According to the latest figures from the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), demolitions and settler violence displaced an average of 17 people a day this year, double the rate of the previous three years.

A June report by the West Bank Protection Consortium, which includes the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) and monitors more than 200 communities it judges at risk of forcible transfer, said 96 percent of those who had been forcibly displaced were previously dependent on farming or herding. They have mostly lost access to these lands or pastures.

However, residents and watchdogs say such dispossession takes place within a system of Israeli permits, demolition orders and land policies controlled by the state alongside hundreds of millions of dollars in public funding for settlements and outposts. Israeli NGO Peace Now counts 146 illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and 390 unauthorised outposts and farms.

In 2024, the International Court of Justice found Israel’s continued presence in the occupied Palestinian territory unlawful.

Amid dispossession of their traditional grazing lands, 13 structures in Umm al-Khair were issued demolition notices last October, following demolitions in 2024 that left a third of the village homeless. The restraining order against Atiya, residents say, has done little to stop him.

Tariq argues the erasure is not only physical, but cultural also, and that it comes paired with an attempt by settlers to claim the very Palestinian identity they are displacing.

“The settlers nowadays try to imitate that lifestyle, building tents that they probably stole from Palestinians somewhere, using tractors to bring water from far away,” he said.

Young men from the hilltop outposts can be seen grazing camels, goats and sheep. All the while, Tariq observes them wearing Palestinian scarves and even attempting the Bedouin dialect when leading their own flocks.

“They know the Indigenous people of this land are the Bedouins and other Palestinians. So, they try to imitate that – to show to themselves and to the world that they are the Indigenous people of this land,” he added. “[But] this land doesn’t relate to them, because only the Indigenous people of this land know how to live in this land.”

‘We are the Indigenous people of this land’

Many outpost settlers serve as military reservists while living on the farms themselves, Tariq noted – a status that comes with state-issued weapons.

He recalled Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich publicly distributing all-terrain vehicles to South Hebron Hills outpost settlers. He also remembers the day Awdah was killed, when soldiers let Levi point out five community members for arrest.

“This is not only settler terrorism backed up by the state,” Tariq said. “It is the state’s plan, carried out by the settlers, well planned in rooms where officials sit around a table and tell them what to do.”

Yair Dvir, spokesperson for B’Tselem, said: “Israel is carrying out ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and an all-out assault on the Palestinian people. We see it on many levels: military violence and repression, home demolitions, and the funding and backing of settler militias.”

Shaina Low, a spokesperson for the NRC, described the same pattern as a coordinated strategy across the Israeli-occupied territories.

“For nearly 80 years, we’ve seen Israeli efforts to drive Palestinians from their land play out, starting with the Nakba and continuing to the present day,” she said. Low cited an acceleration of these actions since October 2023, when the genocidal war on Gaza began, that has seen expanding settlement infrastructure, rising West Bank demolitions alongside East Jerusalem evictions in neighbourhoods like Silwan. There has been an “astronomical increase” in settler violence documented, Low added.

Gaza shows the same agenda but taken to the extreme. Since the October 2025 “ceasefire”, more than 1,200 people have been killed in Gaza, on top of a cumulative death toll that has climbed past 73,000 since October 2023, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health.

According to UN satellite analysis, roughly 81 percent of all structures in Gaza have been damaged. Even with the “ceasefire”, OCHA reports that some 59 percent of Gaza’s population faced crisis-level food shortages or worse between April and June, a share it projects will rise again by year’s end as aid funding shrinks.

Following successive campaigns of expansionism, the Israeli military now controls at least 64.9 percent of Gaza. “These policies are all working together,” Low said. “They may be different tactics, but it’s all part of the same agenda to force Palestinians from their land and increase Israeli control over the territory and expand Israeli presence.”

Still, on the eve of a day meant to mark the world’s Indigenous peoples, Tariq was resolute.

“They will try a million ways to erase the Palestinian Indigenous people, but they will fail because this land doesn’t speak their language, it doesn’t carry their colour, it doesn’t go by their ideologies,” he said.

“This is our land, and we have always been living here in harmony – with nature, the desert, the mountains, the valleys of Palestine – because we are the Indigenous people of this land, and we always will be. Their attempts are failing, and will fail. One day, we will get our freedom.”

A large-scale security operation is in place in the Republic of Ireland as the authorities prepare for the extradition of alleged crime boss Daniel Kinahan.

The 49-year-old was arrested in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in April and on Saturday an Irish government jet flew to Dubai to prepare to collect him.

The plane is expected to return to Dublin on Sunday and Kinahan will then be taken to the Special Criminal Court.

Ahead of the extradition, the Irish Prison Service bought a bulletproof and bombproof van which can be used to escort prisoners who are considered high-risk.

Irish authorities are expected to prosecute him for his involvement in leading an organised crime group.

Kinahan is not only wanted by the authorities in Ireland – the US Treasury Department once described the Kinahan cartel as one of the most dangerous in the world.

The US government imposed sanctions on Kinahan in April 2022 after he and other members of his family were identified as leaders of the Kinahan organised crime cartel.

He fought attempts to extradite him back to his native country, where the Kinahan cartel was involved in a long-running gangland feud that claimed 18 lives.

Kinahan himself became a target for murder and escaped an attempt on his life during a fatal shooting at a Dublin hotel in 2016.

He left Ireland and spent time living in Spain and more recently in Dubai, where a warrant for his arrest was issued by the Irish courts in April.

He appealed the extradition order over the past few months but his attempts were unsuccessful.

It is expected that shortly after his arrival in Ireland he will be taken to the non-jury Special Criminal Court in Dublin to face charges for alleged involvement in leading an organised crime group.

One of my favourite protest songs rings out every year on August 9, which is Women’s Day in South Africa. The song works as a call and response: one set of voices cries out, “You have struck a woman,” while another set responds, “so, you have struck a rock!”

The chant dates back to the historic protest that gave South Africa’s Women’s Day its date and meaning. In 1956, 20,000 women marched on the Union Buildings in Pretoria in opposition to “pass laws” that the apartheid regime was seeking to extend to African women. African men were already subject to the indignity of carrying passes, and with this latest move, thousands of domestic workers across the country immediately understood that they too would be subjected to random stops and searches by police. What little freedom of mobility they enjoyed would be snatched away.

Led by the multiracial Federation of South African Women (FEDSAW) and the Women’s League of the African National Congress (ANC), a group of politically engaged women organised a petition and a march to oppose the incoming laws.

After months of hard work, thousands of women, most of them Black, woke up at the crack of dawn and began to make their way to the Union Buildings, the seat of power of the Afrikaner government. By nine that morning, they had gathered in front of the office of the Minister for Native Affairs.

It was no accident that the rally took place on a Thursday, which was also known as “Sheila’s Day.” In the 1950s and 1960s, Sheila was a generic name used to describe Black women who were domestic workers; a casual way for white women employers to refer to the African women who worked in their homes without having to remember their actual individual names. Most madams gave their staff Thursdays off and so it came to be known as Sheila’s Day.

As a delegation handed over a petition, the women broke out in song, pointedly addressing then Prime Minister JG Strijdom and insisting, “Strijdom, you have struck the women, so you have struck a rock!”

I was a young feminist in the 1990s and I remember singing that song countless times at rallies, protesting gender-based violence and calling for treatment for pregnant women living with HIV and AIDS. I remember, too, the stories of older women who marched on August 9, who reminded younger activists that many of them had taken to the streets over the objections of their husbands and fellow male comrades. They explained that at the time they did not have the language to explain how race, class and gender intersected; they just knew how sexism felt in their bodies.

By the time we were marching for a new set of rights, they had gifted us the language and analysis to describe how race, class and gender shaped women’s experiences. Their stories also showed us that sexism did not sit neatly outside the struggle against apartheid: women could stand alongside men in a liberation movement while still having to fight for equality with those same men. This was one of the most important legacies of the women’s march in 1956.

The rally that day failed to stop the pass laws, but it had a far more significant impact on the South African political landscape, effectively launching the South African women’s movement. The momentum and defiance of that day gave women in subsequent generations a blueprint for activism and analysis.

When apartheid ended in 1994, many of the women who had been at the forefront of the march in 1956 were still active in politics. The movement they had helped build was such a powerful force in the transition to democracy that almost a third of the incoming parliament comprised women, making South Africa one of only a handful of countries with such strong women’s representation in politics.

Once they were in power, the daughters of 1956 pushed through numerous legal and policy changes on reproductive rights, customary law and marriage – and the rights of domestic workers.

As a result of their efforts, South Africa has some of the most progressive laws and policies promoting gender equity and equality in the world. More than 30 years after the end of apartheid, women still constitute about 45 percent of parliamentarians and 44 percent of ministers.

Yet these gains have not translated into safety. South Africa’s first national gender-based violence study found that 33.1 percent of women aged 18 and older had experienced physical violence in their lifetime, while one in five men surveyed admitted to perpetrating physical or sexual intimate partner violence. The persistence of such violence exposes the limits of formal equality: laws can change faster than the attitudes, relationships and behaviours that shape women’s lives.

The same gap between formal rights and lived reality is evident in economic life. The disconnect between the rights enjoyed by women in positions of power who have helped shape South Africa’s laws and the lives of women in the poor communities to which they are accountable is stark.

South African women living in poverty are besieged by high levels of unemployment, gender-based violence and poor access to health and education services, while middle-class women enjoy many of the privileges once reserved for whites only. This is because in the last 30 years the ANC-led government has done little to dismantle the underlying economic structures that upheld apartheid. Formal equality has not translated into material equality for millions of women.

It is hard to find hope for women in South Africa’s statistics. Indeed, many women I know don’t celebrate Women’s Day – they are weary. Yet the women’s movement that the march helped galvanise 70 years ago still has much to teach us.

The lesson we learn from the vibrant movement that was created that day is that gender equality cannot be driven by women’s demands alone. Real progress requires call and response. Women have been making the call for generations. It is time for men to respond.

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

Ekaterina Alexandrov took down four-time Grand Slam singles champion Aryna Sabalenka in a three-set marathon in Toronto.

World number one ‌Aryna Sabalenka suffered a setback in her US Open ⁠build-up after ⁠she was beaten 7-6(3), 4-6, 6-4 by Russia’s Ekaterina Alexandrova in the fourth round of the Canadian Open ⁠in Toronto on Saturday.

The 16th-seeded Alexandrova fought a hard battle, lasting nearly two and a half hours, to secure her quarterfinal berth.

Sabalenka, a four-time Grand Slam champion and reigning US Open winner, recovered from a set down to force a decider but was unable to halt Alexandrova’s aggressive shot-making in the final set.

The Belarusian ‌broke early in the opening set before Alexandrova rallied to force a tiebreak, which the Russian won to move ahead.

Sabalenka responded by seizing control of the second set with a break for a 4-3 lead before serving out to level the match.

Alexandrova held her nerve in the decider as ⁠Sabalenka’s error count rose. Serving to stay ⁠in the match at 4-5, the top seed saved two match points, but a double fault on the third handed victory to the Russian.

“I just tried to ⁠play every single point as if it was the last one because with her, you ⁠don’t [get] a lot of chances during ⁠the match,” Alexandrova said in her on-court interview.

“Honestly, I was trying not to think about the score or anything. Just hit the ball, and that’s it.

“I’m super ‌happy that I could win because after the second set, I thought (the chance) was already past me.”

Alexandrova will face Ukraine’s Elina ‌Svitolina, ‌who defeated American eighth seed Amanda Anisimova 6-2, 6-4 for a place in the semifinals.

A fast-moving wildfire has forced more than 20,000 people to evacuate parts of British Columbia’s Okanagan region in Western Canada. The Bald Range fire has grown to about 9,500 hectares, threatening homes and farms as firefighters battle blazes across the province.

Football superstar Lionel Messi returned to Rosario, Argentina with his family on Saturday, a day after his father and longtime agent Jorge Messi died aged 68. His cause of death hasn’t been disclosed, though he had suffered a prolonged illness. Jorge helped guide his son’s career from childhood.

Meyby Ugueto-Ponce is an Afro-Venezuelan activist, dancer, and researcher. She holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology and currently works at the Venezuelan Institute for Scientific Research (IVIC). In this interview, she addresses some of the main themes of her research, including structural racism in Venezuelan society, restorative justice, and the impact of the Bolivarian Revolution.

Many Venezuelans deny that there is systemic racism by reducing it to isolated incidents. How would you explain the ways in which racism operates in everyday life? What is the difference between everyday micro-racism and structural racism?

To address this topic in depth, we must examine the historical and political project that underpins it. The dominant, mainstream narrative on racism in Venezuela denies its existence. It claims that the colonial contradictions between “races”, which provided the cultural and historical foundation for who we are today, were overcome following the nineteenth-century independence struggle.

In our collective imagination, there is often this entrenched idea that the biological and cultural mixing that occurred among “Indigenous peoples,” “Africans,” and “Spaniards” during the colonial period generated a kind of “harmony” that erased the violence and the racial and economic hierarchies characteristic of more than 300 years of slavery and a caste-based society.

Another idea prevalent in Venezuela is that, having achieved the long-cherished republican dream and with Bolívar decreeing “equality among men,” it was believed that deepening this mixing would guarantee the harmony the future republic needed, giving rise to a “new man” superior to the three component parts.

The white political, intellectual, and economic elite has insisted that the fact that we established ourselves as a republic made us equal as citizens, without questioning that this same elite perpetuated social and economic hierarchies based on criteria of race, gender, and caste.

Furthermore, we Venezuelans have many times been told that we should thank the Europeans who arrived in the early decades of the twentieth century for the country’s modernization, following the selective immigration policies such as the “February Program” of 1928. These policies were grounded in scientific positivism, which ascribed the essence of civilization, progress, and culture to the “white race.”

Faced with this “truth effect” constructed over centuries, what is the logical next step that can guarantee citizenship, inclusion, and acceptance of the population? Logically, it is to mix culturally and biologically in order to become part of the nation and a modern citizen.

And if the “seed” of citizenship lay with the “white race,” as claimed by Venezuelan intellectual Arturo Uslar Pietri, then what was the implied direction of that mixing? One that privileges whiteness, of course. That is, a veiled logic toward “whitening,” which simultaneously implies a rejection of African and Indigenous identities.

How did this construct evolve over the rest of the 20th century?

This dissociative narrative gained strength throughout most of the twentieth century, marked by an intense marginalization and denial of Indigenous and African identities, and at the same time a veiled glorification of whiteness. Just imagine: we were building the country, internalizing the values of European and later Anglo-Saxon whiteness in a disguised way, while silencing the other two components, which were understood as synonymous with backwardness.

Every institution, every administrative procedure, every university curriculum, every cultural policy, every public policy, every beauty standard, every food habit, every religious sentiment, every idea about care, about health, and so on, had to be modernized. In other words, it had to be “whitened” at the expense of the diverse and unique aspects inherited from the misnamed “primitive” African and Indigenous traditions.

Systemic racism was thus gradually established; it seeped into the collective imagination, into people’s emotions, and into the everyday and institutional relationships of Venezuelans. This results in racism flowing in a “naturalized” way through the veins of the country’s entities, coagulating in administrative procedures, in state bureaucracy, in the creation of belief practices, in the ways the deceased are laid to rest, in the conceptions of sport and beauty, in what is considered art, in what is deemed worthy of ridicule, and so on.

Racism is systemic because it circulates through the arteries of the state. And mestizaje is the mechanism created to “harmoniously” instill whiteness into society, not just in Venezuela but throughout the entire Latin American region.

What a contradiction, isn’t it? The psychological effects of this are very powerful, given that it involves a dissociation and denial of both the individual and society. That is why, when a person of African descent, for example, for whatever reason or due to culinary tradition, decides to bring their lunch to the office or school, and that lunch consists of foods typical of their region of origin, prepared using local methods rather than processed products, an uncomfortable situation can arise, one that may go unnoticed as micro-racism.

Something as simple as lunch can be questioned or made to seem exotic by others through the most common mechanism: the joke, which is considered harmless. The person in question may feel out of place, uncomfortable. They may wonder if no one else eats that way, if their way of eating is weird. Possible consequence: they stop bringing their lunch and instead go to fast-food chains or restaurants, or eat alone.

This is the mechanism of “whitening” at work. Although it may not appear to be violence, we are dealing with a form of micro-racism. It is a way of denying practices, aesthetics, care, and local knowledge surrounding food and, at the same time, with an unconscious encouragement to conform to behaviors and practices considered more modern.

This affects positive self-perception, leads to the devaluation of family wisdom, and causes local food practices to be forgotten. In other words, it fosters endoracism, the erosion of small-scale local economies based on Afro-family logic, and, at the same time, the strengthening of the logic of the globalized food system. It is deeply racist.

How can we present these issues to new generations?

It’s not easy, but the only way to teach it is to put it into practice in the situations that arise, since each one is different and unique; or to think about it structurally within the classroom, together with teachers, specialists, students, decision-makers, mothers, and others.

For example, when I worked with preschool and elementary school children through dance, I focused on conveying the importance of the country’s cultural diversity. I created a workbook featuring various traditional dances to help them learn the alphabet and understand the cultural practices associated with each of these forms of movement.

I also implemented an exercise in which participants must match magazine clippings featuring images of people with different skin tones, hair textures, eye colors, professions, and clothing with other magazine clippings depicting various objects, elements, and themes such as money, pots, airplanes, cars, landscapes, professions, tools, technologies, and so on.

The task is to associate the people with these objects. The goal is to uncover the associations participants make and the reasons behind them. I believe this brings to light the mental constructs surrounding gender, race, and class that lift the veil of racial mixing and make structural racism visible along with its everyday micro-racist manifestations.

“Restorative justice” has become an important element in the discourse and thinking of Afro-descendant peoples. Can you explain this concept?

To answer this question, the first thing we must consider is the meaning of “to restore.” Restoring, or repairing, is synonymous with fixing, amending, remedying harm, correcting an error, and making amends to the offended party. There are at least three premises from this definition:

1. There is another person or entity who has caused harm, an injustice, or an offense to someone;
2. In the face of harm, there are laws that classify it as a crime and determine who committed it; and
3. The word “restore” is a verb that calls for actions that address the aggrieved party’s condition. In other words, those who cause harm commit an offense or crime that requires compensatory actions to improve the affected person’s circumstances.

In 2001, at the World Conference Against Racism held in Durban, South Africa, slavery and the transatlantic slave trade were declared crimes against humanity.

Furthermore, very recently, in March 2026, the UN General Assembly adopted a historic resolution, proposed by Ghana and earlier by the African Union, declaring that the transatlantic slave trade and the enslavement of Africans have been the most serious crime against humanity in history.

Faced with this historical truth, what must be done? We are talking about at least four centuries of a system and a logic of inhuman exploitation; about the systemic nature of the devaluation of individuals who were considered inferior, lacking in intellect, spirituality, and existence, and treated as property.

The normalization of these practices following the invention of “race” served to establish a hierarchy across all levels of society, leaving structural consequences for future generations in the form of accumulated dispossession and inequality.

Knowing this, what is the most urgent form of reparations demanded by the Afro-descendant people? I would say that we should overhaul the entire system, precisely because of what we discussed earlier regarding systemic racism. Racism is a global order of economic and subjective power.

However, we can make a list. After all, we have to start somewhere. First, of the 54 countries that abstained from voting this past March 2026 at the UN, the Western bloc and the countries directly involved in enslavement and the transatlantic slave trade (the United Kingdom, Spain, Portugal, France, the Netherlands, etc.) must issue a public apology, as Pope Leo XIV recently did on May 24, for the leading role the Catholic Church played in the crimes of colonization, the slave trade, and slavery.

Furthermore, these countries must develop joint policies and plans for material and symbolic reparations among nations, aimed at ending the perpetuation of the inequality that was institutionalized during 400 years of slavery and modernized over the following 200 years.

And in the case of Venezuela, what form would this restorative justice take?

In particular, Venezuela has a restorative agenda developed by social movements, intellectuals, institutions, Afro-Venezuelan communities, individuals, and others. It highlights several aspects, such as:

1. Territory;
2. Afro-Venezuelan epistemology, thought, and spirituality;
3. The deracialization of the justice system; and
4. Recognition as citizens in all dimensions, from legal rights, through culture, to public safety.

As an Afro-Venezuelan movement, we have highlighted two specific projects. One that directly addresses territorial reparations: the return of land to the people of Turiamo, Aragua State, who were displaced in 1957. On the other hand, a demand for reparations regarding symbolic memory linked to the right to justice and the recognition of Afro-Venezuelan thought and culture: clarifying the circumstances surrounding the death of the Madera Experimental Folkloric Group in 1980.

By all this, I mean that reparations must be understood as multidimensional and multilateral, involving specific actions by nation-states and concrete policies tailored to each territory, aimed at moral and economic compensation. This includes formal recognition of the affected individuals, as well as territorial, cultural, and political restitution, and the removal of economic and legal barriers that prevent the active participation of the Afro-descendant population.

At the same time, this must include a review of technologies that can improve education, health, security, and justice, while recognizing Afro-diasporic knowledge in the wake of the deliberate actions of the powers that perpetrated crimes against humanity.

For its part, Venezuela supports a reparations plan introduced by CARICOM (Caribbean Community) in 2014. At the same time, it is pursuing lines of research that, using specific and local data, can showcase the affected areas and the extent of the impact.

Recently, the Ministry of Science and Technology has funded research so that the Afro-Venezuelan people themselves can lead the process, which demonstrates greater awareness in understanding Afro-Venezuelan identity and the social debt owed to them, ensuring they are treated as citizens with full rights. Much remains to be done. An immediate step would be the inclusion of Afro-Venezuelans in the Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

Building on the example you mentioned earlier, and since it is a topic of your research, let us talk about “food racism.” How can we understand traditional Afro-Venezuelan cuisine as a space of memory, resistance, and justice?

I think the food sector is one of the least recognized as a site of racist attack because folkloric tradition is conflated with recognition, reparations, and redistribution. Examples include the label “traditional food” or the exoticization of cacao by luxury markets. Public validation does not eliminate racism. Rather, it can help conceal it. My goal is to show how the food system reproduces racism as a mechanism for accumulating privilege and dispossession.

I acknowledge the Afro-Venezuelan intellectual contribution to dishes such as Caracas-style asado negro, the versatility with which Afro-Venezuelan women use coconut, the Holy Week rice dish, and the complex concept of sazón [seasoning]. All of that exists, but it is not my focus as a researcher: I want to concentrate on how the historical structure of the food system, both globally and in Venezuela, is underpinned by hierarchies of race, class, and gender established since European colonization. This leads to the erasure, devaluation, and “whitening” not only of people but also of food-related knowledge and practices.

Monocultures such as sugarcane, cacao, and coffee consolidated the colonial order. White landowners and merchants exercised power over bodies, knowledge, and labor. The plantation economy extracted raw materials and subordinated people and spices to the European markets, shaping how food is produced, consumed, and valued, including health and food aesthetics. Despite this, Indigenous, Afro-descendant, and mestizo communities preserved agricultural techniques and knowledge, such as the conuco, and plant-based health practices, knowledge on which the elites depended even though they did not recognize it. Cacao is a symbolic case in point: it has organized material and symbolic inequality since the eighteenth century.

In this context of structural racism and inequality, what was the impact of the Bolivarian Revolution?

After the formal end of slavery and the wars of independence, the model did not change: capitalism maintained racial hierarchies in order to perpetuate itself. In the twentieth century, “modernization” and colonization policies favored white agricultural settlements, deepening inequality. The oil boom urbanized the economy and rebuilt it around rent, leading to massive food imports and stigmatizing of Afro-Venezuelan and Indigenous dietary practices as “backward,” thereby standardizing class-based consumption patterns.

The agrarian reform of the 1960s was limited. The crises of the late twentieth century and neoliberal measures widened inequality and led to uprisings such as the Caracazo [1989], demonstrating that modernization did not resolve the racial-class hierarchy.

The Bolivarian Revolution sought to reverse this model. Examples of such initiatives included the Seed Law, the Land Law, rural programs, and land titling for Afro-Venezuelan communities, all aimed at valuing ancestral knowledge and promoting food sovereignty. However, sanctions, corruption, and the logic of large-scale capitalism constrained these policies. The creation of the CLAP [subsidized food distribution program] in 2016 to alleviate shortages fostered imports with no nutritional controls, and the pandemic worsened access to food, hitting the working class, which is predominantly Afro, Indigenous, and mestizo, the hardest.

In the face of the crisis, families developed subsistence strategies: cutting back on meals, substituting staples with less nutritious options, resuming bartering and solidarity-based exchanges, buying directly from producers, and reviving ancestral recipes with high nutritional value. That is why I maintain that recognizing racism as a foundation of the food system explains current inequality and offers guidance on how to build food sovereignty. The ancestral knowledge of Indigenous peoples and Afro-Venezuelan communities embodies memory and resistance: these are practices of food, health, and territory that connect people to the land and pave the way toward food justice.

Utah wildfire response continues despite loss of helicopter crew, with containment standing at 24 percent.

A pilot and one crew member have been confirmed dead after their firefighting helicopter crashed while battling a massive wildfire in central Utah.

The Sikorsky S-64 ‘Skycrane’, operated by Helicopter Transport Services under contract with the United States Forest Service, went down about 10am local time on Friday (16:00 GMT) near Richfield, in the Three Creeks Reservoir area southwest of the city, close to the southeastern edge of the Widemouth 2 fire.

The National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) confirmed the deaths on Saturday, more than 24 hours after the crash, saying the two crew members were “fatally injured” and extended its “condolences to the friends and family of the deceased”.

In a situation report, the NIFC said extreme fire conditions and steep terrain had kept rescue teams from reaching the wreckage. The bodies were recovered on Saturday, but the names of the deceased have not been released.

The NIFC has issued evacuations for residents in the area and imposed road closures.

Deputy incident commander Tyler Hecht said on Friday that crews took a “tactical pause” to regroup after the crash before resuming their firefighting work.

“It’s not going to change how we operate,” Hecht said. “We’re going to continue to fight fire and utilize aircraft to support our firefighters on the ground.”

Utah Governor Spencer Cox called wildland firefighting “among the most dangerous jobs in the world” and asked residents to keep the crew “in your prayers”.

The Utah Highway Patrol organised a procession Saturday evening to escort the remains of the “fallen heroes”.

The Widemouth 2 fire ignited from a lightning strike in Fishlake National Forest on July 27 and has since burned more than 111,000 acres (45,000 hectares), putting it on pace to become Utah’s largest wildfire this year.

Officials listed containment at 24 percent on Saturday, with extreme fire behaviour – including crowning and long-range spotting – still threatening nearby communities.

This is Utah’s second fatal wildfire incident this summer. Three firefighters died in June while battling the Knowles and Gore fires near the Colorado border. A fourth firefighter later died from injuries sustained in the incident.

The path of totality crosses the western part of Iceland and they hope to find a spot in the Westfjords peninsula to witness it.

Although they’ve heard rumours of roads being closed to stop too many people overwhelming the area, so are keen to get there a couple of days before the spectacle.

Samantha, who her husband describes as an “obsessive travel planner”, is all over the Facebook groups and social media pages being used by eclipse hunters to share information and advice.

She’s expecting a good turnout given the number of eclipse glasses she’s seen people with in Iceland. “They’re really trying to prepare everybody,” she says.

“What I expect, as we start inching westward, is we’re going to see more and more of them.”

Andrew Wills is also going to an island to see the eclipse, albeit a much warmer one: Majorca.

He’s travelling with his wife and his dad, who is 90. Father and son witnessed Europe’s last total solar eclipse together in 1999 while stood atop St Agnes Beacon in Cornwall.

The landmark, believed by some to be a Bronze Age bowl barrow, offers panoramic views across the Cornish countryside and out to the Atlantic. It was a cloudy day, remembers Andrew.

“We didn’t see the shadow rushing across the sea towards us, though we did see the dawn appearing and it getting closer very quickly,” he says. “It was awe-inspiring.”

Andras Baka, a strong advocate for judicial independence, becomes Tisza’s pick for Hungary’s next president.

Hungary’s governing Tisza party has nominated Andras Baka, a former Supreme Court chief removed from his post by Viktor Orban’s government in 2012, as its candidate for the country’s presidency.

The nomination, announced Saturday by Prime Minister Peter Magyar, marks the latest step in Tisza’s effort to dismantle Orban’s influence over state institutions since the party’s landslide election victory in April ended his 16-year rule.

The decision to nominate Baka for the presidency comes weeks after Tisza used a constitutional amendment to remove Orban-era President Tamas Sulyok from office.

On Tuesday, Baka, 73, is expected to be elected by parliament, where Tisza holds a constitutional majority.

Magyar wrote on Facebook that the nomination, made by secret ballot within the party’s parliamentary group, was “one of its most important decisions so far”.

Tisza lawmakers said Baka had always “attached paramount importance to the principle of separation of powers, consistently standing up for the rule of law and judicial independence”, adding that his experience represented “a significant asset” as the party lays “the foundations for Hungary’s new constitutional order”.

Fidesz, the party now in opposition, said it would boycott the vote, accusing Tisza of authoritarian tactics – allegations it denies.

Baka served two terms as a judge on the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg before being elected head of Hungary’s Supreme Court in 2009.

He was removed two years later after publicly criticising Orban’s government reforms, which he said threatened judicial independence. The European court later ruled that his dismissal had violated his rights to a fair trial and freedom of expression, a judgement the Council of Europe said Hungary failed to fully implement.

Hungary’s presidency carries mostly ceremonial powers, with limited authority to veto or refer legislation, though the nomination is being treated as a heavily symbolic move.

IRGC sets terms to reopen Hormuz as US seeks commitments to end attacks on ships in the waterway.