Arab

RIYADH: Saudi Arabia temporarily shut down its East-West Pipeline after it was targeted in several attacks in the Riyadh and Madinah regions, the Ministry of Energy said on Friday.

Several people were injured in the attacks, which took place on Thursday morning, and medical treatment, the ministry said in a statement.

Emergency and specialized technical teams were deployed immediately following the attacks to secure the pipeline and assess its safety in coordination with the relevant authorities, the ministry added.

The shutdown was carried out as a precaution and any further developments would be announced as they arise, according to the statement.

The Iran-backed Houthis earlier this week targeted civilian and energy infrastructure targets in Saudi Arabia’s Abha, Khamis Mushait, Jazan and Najran. The attacks caused several fires at oil facilities in the southern region that led to a temporary halt in some operations, the Energy Ministry said.

The Coalition to Support Legitimacy in Yemen condemned the attacks on Saudi Arabia, which wounded 73 civilians, including women and children, vowing to take measures to neutralize the threat.

KYIV: US President Donald Trump’s administration should impose new sanctions on Russia “now” over recent deadly strikes on Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Friday.

“Sanctions need to be imposed now,” Zelensky told the Yalta European Strategy forum. “Honestly, I sometimes do not understand why decisions cannot be made quickly,” he added.

SAN FRANCISCO: Saudi Arabia is building an integrated model to attract leading artificial intelligence companies and help them expand globally, Communications and Information Technology Minister Abdullah Al-Swaha said in Silicon Valley on Friday.

Speaking at the fourth edition of the Frontier Leaders Forum 2026, held under the theme “AI Forward: A Global Frontier,” Al-Swaha said the Kingdom’s approach was centered on providing AI companies with three key resources: computing capacity, capital and access to customers.

He cited Grok as an example of this approach, highlighting Saudi Arabia’s partnership with US AI company xAI and Saudi AI company Humain to deploy Grok in the Kingdom and develop large-scale AI computing infrastructure.

Al-Swaha said the Kingdom aimed to build on that experience and attract more global AI companies, the Saudi Press Agency reported.

Saudi Arabia is working with the private sector to develop more than 14 gigawatts of computing capacity, he said, providing infrastructure for advanced AI companies while helping reduce operating costs and improve efficiency.

Humain is developing a range of AI infrastructure and platforms in the Kingdom, including AI cloud and high-performance computing services designed to support training, fine-tuning, inference and other AI workloads.

Al-Swaha also highlighted the Kingdom’s expanding use of generative AI, AI agents and augmented-reality applications across sectors including healthcare, government services, transportation and logistics.

He said Saudi Arabia would continue working with Silicon Valley around talent, technology and trust while providing the computing capacity, customers and capital needed to help the next generation of AI companies scale internationally.

Al-Swaha held a series of meetings during his visit with technology and investment executives to discuss expanding AI investment in the Kingdom, developing advanced models and applications and integrating them with infrastructure and computing capabilities being developed by Humain.

He met General Catalyst’s CEO Hemant Taneja to discuss expanding the investment firm’s AI and advanced-technology activities in Saudi Arabia, enabling its portfolio companies to develop and deploy applied AI solutions and using Humain’s computing capabilities to accelerate implementation in priority sectors.

Al-Swaha also met Arcee AI’s founder and CEO Mark McQuade to discuss expanding the use of the company’s Trinity open and enterprise models and deploying them across Humain’s infrastructure.

He held talks with Engramme’s co-founder and CEO Gabriel Kreiman on AI memory and continuous-learning applications designed to allow organizations to build models that learn from their own data, knowledge and operating environments.

Infrastructure was another focus of the meetings. Al-Swaha met Supermicro’s founder and CEO Charles Liang to discuss AI factory solutions, including integrated systems, liquid cooling and high-density architectures aimed at improving energy efficiency and supporting large-scale AI data centers.

He also met Upscale AI’s CEO Barun Kar to discuss high-performance AI networking and improving connectivity between computing accelerators, memory and storage to maximize the use of computing resources.

A further meeting with Velaura AI’s co-founder and CEO Rajiv Khemani focused on integrating energy-efficient computing technologies into Humain’s infrastructure and supporting the expansion of AI applications and autonomous systems.

CAMB.AI is introducing its new Streaming SDK and Streaming Dashboard at IBC2026,  with integrations into NVIDIA Holoscan for Media  open reference architecture

The release gives developers and broadcast teams new ways to integrate, manage and deploy real-time multilingual broadcasting within their existing workflows.

Multilingual broadcasting, now live as an SDK

Available for C++, Python, Java and Rust, the SDKs allow developers to start broadcasting in multiple languages with as little as three lines of code, making it easier to integrate multilingual capabilities directly into existing applications and workflows.

CAMB.AI’s live streaming platform supports 150+ languages, producing dubbed audio and subtitles for live content. It supports source-speaker voice cloning, studio voices and custom terminology, allowing names, venues, sponsors and other specific terminology to remain consistent across languages. 

The release features the latest quality enhancements backed by CAMB’s foundational models MARS and BOLI.

Bringing live dubbing  to NVIDIA Holoscan for Media open reference architecture

CAMB.AI’s new capabilities will be available within the NVIDIA Holoscan for Media reference architecture as a hybrid SaaS. 

Holoscan for Media is NVIDIA’s open reference architecture and developer toolkit for building AI-powered live media solutions on NVIDIA infrastructure.

Program audio can be processed by CAMB.AI’s models to produce dubbed commentary in each target language, with outputs returned to the production network or delivered directly to destinations including CDN, OTT and YouTube Live.

For broadcasters, this allows live localization to operate alongside other production applications. It reduces the need to send feeds to a separate cloud localization environment and back, reducing infrastructure hops while allowing media to remain within the broadcaster’s facility or own cloud environment when required.

New Streaming Dashboard

The new Streaming Dashboard provides a visual environment for building, launching and monitoring multilingual streams.

Operators can configure sources, select audio, set processing profiles, create language pipelines and manage output destinations from a single interface. During a live broadcast, teams can monitor stream health, outputs, runtime and live transcripts, as well as pause and resume dubbing without stopping the stream.

CAMB.AI’s live localization technology has already been used across Ligue 1+, NASCAR and Eurovision Sport, including live AI-dubbed commentary and multilingual subtitling.

See It at IBC2026

CAMB.AI will preview its new dashboard and SDKs at IBC2026. Visitors will be able to see live multilingual dubbing in action at the CAMB.AI booth.

CAMB.AI builds localization AI for content, entertainment and sport.

Its MARS family of speech models and livestreaming platform deliver dubbing, translation and subtitles in more than 150 languages, live and on demand.

Founded in 2022, CAMB.AI has offices in Dubai and San Francisco.

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump vowed Friday that the United States would never forget the September 11, 2001 attacks and suggested the country was continuing the “war on terror” 25 years later by fighting Iran.

Speaking at the Pentagon after skipping the main 9/11 commemorations in New York, Republican Trump also hit out at domestic “fanatics” in an apparent swipe at Democrats.

“Today we renew the sacred oath that we first swore in their names a quarter of a century ago. We will never, ever forget. That’s why we fight today,” Trump said in a speech.

“We don’t have a choice. There can only be victory. We fight hard. We fight to win,” added the president, who was accompanied by First Lady Melania Trump.

One of the jets hijacked on 9/11 hit the Pentagon in Washington, killing 184 people who were remembered by a single bell tolling as their names were read out.

But presidents have previously marked major anniversaries by attending several sites including New York, where the majority of the 2,977 victims were killed in the attacks on the World Trade Center.

Trump went on to link the fight against Al-Qaeda launched by his Republican predecessor George W. Bush to the US-Israeli war on Iran which is now in its seventh month.

“Today we salute every member of the United States military who served in the ‘War on Terror.’ It is a war on sick, horrible terror,” Trump said.

“And we salute the service members working right now to ensure the world’s number one sponsor of terror, the Islamic Republic of Iran, will never ever have a nuclear weapon.”

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also lashed out at Iran in his remarks to the Pentagon ceremony.

“Over the past six months, we have laid waste to the world’s most prolific state sponsor of terrorism. Our warriors have fought an Islamic theocracy that has wished us death for nearly half a century,” Hegseth said.

The Iran war has slid into a stalemate with Iran largely maintaining its grip on the Strait of Hormuz, and keeping oil prices high, despite sporadic exchanges of fire with the United States.

Trump also turned to the domestic front, a day after a Republican convention for the US midterm elections in which Trump and Vice President JD Vance accused Democrats of sympathizing with the 9/11 attackers.

“A generation after 9/11, we also know that the final response to those atrocities and the ultimate victory over the perpetrators will not be found on a foreign battlefield,” Trump said.

Telling the story of a firefighter killed in the attacks whose son went on to become a US Navy veteran, Trump said it showed that “we can be a nation whose heroes are not fanatics for an abstract cause.”

In his speech to the Republican convention on Wednesday, Trump had used the same term: “With your vote in this election, you can tell these far-left lunatics and fanatics that America is not for sale to them or to anybody else.”

Republicans at the convention repeatedly trained their fire on left-wing Democratic senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed over his previous social media posts about 9/11.

ABIDJAN: A senior official in Ivorian former president Laurent Gbagbo’s opposition party has been remanded in custody on charges including terrorism over electoral unrest in 2025, a prosecutor said Friday.

Violence left 11 people dead during the October 2025 election, won by President Alassane Ouattara, who has led the country since 2011.

Several dozen opposition party activists, including senior figures, were arrested or jailed over the unrest. Some have since been released.

A court opened a judicial investigation against Justin Kone Katinan, vice president of the PPA-CI party and a former minister under Gbagbo’s 2000-2011 presidency, prosecutor Oumar Braman Kone said in a statement on Friday.

He said it remanded Katinan in custody on several charges, including terrorist acts and conspiracy against the state.

Katinan’s lawyer, Roselyne Serikpa, told AFP: “These proceedings are irregular and unlawful. They are in complete violation of the penal code.”

The PPA-CI on Thursday denounced what it called a “judicial trap” targeting Katinan.

He was initially summoned by police on Wednesday over defamation accusations by the ruling party after he accused it of being behind the growth of illegal gold mining.

JERUSALEM: The Israeli military on Friday said it “categorically rejects” allegations made in a new documentary about Israel’s AI-powered mass killing of civilians in Gaza, which received a 25-minute ovation at its premiere in Venice the day before.

The Israeli-made film “NAZA” uses conversations with 24 different Israeli military or intelligence whistleblowers who spoke on condition that their identities be protected, with interviewees describing how they felt like they worked in a killing “factory” or a lethal video game.

The Israeli military criticized the use of anonymous testimonies in the film which it said “cannot be verified”, saying in a statement that it “makes unprecedented efforts to minimize harm to civilians” during its offensive in Gaza.

Russian President Vladimir Putin met with US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner at the Kremlin on Saturday, before they headed to Kyiv for talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Velensky. Both sides agreed to pause all strikes on the other’s capital while the Americans were in town. Why now? Have we finally reached the point in the conflict where all parties are left without cards to play?

In August 2025, Donald Trump met Putin at a US military base in Anchorage. No Ukraine ceasefire occurred in the aftermath. After discussing the two states’ long history and their efforts in the Second World War, Putin mentioned there was an “agreement” but failed to offer more details. He stressed that the situation in Ukraine was associated with “fundamental threats to our national security.”

Declassified documents from the US National Security Archive noted discussions on NATO expansion during the administration of President Bill Clinton. They show that, in 1993, American officials led Russian President Boris Yeltsin to believe that the Partnership for Peace offered an alternative to NATO expansion, rather than being a precursor to it. By the fall of 1993, discussions between supporters of the expansion of the alliance and those who proposed a more cautious approach and cooperation with Russia and Ukraine led to the formation of a “double track” approach in Washington.

Kyiv has recently been striking more deeply inside Russian territory, bringing the conflict home to ordinary citizens

Dr. Diana Galeeva

On June 22, 1994, Russia joined the program. But on Dec. 1, NATO announced that it would begin considering the admission of new members. Yeltsin later accused the US and NATO of provoking a post-Cold War “cold peace.” Clinton met Putin in the summer of 2000 at the Kremlin. Putin said that Clinton called the idea of Russia joining NATO “interesting.” However, after a conversation with his team, the US leader apparently said that “it’s not possible now.”

Since 2022, the Russian president has repeatedly criticized the expansion of NATO, calling it a threat to his country’s security. In 2024, Putin announced Moscow’s conditions for a ceasefire, including the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from the Donbas, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions and the recognition of these regions as being part of Russia, along with Crimea.

Zelensky appears open to returning to negotiations after CIA Director John Ratcliffe last month “secretly” visited Moscow and proposed a trilateral Trump-Putin-Zelensky meeting. Zelensky said any ceasefire is set to involve the US proposal for a free economic zone in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region — to be administered by a third party. Earlier, Zelensky was pressured by Trump, who told him “you don’t have the cards.” But is it only Ukraine and Zelensky that ended up with no cards to play, or is it all sides involved?

Kyiv has recently been striking more deeply inside Russian territory, bringing the conflict home to ordinary citizens. It has been using Starlink-guided drones and hastily developed missiles, hitting bombers, oil refineries, air defenses and even retail warehouses.

The Ukraine war, just like the Second World War, has revealed that no party to conflict receives any benefits

Dr. Diana Galeeva

Europe was the first side to lose the Ukraine war. The war revealed a critical weakness at the heart of Europe’s energy system. Reuters reported that the energy shock Europe suffered in the early weeks of the war “revealed a hard truth,” with the crisis reaching the heart of all European capitals. The Iran war and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz contributed further to this dynamic, with prices climbing 13 percent at the start of July.

Putin suggested in November 2025 that Russia was ready to fight “until the last Ukrainian dies” if Zelensky does not surrender. But the Iran war has changed the game, with the Kiel Institute publishing a report in June titled “Endgame” that highlighted how Russia’s war economy had “hit its limits.” Russia last week downgraded its oil output forecast for this year to a 17-year low. In June, Putin announced that Russia was ready to discuss a settlement with Ukraine based on the agreements reached in Anchorage and in Istanbul in 2022.

Meanwhile, the US, which committed about $68.2 billion in defense support of Ukraine between February 2022 and June 2026, is unlikely to continue such spending as a result of the Iran war. Washington and Iran have been exchanging strikes since Feb. 28 and, as of June, Iranian attacks had damaged 20 US military sites in the region.

Domestic factors are also pressuring the White House to prioritize peace, as Trump’s approval rate was last month stuck at 33 percent, while some 71 percent of poll respondents disapproved of Trump’s handling of the cost of living.

Is all this surprising? No. The end of the conflict is inevitable, as all sides have ended up with no cards to play. The Ukraine war, just like the Second World War, has revealed that no party to conflict receives any benefits, only military and economic damage. Most importantly, nearly 2 million casualties have occurred since 2022. This war has again demonstrated that a wise government’s approach is always about prioritizing the success of its own nation. A peaceful future for Europe would be a win-win approach for all.

Dr. Diana Galeeva, a former visiting scholar to the Centre of Islamic Studies at the University of Cambridge, is the author of four books, most recently “Islam in Russia: Formations of Tolerance” (Routledge, 2024).

More from Dr. Diana Galeeva

MOSCOW: Russia said on Friday it would aim its nuclear warheads at Lithuania if the Baltic state hosted any weapons from the nuclear arsenals of its NATO allies on its territory.

Lithuania is moving to lift a constitutional ban on having nuclear weapons stored in the country, part of an effort to boost its security posture amid Russia’s offensive on Ukraine.

The decision is currently working its way through parliament — where it needs a two-thirds majority to pass and has the support of the president and major parties — and could come into force this winter.

It would be “a very serious turn in terms of escalating tensions”, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told state TV when asked about the plan.

“If there are nuclear weapons on the territory that are aimed at us, accordingly, the territory of that country will fall into the crosshairs of our own nuclear weapons,” he said.

Lithuania’s President Gitanas Nauseda had announced the plans in July, saying his country wanted to be an “integral part of this nuclear deterrence”.

RIYADH: “Ivan Toney is an exceptional striker, in every sense of the word,” said Faisal Zaid, director of the Al-Ahli media center. “He is a player that loves to win, is not fazed by challenges, and has a strong personality on the pitch.”

Zaid’s words came after Al-Ahli’s 3-2 defeat to Al-Qadsiah this week, which saw Toney reach a new milestone at the club: 80 goals in his first 100 games.

After Al-Ahli fell 3-0 behind in the first half, Toney rallied his teammates and scored a brace to bring them within a whisker of completing a remarkable comeback in Dammam — but Brendan Rodgers’ side ultimately held on.

Toney’s impact at Al-Ahli has been unmatched since his arrival in the summer of 2024.

In his first season, he finished among the top scorers in the Saudi Pro League, netting 23 in 30 league fixtures, in addition to a goal in the King Cup and six more on the way to Al-Ahli’s first-ever AFC Champions League Elite triumph.

He followed that with an even better campaign in 2025/26.

He scored 32 in 32 league fixtures to finish just one goal behind top scorer Julian Quinones — with 10 more across all competitions, bringing his season tally to 42 — as another AFC Champions League Elite title was added to his trophy cabinet.

He has shown no signs of slowing down in the current season, sitting at the top of the scoring charts six weeks in with eight goals already. That takes his overall tally to 80 goals in 100 games for Al-Ahli, with 17 assists taking his total contributions to almost one per game.

Perhaps the most striking statistic is just how much Toney has contributed to Al-Ahli’s attacking output since his arrival in 2024. Al-Ahli have scored 229 goals in that time, with Toney’s 80 accounting for 35 percent of that total.

“I remember when he signed in 2024 — his transfer was a huge shock for the English media,” Zaid told Arab News. “There were many questions surrounding whether he would return to the England squad.”

Initially, that seemed likely. Toney played just two minutes of international football between his move to Al-Ahli and the summer of 2026, with no indication he would be called up to Thomas Tuchel’s side.

The battle for a starting striker berth was fierce between Toney and recent Al-Hilal signing Ollie Watkins in the presence of Harry Kane — but Toney ultimately made his way back into the England squad after his stellar campaign at Al-Ahli.

“Toney proved that playing in the Saudi Pro League would not derail his path back to the England squad,” Zaid said.

The former Brentford striker is more than just a prolific goalscorer. He has consistently been a voice for Al-Ahli in the media, supporting his teammates and connecting with the fans at a level few other foreign players in Saudi Arabia enjoy.

“His value is not just in his goals,” Zaid explained. “He has a powerful presence in the dressing room, and he commands the love and respect of his teammates — foreign and Saudi alike.”

Toney’s character and leadership face their biggest test this season — his first at the club without Matthias Jaissle, now head coach at Newcastle.

Al-Ahli have had a rocky start, with their dreams of winning the Saudi Pro League title for the first time since 2016 dented by three defeats in their first six games. Life under Marino Pusic may have fans anxious, but if there is any player to rely on in difficult times, it is Toney.

He has already shown that this season.

In Al-Ahli’s 5-0 victory over Al-Riyadh, new signing Artem Bondarenko was booed by fans at halftime. Toney — alongside Roger Ibanez — stepped forward to shield the new signing from the crowd’s hostility.

Toney may have been a central figure in Al-Ahli’s stellar back-to-back campaigns, but the biggest challenge lies ahead.

Can he help drive Al-Ahli’s resurgence in a season where they look to compete for the FIFA Intercontinental Cup, the King Cup, the Saudi Pro League and the AFC Champions League Elite?

A massive explosion tore through the strategic Ali Al-Taher ridge overlooking Nabatiyeh on Thursday night after the Israeli military detonated what it said was a Hezbollah underground complex extending for more than 2 kilometers beneath the heights.

Lebanon’s National News Agency said the blast was felt across Nabatiyeh and surrounding areas. Israel said it had destroyed command centers, weapons stores, living quarters, rockets, missiles, drones and other military infrastructure and had achieved “operational control” of the ridge both above and below ground.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz said the operation completed the consolidation of Israel’s self-declared security zone inside southern Lebanon.

For residents of Nabatiyeh below, the destruction gave dramatic new urgency to a political argument that has been building for weeks: Who can actually protect the south?

When Lebanese Army vehicles appeared in greater numbers on the streets of Nabatiyeh, residents welcomed the soldiers with flowers and handfuls of rice.

The army had not been absent from the southern Lebanese city, as a security source later stressed. But the enhanced deployment — and its unusual public reception — carried unmistakable political weight.

For decades, Nabatiyeh has been synonymous with the influence of Hezbollah and the Amal Movement. Yet the soldiers arrived a day after more than 400 people signed an appeal demanding that the Lebanese state assume responsibility for the city’s security, deploy the army in and around it, and restore decisions of war and peace exclusively to legitimate institutions.

Known as “Nabatiyeh 2,” as the second of such petitions, the appeal may not prove that Hezbollah’s southern heartland is turning decisively against the organization. Its significance lies somewhere subtler; it suggests that some southerners — long-cast as steadfast Hezbollah loyalists — are beginning to question not their hostility toward Israel, but whom they trust to protect them from it.

Bahjat Mirza, a signatory whose family has been rooted in Nabatiyeh for generations, rejected accusations the initiative was politically motivated.

“These appeals are coming from people of the land — people who are not politically inclined in any particular direction,” he told Arab News.

“This appeal is not politically motivated. It is simply a civil appeal by Lebanese citizens to their government to deploy the army and official security forces on the ground. In my opinion, they should have been there since 1948, since 1969, since 1975.”

Dr. Ali Hassan Wehbe, another supporter of the appeal, is a Lebanese dentist, political and social analyst and former parliamentary candidate who ran in the 2022 elections. His dental clinic in Nabatiyeh has been destroyed three times during successive conflicts — in the 2006 war, again in 2024 and most recently in 2026.

He said the campaign was fundamentally about preventing Nabatiyeh from suffering still greater destruction.

“The appeal is, first and foremost, about removing Israel’s pretext and saving Nabatiyeh,” Wehbe told Arab News, stressing that “Israel bears the primary responsibility for this destruction and this barbarity.”

But he rejected suggestions that calling for state security forces amounted to betrayal.

“Has bringing the Lebanese Army and the Lebanese state into Nabatiyeh suddenly become forbidden? Has this become an act of treason against the country?” he said.

“Which is preferable — for the Lebanese Army to enter, or, God forbid, for the Israeli army to enter? Of course, the Lebanese Army should enter. They are our sons.”

The appeal explicitly holds Israel responsible for occupation, killing and destruction. But it also demands accountability from those who controlled security decisions and promised that their weapons could protect southern Lebanon.

Without repeatedly naming Hezbollah, the target of that criticism is clear.

Its most politically charged declaration is that Nabatiyeh must not become “a barricade for any axis” — a challenge to the city’s place in a regional confrontation closely linked to Iran. The appeal also rejects what it describes as the “duality of decision-making” inside Lebanon.

This is not merely a request for more soldiers or better policing. It explicitly demands for the state to become the sole authority responsible for security, and for no armed party outside its institutions to determine when Lebanon goes to war.

“Hezbollah’s position on this is irrelevant,” Mirza said. “Anybody’s position is irrelevant — even if the president of the country disagreed with us. We are asking the Lebanese state to protect its citizens.”

Wehbe put it more starkly.

“We are not a bargaining chip and we are not a negotiating card,” he said. “Nabatiyeh is the artery of the south. It is the heart of Jabal Amel.”

For him, the conclusion is straightforward: “We have no alternative to the state.”

The struggle over Ali Al-Taher

The immediate trigger for the second appeal was the clear and devastating fate of Ali Al-Taher, the strategic heights described as the “gateway to Nabatiyeh.”

The petition argues that an opportunity existed to place the area under Lebanese Army control before Israel claimed operational control of it. For critics, the episode has produced a simple argument: Territory that was not handed to the Lebanese state ultimately fell under Israeli control.

That argument acquired added force on Thursday when Israel detonated the underground complex beneath the ridge, after weeks of bombardment and ground operations. The blast was powerful enough to register as a magnitude-4.1 seismic event about 13 kilometers west-southwest of Nabatiyeh.

The Israeli military said the network contained a central command complex belonging to Hezbollah’s Badr unit as well as weapons storage rooms and facilities that allowed fighters to remain underground for prolonged periods. Israel said its troops would remain in the area to prevent Hezbollah from rebuilding its presence there.

Political writer Sateh Noureddine, who comes from the southern town of Arabsalim, said the loss of the heights was not as recent as Israel’s announcement suggested.

“The Ali Al-Taher hills fell some time ago,” he told Arab News. “The information indicated that Hezbollah’s members had evacuated them weeks ago, not now.”

Noureddine said he did not believe a deal had been responsible for the area falling into Israeli hands. He did, however, question the timing of Israel’s announcement.

“What I find strange, and what raises more than one question, is why Israel announced the fall of Ali Al-Taher now,” he said.

“I believe this indicates that Israel will undertake a military operation more significant than Ali Al-Taher, through which Benjamin Netanyahu will seek to make electoral gains in the Oct. 27 election.”

The second appeal is markedly more urgent than the first. Mirza said it was issued after continued Israeli bombardment of Nabatiyeh and its surrounding villages created a growing fear that the city itself was gradually disappearing.

“It became very clear, with Israel’s dominance and the continued bombing of cultural and historical sites in Nabatiyeh and the surrounding villages, that we felt the city was gradually being destroyed,” he said.

For Wehbe, that fear is intensely personal.

“Since I was 10 years old, I have lived through displacement and wars,” he said. “We do not want to keep mourning our children. We do not want to keep living on memories. We want to live in the present and build the future.”

Residents are no longer debating only a theoretical future danger. They have watched destruction reach the approaches to the city and are contemplating what another escalation could mean for their homes, families and livelihoods.

For years, Hezbollah and Iran were associated among their supporters with power, protection and deterrence. Residents are now confronting destroyed villages, lost territory and the possibility of still greater devastation.

That does not necessarily amount to a complete political realignment. But it has shaken some of the assumptions on which Hezbollah’s relationship with its popular base was built.

The political debate was once largely about who represented the south. For some residents, the more urgent question is now whether there will be a south left to represent.

‘Nothing but words and threats’

Ali Al-Amin, editor-in-chief of Janoubia, a news website opposed to Hezbollah, said the party was becoming increasingly defiant as the pressure surrounding it intensified.

“Hezbollah has no options other than to continue attacking the authorities in general, while the circle of protest against the party is expanding in the south amid fears of further Israeli incursions and of the entire south falling under occupation,” he told Arab News.

“Even Hezbollah’s supporters have begun to voice their unease over what the wars in support of Gaza and Iran have produced. Voices are rising even from within Hezbollah’s own constituency because the equation on the ground has become exposed.

“All the evidence has shown that the party says one thing and does another. It has become clear that it possesses nothing but words and threats.”

Al-Amin said Hezbollah’s failure to confront Israeli forces at Ali Al-Taher was particularly damaging because of the importance the organization had previously attached to the area.

“Hezbollah did not resist the Israelis when they advanced toward Ali Al-Taher, even though it had described it as the ‘mother of all battles,’” he said.

He warned that Hezbollah’s response to its growing isolation could eventually transform the purpose of its weapons.

“The danger today is that Hezbollah’s defiance could change the function of its weapons, turning them from weapons intended to resist Israel into weapons used to confront the Lebanese state,” Al-Amin said.

“Hezbollah is trying to find pretexts for not handing over its weapons. But if we observe the trajectory, we find that the party’s argument is weakening and being depleted over time. This is what Israel has done through the escalation of its military operations.

“Today, the testing ground has shifted north of the Litani River, rather than remaining south of it.”

Wehbe, however, framed his challenge to Hezbollah differently. He stressed that many of those behind the appeal had themselves supported or participated in the resistance — Hezbollah’s preferred euphemism — in previous decades.

“My message to Hezbollah’s leadership is this: Deal with this opposition rationally and calmly, because this opposition was itself a stronghold of the resistance,” he said.

He also urged Hezbollah to rein in supporters who had accused the signatories of treason or incited against them.

“Are we no longer allowed to express our pain?” he asked. “Are we no longer allowed to say: Enough displacement?”

Dissent is not new — but its focus may be

Public opposition to Hezbollah and Amal inside Nabatiyeh is not unprecedented.

During Lebanon’s 2019 uprising, protesters in the predominantly Shiite city openly challenged both movements. Those demonstrations broke longstanding taboos and exposed anger over corruption, patronage, economic mismanagement and Lebanon’s sectarian political system.

Some of the people supporting the latest appeal may belong to that established opposition constituency. More than 400 signatures, while notable, cannot be treated as representative of hundreds of thousands of people across southern Lebanon. Nabatiyeh has not suddenly ceased to be a major center of Hezbollah and Amal support.

What may be changing is the nature of the criticism.

In 2019, much of the anger focused on governance and economic failure. “Nabatiyeh 2” strikes much closer to Hezbollah’s foundational claim to legitimacy: that its independent arsenal is necessary because it can defend the south more effectively than the Lebanese state.

The appeal asks whether that claim still holds after the scale of destruction inflicted on southern communities and the loss of territory Hezbollah’s weapons were supposed to protect.

Noureddine argued that the growth of public opposition was evidence that the party’s political structure was beginning to disintegrate.

“Hezbollah is on its way to disappearing — its leadership and political bureau alike,” he said. “It is living through its final phase. The party’s political body has begun to disintegrate, and nothing will remain except scattered cells that carry on its path and may disappear underground.”

“The number of people signing the Nabatiyeh appeal is doubling every day,” he added. “This is an indication of growing opposition to a party that is fading away.”

His assessment is among the most categorical offered by Hezbollah’s critics and remains fiercely disputed by its supporters. There is no evidence that the organization has lost its dominant position within its traditional constituency.

Nevertheless, the willingness to make such arguments openly is itself significant in a region where public criticism of Hezbollah’s security role has historically carried a high political and social cost.

Joelle Abboud, a member of the Lebanese Kataeb Party’s political bureau, said the demand for state sovereignty over southern villages had never belonged to one community or political faction.

“The voices that have recently risen to demand state sovereignty through the army in southern villages reflect what has always been a national demand across all sects,” she told Arab News.

“The emergence of Shiite voices making that demand today is evidence that Hezbollah’s weapons did not deter Israel, and that the war continued to an Iranian rhythm, with Lebanese youth used as fuel for an Iranian project.”

Abboud said the reception given to the army in Nabatiyeh showed that southerners wanted the state to assume the role long claimed by Hezbollah.

“The welcome received by the Lebanese Army in Nabatiyeh is evidence that southerners are eager to see the state become the alternative to militia weapons,” she said.

“Diplomacy is a difficult path, but it is effective in achieving stability. What is required today is the implementation of the Lebanese government’s decisions to confine weapons to the state.”

For now, “Nabatiyeh 2” — with signatories including doctors, engineers, lawyers, bankers, journalists, academics, writers, activists and MP Firas Hamdan — is not proof that southern Lebanon has turned against Hezbollah. It is evidence that a question once difficult to voice publicly is becoming harder to suppress.

After decades in which Hezbollah presented itself as the indispensable defender of the south, some people within its traditional environment are looking toward the Lebanese Army and asking whether only the state can protect them.

Whether this is simply the cry of a frightened city facing another battle, or the beginning of a deeper transformation in Hezbollah’s relationship with the society from which it draws much of its power, remains unanswered.

But after the explosion beneath Ali Al-Taher shook Nabatiyeh on Thursday night, that question is no longer abstract.

It is being asked aloud.

RIYADH: Trade can grind to a halt before ports close or shipping lanes are blocked. Disruption can begin elsewhere, when cargo or vessels become too costly or difficult to insure, or when markets are unable to provide adequate coverage for war-related risks.

Against a backdrop of rising geopolitical risks in the region and their spillover into maritime traffic, insurance and reinsurance markets, Saudi Arabia is moving to establish a national framework to help keep trade flowing even in a highly volatile maritime environment.

In response, the Cabinet approved the establishment of the “Saudi War Risks Insurance Pool for Cargo and Vessels,” a step aimed at building domestic insurance capacity to address risks that could drive up transportation and trade costs or constrain global insurers’ ability to provide coverage.

The initiative is also intended to help ensure the continuity of goods flows and support businesses involved in transportation and logistics.

The move is particularly significant for Saudi Arabia as it expands its role as a trade and logistics hub. The competitiveness of ports and distribution centers depends not only on cargo-handling speed and transport costs, but also on companies’ ability to price and manage risks when geopolitical conditions change abruptly.

Saudi Finance Minister Mohammed Al-Jadaan said after the Cabinet approved the mechanism that the Saudi marine insurance pool was a specialized national mechanism designed to support the continuity of trade and supply chains through a public-private partnership.

He said the pool would directly enhance the technical preparedness of the domestic insurance market and expand its capacity to provide the necessary coverage under rules and frameworks set by the Insurance Authority.

He added that the initiative would strengthen the resilience of the national economy and help safeguard its stability amid regional and international crises and challenges.

Industry specialists who spoke to Asharq Al-Awsat said the pool’s economic value would be most evident during crises, when insurance premiums surge or insurers and reinsurers tighten their acceptance of risks associated with particular regions.

They said a stable insurance safety net could give transport companies, importers and exporters greater room to plan and continue operating.

A stable insurance environment

Logistics specialist Nashmi Al-Harbi said rising shipping risks in the Red Sea and the Gulf had prompted some insurers to tighten their conditions for covering vessels linked to the region.

That makes the establishment of the Saudi pool particularly timely for domestic transport and logistics companies, he said, as it would help reduce one of the main sources of uncertainty affecting international shipping contracts.

Al-Harbi told Asharq Al-Awsat that international companies doing business with Saudi Arabia, or whose cargo passes through its ports, would also benefit from greater clarity and stability in the insurance environment.

He said the pool’s scope would not be limited to vessels based in the kingdom but would extend to activities and companies with Saudi interests, subject to approved eligibility and coverage requirements.

Al-Harbi said providing stable war-risk coverage would make Saudi Arabia more attractive as a regional hub for storage, distribution and re-exporting.

Logistics companies do not consider only port, transport and cargo-handling costs when selecting destinations, he said. They also take into account the costs of risks to goods and vessels throughout their journeys.

The cost of risk

Supply chain and logistics expert Khalid Al-Ghamdi said the importance of the Saudi war-risk insurance pool went beyond providing coverage for vessels and cargo.

It also addressed a deeper challenge facing businesses: the difficulty of predicting risk costs when geopolitical conditions change suddenly.

Al-Ghamdi said a national war-risk safety net would give Saudi logistics companies greater stability when planning voyages, signing contracts and setting prices.

Companies managing thousands of containers need to know more than the cost of fuel, transport and cargo handling, he said.

They also need greater certainty about insurance costs so that insurance risks do not suddenly become a heavy financial burden or an obstacle to keeping voyages in operation.

The decision sends a message to international logistics companies that Saudi Arabia is continuing to build a business environment capable of operating even when shipping is disrupted, he said.

That could become an additional factor in decisions by global companies when choosing ports and distribution and re-export centers.

Al-Ghamdi added that the selection of a logistics hub was based not only on location and transport costs, but also on its ability to absorb shocks and manage risks associated with trade flows.

Strengthening that capacity could improve supply-chain resilience, bolster international companies’ confidence and create opportunities for more effective risk-management partnerships, he said.

Insurance pool arrangements

The initiative establishes a national insurance mechanism bringing together the public and private sectors under the supervision of the Insurance Authority.

It is intended to strengthen the domestic insurance market’s ability to handle war risks associated with maritime transport and mitigate the effects of volatility and rising reinsurance costs in global markets.

The initiative also aims to enhance Saudi Arabia’s competitiveness as a logistics hub at a time when more flexible tools are needed to manage the risks facing trade and transport.

As part of its implementation, the Saudi Reinsurance Company, known as Saudi Re, said that the Insurance Authority had selected it to lead and structure the pool’s arrangements, with participation from insurers operating in the domestic market.

Saudi Re will manage the pool’s technical operations and reinsurance arrangements. Beneficiaries will be able to obtain coverage through participating insurers under approved terms and conditions.

Initiative’s objectives

The Insurance Authority has identified four main objectives for the pool: enhancing the insurance market’s preparedness and capacity to absorb marine insurance risks; supporting the continuity of trade and supply chains; limiting the effects of sharp volatility and higher reinsurance costs in global markets; and strengthening Saudi Arabia’s competitiveness as a major logistics hub.

The pool will cover cargo transported by land, sea and air, as well as marine hull insurance against covered damage and risks.

It will also cover charterers’ liability and provide protection and indemnity coverage, offering broader protection to parties involved in transport and trade.

Eligible beneficiaries include exporters and importers; vessel owners and operators; shipping, freight and maritime transport companies; businesses involved in cargo movements, logistics and supply chains; and Saudi insurers participating in the pool.

International models

Saudi Arabia is not alone in adopting such a mechanism. Other countries have established national pools to address rising war risks and difficulties in obtaining coverage from traditional insurance markets.

India offers a recent example. This year, it launched a marine insurance pool with a total capacity of $1.5 billion, including a $1.4 billion sovereign guarantee, to cover war risks affecting vessels and cargo linked to Indian interests.

India’s experience demonstrated the scale of demand for such coverage. The scheme issued more than 1,600 policies within weeks of beginning operations, while war-risk insurance premiums fell by about 35% to 40% from the peaks recorded during the escalation of regional tensions.

The trend reflects a shift in how countries manage maritime war risks — from relying entirely on global insurance and reinsurance markets to developing domestic capacity that can help keep trade moving when coverage becomes more expensive or private insurers’ appetite for risk declines.

DUBAI: Aez Alkhatir (KSA) will make his debut for new owners this Friday when facing 14 rivals in the SR150,000 ($40,000) JCSA Sprint Cup at King Khalid Racecourse in Taif.

Formerly owned by Qemat Twaiq Stable, the gelding remains in the care of Homoud Alshamari.

But will now sport the colors of the White Stable of King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz & Sons in the 1,200-meter feature when he aims to follow up last month’s Alhada Cup success under Fahad Alfouraidi.

Runner-up in the Sarawat Cup on The Saudi Cup weekend, Aez Alkhatir will take on the Red Stable Prince Faisal bin Khaled bin Abdulaziz’s Aba Almae’aly (KSA) who was eighth in the Sarawat Cup and reappeared to win a conditions race on Aug. 28.

Intriguingly both the White and Red Stable runners have a very similar form line, with both starting in the Sarawat Cup.

And both beat the filly Ana Aljonubiyah (KSA) on their most recent starts, with Aez Alkhatir leaving her a length behind in third, and she was just a quarter-of-a-length second to Aba Almae’aly.

Red Stable additionally rely on December’s Riyadh winner Thamer Almoghtarah (KSA), while also set to play a leading role is Adel Alfouraidi’s mount Alklothani (KSA) who was fourth in the Sarawat Cup and reappeared last month to land the JCSA Sprint Cup Prep.

Friday’s other main event is an Arabian Horses Open worth SR120,000 and features Ershan (FR) who has twice been runner-up this season including last time out when second in the Prince Abdullah Al-Faisal Cup Prep.

He locks horns with King Khalid Racecourse Championship Prep runner-up Angad Al-Khalediah (KSA) who has worked his way back into form in three Taif outings this campaign having been highly tried last term including when down the field in the Group One Obaiyah Arabian Classic.

Saturday’s feature event is a SR120,000 Open in which the Red Stable and owner Sheikh Abdullah Homoud Almalek Alsabah account for seven of the 19 runners.

The latter’s main hope would appear to be Muhammad Aldaham’s mount Ajwadi (GB).

The racer is top rated and looking for a hat trick of wins after signing off last season in Riyadh with success in the North America Cup, and reappearing in Taif to land a conditions race by nearly fourth lengths, with stablemate and the reopposing Moswaat (GB) in third.

Amichi (IRE) split that pair on Aug.

15 in second for the Red Stable and he will start again along with fellow Red Sable runners William Tell (FR) and Wuqood (GB) who finished in fifth and sixth respectively behind Ajwadi.

Riyadh Angel (IRE) completes the Red Stable quartet while Taif University Cup fifth Allah Maae (KSA) is the sole White Stable representative under Rayan Altoairsh.

WASHINGTON: The IMF said the global economy had weathered the energy shock caused by the war in the Middle East better than feared and global economic output was still expected to expand by about 3 percent in 2026, but it cautioned that risks remained high.

Julie Kozack, spokesperson for the International Monetary Fund, said oil and gas prices remained elevated and the energy shock from the war was not over.

Global debt pressures were also mounting and the disinflation process over the 2022 cost-of-living crisis had stalled.

Global inflationary expectations have risen but remain well-anchored ‌over the longer ‌run, Kozack told a regular IMF briefing.

“So far, despite six months of ‌war in the Middle East, the global economy has been resilient,” Kozack said, adding that the use of oil and gas reserves had allowed some countries to cope with energy shocks caused by the war, while others had shifted to new energy sources or acted to curb demand.

“We remain on track for world growth of around 3 percent but uncertainty, as we’ve been saying for quite some time, continues to remain high,” she said.

The IMF in July forecast 2026 global growth at a sluggish 3 percent, compared with an average of 3.5 percent seen in 2024 and 2025, and its April forecast of 3.1 percent.

At the time, it said that forecast assumed ‌the war would wind down in mid-July, but Iran and ‌the US have both escalated their attacks and the war has widened with increased military activity in Yemen.

The ‌global lender will release an updated forecast during the annual meetings of the IMF and the ‌World Bank in Bangkok from Oct. 12 to 18.

Pulled in opposite directions

Kozack said the global economy was being pulled in opposite directions by the negative energy supply shock that was driving prices of energy, fertilizers, food and other commodities sharply higher, while the AI-led technology cycle was providing a positive demand shock.

Risks remain high, with many countries needing to ‌restock their oil and gas reserves, and energy demands set to rise as winter approaches in the Northern Hemisphere, she said.

Pressures are also mounting on global public debt, which is already at nearly 100 percent of gross domestic product — the highest level since World War Two — and is set to rise further, Kozack said. Many advanced economies have particularly high public-debt-to-GDP ratios.

Liquidity problems are also building in developing countries, including in Africa, partly due to a reduction in bilateral assistance, Kozack said.

The IMF is urging central bankers to stick to their price stability mandates, while encouraging fiscal policymakers to develop medium-term consolidation plans, she said.

“We’re not in a situation where fiscal consolidation needs to take place overnight, but having a clear, laid-out plan and strategy for how deficits and debt are going to come down is very important for fiscal authorities,” Kozack said.

The IMF was also urging authorities to focus on lifting growth prospects through structural reforms and removing “self-inflicted” barriers to growth, she said.

Kozack said the IMF would look closely at the impact of new US sanctions against Iran, including secondary sanctions aimed at firms in third countries that support Tehran.

A fuller report was expected in the upcoming global outlook, she said.

CORON, Philippines: Firefighters entered a charred ferry in Philippine waters on Friday after a fire two nights earlier left five people dead and 84 missing and produced heat and smoke that prevented search and rescue efforts onboard.

Images released by the coast guard around midday showed three smaller boats near the MV June Aster, which appeared to have stopped emitting smoke as personnel walked on the outer portion of the ship.

Coast guard communications officer Joy Dianne Gumatay said Friday they had not received updates from the firefighting team about what was found inside, including whether there were additional fatalities.

The ferry sailed from the capital, Manila, on Wednesday evening and was around 7.4 kilometers off the village of Turda near its destination of Coron in Palawan province when the fire was reported.

Rescuers struggled to get inside the burning, smoking vessel Thursday to search for passengers who may been trapped. The efforts were halted overnight.

The cause of the fire has not been determined.

The coast guard and other vessels have rescued 43 people, some plucked from the dark waters as the ferry burned.

“The fire quickly spread. That’s when I dropped to the ground and my back was burned,” survivor Arnulfo Nokki Villanueva said in a video broadcast by News5, adding that he jumped from a window. “I wanted to get a life jacket but failed to get one because people were stepping on me. People were in panic.”

The coast guard, other government agencies, private volunteers and fishermen searched the nearby waters and coastal patrols checked for people who may have drifted to shore but no new survivors or fatalities were found.

According to the manifest, 134 people were onboard, 117 of them passengers and 17 crew. The 53-meter (174-foot) vessel had a capacity to carry 306 passengers and 27 crew.

Two passengers listed in the manifest reported to authorities that they failed to board, bringing the number of missing to 84, the coast guard said.

Two of the survivors were tourists from Chile, according to Rachel Conserman, a staffer of the ship’s owner Atienza Interisland Ferries Inc. They are recovering from injuries in a hospital in Coron, she said, adding that there no other foreigners known to have been on the ship.

The shipping company said in a statement it was assisting those who were on board and their families while coordinating with the coast guard and maritime officials to locate the missing passengers and determine the cause.

Coron is a popular tourist destination known for clear blue waters, limestone cliffs and rock formations.

Ferries are frequently used for transport in the Philippine archipelago. Sea accidents are not uncommon due to storms, badly maintained vessels, overcrowding and spotty enforcement of safety regulations, especially in remote provinces.

Qiddiya City has announced the signing of memoranda of understanding (MoUs) with five major travel and tourism service providers: Al Faris International Travel and Tourism, Travel Destinations Solutions, Al Matar Commercial Services Company, AlMosafer Travel and Tourism Company, and Fursan Travel and Tourism Company.

The agreements form part of a strategic direction aimed at expanding Qiddiya City’s network of partnerships in the travel and tourism sector, strengthening its readiness to welcome visitors, and developing more integrated pathways for accessing its diverse destinations and experiences from within the Kingdom and abroad, SPA reported.

The MoUs aim to establish shared frameworks for cooperation with a select group of travel and tourism service providers, contributing to the development of more integrated and flexible solutions for the visitor journey; from planning and booking, through travel and arrival arrangements, to enjoying Qiddiya City’s experiences more smoothly and efficiently.

Through these partnerships, Qiddiya City will leverage the specialized expertise, booking infrastructure, and commercial networks of these travel companies. The joint focus will be on delivering integrated and flexible solutions across every stage of the visitor journey, from initial planning and booking to travel arrangements and arrival.

These MoUs reinforce Qiddiya City’s ongoing commitment to build quality partnerships with key players in the tourism and travel ecosystem, and form part of its future plans to develop integrated tourism solutions that enhance the readiness of its destinations to welcome visitors from within the Kingdom and abroad.

These partnerships also contribute to expanding the scope of cooperation with sector partners and providing more flexible and efficient options for the visitor journey, supporting the company’s objectives in establishing Qiddiya as a global destination that brings together entertainment, sport, and culture, offering inspiring experiences built on the concept of “Power of Play.”

This article was first published on Asharq Al-Awsat.

MANILA: Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte’s legal team on Friday secured a postponement of her arraignment on charges of making grave threats against President Ferdinand Marcos Jr, the first lady and the House Speaker, in a new legal battle that could derail her bid for the presidency in 2028.

Lawyer Paul Lim told a crowd of reporters ‌and Duterte’s supporters outside ‌the court that the defense ‌had filed a motion to postpone the arraignment, which the court granted. In a text message to Reuters, Lim said Duterte had not entered a plea in the case. “Arraignment deferred pending resolution of our motion,” he said.

Last Saturday, Duterte had posted bail after a court had ordered ‌her arrest over the ‌charges.

The case against Duterte, an ally and ‌running mate of Marcos before the two had ‌a bitter fallout, stems from her remarks at an online press conference in 2024, when she said she had told an assassin to kill the ‌president, his wife, and his cousin, former speaker Martin Romualdez, in the event she herself were killed.

Duterte, the 48-year-old daughter of mercurial former President Rodrigo Duterte, has denied making the threats and said her remarks were taken out of context. She faces up to six months in prison if convicted.

The allegations of grave threats are also part of an impeachment complaint against Duterte, who is currently on trial at the Senate, which is sitting as an impeachment court with its members as jurors.

‌Gulf foreign ministers plan to meet their Iranian counterpart in a push by Oman and Iran ‌to ‌secure buy-in for ‌a temporary deal to manage shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, the Financial Times reported on ‌Friday. The ‌gathering is ‌scheduled to ‌be held on Monday in the Omani coastal ‌city of Salalah, the report said, citing two people briefed on the matter.

Reuters could not immediately verify the report.

The Trump administration is proposing a dramatic overhaul of the once-a-decade US Census head count that could leave out millions of immigrants based on status and key racial and ethnic data, jeopardizing the allocation of resources and the country’s voting map.

The potential changes, announced Wednesday, would exclude undocumented immigrants, asylum seekers and anyone without permanent status. Certain demographic questions from the traditional questionnaire would also be eliminated.

It echoes Trump’s previous idea to add a citizenship question to the 2030 census.

The US Census Bureau, in a post on the Federal Register website, argued “illegal aliens (among others) should not be included in the apportionment count, as they are not true inhabitants, members of the body politic, or persons with a ‘usual residence’ in the United States due to their lack of a sufficient tie and allegiance to the United States.”

The census also “should be colorblind and should not be distorted in any way by questions about immaterial personal characteristics, such as race,” the agency said. It also is considering nixing questions related to people who identify as part of the LGBTQ+ community.

These changes would harm the quality of the data, said Beth Jarosz, a data researcher and vice president of the Association of Public Data Users. She called the proposals “unprecedented.”

“Not counting all of the people who reside here is actually where the real threat is,” Jarosz said. “If you think about all of the ways that census data are used.”

Census figures are traditionally used for an “apportionment count” to determine how many seats each state will have in the US House of Representatives. That count also determines the number of votes in the Electoral College.

“You can imagine if we have undercounts or if we have people counted in the wrong place,” Jarosz said. “Then their political power or their political representation gets diluted.”

Immigrants of every status have historically been counted

Historically, the decennial census has not sought to conduct a full count of people by citizenship status, she added. It may come up in the Census’ periodic American Community Survey.

Getting an accurate count of immigrants of various statuses is useful when assigning resources for public health emergencies or natural or man-made disasters.

“If you don’t have a count of everyone who’s there, you’re not going to have the resources you need,” Jarosz said. “And that puts everybody at risk.”

Why race and ethnicity census data matters

Race-related questions have been on the once-a-decade census since 1790. Starting in 2000, the US census began allowing people to identify by more than one race. A 2015 Pew Research Center study found that multiracial people in the US were growing at a rate three times faster than the general population. By 2020, 33.8 million people in the US identified as being more than one race, according to the census.

Race and ethnicity data is essential for researchers who gauge discrimination, crime rates and wealth gaps in communities of color.

Collecting data for the 2030 Census with all these missing elements would be detrimental, Jarosz said.

“These changes are like trying to land an airplane when you are in thick fog and someone has thrown paint across the front window and your instruments are also not working,” she said.

RIYADH: Oysters, mussels, crabs and other aquatic invertebrates may be making a far greater contribution to global nutrition than previously recognized, according to a new study led by researchers at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST).

The study, published in the journal Nature and featured on the KAUST website, examined 30 nutrients essential to human health and found that current global production of aquatic invertebrates provides enough vitamin B12 and selenium to meet the equivalent annual requirements of more than 5 billion people. It also supplies enough iodine, zinc, copper and omega-3 fatty acids to meet the annual requirements of more than 1 billion people.

The findings challenge the way aquatic food systems are commonly assessed, with production often measured by the amount of food harvested rather than the nutrients it delivers.

“For far too long, we have measured success of aquatic food systems in tons of production, rather than in the nutrients they deliver to people,” said Jessica Zamborain-Mason, the study’s lead author and an assistant professor of marine science at KAUST.

The research team said incorporating nutritional value into decisions on fisheries, aquaculture and food systems could help governments pursue healthier diets while ensuring marine resources are managed sustainably.

Researchers compiled nutritional data from hundreds of aquatic invertebrate species and used predictive models to estimate nutrient content for more than 50,000 potentially edible species. The models were based on species-specific environmental, ecological and life-history traits, addressing major gaps in available nutritional data.

The resulting estimates will be incorporated into SeaLifeBase, a major online database of marine species, giving researchers and policymakers broader access to information on the nutritional value of aquatic foods.

The study found that invertebrates can provide disproportionately large amounts of key micronutrients compared with their share of production. In aquaculture, for example, they account for about one-third of production by weight but provide more than half of the supply of nutrients including iodine, vitamin B12, vitamin C and iron, according to the study.

Processing can also affect nutritional value. The researchers found that 100 grams of dried invertebrates often contain higher concentrations of minerals than raw tissue, pointing to potential opportunities to improve nutrition through food processing while reducing waste.

The study is not a call to harvest more aquatic species, the researchers stressed. Instead, it provides evidence for considering nutrition alongside ecological sustainability when managing fisheries and developing aquaculture.

Many aquatic invertebrates remain poorly studied or unassessed for sustainability, Zamborain-Mason said, underscoring the need to better protect, monitor and assess these resources.

The researchers hope the findings will help governments, industry and international organizations incorporate nutrition more fully into fisheries, aquaculture and food policies, while highlighting areas where more research and nutritional data are needed.

As countries seek more resilient food systems, the study argues that measuring how much food is produced is only part of the equation. Understanding the nutrients that food provides may be just as important.

HONG KONG: Cristiano Ronaldo will have a last crack at winning the Asian Champions League when the continent’s top club competition begins on Monday, with big-spending Saudi teams set to dominate.

The 41-year-old former Manchester United, Real Madrid and Juventus superstar said in August that it was “probably my last year in football.”

The Portuguese attacker has nearly won it all during his club career, including five UEFA Champions League crowns.

But the Asian Champions League has so far eluded the five-time Ballon d’Or winner.

His Al Nassr side go into the latest continental campaign under a new coach in former Tottenham manager Ange Postecoglou, who was sacked by Spurs in June 2025 despite taking them to Europa League glory.

Along with Ronaldo, the Riyadh-based outfit have proven international attacking quality in Kingsley Coman, Sadio Mane and Ronaldo’s Portugal team-mate Joao Felix.

Al Nassr are second in the Saudi Pro League after six matches, behind Al Hilal only on goal difference.

The skipper Ronaldo has been in good form, scoring three times in five league games.

Simone Inzaghi’s Al Hilal present a major obstacle in Ronaldo’s bid to win the AFC Champions League for the first time.

Al Hilal were major spenders in the recent transfer window, snapping up Aston Villa’s England striker Ollie Watkins and Brazil winger Gabriel Martinelli from Arsenal for a combined $150 million.

Japan threat

The format of the Asian Champions League is heavily skewed in favor of teams from Saudi Arabia, which is spending vast fortunes on football and will host the 2034 World Cup.

Since the 2024-2025 season the competition was rebranded as the Champions League Elite and the quarter-finals, semis and final are held in a centralized location in Saudi Arabia.

Al Ahli made the most of home advantage by winning the title in 2025 and 2026.

An Al Ahli side with England’s Ivan Toney in attack beat Japan’s Machida Zelvia 1-0 in extra time in April’s final on home turf in Jeddah.

Al Nassr, Al Ahli and Al Hilal will be joined in this year’s competition by Al Ittihad and Al Qadsiah, making it a bumper five Saudi sides among the 32 teams.

As in recent years, the competition is divided equally into two leagues of East and West.

Each side will play four matches at home and four away.

The biggest threat to the Saudi stranglehold will likely come from Japan — teams from Asia’s strongest footballing nation have reached the final in each of the last four editions.

There are also five J. League teams, prime among them reigning domestic champions Kashima Antlers.

Former Kashima star Yasushi Endo admitted the Saudi teams would be hard to beat.

“It’s difficult for Japanese teams to be champions these days given the financial strength of teams in the West who can invest heavily in players that traditionally play in strong European leagues,” he said.

“With the tournament being played in a centralized format in the West, it also makes things extra difficult.

“We cannot underplay the importance of having large fan support.”

SAN FRANCISCO, California: Anthropic said Thursday it shut down multiple cases of state-sponsored surveillance operations that used its artificial intelligence (AI) models, and warned that governments and state-aligned actors are increasingly using AI to spy on ethnic minorities and dissidents.

The incidents were found and disrupted between January and July, and they originated in China, Iran and west Africa, Anthropic said in a report about misuse of its models.

These surveillance campaigns “targeted the same diaspora and dissident communities these regimes have historically targeted. These include pro-democracy figures in Hong Kong, Tibetan and Falun Gong communities across Asia, and Iranian minority communities and opponents of the Iranian regime abroad,” the report said.

In one case, Iranian actors developed a way to identify people through their social media accounts; in another, a contractor working for Malian national security authorities used Claude “to design the underlying software that enabled the intelligence gathering.”

“AI is now being used in place of an engineering workforce,” the report said.

Anthropic also disrupted efforts by users to design weapons, conduct questionable biological research, and create dating scams.

The San Francisco-based AI lab also accused Chinese developers of deceptively using Claude to produce responses to user queries while simultaneously “distilling” that data to improve their own models.

Distilling is an industry term that refers to a process where one AI model is used to train another one.

Chinese developers have previously been accused of using that technique without permission, essentially stealing resources from American labs such as Anthropic and OpenAI.

Now Anthropic alleges that China’s Moonshot and Deepseek have also secretly used Claude to generate answers given to its users.

“In one instance, over a ten-day period, Moonshot relayed almost 300,000 customer requests to Anthropic” through a “network of 5,380 fraudulent accounts, most of which appeared to be located in Singapore and Japan,” the report said.

Some of that data contained sensitive user information, potentially in violation of privacy agreements.

“We do not know if Moonshot notified their customers that their requests were being rerouted to Anthropic and exposed to a third party,” the report said.

Deepseek used similar techniques.

When it comes to the research Anthropic detected and blocked that was related to biological weapons, the intent of the actors was less clear-cut and the AI lab did not identify them.

“The individuals implicated in these case studies are working scientists. We do not assert that they intended harm, and identifying them or their labs could expose them to harm,” the report said.

The scientific research in those cases involved work around the mosquito-born chikungunya virus, a “highly-pathogenic” strain of the bird flu, a family of viruses that include smallpox and mpox, venoms and other toxins.