Asia Pacific

Harimoto, whose record 3,085 career hits still stands, was inducted into the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame in 1990.

Japanese baseball legend Isao Harimoto, who survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and became the first player from his country to reach 3,000 hits, has died aged 86, reports said.

Born to Korean parents in Japan, Harimoto learned to play left-handed when an accident at the age of four left him with severe burns and limited mobility in his right hand.

He survived the atomic bombing as a five-year-old, his mother jumping in front of him and his sister to shield them from the blast.

He went on to rack up 3,085 career hits, which still stand as a record in Nippon Professional Baseball.

He played for several teams in Japan, including the all-powerful Yomiuri Giants, and earned himself the nickname “Hit Machine” for his batting prowess.

He retired in 1981 after 23 professional seasons and worked as a TV commentator.

Harimoto was inducted into the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame in 1990.

For more than a decade, governments got used to cheap borrowing. That era may now be ending.

Government bond markets are flashing warnings around the world.

Across major economies, yields – the interest rates governments pay to borrow – are climbing to levels not seen in years and, in some cases, decades.

Investors are pricing in more risk before they’ll lend to governments already carrying heavy debt loads.

Inflation remains stubborn, geopolitical tensions are adding pressure, and central banks may have to keep interest rates higher for longer.

Those higher borrowing costs are pushing up what banks charge companies and homeowners.

Tehran has threatened “serious consequences” for South Korea if it interferes in the US-Israel war on Iran.

The warning comes amid reports that Seoul is mulling contributing to the US naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz passage, which has hampered Iran’s oil exports.

In a statement posted on X on Monday, Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said Iran and South Korea had more than 64 years of diplomatic relations based on mutual respect and that Tehran values that friendship.

However, if South Korea joins the United States in its military actions against Iran at a time when the country is defending itself from what he called US aggression and “war crimes against women and children”, then there will be consequences, he warned.

Baghaei threatened that Iran would regard any military presence or participation in operations by another country in the Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz “would inevitably be regarded as direct support for the aggressor and would have serious consequences”.

“No sovereign and responsible country should succumb to US pressure and intimidation and become complicit in acts of aggression and horrific crimes against the great Iranian nation,” he added.

Seoul did not respond directly, but a Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement on Monday said it is communicating with the international community over the situation in the passageway.

Here’s what we know about how South Korea is getting roped in:

Why is South Korea involved?

Seoul, a close ally of Washington, has been under pressure from US President Donald Trump.

The issues began in mid-August, when Trump revealed in an interview, and later online, that he had spoken to South Korean President Lee Jae Myung and asked that Seoul give “a little hand” in the war on Iran.

According to media reports, the two leaders had spoken over the phone on May 17.

Seoul said, “No, thanks!”, according to Trump’s message on social media.

However, as South Korea now knows, saying no to Trump has repercussions.

On August 16, Trump announced that the US would significantly scale back joint military drills it holds annually with South Korea – the evening before they were scheduled to begin.

The Ulchi Freedom Shield (UFS) exercises are meant to sharpen Seoul’s readiness in case of a North Korean attack. They usually last for more than 11 days but were reduced to five.

In a post on his Truth Social site, Trump claimed the drills were “costly” and that they send a “hostile” signal to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, with whom he is trying to build a relationship. South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Hyun said in parliament there was no warning from the US.

Trump also questioned why South Korea would refuse his request when thousands of US soldiers are stationed on the Korean Peninsula.

The US also cancelled another military exercise scheduled for September, although South Korea’s military revealed it received a notification much earlier in June, with Washington citing constraints due to the war on Iran.

How has South Korea responded?

President Lee, a liberal who pushes for a dialled-down defence posture, has opted to negotiate. His office earlier released statements saying it hopes for “meaningful dialogue” with Trump.

South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported on Monday that Washington has, however, “ratcheted up pressure” on Seoul.

On Friday, a South Korean presidential official told Yonhap that Seoul could consider a military contribution to international measures seeking to free up navigation in the passageway as long as it does not affect the country’s defence readiness.

South Korea is looking at various options, the official said, including possible cooperation with France, the United Kingdom and other allies on sending noncombat and search-and-rescue forces.

The South Korean military has also started reviewing assets and troops that could be deployed, including maritime patrol aircraft, explosive ordnance disposal teams and unmanned mine detection and clearing systems, he added.

Such a move would be unpopular. The opposition has spoken out against a possible deployment, as have some within Lee’s ruling Democratic Party. Many South Koreans have also protested against the US-Israel war on Iran.

What is the history of US-South Korea relations?

South Korea became one of the US’s closest allies after Washington backed Seoul against Pyongyang in the Korean War of 1950.

The US supported Seoul’s economic and military growth in the years after. Under a treaty, some 29,000 US soldiers have been stationed permanently on the Korean Peninsula since the end of the war. Seoul has also relied on US defence might to deter nuclear-armed North Korea.

In return, South Korea supported several US wars, including the Iraq War, and is designated an important non-NATO ally.

In 2025, however, Washington imposed a 25 percent tariff on the country, testing relations. Seoul opted to negotiate rather than retaliate, leading the US to lower tariffs to 15 percent.

Many South Koreans were also alarmed after hundreds of South Koreans were arrested in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids on a Hyundai plant in Georgia in September 2025.

Last October, Trump travelled to Seoul in a historic state visit, and earlier this year, President Lee visited the US. Lee is also trying to resume dialogue between Washington and Pyongyang.

How is South Korea being affected by the US-Israel war on Iran?

South Korea is facing an economic crisis. The country relies on the Gulf supplies via the Strait of Hormuz for 60 to 70 percent of crude imports, meaning supply is being severely hit. The war has led to soaring inflation, causing the Korean won to fall to a 17-year low.

Seoul therefore has an interest in freeing up the strait. However, under Korean law, the government will require parliament’s approval before a military deployment, although some governing party members could oppose it.

Oil prices are rising to nearly a six-week high amid a wave of strikes between the United States and Iran in the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly a fifth of the world’s oil supply travels during peacetime.

On Monday, Brent oil futures, the global benchmark, rose to hover around $97 a barrel — up 9 percent over the last five days and 19 percent over the last month. Monday’s market moves are approaching the highest point since July 24th, when prices topped $97.93.

US West Texas Intermediate crude similarly rose to $92.27 a barrel, up 79 cents, also a near six-week high.

In recent days, strikes escalated in the Strait of Hormuz. The US hit three Iranian oil tankers on Saturday, while Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said it had struck three tankers and three US-linked vessels in other areas.

“This is a reflection of continued conflict and exchange of fire. The supply deficits globally are persisting, and there is little end to these shortages,” Rachel Ziemba, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), told Al Jazeera.

On Monday, Saudi Aramco’s Jizan facilities were struck for the second time in the last month, according to reporting from the Financial Times that cited two people familiar with the matter.

“The fact that a Saudi refinery in Jizan was hit, possibly delaying its return to production, didn’t help,” Ziemba added.

Amid increased strikes, there’s less traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, with an average of 10 commodity ships crossing the vital chokepoint each day over the last 10 days, according to Kpler, a data analytics platform.

“Crude went back down to what the pre-war level was in early July. Then it increased again, and then it reduced again, and now it’s increasing again on this weekend’s exchange plus the Aramco attack,” Arif Gasilov, a partner at the Gasilov Group, an energy advisory firm, told Al Jazeera.

“I would say that you might eventually see an inflection point, depending on how long this keeps going on, where a ceasefire doesn’t move the market at all, maybe by just a dollar or two.”

US consumers pinched

US consumers are feeling the impact of heightened oil prices at the petrol pump. The average price for a gallon (3.78 litres) of petrol has jumped 7 cents over the course of a week, reaching $4.15 nationally on Monday, up from $4.08 this time a week ago, according to the American Automobile Association (AAA), which tracks daily petrol prices.

That’s up from $4.04 this time a month ago and $2.98 from February 28th, when the US and Israel first struck Iran, marking a 39 percent increase since the war began.

Last week, diesel prices hit all-time highs at $5.85 per gallon.

“US diesel prices have never been this high, and now the countdown starts for the trickle-down to everything consumers buy… record diesel will start funnelling down into the economy,” Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, said in a post on the social media platform X.

Prices have continued to climb since, with average prices on Monday topping $5.90 per gallon.

“Markets are pricing in longer disruptions. It continues to be in product markets where the biggest disruptions lie, though, including diesel,” Ziemba added.

Those price gains are weighing on Americans, who have spent an average of $764.59 per household on fuel since the war began. That’s $418.82 more than usual, according to Brown University’s Watson School of International and Public Affairs.

Ahead of the US’s September 5-7 Labor Day weekend, the unofficial end of summer and a popular time for US travel, AAA forecasts showed a 20 percent increase in flight costs compared to the same weekend last year.

Ahead of the midterm elections, the economy is emerging as a key issue for US voters — and a potential warning sign for Republicans. Polls show voters souring on President Donald Trump’s handling of the economy, with his economic approval rating falling to a new low in a recent Financial Times poll. Just 17 percent of Americans approve of his handling of the economy.

An Economist/YouGov poll similarly found that 39 percent of Americans believe Democrats are doing a better job handling the economy, compared with 32 percent who said Republicans are.

China pressures

Southeast and East Asian markets rely more heavily on imports travelling through the Strait of Hormuz directly than the US, but Beijing has moved to insulate itself from the disruption by turning to domestic sources, including its strategic petroleum reserve (SPR).

“China has been managing this situation successfully since the beginning of the war. We know that China has many domestic resources, despite rising oil prices,” John Gong, an economics professor at the University of International Business and Economics, told Al Jazeera.

“China has been conserving its oil and gas consumption for quite some time now. China was prepared for these challenges,” Gong said.

He also stressed that China’s close relations with Russia give Beijing another source of supply, with Moscow able to provide nearly half of China’s daily oil needs.

China has also begun tapping into its SPR while reducing its reliance on imports, as Beijing accelerates a broader shift towards alternative energy sources and vehicles that require little or no oil to operate.

“We have national strategies focused on transitioning to clean energies like solar and green power,” Gong said. “When we look at the vehicles purchased in China, more than 50 percent of cars sold on the Chinese market are electric.”

Manila defence chief says Washington gave ‘definite assurances’ that its commitments to the Philippines remain.

Philippine Defence Secretary Gilberto Teodoro has warned that Beijing could view recent cuts to the joint US-South Korea military drills as an opportunity to reassert itself in the Asia Pacific.

Speaking on the sidelines of the Seoul Defense Dialogue, an annual multilateral security forum, Teodoro said that “China is very quick to exploit gaps”, when asked on Monday whether Beijing could seize on the move.

He added that Washington had given Manila “definite assurances” that the US commitments to the Philippines remained unchanged.

He also accused China of exploiting democratic systems to spread “distortive narratives”.

South Korea and the US shortened the duration of their annual joint military drills and scaled back field training exercises last month after US President Donald Trump ordered a “substantial reduction” in the annual war games.

The US-led Ulchi Freedom Shield war games ended six days earlier than originally planned.

Trump cited his “very good relationship” with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and linked the decision to Seoul’s refusal to join the US and Israel’s war on Iran at the time.

Last week, South Korea’s presidential office said it was mulling “contributions” to the US’s freedom of navigation ⁠in the Strait of Hormuz. The presidential office later clarified that nothing has been decided, as any military deployment by South Korea requires a decision by the country’s National Security Council, a resolution at a cabinet meeting, and consent from the National Assembly.

Trump said he planned to meet with Kim later this year. Kim’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, later released a statement denying any ongoing communication between the US president and her brother and maintained that Washington continues to engage in a “hostile” policy towards her country, despite the warm relationship between the two leaders.

US, South Korea and Japan hold trilateral military drills

The US, South Korea and Japan are due to hold five days of military drills in waters east and south of South Korea’s Jeju Island starting on Monday.

South Korea’s military said in a statement that the Freedom Edge exercise is defensive in nature and meant to respond to North Korean nuclear and missile threats as well as promote regional peace and stability.

North Korea has previously slammed the trilateral drill as a “reckless show of strength” that proved its adversaries’ confrontational stance. Pyongyang has also said the drill contained a US intention to lay siege to China and exert pressure on Russia.

Leader Kim Jong Un says vessel will form part of Pyongyang’s nuclear response system, strengthen naval forces.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un attended the commissioning of a warship he said could deliver “annihilating retaliatory strikes on an enemy”, citing “constant threats”, according to the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

The Kang Kon, named after the North Korean military leader who was killed in action during the Korean War, was formally deployed at a ceremony at the eastern Wonsan Port in Kangwon Province on Sunday.

In his address, Kim said the warship “represents the self-respect and will” of North Korea to defend its rights and interests, KCNA reported.

“The time has come for us to exercise our sovereignty at sea and under water,” Kim said, according to KCNA.

He said that “dangerous shadows must be erased” and that North Korea was under constant threat in the “sea east of the Korean Peninsula and nearby waters”, KCNA reported.

KCNA did not specify what weapons systems might be deployed on the Kang Kon, but said it has the same weapons systems as the 5,000-tonne warship Choe Hyon launched in June.

A previous KCNA report said Choe Hyon-class destroyers can carry a range of weapons, including missiles that analysts say are capable of carrying a nuclear payload.

Sunday marks the third launch of the Kang Kon; the destroyer partially capsized during the first commissioning in May 2025 before it was repaired and relaunched the following month. It underwent further repairs and sea trials before completing weapons testing in July this year.

Kim said he would demonstrate another stage of North Korea’s naval buildup in eight months, KCNA said, without giving details.

North Korea has accelerated efforts to modernise its navy as Kim pursues a broader expansion of the country’s nuclear-capable forces.

He also said the construction of naval bases on North Korea’s east coast was under way and that the country would create new naval units and build different classes of warships.

Pyongyang, which calls itself an “irreversible” nuclear state, frames the build-up as deterrence against Washington and Seoul. The Korean Peninsula remains technically at war, and Kim has accused the allies of driving the region “to the brink of a nuclear war”.

Iva Jovic outlasted the fellow young tennis sensation from the Philippines, Alex Eala, in an epic three-hour showdown.

American teen Iva Jovic was moved to tears while talking about her off-court friend and on-court opponent Alex Eala, whom she beat in a three-set thriller to enter the round of 16 at the US Open.

Jovic outlasted the fellow young tennis sensation from the Philippines in an epic three-hour showdown on Saturday to book a meeting with fourth-seeded former champion Coco Gauff.

The 14th-seed Jovic won five of the last six games for a 7-5, 3-6, 7-5 triumph over 17th-seed Eala after three hours and three minutes.

“That felt like a marathon, and I felt like I lost my sanity five times over to win that match,” Jovic said. “But it’s really worth it for this feeling.”

Two of the top rising stars of women’s tennis made their Arthur Ashe Stadium debut a memorable battle that featured 17 service breaks in 33 games.

“That match, definitely the way it finished, deserved that court,” Jovic said.

“It literally took everything to somehow squeeze my way through that.”

When the emerging US tennis star’s win was sealed, her Filipina friend went around the court to congratulate her instead of waiting at the net as players usually do at the end of tennis matches.

When Jovic was asked about Eala’s gesture in her post-match news conference, the American was moved to tears and said it showed her friend’s character.

“It says a lot about her as a person,” Jovic said while wiping away tears. “I’m gonna start crying, but it says a lot about her as a person to be able to do that after that type of match and still come over to hug me and wish me all the best. And even in the locker room behind closed doors … so that just says a lot about her and her character. Yeah, she’s incredible.”

Jovic, 18, and Eala, 21, are friends and sometimes doubles partners, knowing each other’s skills and style well. That helped produce seven service breaks in the first 11 games.

“I’m usually not one that shows that many emotions, but this one really meant a lot to me. It’s everything to have another match here at the US Open,” Jovic said.

That match will be against compatriot Gauff, the 2023 US Open and 2025 French Open champion.

“I’m going to be more than happy to just bring this fight and this energy, and whatever happens I can leave with my head high,” Jovic said.

‘Put on a show’

Jovic broke four times to win the first set but was broken three times by left-hander Eala to drop the second.

“The level was absolutely incredible from both sides,” Jovic said.

“We definitely put on a show, and it literally took everything to get through that … losing my earrings, falling literally flat-out on the floor, cuts on my knees, mental breakdowns,” she said.

Eala admitted: “I had my chances. I’m happy with the match in general. Of course there is disappointment in losing, but trying to see the positive side. It was a really good match. The level was really high.

“I left everything out there. I fought through the ups and downs … What I know for a fact is that I fought, so I’m happy with that.”

A quarterfinalist at this year’s Australian Open, Jovic won her first WTA title last year in Guadalajara at age 17.

She beat Eala at the French Open and Queen’s Club in London earlier this season in their prior meetings, but that was before Eala won her first WTA title at Washington.

“She played an outrageous level tonight. She was serving very good. She was showing a lot more versatility with her returns,” Jovic said of Eala.

“She’s playing some of the best tennis in the world right now, so it’s no doubt it takes a hell of an effort to beat her.”

At the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Bishkek this week, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian received precisely the kind of political support he had hoped for. The SCO condemned the military attacks against Iran, described them as violations of international law and the UN Charter, reaffirmed Iranian sovereignty and territorial integrity, and called for the conflict to be resolved through political and diplomatic means.

But the organisation did not offer to defend Iran. That distinction between political solidarity and collective defence is important. It tells us something not only about the Iranian experience with the SCO, but about the international order that is emerging around it.

For years, discussions about multipolarity have often suggested that the US-led international system would gradually be challenged by an alternative bloc centred around China, Russia and organisations such as BRICS and the SCO. From the perspective of middle powers, joining both institutions seemed to fit neatly into this transformation. Integration into non-Western organisations was supposed to make them less vulnerable to Western isolation and pressure.

The US-Israeli war on Iran has made clear that none of these alternative relationships can produce a security guarantee comparable to those provided by formal military alliances. The lesson is not that multipolarity has failed middle powers. It is that the emerging multipolar order may work differently from what many expected.

Rather than replacing one alliance system with another, it is producing an increasingly dense network of overlapping partnerships in which states gain diplomatic and economic options without necessarily acquiring new security guarantees.

For middle powers, this may be one of the defining characteristics of the emerging order: more room for manoeuvre, but less certainty about who will stand beside them when their security is threatened.

Turkiye provides a particularly revealing example. It has been a member of NATO for more than seven decades and remains embedded in the Western security architecture. Yet Ankara has increasingly demonstrated that alliance membership does not require automatic political alignment with Washington. Turkiye has maintained relations with Russia despite the war in Ukraine, expanded its engagement with China and participated in the SCO as a dialogue partner. At the same time, its differences with the US and Israel over the future regional order in the Middle East have become increasingly visible.

This does not mean Turkiye is abandoning NATO or moving into a Chinese- or Russian-led bloc. Quite the opposite. Ankara’s strategy depends precisely on avoiding such a binary choice. Its NATO membership provides security benefits that the SCO could not replicate. Its relationships with Russia, China, Iran, the Gulf states and other regional actors, meanwhile, expand its diplomatic and economic options.

Brazil represents another good example. Unlike Turkiye, Brazil is not bound to the US through a formal military alliance. But it has traditionally operated within a US-dominated hemisphere where Washington has expected considerable political alignment from regional governments.

Brazil’s refusal to join the US-led Americas Counter-Cartel Coalition (ACCC), together with its positions on the Iran war and other recent international crises, reflects its reluctance to accept that regional proximity should translate into automatic strategic alignment.

Yet Brazil is not simply switching sides. Its participation in BRICS, its extensive economic relationship with China and its calls for reform of the international system coexist with important political and economic relations with the US and Europe. Brasília’s objective is not to exchange dependence on Washington for dependence on Beijing, but to preserve the ability to cooperate with both, and disagree with either.

This may be one of the most consequential opportunities that multipolarity offers middle powers. The rise of alternative centres of economic and political influence reduces the cost of saying no. For decades, weaker states often confronted a difficult choice when facing pressure from a dominant power: comply, resist and risk isolation, or seek protection from a rival bloc.

The proliferation of partners and institutions complicates that calculation. A government that disagrees with Washington may deepen relations with Beijing without becoming a Chinese ally. A state dependent on China economically may strengthen security ties with the US without fully aligning with Washington. Membership in BRICS does not prevent cooperation with Western institutions, just as membership in a US-led security framework does not necessarily preclude engagement with China or Russia.

India has made this logic almost an organising principle of its foreign policy. New Delhi participates in the Quad with the US, Japan and Australia while simultaneously belonging to both BRICS and the SCO. At Bishkek, India supported the SCO declaration defending Iranian sovereignty while Prime Minister Narendra Modi also stressed to Pezeshkian the importance of preserving freedom of navigation and commerce through the Strait of Hormuz.

The Gulf Cooperation Council member states are pursuing their own version of this diversification. Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, for example, continue to depend heavily on their relationships with the US for security, while simultaneously expanding economic and diplomatic ties with China, India and other Asian powers and participating in new regional and international arrangements.

None appears eager to replace Washington with Beijing. They want relationships with both. This suggests that the most significant consequence of multipolarity for middle and smaller powers may not be the emergence of a new bloc to which they can attach themselves. It may be the declining necessity of attaching themselves exclusively to any bloc at all.

But greater autonomy comes with a cost. The same flexible arrangements that allow states to avoid choosing sides also provide fewer guarantees when crises become existential. BRICS does not have an Article 5. Neither does the SCO, which explicitly defines itself as a non-military organisation.

Strategic partnerships can provide weapons, investment, diplomatic backing and political support without obligating partners to go to war for one another.

The emerging international system is therefore unlikely to resemble a simple transition from a US-led order to a Chinese-led one, or even a confrontation between two clearly defined blocs. The older alliance system is not disappearing.

NATO remains central to European and Turkish security, while US security relationships remain indispensable across much of Asia and the Gulf. What is emerging alongside it is another layer, a more fluid landscape of overlapping institutions, selective partnerships and transactional relationships.

Multipolarity, in other words, may not require states to choose a new camp. That gives middle and smaller powers greater agency. But it also places greater responsibility for their own security upon them. The world they are entering may offer more partners, more bargaining power and more freedom to say no. What it may offer less frequently is certainty about who will say yes when they ask for protection.

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

The United Nations General Assembly has voted to back a resolution spearheaded by several African countries to adopt a map that shows the continent as much bigger than it is on conventional world maps.

On Friday, the resolution aimed at “a more accurate representation” of continental landmasses on the globe was supported by 164 countries, while the United States voted against it and six other states abstained.

The new map – known as the Equal Earth cartographic projection – “is a relevant option for improving the accuracy of the cartographic representation of the world”, the resolution stated.

Foreign Minister Robert Dussey of Togo, which drove the resolution, said maps “guide education, nourish the imagination, and influence collective perceptions”.

“The resolution adopted today reaffirms African reality,” he added.

But how does the new map differ from the traditional version, and why did the US object?

What has the UN decided?

The UN has urged member states to adopt a new map in place of the centuries-old, traditional Mercator projection, which was designed for maritime navigation by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569.

That projection focused on accurate depictions of the shapes and angles of land masses, but their relative sizes were often inaccurate – in part because of the challenge of rendering a three-dimensional globe onto a two-dimensional surface.

It inflated northern regions and compressed equatorial ones, making Europe and North America appear much larger, while shrinking Africa and South America.

How big are Africa, Latin America, South Asia and Oceania?

It does not look like it on the conventional Mercator map, but Africa is a giant among the world’s continents at about 30.3 million square kilometres (11.7 million square miles).

It is large enough to contain the US, China, India and most of Europe, yet on a Mercator map it looks roughly the same size as Greenland, which is actually about 14 times smaller than the continent.

Latin America covers roughly 20 million sq km (7.7 million sq miles), of which South America accounts for 17.8 million sq km (6.9 million sq miles).

Oceania spans about 8.5 million sq km (3.3 million sq miles), almost all of it Australia.

South Asia is the smallest of the four at about 5.1 million sq km (2 million sq miles), though it is home to about a quarter of the world’s population.

Combined, the four cover about 64 million sq km (24.7 million sq miles), more than 40 percent of the world’s land surface.

Europe, by comparison, is 10.2 million sq km (3.9 million sq miles).

What has the response to the change of maps been?

Largely positive.

France, which co-sponsored the resolution in support of the new map, announced on Friday that it would abandon the Mercator projection.

In that map, “the United States, Russia and China take on a disproportionate visual prominence compared to Africa, Latin America or Southeast Asia”, while “Greenland appears almost as big as Africa,” Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said.

“Changing maps obviously doesn’t change the world,” he added. “But correcting a distorted representation is already an act of truth.”

Only the US voted against it, while six other countries – Serbia, Estonia, Georgia, Lithuania, Moldova and Ukraine – abstained.

US representative Yaryna Ferencevych said before the vote that the resolution is “the reason this institution is losing its credibility”.

“Instead of focusing on genuine problems … this body is debating map projects from the 16th century,” she said.

What is Equal Earth?

Equal Earth was launched in 2018 by three cartographers – Bojan Savric of the Environmental Systems Research Institute, Tom Patterson of the US National Park Service, and Bernhard Jenny of Monash University.

“Equal Earth preserves the relative surface areas of continents and, as much as possible, shows their shapes as they appear on a globe,” Savric told the AFP news agency in 2025.

The UN resolution encourages governments and institutions worldwide to adopt the Equal Earth projection.

Will the world map actually change?

Friday’s resolution is not binding, but is intended to encourage changes to maps used by default around the world.

The UN said in its report that it is not banning the Mercator projection or imposing a replacement, but is merely encouraging the use of the Equal Earth projection.

US sanctions Turkish bank over alleged IRGC ties, accusing it of facilitating millions in transactions for Iran.

The United States Treasury Department has imposed sanctions on a Turkish bank and its subsidiaries over alleged ties to Iran, as Washington seeks to economically isolate Tehran.

The Treasury Department accused Golden Global Yatirim Bankasi Anonim Sirketi (Golden Global Bank) on Friday of facilitating “tens of millions of dollars’ worth of transactions for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force” and providing the Iranian government with banking access to move its funds internationally.

Washington alleged the bank “was established for the purpose of enabling Iran’s rahbar network [shadow banking system] to transfer oil revenues from China to Turkey” using gold and cash.

Golden Global Bank responded on Friday, saying it fulfilled all local and international banking compliance rules and would take legal action against the US-imposed sanctions.

There are no transactions conducted by Golden Global Bank that could substantiate the claims made by the US, the bank said in a news release.

“We will exercise all our rights of objection and legal recourse in the most effective manner and will take the necessary actions at the earliest against these allegations and the decision,” the Turkish bank added.

“Financial institutions continue to find out the hard way that we are serious about Operation Economic Outcast,” said Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent in a statement published by the department on Friday.

The sanctions place the bank and its two subsidiaries on the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC)’s Specially Designated Nationals list, cutting off access to the US financial system.

The bank said individuals and entities named in the OFAC decision “have never been and are not currently customers” of Golden Global.

US Ambassador to Turkiye Tom Barrack said on Saturday that it would be a mistake for Turkish officials “to read [the US’s] narrow measure as a judgement upon Turkiye”.

“The health of the Turkish financial system is not in question; the conduct of one institution was,” Barrack said on X.

Last week, the US took steps towards severing the UAE operations of Egypt’s second-largest bank from financial access after accusing it of processing transactions for companies linked to Iran’s shadow-banking system.

Bessent said on Tuesday on the sidelines of a G20 summit that Washington would likely announce a bank sanction this week and another next week, as it ramps up its economic campaign against Tehran.

Country implements state of emergency in Sarawak’s Serian district after air pollution reaches ‘hazardous’ levels.

Malaysia has declared a state of emergency in a district in Sarawak state after haze caused by wildfires in neighbouring Indonesia increased air pollution to “hazardous” levels.

King Sultan Ibrahim “has consented to the declaration of emergency throughout Serian Division, Sarawak, following haze conditions that have reached air pollution levels hazardous to public health and safety”, Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s office said in a statement on Thursday.

The declaration followed a formal request from the Sarawak Disaster Management Committee after the region’s Air Pollutant Index reached levels warranting consideration of a local emergency.

Under the order, 647 schools in Serian will close from Monday until at least the end of next week, alongside government and private offices, plantations, construction sites and quarries, with only essential services continuing to operate.

The state’s disaster management authorities said a three-day cloud-seeding operation launched on Thursday would be extended to at least Monday, citing forecasts of “more conducive cloud formations” during that period.

Sarawak State Disaster Management Committee chairman Douglas Uggah Embas, speaking at a news conference in Kuching, stressed that the emergency applied only to Serian, not the entire state, but urged residents there to take the situation seriously.

“Please minimise outdoor activities and avoid strenuous activities outdoors,” he said.

Sarawak, in the northern part of Borneo island, has been heavily affected by haze for weeks, as have the neighbouring states of Sabah and Peninsular Malaysia.

Other Southeast Asian countries like Brunei have also reported smoggy conditions. Singapore announced it would start providing daily haze advisories from Friday evening, after the 24-hour air quality readings entered the unhealthy range, the first since 2023.

It has also hit the Philippines, where President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. ordered the suspension of classes in the capital region, Metro Manila, as well as more than a dozen provinces on Friday.

This year’s transboundary haze, which originates from fires burning across Indonesia, particularly the Kalimantan region and Sumatra island, is part of a wider seasonal wildfire crisis in the archipelago country.

Scientists say temperatures are expected to peak this month, potentially intensifying the fires by bringing hotter and drier conditions across the region.

China has long been a rare partner to Iran, with the economic heft to blunt the United States’ efforts to strangle the Iranian economy.

Yet even as China opposes US President Donald Trump’s latest pressure campaign, few observers expect it to go much further than the modest economic links it has thus far forged with Iran to shield it.

While China opposes the Trump administration’s military attacks and sanctions against Iran, Beijing’s relationship with Tehran is just one consideration in a foreign policy that seeks to balance relations with numerous countries, including the US and the Gulf states, limiting its appetite to prop up the Iranian leadership at any cost, analysts say.

“China, with broader global interests, can only actively promote de-escalation of the US-Iran conflict, and cannot and will not engage in fierce confrontation with the US for Iran’s sake,” said Hongda Fan, director of the China-Middle East Center at Shaoxing University in China.

“Ultimately, the US-Iran conflict must be resolved by the two countries themselves,” Fan said.

China and Iran share substantial trade links, particularly in energy, and a mutual suspicion of US dominance, but their relationship is heavily lopsided, with Tehran depending on Beijing far more than vice versa.

That asymmetry in ties was on full display this week at the annual gathering of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, a 10-member bloc widely seen as a counterbalance to US hegemony, where Chinese President Xi Jinping joined more than a dozen non-Western leaders, including Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian.

While Iranian state media reported that Pezeshkian held a “brief meeting” with Xi on the sidelines of the summit in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, Chinese outlets made no mention of the encounter.

Xi immediately followed his attendance at the summit with his first visit to Egypt in a decade on Tuesday, using the visit to call on countries in the Middle East to oppose “external interference” and reiterate his calls for a diplomatic resolution to the Iran war.

As Iran’s top trade partner, China has taken up to 90 percent of Iranian oil exports since the US and Israel launched their war in late February.

Iranian crude, however, accounts for only about 2 percent of China’s overall energy mix.

While China’s oil purchases have been an economic lifeline for Tehran, Chinese importers have not been immune to fears of exposure to US sanctions.

China’s major state-owned refiners such as Sinopec and PetroChina have shunned Iranian oil for years, leaving the trade to independent “teapot” refiners with minimal links to the dollar-based global financial system.

Though the Trump administration has imposed sanctions on these “teapot” refiners and a limited number of China- and Hong Kong-based firms and individuals, it has yet to target major Chinese banks accused of facilitating Iranian oil purchases.

The Trump administration has hinted at targeting China’s financial system as part of its ramped-up sanctions campaign, dubbed “Operation Economic Outcast”, though analysts are sceptical that Washington will risk provoking Beijing’s ire as the sides seek to lower the temperature in their trade war before a scheduled summit between Xi and Trump on September 24.

“The legitimate question is why third countries should be expected to adopt Washington’s unilateral economic policy towards another sovereign state,” said Zichen Wang, deputy secretary-general of the Center for China and Globalization (CCG) think tank in Beijing.

“That does not, however, mean that Beijing will provide Tehran with a blank cheque,” Wang said.

“China is likely to continue opposing US secondary sanctions politically and to defend what it considers legitimate Chinese commercial interests. But past behaviour also shows that major Chinese banks and state-owned companies are highly conscious of sanctions exposure.”

Rhetoric versus reality

Even as Beijing and Tehran have forged closer ties, their relations have for years been marked by a substantial gap between rhetoric and reality.

While China pledged to invest up to $400bn in Iran over 25 years as part of a “comprehensive strategic partnership agreement” signed in 2021, few projects have materialised amid what analysts say is Chinese firms’ reluctance to navigate sanctions and the opaque Iranian bureaucracy.

In 2023, Iran’s then deputy economy minister, Ali Fekri, complained that he was “not satisfied” with China’s level of investment since the agreement, saying it had only amounted to about $185m.

“Iranian experts often blame their government for not doing enough to attract Chinese investors or not pushing Chinese companies to share more technology,” said Andrea Ghiselli, head of research at the ChinaMed Project.

“However, the reality is that there is no point for Chinese companies to give up their ties with the international financial system to expand their business in Iran,” Ghiselli said.

“It is much easier and more profitable to trade and invest elsewhere. Iran’s own domestic physical and bank infrastructure is also an obstacle.”

Meanwhile, the most tangible measure of China’s economic support, purchases of Iranian oil, has been dwindling amid the US blockade of Iranian ports.

Iranian crude exports via the Strait of Hormuz, mostly bound for China, fell from an estimated 1.85 million barrels per day (bpd) in March-April to just 240,000bpd in August, according to data from ship-tracking platform Kpler, though millions more barrels shipped before the blockade are still at sea.

In an interview with CNBC on Monday, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said “only” about 30 million barrels of Iranian oil remained on the water and Chinese remittances to Iran were “going to run out”.

Kpler last month estimated that about 80 million barrels were in on-water shortage, enough to provide revenues to Tehran for up to six months.

“For China, Iran is valuable – but replaceable across many dimensions. Iranian oil matters, but China can obtain energy from Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iraq, the UAE, and numerous other suppliers,” said Mordechai Chaziza, an expert on China’s Middle East policy who lectures at Ashkelon Academic College in Israel.

“Iran offers geopolitical access, but China possesses relationships throughout the region. Iran supports China’s multipolar agenda, but so do many other states.”

China’s support for Iran is also not risk-free for Beijing, given its important relationships with Iranian rivals such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, Chaziza said.

“Saudi Arabia and the UAE are major energy and commercial partners.

“Gulf stability is vital because China obtains roughly half of its crude imports from the Middle East,” he added.

The “ideal outcome” for Beijing, Chaziza said, would be “a stable, sovereign, economically connected, and internationally non-Western” Iran, but not one “whose confrontation with Washington, Israel, or the Gulf monarchies forces China to choose sides”.

Wang, at the CCG, said that while Beijing appears determined to defend Chinese commercial interests, it is unlikely to sacrifice its broader interests in the region or elsewhere.

Beijing’s warning that it is ready to take countermeasures against unilateral sanctions is “not the same thing as promising to underwrite the Iranian economy”, Wang added.

For China, Iran is seen more as a customer than an ally, said Kerri Bitsoff, a former senior official at the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control.

“I don’t think this is the alliance some people think it is, even though there’s real support. I think of a more like a customer relationship that Iran can’t walk away from,” Bitsoff said.

“And it was good for China – they got cheap oil, they got a US tied up in the Middle East, but I think that only lasts up until the point where it threatens China’s other interests,” she added.

UN watchdog says Syria ‘failed to report nuclear material, facilities and activities’ under Bashar al-Assad’s rule.

The United Nations nuclear watchdog has confirmed that Syria tried to construct a nuclear reactor in the eastern province of Deir Az Zor under ousted former President Bashar al-Assad.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), in a confidential report seen by news agencies on Tuesday, said it visited several sites in Syria in August and carried out verification work.

Based on observations at the Deir Az Zor site, the agency said it confirms “that the cooling infrastructure which has now been uncovered is consistent with that of a nuclear reactor”. The agency said it would continue to monitor the activities at the site “as the excavation work progresses”.

Syria was believed to have operated an extensive undeclared nuclear programme under al-Assad that included a nuclear reactor built by North Korea in Deir Az Zor.

The site only became public knowledge after Israel launched air strikes in 2007 that destroyed the facility. Syria later levelled the site and never responded fully to the IAEA’s questions about it.

Israel is believed to have its own undeclared atomic weapons programme that makes it the only country in the Middle East with nuclear bombs. Israel neither confirms nor denies having atomic weapons.

Following al-Assad’s removal in early December 2024, the new government agreed to give IAEA inspectors access to suspected former nuclear sites.

The agency took samples at the site in 2024 and reported last year that they contained uranium particles.

In its Tuesday report, the IAEA said it was also able to “establish that the former Syrian authorities had failed to report nuclear material, facilities and activities”.

Besides the nuclear reactor under construction at Deir Az Zor, the IAEA listed a fuel fabrication plant, where the nuclear fuel for the reactor was manufactured, and a location where the nuclear fuel, as well as uranium scrap and waste, were stored.

During the visit to Syria, IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi and a team of senior inspectors also visited a previously undeclared site.

The new Syrian administration notified the agency of the site’s existence in a July 17 letter and invited the IAEA “to cooperate with the Syrian authorities in the inspection and verification of the site and of any nuclear material to be potentially found”.

The IAEA said in its report that this new site contained “natural uranium metal in the form of fuel rods with cladding”.

The agency verified the material and confirmed “the presence of around 73 tonnes of natural uranium metal”. The agency reported that “all of this nuclear material is currently subject to Agency containment and surveillance measures”.

The new Syrian authorities have also expressed an interest in developing a civilian nuclear energy programme and said any nuclear material found in the country would remain in Syria’s custody under international safeguards.

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – Smoke from forest and peatland fires burning across Indonesia has pushed air quality in parts of Malaysian Borneo to hazardous levels, triggering a surge in respiratory illness and forcing the cancellation of outdoor Independence Day celebrations.

The smoke – drifting from fires in Kalimantan in the Indonesian portion of the island of Borneo – has settled over the Malaysian state of Sarawak, on the same island, for much of August. It has also reached peninsular Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore.

It is the region’s worst haze episode since 2015, when fires in Indonesia exposed tens of millions of people to toxic smoke and caused more than 500,000 people to suffer respiratory ailments.

On Tuesday, six areas in Sarawak recorded hazardous air quality, with readings above 300 on Malaysia’s Air Pollutant Index. Anything above 100 is considered unhealthy. In Kuching, the state capital, the index hit 407, while in Serian, a town close to the Kalimantan border, it hit 408.

Mia Emylia Hassan, 33, a mother of two in Kuching, said the smell of smoke was inescapable.

“The air here is very thick,” she said. “It smells like smoke, and it’s just white all over.” Visibility from her house, she said, had dropped to about a kilometre, or roughly half a mile. “We have not seen blue sky for over a month,” she said.

The haze arrived in early August, shortly after her 10-month-old daughter came home from the hospital after a lung infection. “She’s not healing properly because her lungs are still developing,” Hassan said. “She’s been on medication this whole month, and she has been coughing and vomiting.”

Twice, the family has had to rush the infant back to the emergency room because she could not breathe.

“It’s a mini heart attack for us every time,” Hassan said.

Asthma cases surge

Malaysia’s Ministry of Health has reported a sharp rise in illness nationwide. During the week of August 23 to 29, asthma cases climbed to 1,811, up from 219 the previous week, the ministry said on Saturday, while conjunctivitis cases also rose to 720, from 146.

In peninsular Malaysia, Karen-Michaela Tan, an asthma patient who lives near the capital, Kuala Lumpur, said that a week after the haze thickened, she was “wheezing audibly” and “breathless when climbing stairs”. The 52-year-old said she needed two nebuliser treatments back to back to stop the wheezing, along with a heavy dose of steroids.

“Doctors are erring on the side of caution when it comes to asthma patients, choosing to up dosages rather than risk a patient being hospitalised for shortness of breath,” she said.

Her house is sealed, and two purifiers run continuously. Still, “I battle throat scratchiness and nasal dryness even with these measures”, she said.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), a regional bloc, has activated a Level 3 transboundary haze alert – its highest – for the southern part of the region. The alert signals a high risk of severe cross-border haze. ASEAN cited an increase in fire hotspots and prolonged dry weather, fuelled by an intensifying El Nino weather pattern.

The toxic smoke has forced Sarawak to cancel its outdoor Independence Day celebrations on Monday, and officials warned that worse restrictions could follow. Any area where readings cross 500 will be placed under a local emergency, and all public and private offices will be closed, the deputy premier, Douglas Uggah Embas, told reporters. “Only essential services will be allowed to operate,” he added.

In Kuala Lumpur, where skies were grey for most of the month, the haze thinned enough to reveal blue sky for the first time in a week, just as the Independence Day parade got under way early in the morning.

Schools, too, have been hit hard. Under Ministry of Education rules, outdoor activities are suspended when the index reaches 100, and schools must close at 200. On August 20 and 21, nearly 600 schools in and around Kuching shut, affecting some 200,000 primary and secondary students. And on August 28, 30 more schools in Sarawak closed, keeping more than 4,000 children at home.

This week, schools are closed for the Independence Day holiday.

Youth sport has been affected, too. Yap Kai Jinn, 31, a coach at Square One Football, a Kuala Lumpur academy, said the club had cancelled all training sessions and matches since last week.

“Along with our parents, we decided that it is not healthy; it is not safe for our players to play under these conditions,” he said. “For now, we are looking for an enclosed area to do sessions, and for outdoor, we have to wait and hope that the weather gets better.”

Fires surge in West Kalimantan

The toll of the haze has been far heavier in Indonesia.

The country’s deputy health minister, Dante Saksono Harbuwono, told reporters on Monday that some 13,500 people were treated for respiratory infections in July and August, while about 5.5 million people on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra have been directly exposed to smoke.

Borneo is the world’s third-largest island and is divided between Indonesia, which controls the southern two-thirds as Kalimantan; Malaysia, whose states of Sarawak and Sabah run along the north; as well as the sultanate of Brunei.

According to the Indonesian government, fires between January and July burned more than 200,000 hectares (about 494,000 acres), an area three times the size of Indonesia’s capital, Jakarta, across Borneo and Sumatra. Nearly 95,000 hectares (about 235,000 acres) burned in July alone.

And despite efforts to control the blazes, the fires continue to surge in parts of Indonesian Borneo.

Hotspots in West Kalimantan nearly doubled on Monday, rising by 3,553 to 7,377, while the number of active fires rose by 88 to 104, and visibility fell below a kilometre, said Berton Panjaitan, an official at Indonesia’s National Disaster Mitigation Agency. In Central Kalimantan, hotspots declined by 147 to 5,244, while fire spots increased by 16 to 72, he said.

Cities in Kalimantan have recorded hazardous air, too.

Readings in Palangkaraya in Central Kalimantan reached 780 on Monday on the air quality index used by IQAir, a Swiss company that monitors pollution data. Pontianak in West Kalimantan reached 593.

The fires are largely set on purpose, analysts say, with plantation companies and smallholders alike burning rainforest and carbon-rich peatland to clear ground for palm oil, farming, and pulp and paper production. The practice is illegal, and Indonesian police said last week that they had arrested 72 people suspected of setting recent fires.

Super El Nino

Researchers warned people in Southeast Asia to brace for a long fire season.

El Nino – the naturally occurring pattern that shifts winds, air pressure and rainfall worldwide – appears headed for “super” strength, said Helena Varkkey, a specialist on transboundary haze at Universiti Malaya.

In Southeast Asia, she said, “the intensifying El Nino means hotter and drier conditions”, so “any fires that happen will have a bigger and longer regional impact”.

Jayaprakash Muralitharan, a Malaysian atmospheric scientist, said the worst was still ahead.

Haze conditions are “going to be severe and longer, because the hot weather started much earlier last year”, he said. “El Nino came in and made conditions drier. Now you have the extreme drying of the peatland.”

And peat can make fires stubborn, he said. What looks extinguished on the surface can smoulder underground for weeks and flare up again, and nothing short of sustained rain will soak the soil enough to put it out.

Until the rains arrive, Muralitharan said, there is little to be done.

“Human intervention now is only a temporary solution. It would go on until end of September or October when the rain comes in. I hope that rain comes in by then.”

Leaders of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), including Chinese President Xi Jinping, his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, are set to gather in Kyrgyzstan’s capital Bishkek for an annual summit.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian is also attending the summit, which marks 25 years of its existence.

The two-day summit, starting on Monday, comes at a time when the world is grappling with the aftermath of the US-Israel war on Iran, which has upended global energy and financial markets, and the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war.

So, what will be the main agenda of the summit, and will the SCO leaders try to use the gathering to push for a multipolar world and Global South cooperation on trade and security issues, as United States President Donald Trump’s unilateral foreign policy has eroded the global rules-based order?

Here’s what we know:

Who is attending the SCO summit and where is it being held?

This year’s summit is taking place in Bishkek under the motto: Together for Sustainable Peace, Development and Prosperity.

Xi, Putin and Modi will be joined by the Iranian president and leaders of Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, among others.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Secretary-General Kao Kim Hourn are also expected to attend the summit.

William Yang, senior analyst for Northeast Asia at the International Crisis Group, noted that the ongoing wars are putting more strain on the rules-based international order, and against this backdrop, the summit serves as an important occasion for several of the world’s rising great powers, including China and India, to elevate their global influence and deepen their engagement and cooperation with other countries in the Global South.

“For years, SCO has been viewed as one of the avenues for China to promote the multipolar world order and form its own bloc with other developing countries. Despite its narrow scope of cooperation at the beginning, SCO member states have sought to expand the scope of their mandate and the number of member states,” Yang told Al Jazeera.

Amid the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East and Europe, Yang said, “China could use this year’s summit to present itself as a great power that advocates for a peaceful resolution of the conflicts, thereby sharpening the contrast with the US.”

“However, these efforts are likely to be limited to rhetoric rather than any substantive proposal for conflict resolution,” he said.

Alicia Garcia-Herrero, chief economist for Asia Pacific at French investment bank Natixis, said the summit is particularly significant because it marks the grouping’s 25th anniversary and offers the first chance to turn last year’s Tianjin strategy, which called for a multipolar world order that fosters mutually beneficial international cooperation, into action. Last year’s summit took place in China’s Tianjin region.

“Putting Modi, Putin and Xi in the same room, with India-China border talks still live and a scheduled Modi-Putin bilateral, is a visible test of how far the recent thaw goes and how Eurasia wants to organise security, connectivity and trade without defaulting to Western institutions,” she told Al Jazeera, referring to the recent India-China talks amid the warming up of New Delhi-Beijing ties.

What is the SCO?

The SCO started in 1996 as a security bloc, dubbed the “Shanghai Five”. It was formed by China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to settle their border disputes following the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union.

But in June 2001, the grouping evolved into the SCO, and expanded to include Uzbekistan, with headquarters in Beijing. In 2017, the bloc expanded to include India and Pakistan. Iran and Belarus were also added as full members in 2023 and 2024, respectively.

In addition, the organisation has 14 key dialogue partners, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt, Turkiye, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Cambodia.

SCO member states account for 43 percent of the world’s population and 23 percent – or almost a quarter – of the global economy.

Analysts have pointed out that while the SCO emerged with a focus on regional security, the expansion of its mandate to include trade and other Global South concerns means it is difficult to understand what sets the grouping apart from other Global South organisations like the BRICS, which is an acronym derived from the initials of the founding member countries, Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

Alejandro Reyes, adjunct professor in the department of politics and public administration at the University of Hong Kong, said the SCO has grown into a “counterbalance” to the US-led Asia Pacific alliance aimed at countering China’s rise. India is part of both groupings. “Interestingly, India is part of the SCO, and the US appears to have dropped the Indo-Pacific nomenclature,” he said.

Reyes emphasised that “the SCO is not a coherent anti-US, anti-Western alliance”. “It is better understood as a forum in which countries with very different interests can demonstrate that they have alternatives and strategic room for manoeuvre – agency in this more volatile geopolitical order, dominated by China and the US. It is less an anti-American alliance than a venue for countries hedging against and hinging away from American power,” he told Al Jazeera.

“The significance this year is that current US policies, especially with regard to Iran and continuing US tariff and sanctions action, may be making that hedging more attractive and necessary,” he added.

What is on this year’s agenda?

The US-Israel war on Iran, the Russia-Ukraine war and the economic and social situation in Afghanistan are key issues leaders are expected to discuss this year, according to the SCO Secretariat.

Relations between India and China – Asia’s two major economies – are also expected to be discussed. Last year, Beijing and New Delhi began a rapprochement after five years of tensions over a 2020 deadly border skirmish. Trump’s tariff war on Indian goods last year forced New Delhi to mend ties with Beijing. For the first time since 2018, Modi visited China last year for the SCO summit.

Border tensions between India and Pakistan also persist, and the issue is expected to be discussed at this summit.

Manoj Kewalramani, chairperson of Bengaluru-based think tank Takshashila Institution’s Geostrategy Programme, told Al Jazeera that apart from the traditional security agenda, this year’s summit might include any forward movement on issues of economic integration or financial cooperation architecture.

“In Tianjin, we had the agreement on establishing the SCO Development Bank,” Kewalramani said.

“The Kyrgyz leadership has said that its priority will be to move the needle on the bank, the SCO Development Fund and SCO Investment Fund,” he said, adding that while talks have reportedly been taking place in this direction, there is no clarity on whether any agreements will be announced at this year’s summit.

According to the SCO Secretariat, economic connectivity will be a key topic the group will discuss as the US and Israel’s war on Iran continues to paralyse key maritime routes like the Strait of Hormuz, which has upended global supply chains, the energy market and financial markets.

The group is expected to discuss new trade and transport corridors, such as the 7,200km (4,474-mile) International North-South Transport Corridor, which links the Russian port city of St Petersburg with India’s financial capital, Mumbai, through Iran and ports on the Gulf.

Herrero pointed out that with Modi and Putin scheduled to hold a bilateral meeting, discussions on the Northern Sea Route, which runs through the Arctic coast, are also expected. China last month announced a new shipping route through the Arctic Ocean, aimed at easing global trade amid the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and attacks in the Bab al-Mandeb in the Red Sea, which will pass through the Northern Sea Route.

According to Indian media reports, Moscow and New Delhi could negotiate the use of the Northern Sea Route by India as the crisis in West Asia continues to affect trade routes.

The SCO will also seek to establish a network of Silk Road stations to support international freight traffic across Eurasia.

Can the SCO agree on all issues?

The Eurasian grouping has often been unable to agree on global geopolitical issues.

For instance, Russia has been able to get most SCO members to align with its interests when it comes to its war in Ukraine, but India has attempted to play a more balanced role – seeking peace and stronger ties with Ukraine, while also buying record levels of oil from Russia.

But this year, Ukraine is expected to feature in discussions, with Turkiye’s Erdogan and Russia’s Putin holding bilateral talks on the matter, according to a Kremlin aide. Europe’s deadliest war since World War II is in its fifth year.

Yury Ushakov, Putin’s foreign policy adviser, said the meeting would take place on the sidelines of the SCO summit.

“There are many issues to discuss. Of course, these include the situation in the Black Sea and the Ukraine issue in general,” he told reporters, referring to the rise in attacks in the Black Sea.

The SCO has, however, taken a more collective position on the US-Israel war on Iran and Israel’s genocidal actions in Palestine.

In March, the SCO condemned the US-Israel war on Iran. “The SCO member states considered the use of force as unacceptable and advocate for the resolution of existing differences exclusively by peaceful means, based on dialogue, mutual respect, and taking into account the legitimate interests of all parties, in accordance with the norms of international law and the principles of the UN Charter,” it said in a statement.

India, which has strong ties with Israel, had refused to endorse an SCO joint statement condemning Israel for its attack on Iran in June 2025.

Iranian President Pezeshkian is also scheduled to meet Putin on the sidelines of the summit, according to Iran’s official IRNA news agency. Russia is a close ally of Iran and the two countries cooperate on defence issues. China has emerged as Iran’s biggest economic lifeline as it buys more than 80 percent of its crude oil. Moscow and Beijing have also lent diplomatic cover to Tehran at the UN.

Frictions also exist on how the group views border tensions between India and Pakistan. New Delhi has repeatedly called on the organisation to condemn “cross-border terrorism”, for which it blames Islamabad, a close economic and defence ally of China.

Last July, India demanded that the grouping condemn the April 2025 attack by armed men in Indian-administered Kashmir, in which 26 people were killed. Pakistan has also blamed India for armed attacks inside its territory.

During the Tianjin summit, the bloc condemned “terror” attacks in both India and Pakistan, taking a more balanced position on the issue.

What are Russia, China and India going to gain at the summit?

Reyes from the University of Hong Kong pointed out that all eyes will also be on Russia, China and India.

“For China, the SCO is partly about institution-building. Beijing wants to demonstrate that it can convene a large part of Eurasia around an agenda of security, connectivity, trade and development, while promoting a more multipolar, agentic international order. It also reinforces China’s increasingly important economic position in Central Asia, a strategically key region of the Eurasia landmass,” he said.

“For Russia, the summit is an opportunity to show that it is not isolated internationally. Maintaining strong relationships with China, India, Iran and Central Asia is economically and diplomatically important, given the Ukraine war and Western and other sanctions. But Moscow also has an interest in preserving its own influence in Eurasia rather than simply becoming more and more dependent on China.

“India is in an intriguing position. Modi’s participation is not an indication that India is joining the China-Russia axis, such as it is. India itself describes its SCO priorities as ‘security, connectivity and opportunity’. That is much more consistent with India’s longstanding pursuit of strategic autonomy – its agency amid the great-power rivalry,” Reyes explained.

He added that New Delhi wants “access and influence in Central Asia, continued relations with Russia [from which it buys the bulk of its defence equipment], and a mechanism for managing its difficult but gradually stabilising relationship with China”.

“At the same time, New Delhi maintains important relations with Washington, including through the Quad security arrangement.

“So China and Russia may see the SCO partly as an instrument for building a less US-dominated international order. India, meanwhile, sees it more as one of several overlapping platforms through which it can maximise its own agency.”

What does all this mean to the US?

As part of his unilateral foreign policy vision, Trump has undermined the Western-led international order and lashed out at Global South blocs, such as BRICS, which he sees as a threat to the US’s economic dominance. He has called the grouping “anti-American”.

However, Kewalramani noted that the Trump administration has continued some of its predecessors’ approaches and deepened engagement with countries in the region where this year’s SCO is being hosted, especially with the C5 or Central Asian countries of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

“Joe Biden had established a leader-level meeting mechanism with C5 countries in 2023. Trump also hosted them in DC in November 2025. [US Secretary of State] Marco Rubio and subsequently Trump are expected to visit the region later [this] year. Kazakhstan has announced accession to the Abraham Accords, becoming the first Central Asian state to join [the Trump-led diplomatic efforts to cajole Muslim countries to recognise Israel]. The US has been engaged with the region on critical minerals and other business deals,” he said.

“In other words, C5 members are also adopting a diversified diplomatic approach, seeking to balance China and Russia’s dominance,” he noted.

“But the fact that you are witnessing these countries meeting with far more purpose to think about alternative financial and energy architectures is a reflection of the limitations of the US’s disruptive foreign policy,” Kewalramani added.

Herrero said for the US, the SCO summit is a reminder that countries like India will keep practising strategic autonomy: it will sit in the Quad and buy US defence equipment while also talking to Moscow and Beijing in a China-heavy forum.

The Quad or Quadrilateral Security Dialogue was established by India, Japan, Australia and the US in 2007 to counter China’s growing influence in the Asia Pacific region. Over the past quarter-century, India has grown closer to the US and its allies, amid shared concerns over Beijing’s rise.

Reyes warned that Washington should be careful not to read the SCO as a consolidated anti-US coalition, even though China, Russia and Iran are members.

“The differences among China, Russia and India are far too substantial to substantiate that label. The more important message is that American economic and geopolitical pressure can sometimes produce convergence among countries that otherwise might disagree with one another more,” he said.

“The SCO’s criticism of unilateral economic measures is significant in that respect. China and Russia explicitly want a less US-dominated international order. India does not necessarily share that objective, but it does want a world in which Washington cannot dictate its foreign-policy choices.”

Coral reefs make up just 1 percent of ocean coverage, but host a quarter of all life in the sea.

Coral reefs are experiencing bleaching events so frequently that they no longer have time to recover before the next one strikes, scientists have warned.

Global coral cover is now well below ⁠normal levels and at risk of irreversible decline, the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network (GCRMN) said in a report released on Monday.

“If we give them enough time, they ‌have the capacity to recover,” lead author Manuel Gonzalez Rivero said. “But we haven’t seen that amount of time being allowed. In fact, the frequency of those bleaching events has pretty much doubled.”

Bleaching occurs when corals expel the colourful algae living in their tissues. Without this algae, they become vulnerable to starvation and disease. Bleached coral are not dead, but they need time in cooler water to recover.

“We had 40 years of coral cover around the world that had remained relatively unchanged until 2010,” said Gonzalez Rivero, a scientist at the Australian Institute of Marine Science. “Since 2010, there has ⁠been a very steep change.”

The latest bleaching in 2023 was the most extensive on record, impacting 77 percent of the world’s coral reef areas.

Rivero warned that another such event is “very likely” this year given elevated temperatures globally.

Coral reefs are critical barometers for global ocean health, supporting more than 25 percent of all marine life despite covering less than 1 percent of the ocean floor.

The GCRMN’s warning came as organisers of the annual Pacific Islands Forum announced that at least five leaders of the 18-nation group will skip the group’s summit.

The forum has been touted for decades as a symbol of regional unity, and is used to discuss pressing matters facing Pacific states, including climate change and ocean health.

Washington has recently stepped up efforts to economically pressure Tehran amid the deadlocked truce talks.

Washington plans to impose sanctions on another bank this week as it steps up its campaign to economically isolate Tehran amid the deadlocked truce talks, the US Treasury chief has said.

In an interview with The Associated Press news agency on Sunday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent declined to name the bank to be targeted by sanctions.

The announcement comes just days after Washington said it would cut off the United Arab Emirates’s operations of Basque Misr from the US financial system after accusing Egypt’s second-biggest bank of doing business with the Iranian government.

“This is going to be financial violence if we have to,” Bessent told AP on Sunday. “We are showing people that we know who you are, you know who you are, and this has got to stop.”

⁠In an interview with the Reuters news agency, Bessent said the next step may be cutting off an institution entirely from the dollar-based financial system.

“You’re going ⁠to see a lot ⁠more of these every week,” he said on Sunday, ahead of a Group of 20 finance leaders ⁠meeting in Asheville, North Carolina. “We’re starting with the banks, and we’re telling ⁠the banks it’s not OK ⁠to have Iranian money and to aid the regime.”

The US has stepped up efforts to economically pressure Tehran to submit to Washington’s demands, a campaign dubbed “Operation Economic Outcast”, amid the stalled truce talks between both parties.

Last week, the Treasury Department imposed new sanctions on nearly 60 individuals and entities that Washington accused of being part of networks helping Iran generate oil revenue, procure weapons and conduct cyber-operations.

Iran, however, has rejected the latest US sanctions, with Minister of Finance and Economic Affairs Ali Madanizadeh saying they will fail.

Violence in the conflict resumed on Sunday, the first time since late July, with Iran launching missiles at two US bases in Jordan following a US attack on Larak Island in southern Iran.

Cooperation against Iran

Bessent is preparing to host the meeting of the G20’s finance leaders, where he will huddle individually with his counterparts from the world’s major and developing economies to encourage cooperation against Iran.

The US Treasury chief also told AP that he would speak to his Chinese counterparts at the meeting and “all options are on the table” in terms of sanctioning Beijing for its continued trade with Tehran. 

But he rejected the idea that the US was reluctant to confront China, calling it “a completely false narrative that the media picked up on”.

He insisted that Beijing and Washington agreed on the need to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.