Business and Economy

Nothing much stays with me from the first days of Twitter, which was publicly launched 20 years ago, on July 15, 2006.

I had discovered the internet back in 1995 and early on, I started thinking about how to get my voice heard by the world. I created a couple of websites through Angelfire and 8m, but there was no real ecosystem to nurture the idea. It’s like opening a shop to sell a certain product in a remote area – somewhere nobody really knows, at a time when there’s no interest – compared with opening that same shop in a mall, or on a street full of other vendors.

MySpace was another opening, but the idea was not yet ripe. Facebook came with a spark – and then we got Twitter.

“It’s like having your own breaking news platform, you’ll set your own agenda,” I remember one of my colleagues at the BBC, where I used to work, saying at the time.

It didn’t take me long to sign up. I cannot recall whether I tweeted immediately or not, yet what happened afterwards helped frame my future as an international journalist.

Twitter’s first defining moment for me was 2009’s Green Revolution in Iran, when I and others followed how the platform shaped the discourse in a way that differed completely from traditional media. We were not new to citizen journalism; a few years earlier, Salam Pax emerged as the first ever famous war blogger, presenting his distinctive view of the US-led invasion of Iraq through his individual blog. A few years later, tens of thousands of Salams have appeared – and I’m one of them.

Going through my early timeline, I see that I was tweeting randomly – an earthquake in Japan, an election in Lebanon, an explosion in Somalia, and so on. Then came the Arab Spring. Just as with many in the world, this was the moment that shaped my Twitter presence, and as I got involved in the coverage, I became well-positioned to post and attract followers.

My coverage of the Libyan revolution in March 2011 introduced me to many people and gave me a better understanding of what was happening. I was based in Sallum, a village on the Egyptian side of the Libyan border, without a connection of my own. I fed a colleague back in Cairo a sentence at a time over a crackling Thuraya satellite phone, and he typed my words into the account that I could not reach. Its password lived on my friend’s head until days later, when I finally got my hands on a satellite dish.

Trips to Libya, Egypt, Syria, Somalia – all of it made Twitter part and parcel of my journalistic journey, and it also helped me build a parallel path writing for international outlets including Al-Monitor and The Sunday Times.

Yet still, there was something else that changed my direction. Until 2013, I was a journalist covering stories without specialisation – I used to report from Iran, like I do today, yet it was not my career the way it currently is. But then I became a bureau chief in Tehran and my knowledge began growing – and here, Twitter gave me another layer, widening my network day after day.

Personally, that specialisation gave the platform its finest hour for me. I broke developments out of Iran’s nuclear talks with world powers before the news agencies had finished their first draft, filing in Arabic and English within minutes of each other and announcing the agreement itself while other newsrooms were still working on their bulletins.

The war against ISIL (ISIS) followed, then a January 2020 morning near Baghdad airport when my sources told me the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’s Quds Force, Qassem Soleimani, and the deputy chief of Iraq’s Popular Mobilisation Forces, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, were in a convoy hit by a US air strike – and I was among the first to say so.

Twitter was never only a wire service for other people’s wars. I’ve “met” heads of state and celebrities on this platform – and for a moment we felt equals. I have made my scoops there, and I have made my hugest gaffes there, too. You act and you interact and you see the result immediately, backlash or praise. It’s like a daily journal, one that outlives you. I know of many, some friends, some colleagues, some people I only happened to follow, who left our world while their accounts are still there – for us, and for me – to return to for the memory or to get a piece of information.

It was also where, on the 100th anniversary of World War I, that I told the story of my great-grandfather, Ali Hashem, who went to the war and never returned; and of my grandfather Hussein, who was three when his father was summoned to the Ottoman army and never saw him again.

It was where colleagues at Al Jazeera, stationed in the north of Palestine, went looking for my family’s village on my behalf, for a cemetery nearly in ruins, for a great-grandmother’s grave that has never been found.

It became, eventually, the subject of my own academic work too, a master’s thesis on Twiplomacy, examining how a platform built for gossip and jokes quietly rewired the choreography of nations, with Iran’s nuclear diplomacy as my case study.

In the summer of 2023 – sensing where things were headed, as new owner Elon Musk decided to change Twitter’s name to X, and to tragically, if I may so, kill the famous and lovely blue bird that accompanied the journey many made with the platform, including myself – I posted five words.

“Someone buy Twitter and save the bird.” Alas, nobody did, and the bird disappeared from the icon, and the name went with it, replaced by a single letter that still sits wrong in my mouth. In Arabic or in English, the word that comes out of me, though, is still Twitter.

The United States carried out attacks against Iran for a third consecutive night late on Monday.

Iran has continued to hit targets in the Gulf in several waves of retaliatory strikes on Tuesday, including UAE‑flagged oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz and US military facilities in Bahrain and Kuwait.

Here is a recap of what has happened on Monday night and Tuesday, and what each side has said.

Where did the US attack Iran?

US Central Command, the military’s regional command known as CENTCOM, said its latest strikes began at 4:45pm ET (20:45 GMT) on Monday and were aimed at degrading Iran’s capacity to attack “innocent civilians and commercial shipping” in the strait.

CENTCOM later announced the conclusion of its strikes and said the latest round of attacks on Iran lasted five hours. It added that US forces “successfully struck military targets across Iran including Bushehr, Chah Bahar, Jask, Konarak, Abu Musa, and Bandar Abbas”.

Iranian state television and semi-official news agencies reported explosions throughout the night across the country’s southern coast, including the port city of Bandar Abbas, and on Kish and Qeshm islands, as well as the town of Jam in Bushehr province.

A projectile that struck western Bandar Abbas caused no casualties, the Fars news agency reported, citing the regional governor’s office.

What areas did Iran target?

For its part, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said it had launched a wider retaliatory campaign against US allies and interests across the Gulf.

Iran’s Tasnim news agency reported that Iranian forces had struck several “violating” vessels in the strait, and that a US-made drone had been shot down near Bandar Abbas.

The UAE: The UAE said two of its oil tankers had been hit by Iranian cruise missiles in Omani waters in the Strait of Hormuz. The UAE added that one Indian national crew member had been killed on one of the tankers, and eight other people were wounded.

Iran’s Tasnim news agency said the IRGC hit two “offending” oil supertankers, citing an IRGC statement – apparently referring to the two UAE tankers.

Kuwait: The Iranian army said on Monday that it had carried out a drone attack on US military targets in Kuwait. In a statement posted by state broadcaster IRIB, the army said it launched drones at a US Patriot missile system, fuel tanks, a watchtower, an ammunition depot and communication systems.

Bahrain: The IRGC said it targeted “several weapons storage depots, a satellite communications centre, and a building housing US forces” at al-Juffair Base in Bahrain. It also said it had hit the US Fifth Fleet in Bahrain with missiles and drones.

Air sirens have been heard four times in Bahrain on Tuesday so far.

Jordan: Jordan’s army said it shot down four missiles in Jordanian airspace that were fired from Iran, according to the official Petra news agency. After this, the IRGC said it launched ballistic missiles at US forces and key facilities at an airbase in Jordan.

In a message addressed directly to Jordanians, the IRGC insisted that the operation was aimed at the US military presence in the country rather than at Jordan or its citizens. “You know that we hold no animosity toward your country. On the contrary, we deeply love you, the noble people. You understand the pain and suffering of the Palestinian people better than any other nation, and you are aware of the crimes of the Zionist regime in the massacre of 70,000 Palestinians, including 20,000 children in Gaza, carried out with the direct involvement of the United States,” it said.

What have the US and Iran said?

US President Donald Trump formally notified Congress on July 10 that fighting with Iran had resumed on July 7, invoking his authority to keep US forces in combat for another 60 days without lawmakers’ approval.

At a news conference on Monday, Trump said Iran’s offensive capabilities were being dismantled, but he still thinks a “deal is possible” despite the return to open fighting.

Trump also repeated an earlier demand that Gulf nations help cover the cost of protecting shipping, saying Washington was “protecting a very rich portion of the world” and expected to be paid for it.

On Monday, Trump also threatened to “take out” Kuh-e Kolang Gaz La, also known as Pickaxe Mountain, a suspected nuclear site near the Natanz uranium enrichment facility in central Iran.

Meanwhile, the US blockade on Iran, confirmed by the US Navy-led Joint Maritime Information Centre (JMIC), is due to begin at 20:00 GMT on Tuesday.

The US’s blockade covers Iran’s ports and terminals along the entire southern coastline, according to JMIC.

Ebrahim Azizi, the head of the Iranian Parliament’s National Security Committee, has warned that Iran remains steadfast in defending its red lines, following the formal introduction of a bill to manage the Strait of Hormuz.

In an X post on Tuesday, Azizi wrote: “Last night, coinciding with the downing of US drones, the ‘Strategic Action for the Security and Sustainable Progress of the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf’ bill was formally introduced in Iran’s Parliament. We remain steadfast in defending our red lines, particularly regarding the management of the Strait of Hormuz.”

What is happening to shipping in Hormuz?

Oil prices rose more than 9 percent on Monday, with Brent crude climbing to about $81 a barrel, its highest level since mid-June.

Kpler, the ship-tracking firm, said crossings through the strait fell by about 52 percent between July 10 and July 12, compared with the previous week.

Madrid, Spain – Badr Tmairi, 22, from Morocco, has spent six years living in Spain without legal status. He arrived at 16, alone, without his family. He held legal residency briefly after turning 18, but lost it when he failed to renew it in time.

“What I want is to get my papers back so I can work as a hairdresser and travel to visit my family in Morocco,” he said.

Tmairi is one of more than a million people who have now applied for regularisation under a new scheme that contrasts with a growing European trend against irregular immigration.

He has been homeless for the past year. Without documents, finding work and decent housing in Spain is difficult.

“It’s very encouraging to know that so many people submitted an application and are trying to regularise their situation, but that huge number is also proof that the state has failed in its duty to protect the most vulnerable,” Edith Espinola, president of the Active Domestic Workers’ Service Association (SEDOAC) and spokesperson for the Regularizacion Ya (Regularisation Now), told Al Jazeera.

Regularizacion Ya, a collective made up of migrants, has led the push for regularisation since 2020. The measure grew out of a broad social consensus and has been backed by civil society organisations, the Catholic Church, trade unions and business associations.

Living without legal status, Espinola said, condemns people to social exclusion, as it has for Tmairi. Without rights or protection from abuse, they are unaligned with most of the rest of the population.

The new initiative, Spain’s first regularisation process since 2005, began in April and closed on June 30. The government now has three months to resolve the vast majority of the applications submitted.

Of the 1,174,978 applications, according to the Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration, only 11,000 have received a favourable resolution so far. About 608,000 have been accepted for processing, granting provisional residency and work permits until a final resolution.

‘All I want is to work’

Rocio Neciosupe, 54, is a Peruvian migrant who has spent two years without legal status in Spain. “Regularisation isn’t a handout; all I want is to work. To work without fear and with rights, so that if I fall and I’m sick, I don’t have to go to work that day and can still get paid, like anyone else,” she said.

Neciosupe, a cleaner in private homes, is busy across six different buildings around Madrid. But she is currently recovering from a back injury sustained in a fall at work. Without documents or a contract, she has no right to sick leave.

Unable to afford to lose her income while she recovers, her husband accompanies her to work each day and helps her with tasks she cannot manage alone.

Rocio, her husband and their two daughters, aged 22 and 17, have all had their regularisation applications accepted for processing and are now awaiting a favourable resolution.

“I want to support the country I live in, and if the country grows, we grow too,” Neciosupe added.

It is precisely in the contribution and growth potential of people like her that the Spanish government has framed its case for the measure.

“By 2050, Spain’s GDP would be 19 percent lower, 90,000 bars would close, 50,000 classrooms would shut and 220,000 farms would disappear,” Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said recently in a public address.

Gonzalo Fanjul, director of ISGlobal’s policy and development team and head of Research at the porCausa Foundation, said: “If you look at what’s happening in the United States, there are already estimates of the impact of the government’s violent, hostile anti-migration policies. Whole economic sectors are struggling to keep functioning.”

One of those sectors is care work. With an ageing population, Spain needs trained workers to fill positions in that sector, among others.

Josselyn Aguirre, 32, is one of those workers. A nursing assistant, she migrated from Ecuador to Spain in 2024. Her original plan had been to move to the United States, but her visa application was rejected.

“My goal is to stay and help older people. I really enjoy working with them,” she said.

“Here, in my country and in other countries around the world, this sector is collapsing due to a shortage of staff. That’s why I believe that being able to regularise your status and contribute as a professional benefits everyone,” she told Al Jazeera.

Migrants and refugees who applied for regularisation had already been living in Spain, working in the informal economy for years; 57 percent are men, most come from Latin American countries, and six out of 10 are below the age of 34.

So far, 159,097 additional people have registered with the Social Security system as a result of the regularisation process.

With this measure, “Spain has made a bet on growth. We’re going to be a country of 50 million people,” Fanjul said. “But it’s not enough.”

Amid a European political climate in which anti-migration rhetoric appears to be gaining ground, Spain’s approach shows another path is possible, though “regularisation is only the beginning”, Fanjul said.

“The system has been reset, but none of the underlying reasons that brought us to this point have been resolved.

“For the state to open up legal, safe and orderly channels for labour mobility is simply common sense,” he concluded.

Espinola is in no doubt.

Despite criticism from those opposed to the regularisation, she stressed, “We have come out stronger. The migrant community has once again shown its capacity for mutual support in difficult situations.”

The regularisation process is not yet over, she added: “We will remain vigilant to make sure the more than a million applications submitted are processed properly.”

The jailing of one of Indonesia’s most influential entrepreneurs in a controversial corruption case has raised fears of damage to investor confidence in Southeast Asia’s largest economy.

Nadiem Makarim, the cofounder of the popular super-app Gojek, was last month sentenced to 10 years in prison for allegedly abusing his authority while serving as the country’s education minister.

Makarim was found guilty of giving favourable treatment to Google, an early investor in Gojek, when procuring Chromebook laptops for schoolchildren during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Prosecutors argued that Makarim, who served as former Indonesian President Joko Widodo’s education minister from 2019 to 2024, inflicted state losses of $120m, alleging that he should have been aware the laptops would not work in remote areas with poor internet access.

Critics of the prosecution have argued that the case against Makarim lacks evidence and that the startup founder-turned-politician is the latest victim of a campaign of political retribution being waged by the administration of Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto.

Nicky Fahrizal, a researcher of politics and social change at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Jakarta, said foreign investors will inevitably think twice before committing capital to Indonesia following the verdict.

“The Nadiem case, along with a string of similar incidents, has served as a warning signal to investors,” Fahrizal told Al Jazeera.

“For them, non-economic factors, such as legal certainty and the quality of the judicial system, are absolute prerequisites.”

Makarim was found guilty by a panel of five judges on June 30, following charges related to the procurement of more than 1 million laptops intended for use in schools in remote and impoverished areas.

At the trial held at the Indonesian Court for Corruption Crimes in Jakarta, prosecutors alleged that Makarim deliberately tailored the tender specifications to favour Google, which invested in Aplikasi Karya Anak Bangsa (AKAB), Gojek’s then-parent company.

Scrutiny of the tender process first arose among the public after it emerged that the Chromebooks often did not work in remote areas, raising questions about how Google was chosen in the first place.

“Choosing a device that relies on an internet connection amid uneven infrastructure… demonstrates a mismatch with needs…” Judge Sunoto said during the sentencing.

Following the verdict, prosecutor Corneles Geeb Paulus hailed the outcome as a victory for “the schoolchildren whose rights were taken away and who were deprived of equitable access to digital education across Indonesia”.

Google has denied providing or offering authorities any inducements to win the tender.

The California-based tech giant, which has a market value of more than $4 trillion, was not indicted in the case.

“From a legal standpoint, authorities seem to have hit a wall in their efforts to secure sufficient evidence and establish the necessary criminal nexus to prosecute the corporation,” the CSIS’s Fahrizal said.

“From a political perspective, Google is a tech giant with immense business influence.”

Taking action against Google could have jeopardised the government’s ongoing digitalisation efforts, Fahrizal added, describing the company as “too big to fail” within the digital sector.

Trissia Wijaya, an Indonesian-born research fellow at the University of Melbourne’s Asia Institute, said Nadiem’s prosecution, coupled with the uncertainty of the business environment under Prabowo, would inevitably erode market confidence.

“Regardless of whether Nadiem is actually guilty or not, he is a symbol of startups and market optimism in Indonesia, especially in the mid-2010s,” Wijaya told Al Jazeera.

“When Gojek started booming and gaining traction, Indonesia was one of the main target countries for global investors, both from the US and China, to invest in the fintech industry,” Wijaya added, describing Indonesia’s business environment as being at a “critical juncture.”

Since taking office in 2024, Prabowo has faced criticism over his handling of the economy, including high levels of spending on public initiatives, such as his signature free lunch programme, which is expected to cost about $15bn this year.

In June, the Indonesian rupiah hit an all-time low against the US dollar, a nadir economic analysts partly attributed to investors’ scepticism about Prabowo’s populist economic policies.

For his part, Prabowo has denied that he is anti-business, while emphasising that Indonesia must uphold the rule of law.

“Some have claimed that I dislike foreign investors and will drive them away, but that is not the case. I have met many investors who are planning to enter the market,” Prabowo told a conference for young entrepreneurs in the city of Lampung last month.

“The government must create a favorable environment for entrepreneurs, including the enforcement of the law. If the law is not enforced, what ensues is the law of the jungle… law based on power, and in the end, that is not good for any of us.”

‘Credibility’ of government policies

Siwage Dharma Negara, a co-coordinator of the Indonesia studies programme at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore, said Indonesia’s reputation as an investment destination had already been in decline before the Makarim verdict.

“Investors are unsure about the credibility of government policies, and they are unsure about the credibility of institutions, whether executive, legislative, or judicial in Indonesia,” Negara told Al Jazeera.

“Nadiem’s case is only one factor that has damaged foreign investor confidence. But there are many other factors that contribute, including government policies that are increasingly less pro-market.”

Teguh Yudo Wicaksono, an economics lecturer at Universitas Islam Indonesia in Yogyakarta, said that although he does not expect the case to have much of an impact on foreign investment, it could deter Indonesian talent based overseas from returning home.

“This could result in a brain drain and Indonesia losing talent,” Wicaksono told Al Jazeera.

Makarim attended Harvard Business School and Brown University in the United States before returning to Indonesia in 2006 and cofounding Gojek four years later.

In 2019, Gojek, which began as a ride-hailing business before evolving into a super-app that also offers food delivery and digital payment services, became the first Indonesian tech company to achieve a valuation of more than $10bn.

Not all observers see the Makarim case as a negative for investor sentiment.

I Gusti Ngurah Bayu Pradana, an expert in business law at the Bali-based Malekat Hukum International Law Firm, said the enforcement of corruption law should be seen as a “positive signal for legal certainty and governance quality in a country, rather than a negative one”.

“Experienced foreign investors generally understand that the greatest risk in investing is not the existence of law enforcement, but rather, legal uncertainty, or a situation in which the rules of the game are unclear, legal processes lack transparency, or enforcement is selective and unpredictable,” Pradana told Al Jazeera.

While Makarim was found guilty of abusing authority and causing state losses, he was acquitted of an additional charge of directly seeking to enrich himself, and he was handed a lower sentence than the 18 years sought by the prosecution.

While reading the verdict, Judge Andi Saputra also presented a dissenting opinion, saying that he found “no evidence of malicious intent or malicious acts” and scant “causal connection or indication between the conflict of interest and the corporate crime”.

The Malekat Hukum law firm’s Pradana pointed to the judge’s dissenting view as evidence of the Indonesian judiciary’s independence and rigorous fact-finding.

“For foreign investors considering Indonesia as an investment destination, the takeaway from this case should not be alarm, but rather confidence that Indonesia’s legal system functions and can hold anyone accountable equally before the law,” Pradana said.

“So long as investment contracts are clearly drafted, business processes are conducted transparently, and implementation complies fully with applicable laws and regulations, investment in Indonesia remains a safe and promising choice.”

Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi is travelling to the United States for talks with President Donald Trump, in what will be his first foreign trip since taking office in May.

During this week’s meetings, al-Zaidi is expected to sign agreements in energy and trade while also boosting investment with US companies.

Iraqi government spokesman Haider al-Aboudi told reporters on Sunday the visit to Washington, DC, will mark a shift in the countries’ relations “from a framework of crisis management to a strategic economic partnership”.

The focus, he said, would not be about striking a “temporary” agreement but about establishing “a durable, long-term partnership that serves the shared interests of both countries”.

Al-Aboudi said oil would be “a top priority” during the visit as the Iraqi government seeks to increase production and find alternative export hubs to lessen the consequences of any future closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

Iraq was one of the countries badly hit by the shutting down of the critical waterway in recent months due to the US-Israel war on Iran, as about 90 percent of its 3.4 million barrels per day (bpd) of exports passes through it.

Al-Aboudi said Iraq’s proposal to establish an energy and development fund with the US would be on the table to finance any projects that would be agreed upon, especially in the energy sector.

Al-Zaidi had previously said the fund would initially be structured in oil exports of 500,000 bpd with the goal of increasing to as much as two million bpd.

The prime minister has also said Iraq seeks to increase oil production to seven million bpd over the next three years, up from its current output of about 4.5 million bpd.

“Iraq is in need of such kind of cooperation, especially with a partner like the United States to enhance and strengthen its capacity, particularly in the energy, oil, gas, electricity, and petrochemicals sectors,” said Abdulrahman Almashhadani, an Iraqi economic expert and professor.

“However, the critical question remains whether Iraq can provide a safe and stable environment that would encourage US companies to come to Iraq,” he said. “This issue is sensitive and unresolved; it largely depends on the government’s ability to deliver on its commitments to restrict weapons to state control.”

Large delegation

Sources told Al Jazeera the Iraqi delegation to the US comprises more than 70 people, including key ministers, the head of the central bank, the national security adviser, lawmakers and businessmen.

A well-informed source said meetings with US administration officials and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have also been planned. According to the source, who asked not to be named, Iraq is seeking to secure an IMF loan of up to $8bn.

A separate well-informed source told Al Jazeera that the disarming of pro-Iran Iraqi armed factions and restricting weapons under state authority, as well as Baghdad’s relationship with Tehran, are expected to be among the issues the US side will raise during the visit.

In his first speech in parliament as prime minister, al-Zaidi had promised that the state would have control over weapons in a country where paramilitary groups, including many supported by Iran, have been powerful since the 2003 US-led war on Iraq.

Some armed factions said they would abide by the prime minister’s declaration, but others – particularly the powerful ones that launched missiles and drones at US facilities during the war on Iran – rejected it.

In a statement released hours before al-Zaidi’s trip to Washington, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella group of Iran-backed armed groups in the region, including Iraq, rejected the prime minister’s visit and its outcomes.

“We will not give a blank cheque for all government policies. We warn against replacing military occupation with an economic occupation that is even more dangerous,” the statement said.

“The option of defending Iraq and its legitimate interests will remain on the table,” it added.

Al-Zaidi has said his government is eager to implement a 2024 deal made with the US-led coalition’s military mission in Iraq to end its presence as combat forces by the end of September.

Some of the factions that rejected the prime minister’s disarmament statement said they would wait to see what happens on September 30 and then act accordingly.

Ehsan al-Shammary, a professor of international studies at Baghdad University, said the economic initiatives and the backing that al-Zaidi is seeking from Trump during Monday’s talks would inevitably be overshadowed by the issue of Iran’s influence in Iraq.

Ultimately, he added, it is the issue that will determine the success or failure of a “very important” visit that could “redefine” bilateral relations and “give it a push”.

“Al-Zaidi has little room for manoeuvre. He should choose either to align with the United States or move closer to Iran,” said al-Shammary. “I do not believe Washington is willing to accept a divided sphere of influence in Iraq alongside Tehran. That is why the prime minister’s task appears to be almost impossible.”

Qatar’s Father Emir Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani has died at the age of 74.

During his 18-year rule, Sheikh Hamad reshaped the energy-rich country’s domestic and global footprint.

When he assumed power in 1995, Qatar’s economy was limited in size and relied mainly on oil, while the vast gas wealth of the North Field site was still in the early stages of development.

In less than two decades, Qatar became the world’s largest exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG), the owner of one of the largest sovereign wealth funds and one of the countries with the highest per capita incomes.

This transformation was not just an oil or gas boom fuelled by rising energy prices, but an overhaul of the country’s economic model that was underpinned by a strategy of investing natural resource wealth in building productive assets, financial institutions, infrastructure and human capital.

The economic shift did not begin with Sheikh Hamad’s assumption of power. It was preceded by his appointment in 1989 as chairman of the Supreme Council for Planning, the body then responsible for formulating Qatar’s economic and social policies, which allowed him to oversee the preparation of development programmes before he came to power.

Here, we take a look at Sheikh Hamad’s economic legacy that helped transform Qatar from a small Gulf economy to a major and influential player in global energy and investment markets.

How gas changed Qatar’s economy

The development of the North Field, the world’s largest natural gas field, marked the true starting point of Qatar’s economic transformation.

The decision to accelerate investment and expand gas liquefaction projects during the second half of the 1990s changed the country’s position in the energy market and propelled it towards global leadership.

Qatar went from exporting its first LNG shipment in 1996 to becoming the world’s largest exporter of the commodity in fewer than 15 years.

By 2010, production capacity had risen to 77 million tons per year, according to data from QatarEnergy and the International Energy Agency.

The impact of this boom was not limited to increasing revenues; it also cemented Qatar’s position as a strategic partner in global energy security, especially for the economies of Asia and Europe.

Data from Qatar’s Amiri Diwan reflect the scale of the transformation witnessed by the energy sector, as the added value of the hydrocarbons sector rose from 11 billion Qatari riyals (about $3bn) to 403 billion riyals (about $110.4bn) during Sheikh Hamad’s rule.

Unprecedented economic growth

The gas boom was directly reflected in the performance of Qatar’s economy, which became one of the fastest-growing in the world during the first decade of the millennium.

World Bank data cited by Bloomberg showed Qatar’s economy grew more than twentyfold during Sheikh Hamad’s reign, with gross domestic product (GDP) rising from about $8bn in 1995 to about $199 billion in 2013.

According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the economy also recorded the highest growth rates in the world during that period, with real growth reaching 18 percent in 2006 before rising to 26.2 percent in 2011, as LNG production projects came onstream.

From gas boom to capital export

The economic transformation did not stop at increased production or revenues, but it also extended to the way wealth was managed.

As part of building a system to manage financial surpluses, Qatar in 2001 established the Supreme Council for Economic Affairs and Investment under the chairmanship of Sheikh Hamad.

The council was tasked with diversifying domestic and foreign investments “with the aim of developing Qatar’s financial reserves and diversifying sources of income”, according to the Qatari Amiri Diwan.

Four years later, the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) was established to manage the financial surpluses generated from oil and gas exports.

Sheikh Hamad implemented a policy based on allocating part of the energy revenues to long-term investment, with the aim of building sustainable sources of income beyond natural resources.

QIA quickly became one of the world’s largest sovereign wealth funds, acquiring stakes in companies such as Barclays and Volkswagen, as well as the United Kingdom-based Harrods department store in 2010.

Qatar’s investment policies expanded to cover almost every continent – from investments in football clubs, to global economic institutions, to London’s Shard skyscraper, among others.

The authority’s assets are now estimated at more than $500bn, according to the Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute, making it one of the world’s largest government investors.

Qatari citizens’ rising living standards

The economic growth was reflected in welfare indicators.

According to the World Bank and the IMF, Qatar during Sheikh Hamad’s reign became one of the countries with the highest GDP per capita in the world.

It exceeded $90,000 in terms of purchasing power parity, as it expanded spending on housing, education and health and recorded a steep decline in unemployment rates to very low levels.

Experts believe the rise in income was not solely the result of higher energy prices, but also stemmed from expanded government investment and the creation of jobs linked to energy and infrastructure projects.

Investment in people

In parallel with energy investments, Qatar also moved towards building a knowledge-based economy.

One of the first development decisions after Sheikh Hamad assumed power was the establishment of the Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development in August 1995 to serve as the main arm for investment in education, scientific research and innovation.

The country later attracted international universities including Georgetown, Texas A&M and Carnegie Mellon, in a move seen as part of a strategy to prepare for the post-oil and gas phase.

The health sector also saw significant expansion through the development of Hamad Medical Corporation and the establishment of new hospitals and specialised centres as part of efforts to improve the quality of public services and keep pace with population growth.

At the same time, the country’s economic openness, coupled with a policy of strengthening its position as a financial and commercial hub in the region, turned the expanding capital of Doha into an increasingly important centre for international economic and investment conferences.

The World Cup and the economy of the future

Gas revenues during Sheikh Hamad’s rule were not limited to financing Qatar’s budget, but were also used for massive infrastructure investments.

That period saw the launch of projects such as Hamad International Airport, Hamad Port, Lusail City and modern road networks, alongside projects that later formed the foundation of the Doha Metro.

These works helped transform Doha from a small Gulf city into a global urban hub, providing the foundation that enabled Qatar to become the first Arab and Middle Eastern country to host the FIFA World Cup in 2022.

After the country won the right to host the major football tournament, its infrastructure and construction sector witnessed a major boom as the government approved huge spending plans exceeding $200bn in infrastructure, including roads, stadiums, railway lines and the construction of a new airport and port.

An ongoing economic legacy

In 2008, the state launched Qatar National Vision 2030, a strategic plan aimed at building a knowledge-based economy with the goal of ensuring continued prosperity for future generations.

This vision, which continues to serve as the governing framework for economic policies, reflects a direction that began under Sheikh Hamad based on transforming natural wealth into a foundation for sustainable development.

And if the development of the gas industry was the starting point for Qatar’s economic transformation, the most prominent legacy of Sheikh Hamad lies in transforming exceptional energy revenues into long-term development tools.

Through the establishment of institutions such as the Supreme Council for Economic Affairs and Investment and QIA, the launch of Qatar National Vision 2030 and investments in education and infrastructure, Qatar moved from an economy dependent on oil exports to a model that combines energy strength with global investment influence.

This blueprint still forms the basis of the state’s economic policies that are being pursued to this day by Sheikh Hamad’s son and successor, Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani.

Tokyo, Japan – While walking his toy poodle in the park near his home in Ikeda, Gifu Prefecture, Shin Ohta had an idea.

“My dog often stops walking during our strolls. I would carry him every time, but his weight of nearly 5kg [11lbs] started to become a real burden,” Ohta told Al Jazeera.

“I knew there had to be a better way.

Ohta works in sales for Japan’s oldest baby carrier manufacturer, Lucky Industries, which has produced more than 40 million baby carriers since its founding in 1934.

He has spent his career making baby carriers, but after that walk, he wondered if the same expertise could be applied to pets.

After consulting a veterinarian to ensure the design was viable for dogs, Ohta helped Lucky Industries launch its first line of dog hip carriers in 2022: Nu-i.

Earlier this year, the company joined dozens of other brands at Tokyo’s annual Interpets conference, a showcase of Japan’s rapidly growing pet care market.

During the first weekend of April, stalls lined the walls of the Big Sight convention centre, selling everything from walk-in pet dryers to the latest organic cat treats.

Few of the pet owners attending the event had their four-legged friend on a leash, instead ferrying them to and fro in well-decorated pet strollers, or the doggy equivalent of baby slings.

Many pets were decked out in colourful outfits, fur clips, and diapers.

Pets in Japan now outnumber children under 15 by more than 2 million.

According to market intelligence company Euromonitor, the country’s pet care market was worth 880 billion yen ($5.4bn) in 2025, up from 689.6 billion yen ($4.2bn) in 2020.

As Japan’s birthrate continues to fall and the population of children shrinks, companies that once built their businesses on babies, selling nappies, slings, and strollers, are increasingly turning their attention to pets.

Betting on pets at the Interpets conference, Unicharm’s expansive stall was lined with dog and cat nappies from its latest “Mannerware’” line.

The Tokyo-based company has been one of the great cross-market successes of the pet care boom.

After making its name selling feminine hygiene products and disposable diapers, Unicharm expanded into pet diapers in 2001.

Since then, pet care products have become one of the company’s main growth engines.

While the personal care market for people is larger, the pet care sector has higher profit margins.

According to Unicharm’s financial results for 2025, the company’s pet care division had a profit margin of 15.4 percent that year, compared with personal care’s margin of 10.7 percent.

Isshu Uehara, a Unicharm spokesperson, said that as of 2025, the pet care business accounted for 17 percent of the company’s total sales, with plans to increase that share to 20 percent by 2030.

“Japan’s birthrate is declining,” Uehara told Al Jazeera.

“Lifestyle changes, such as remaining single, marrying late, and the growth of childless, dual-income households, have led to a greater number of people seeking emotional connections through pets.

“As a result, we’re seeing the growth of ‘pet humanisation’, or treating pets like family members or children rather than just animals.

“Customers want to buy premium products to extend pets’ lifetimes, and share experiences with them, like dining together or going out to cafes and friends’ houses,” Uehara added.

Unicharm is not alone.

Across Japan, stroller brands like AirBuggy and clothing companies like Sweet Mommy have made similar leaps, applying expertise built around infants to a growing market of pet owners.

Lucky Industries CEO Hiroyuki Higuchi pointed to the company’s origins to explain the shift towards pets.

“When the company started, Japanese families had many children, and mothers needed carriers to be able to work around the house,” Higuchi told Al Jazeera.

But now, Japanese families are shrinking. While there has been a rise in single-person households and childless dual-income households, families with only one child have become more common as well.

A national survey of fertility trends found that between 2002 and 2021, the proportion of households with only one child increased from 10 percent to nearly 20 percent.

“With fewer babies around, it has been harder to come up with new ideas for baby products,” Ohta said.

“Now, my life is centred around my dogs, as are the lives of many of my friends. When we meet up, we talk about our pets.”

“Compared to the baby goods market, the pet sector is doing better,” said Higuchi.

“Companies see it as a reliable sector… In Japan, dogs are seen as babies, as part of the family. Just like many Japanese carry their babies in slings or carriers, so can dog owners,” Higuchi added.

Barbara Holthus, a sociologist and director of the German Institute of Japan Studies, said pet humanisation has been a growing trend in recent years.

“Before, a dog or cat might have just been an additional family member, but with fewer other family members and fewer children in the house, the focus becomes very concentrated on this animal,” Holthus told Al Jazeera.

“But it’s more diverse than just replacing children. Animals take on many different roles,” Holthus added. “A pet can also replace a partner. After a divorce, people sometimes get pets.

After someone gets widowed, they get a pet. Sometimes, a pet is seen as a play partner for an only child.”

Holthus sees Japan as a prime example of changing family structures, including the emergence of the “multi-species family”.

Holthus said decreasing birth rates, as well as factors such as loneliness and rising urbanisation, help explain why the trend of humanising pets has been particularly pronounced in Japan.

As for why infant brands are turning to pets, Holthus offered a simple explanation.

“It’s understandable,” she said.

“Of course, companies want to make money, and due to demographic change, their market is getting lost.”

Damascus, Syria – For many Syrians, the decades of rule by the al-Assad family – Hafez al-Assad from 1971 to 2000, then his son Bashar from 2000 to 2024 – were filled with oppression from the state and eventually more than a decade of civil war.

But one of the most important legacies has been an economic one – the result of the sanctions imposed by a number of countries, led by the United States, that effectively froze Syria out of the international economic system.

Despite the fall of Bashar al-Assad after rebel groups defeated him in December 2024, many of the sanctions, including a “state sponsor of terrorism” designation, have remained.

The designation has impeded Syria’s rejoining of the international community, while sanctions have impacted Syrians. Sending money back home from abroad often requires routing transfers through neighbouring countries, such as Lebanon or Turkiye, while access to some websites and online services, including Netflix and Slack, may require a virtual private network.

But there has been a positive reaction to the announcement on Wednesday by US President Donald Trump that his administration will remove Syria from the state sponsor of terrorism list.

The lifting of previous US sanctions, such as those related to the Caesar Act, has not transformed the Syrian economy, but it is hoped that those linked to the “state sponsor of terrorism” listing will allow the country to finally flourish.

“God willing, it will improve things,” said Ihab, a pastry shop owner in central Damascus.

Reintegration

US sanctions are thought to have been a huge barrier to foreign investors since the rule of Bashar al-Assad.

The World Bank said that since 2011, sanctions have led to a major collapse in exports and an increase in the trade deficit.

After the fall of the al-Assad government, interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s administration has identified the removal of all international and US sanctions as the key to reinvigorating the economy.

Al-Sharaa, the former head of the al-Qaeda-aligned Nusra Front, was himself sanctioned by the United Nations and was wanted as a “terrorist” by the US. But he has made efforts to shed those associations and build trust internationally, including by pledging to play a role in the fight against ISIL (ISIS).

His efforts have largely been successful, with the European Union and the US removing many of the sanctions on Syria and on al-Sharaa himself. The sanctions linked to the US’s “state sponsor of terrorism” list are among the few to remain.

The first “state sponsor of terrorism” designation on Syria was during Hafez al-Assad’s rule in 1979, due to the government’s support for Palestinian armed groups.

Additional sanctions were imposed on the state and individuals associated with the al-Assad regime, due to their systematic use of torture and chemical weapons.

Some rebel groups were also sanctioned due to their links to al-Qaeda and other banned organisations.

Al-Sharaa ended al-Nusra Front’s affiliation with al-Qaeda in 2016 and effectively eschewed the group’s ideology.

He also moved to establish a broader, national armed coalition dedicated to fighting the Assad government, later becoming Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.

In May 2025, around the time Trump met al-Sharaa in Riyadh, the US president promised to remove many of the sanctions on the Syrian government. But the expected removal from the “state sponsor of terrorism” list will be particularly welcome as it gets rid of one of the main barriers for international banks and companies.

“This is extremely significant because it’s the last major impediment to international economic and political engagement with Syria and with the al-Sharaa administration, and in terms of reintegrating Syria back into the international order and indeed the international economic and political system,” Rob Geist Pinfold, a lecturer on security studies at King’s College London, told Al Jazeera.

Struggling economy

However, he is careful to add that the removal of the designation does not mean a flood of investment will instantly start pouring into Syria.

“This is a big hurdle that’s been overcome, but it doesn’t mean that there’s no more hurdles to investment or engagement with Syria.”

He added that international actors may be concerned about the government’s control and ability to confront remnants from the al-Assad regime, a potential ISIL (ISIS) comeback, bureaucratic impediments and corruption.

Some Syrians were also sceptical that the designation change would lead to instant results.

“This needs a long breath,” said a minimarket owner in Damascus, who refused to give his name. “You can’t sleep and wake up and expect change.”

He referred to ongoing economic problems and rising costs, as well as a recent fuel shortage.

“There’s no economy, and there’s no investment.”

Other Syrians were more hopeful that the economy, and other aspects of daily life, would improve. Still, there is a recognition that a little more patience is needed.

For some, that patience has worn out, such as the minimarket owner. Others, however, are biding their time.

At a juice stall in central Damascus, Zaher counted money received from a customer.

“I’m on the street with my cart and nobody is bothering me,” he said. “Electricity is getting better, but nothing gets better after just one day.”

“It took God Almighty six days to create Earth,” the 50-year-old said. “These things take time.”

The housing legislation will become US law at midnight with or without President Donald Trump’s signature.

United States President Donald Trump says he will not sign a bipartisan housing affordability bill in protest at the Senate not passing the controversial SAVE America Act voting legislation.

In a post on Truth Social on Friday, Trump said he would not support signing the unrelated housing bill, which would speed up environmental reviews for construction projects, expedite development, and limit the number of single-family homes institutional investors can buy.

The bill will become law with or without the president’s signature. Once a bill reaches the president’s desk, the officeholder has 10 days to either sign it into law or veto the legislation. If he does neither, it becomes law at midnight.

House Speaker Mike Johnson said the president is unlikely to issue a last-minute veto.

The housing legislation, known as the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, which Trump called a “yawn” on June 29, was a rare moment of bipartisan agreement in a starkly divided US Congress. It passed the Senate by a vote of 85-5 and the House by a vote of 358-2.

The provisions included in the legislation are popular. A Bipartisan Policy Center poll suggested that 70 percent of Americans support banning institutional investors that own more than 350 homes from buying additional single-family homes.

The legislation would also establish incentive programmes for communities to build more housing and encourage the development of modular homes. It also includes provisions that would make it easier for communities to convert underutilised land into residential housing.

Housing remains a major pressure on Americans, with 79 percent saying the cost of housing is either “an extremely important” or “very important” issue, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center.

The US median home price hit a record $440,600 in June, while mortgage rates remain elevated. The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate is currently at 6.49 percent.

Voting act pressures

Trump cancelled the original signing ceremony for the housing legislation on June 24 in an effort to pressure Republicans to pass the SAVE America Act. Among its provisions, the bill would require proof of citizenship to register to vote and create a national voter database using state records.

It would also impose new limitations on mail-in voting, even though roughly one-quarter of Republicans voted by mail in the 2024 presidential election, according to an MIT survey.

A version of the voting legislation passed the House but failed to clear the Senate’s 60-vote filibuster threshold.

Under current election law, states administer elections, not the federal government.

The White House did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.

Tehran, Iran – Three weeks after Iran and the United States signed a memorandum of understanding to extend their ceasefire, their truce remains fragile.

Three tankers have been hit in the Strait of Hormuz over the past two days, even as Iran and the US are expected to restart mediated negotiations to end the war next week, after the funeral of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The US military on Wednesday launched large air attacks on Iran’s southern provinces, which prompted the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Iran’s regular army to fire missiles and drones on US interests in Bahrain and Kuwait. Both sides accused each other of violating the understanding signed last month.

But even if a long-term resolution is eventually reached and Western sanctions on Iran are lifted, analysts say that it will take time for the country’s economy to recover.

The economy has been strained by years of local mismanagement and corruption; stringent Western and United Nations sanctions; and, more recently, damage sustained from two wars in a year with the US and Israel, deadly nationwide protests in January, and internet shutdowns.

When numbers tell a story

A falling purchasing power has pushed millions into poverty. Inflation has recently climbed to levels not seen since World War II, when Allied forces occupied Iran, took over railways and food supplies, and contributed to a deadly famine.

The latest report by the Statistical Center of Iran for Khordad, the third month of the Persian calendar that ended on June 21, showed inflation increasing by 88.6 percent compared to the same month of the year before. Inflation was up by nearly 6 percent compared to the second month of the current year.

Food inflation was skyrocketing at almost 134 percent in Khordad compared to the corresponding month a year earlier, with oils and fats surging by more than 278 percent, red meat and poultry by over 178 percent, and bread and cereals by nearly 139 percent.

Unemployment is at 7.5 percent during the current calendar year, according to the latest report by the statistical centre released at the end of June. But labour participation is at just 40 percent, meaning that most working-age people are operating outside the official labour force – including students, retirees, those engaged in irregular informal work, and those not seeking paid work.

The job-quality picture is also grim, as salaries are perennially falling behind expenses, as over 38 percent of officially employed people work more than 49 hours a week, and as youth unemployment is at over 20 percent, the centre reports.

The base monthly minimum wage equals only about $95 using the current open market exchange rate of the US dollar in Tehran. The rate has climbed to 1.75 million rials per greenback over recent days, not far from its all-time low of 1.9 million in May.

The damage — and the road to recovery

Due to a heavy budget crunch, the only relief the government is able to offer amounts to a few dollars’ worth of monthly cash subsidy and electronic coupons for purchasing essential goods.

A late June report by the Central Bank of Iran for the previous calendar year that ended on March 20 showed that gross domestic product (GDP) growth for the year stood at minus 0.7 percent, and gross fixed capital formation, a primary indicator of productive capacity and economic growth, was at nearly minus 12 percent. Imports were down 16.6 percent, as were exports by close to 5 percent.

The damage from nearly 40 days of heavy bombardment during the war, the longest nationwide state-imposed internet shutdown in any country, and a US naval blockade of Iran’s southern ports — the full extent of which remains undisclosed to the public — has only exacerbated Iran’s economic woes. The International Monetary Fund has projected that Iran’s real GDP will shrink by 6.1 percent in 2026.

Still, Mahdi Ghodsi, a senior economist at the Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, said that part of the recent job losses could be recoverable if there is a credible halt to military escalation, restoration of transport and logistics links, more predictable access to energy and fuel, and functioning internet and payment systems.

“In that case, some temporary layoffs in services, retail, transport, construction and small businesses could be reversed relatively quickly, because these activities are highly sensitive to uncertainty and disruptions rather than necessarily destroyed productive capacity,” he told Al Jazeera.

Longer-term challenges

But Ghodsi cautioned that part of the damage is likely to be more persistent.

“Where factories have lost machinery, inventories, imported inputs, workers, working capital, or access to energy, reopening is not simply a matter of returning to normal,” he said, adding that in some cases, full recovery may take years and require large investments, including foreign financing.

Last week, leading satellite imaging provider Planet Labs restored access to imagery for nearly 800 sites across Iran impacted during the war, after lifting earlier restrictions it had placed in response to a US government request to delay or suspend access.

Some Iranians on social media highlighted massive damage done to Iran Electronics Industries (SAIran), a state-owned defence industry heavyweight specialising in optics, communications, semiconductors and medical equipment, among other things.

But along with numerous military-linked sites and assets, and nuclear facilities built over decades now reduced to rubble, Iran’s industrial capacity and civilian infrastructure were also extensively targeted by US and Israeli warplanes and vessels during the war.

Oil and gas facilities, petrochemical and steel giants, electricity outposts, as well as maritime ports, airports, roads, bridges and residential units were significantly damaged.

Work on rebuilding facilities and recovering lost capacities has begun during the period of reduced military hostility over recent weeks, with some airports and industrial units restarting operations.

But a full recovery still appears distant and more destruction could still lay ahead. US President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened extensive attacks against Iran’s electricity grid and infrastructure like bridges if the war resumes.

Economist Ghodsi said the government’s limited fiscal capacity remains one of the central problems, since the state has already faced struggles in financing not only regular expenditures and salaries, but also obligations across public and semi-public sectors. “This fiscal weakness has been one of the drivers of inflation, as budgetary pressures are partly shifted onto the banking system and the central bank through monetary financing,” he said.

Domestic fissures

Speaking at a state-organised event in Tehran last month, Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian expressed concerns about another nationwide protest as public discontent remains high.

“Our most important strength is our unity, and the unity of our people. What I fear is that we fail to serve the people right and they are dissatisfied and come to the streets to protest. Then our might collapses,” he said.

Senior officials spearheading the mediated talks with Washington have backed the process as the viable path to delivering a better economy to the suffering Iranian population.

But hardliners within the system, who perceive Iran to have attained a major victory against superior military powers during the war, continue to vociferously reject giving any concessions.

During Khamenei’s funeral procession in Tehran on Monday, Pezeshkian was filmed getting heckled by anti-deal mourners who demanded blood vengeance for the slain supreme leader and shouted “Death to the compromiser” and “Death to the traitorous homeland-seller”.

The United States-Israel war on Iran has inflicted the greatest disruption to merchant shipping since the back-to-back shocks of the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Since the start of the war in late February, shipping lines have faced attacks on their vessels, lengthy delays and steep rises in operating costs.

Yet even after more than four months of turmoil for the industry, the most enduring legacy of the war for shipping may end up being just how little it ultimately changes.

While shipping firms are expected to more explicitly factor risk into their expenses and diversify supply chains where possible in the future, the indispensable nature of seaborne trade means the industry is likely to continue much as before over the long term, analysts say.

That is likely to be especially the case for the container shipping industry, which, unlike the operators of the oil and gas tankers whose dislocation has roiled energy markets, is not heavily reliant on the Strait of Hormuz to transport its cargoes, which range from agricultural produce to apparel and consumer electronics.

While there is no alternative to the strait to access oil-producing Gulf nations by sea, container shipping firms have had the option of redirecting their vessels along longer alternative routes to avoid conflict in the region, including attacks by the Iran-aligned Houthis in the Red Sea.

The global shipping industry has long stood apart for its resilience in the face of crises, bouncing back from major upheaval at remarkable speed.

In 2020, the first year of the COVID pandemic, global container shipping volumes fell by just 1.2 percent compared with the previous year, according to the Baltic and International Maritime Council (BIMCO), one of the world’s largest associations for shipowners.

By January 2021, the volume of cargo handled at ports worldwide had already surpassed pre-pandemic levels, rising 6.4 percent year-on-year, according to data from the Institute of Shipping Economics and Logistics.

By contrast, it took more than four years for global air travel to fully recover from the shock of COVID-19.

While the Iran war and Houthi attacks in the Red Sea since 2023 scrambled regional supply chains, shipping companies have been rapidly adding capacity since Washington and Tehran signed their memorandum of understanding on ending the conflict on June 17.

After plummeting from 3.2 million TEU (Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit of cargo) to 74,000 TEU as of mid-June, container capacity in the region has already rebounded to pre-war levels on some routes, according to Xeneta, an ocean and air freight rate market analytics platform.

Capacity between Asia and the United States’ West Coast last week surpassed its pre-conflict record, hitting 350,000 TEU, according to Xeneta.

On Monday, Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd, the second- and fifth-largest container shipping firms, respectively, announced that they would begin sailing through the Suez Canal again for the first time since February, following an assessment of the security situation in the Red Sea.

Shipping is indispensable to global trade, in large part because no other mode of transport comes close in terms of capacity and cost-effectiveness.

The world’s largest container ships have capacities exceeding 24,000 TEU – the equivalent of roughly 12,000 trucks, 2,240 cargo planes, or 360 freight trains.

Lacking genuine competition in the transport of goods in huge volumes, shipping facilitates about 90 percent of global trade.

Shipping will look “remarkably familiar” in five years from now because it is an industry driven by demand, said Punit Oza, the head of the consultancy Maritime NXT and the former executive director of the Singapore Chamber of Maritime Arbitration.

Even the most severe conflict cannot change the “physics or the economics” of seaborne trade, he said.

“Ships do not sail because shipowners want them to; they sail because consumers somewhere want grain, iron ore, gas, or televisions,” Oza told Al Jazeera.

“It is the consumers of shipping – the cargo interests, the economies, the households – who ultimately shape the industry, and their demand will endure long after the headlines fade.”

Judah Levine‏, head of research at freight booking company Freightos, said container shipping in the future is likely to look “quite similar” to how it did before the war, with Dubai’s Port of Jebel Ali continuing to serve as the region’s main hub for both Gulf-bound goods and cargoes destined for Asia, Europe, Africa, and the Americas.

But Levine said diversion of cargoes to smaller hubs – such as the UAE’s Port of Fujairah and Khor Fakkan Port, and Port Sultan Qaboos in Oman – during the war offers a preview of the contingencies shipping firms are likely to deploy in future crises.

“All of a sudden, they were handling much larger volumes, and then creating these land bridges, usually to go on to Jebel Ali,” Levine told Al Jazeera.

“Containers find a way,” Levine said.

“It’s kind of like water. They’ll trickle, you know, to where they need to go by other paths.”

Another lasting impact of the war could be greater international cooperation on maritime security and safety.

The International Maritime Organization, the UN body responsible for shipping and seafarers, has listed the protection of shipping lanes as one of its top agenda items for discussion at its biannual meeting taking place from Monday to Friday.

“Seafarers have tragically lost their lives in connection with this conflict, and the impact has been felt well beyond the region, with real consequences for global trade, energy and food security,” IMO Secretary-General Arsenio Dominguez said in opening remarks to the session on Monday.

Ruth Banomyong, a professor of logistics and supply chain management at Thammasat Business School in Bangkok, Thailand, said he expects to see international coordination to strengthen trade routes that integrate both land and sea even as shipping networks remain “largely the same”.

“This means ensuring that maritime transport, ports, inland logistics, customs procedures and alternative land transport options work together as an integrated system when disruptions occur,” Banomyong told Al Jazeera.

“Maritime freedom is no longer just about freedom of navigation. It is about ensuring the continuity of global trade.

“The long-term lesson is not to replace the Strait of Hormuz, but to reduce overdependence on any single transport corridor,” Banomyong added.

Oza, the head of Maritime NXT, said the ad hoc naval coalitions deployed to ensure freedom of navigation during times of conflict could ultimately be succeeded by a multilateral security framework with “regional ownership rather than purely external enforcement”.

“Freedom of navigation is too important to be left to improvisation,” Oza said.

“If there is one consistent lesson from shipping’s long history, it is that human ingenuity always finds a way – pipelines get built, reserves get repositioned, technologies emerge, and trade, like water, finds its path. It will do so again,” Oza added.

“The innovations that follow this war will be a tribute to human resilience; the tragedy is that it took a war to summon them.”

London, United Kingdom – Should Andy Burnham enter Downing Street as early as July 17, if he is confirmed unopposed as Labour leader, one of his most consequential early decisions will have nothing to do with defence spending, immigration, or the economy.

It will concern a seven-year 330-million-pound ($440m) contract between NHS England and Palantir Technologies, a leading defence and intelligence software firm in the United States that received no contracts from Burnham’s Greater Manchester administration during his nine years as mayor.

The ramifications of such a decision could extend well beyond the NHS.

Media reports surfaced last week that Burnham is minded to hold that line with Palantir across all of the UK government when he arrives in Downing Street.

When approached by Al Jazeera, an Andy Burnham spokesperson said: “We’re not going to comment on individual government procurement contracts or companies and there are legal processes that must be followed.

“However, in general, Andy’s guiding principles on procurement are that we need to be getting value for money for the taxpayer and that we need to be safeguarding people’s data and British interests.”

For a company that has spent six years embedding itself across several public sector entities – the NHS, the Ministry of Defence, the Home Office, the Financial Conduct Authority – that posture is a real shift from the outgoing Labour administration led by Keir Starmer.

Starmer’s government actively courted US-based AI companies championed by the former UK ambassador to Washington, Peter Mandelson.

According to the Financial Times, which cited people briefed on the discussions, Burnham’s advisers, including former tech minister Josh Simons, are working with researchers Antonio Weiss and Martha Dacombe on a new AI strategy prioritising British companies and workers.

The story of how we got here runs through Manchester.

The Manchester precedent

Burnham served as Mayor of Greater Manchester from 2017 until June, when he returned to Westminster via the Makerfield by-election.

Under his leadership, the Greater Manchester Combined Authority issued no contracts to Palantir. Greater Manchester Police has separately confirmed it did not have a Palantir contract in the past five years.

The more instructive precedent, though, is in the NHS – an institution Burnham has no direct mayoral authority over, but shaped politically through Greater Manchester’s landmark health devolution settlement.

Rather than adopt the NHS England-mandated Federated Data Platform, built on Palantir’s Foundry software, Greater Manchester’s NHS leaders spent six years building their own analytics infrastructure instead. That became a proof of concept, which allies now cite nationally: effective NHS data management, they argue, does not require Palantir.

In May, Al Jazeera spoke to the Good Law Project about its concerns that Palantir was a “potential security risk”.

Some campaigners have interpreted recent political signalling from Burnham’s camp as supportive of their position, although a Good Law Project spokesperson said it has had no direct contact with him or his team.

The political context

In his first major speech since returning to Westminster as an MP, Burnham said he wanted social value to weigh more heavily in government procurement decisions. The reasoning, according to those close to him, is as much political as ethical.

Reports have described concern within his camp that “unfettered tech boosterism” risks alienating voters already uneasy about how much of the state now runs on American software.

Underneath that concern sits a more specific worry: that a company built to serve defence and intelligence clients does not necessarily share the values of an institution built to treat patients.

“A defence company has inherently different values than a healthcare organisation like the NHS,” said Duncan McCann, Technology and Data Lead at the Good Law Project, which has led legal action seeking greater transparency over the contract. “That’s where I think this concern was created.”

Palantir is not unique in this respect. Its origins in US defence and intelligence contracting are shared, to varying degrees, by most of the US AI firms now supplying British government departments – a lineage that, for critics like McCann, taints the whole category rather than one company alone.

What’s next?

The NHS contract is the most visible, but it is unlikely to be the only one making headlines this year.

A parallel battle is already under way in London, where Palantir has launched a High Court challenge after Mayor Sadiq Khan blocked a 50-million pound ($67m) Metropolitan Police contract, arguing the decision amounts to stifling free speech.

Khan’s office has since approved a smaller arrangement – a partial reversal that has done little to settle the underlying tension.

For campaigners who have spent years pushing for greater scrutiny of Palantir’s role in British public life, Burnham’s ascent could be the moment the tide finally turns. The NHS break clause falls in March 2027, but a decision needs to be made by December.

Burnham is expected in Downing Street later this month. He will soon decide whether Palantir has a future in Britain’s health service – and, by extension, in the rest of the UK’s public sector.

Al Jazeera reached out to Palantir for comment but had not received a response at the time of publishing.

The high court strikes down campaign spending limits, citing First Amendment protections in a 6-3 decision

On the final day of rulings for the Supreme Court’s current term, the top US court overruled a case that would limit campaign spending by rejecting restrictions on coordinated spending efforts between political parties and their candidates on free speech grounds.

The court handed down the ruling on Tuesday in a 6-3 split, with the six conservative judges in the majority, citing free speech grounds, and the three liberal judges dissenting.

The Supreme Court ruled that a spending cap on campaign spending, with input from candidates, violates the United States Constitution’s First Amendment after a lower court upheld the limits.

The decision, stemming from a Republican-led lawsuit, strikes down a provision of a more than 50-year-old federal election law limiting coordinated party spending. Among the Republican candidates at the centre of the lawsuit is now Vice President JD Vance. Vance was running for the US Senate in Ohio when the lawsuit challenging the restrictions was filed in 2022.

The Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 regulates fundraising and spending in US elections by limiting the amount that can be spent on a candidate, aiming to prevent corruption.

Under that law, spending by a political party to advocate for or against a candidate that is not coordinated with a candidate’s campaign is considered an “independent expenditure” – and not subject to a cap.

Spending that is coordinated between a party and a campaign, however, has been restricted.

Tuesday’s decision overruled a 2001 decision in which the Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee challenged the rule against the Federal Election Commission, but the high court had upheld the limits on a vote of 5-4.

In 2024, the US 6th Circuit Court of Appeals had also upheld the limits.

On appeal, the plaintiffs said that developments in campaign finance over the intervening decades, including shifts in the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence, had eroded the rationale for that 2001 ruling and urged the justices to overrule it.

Then, when Donald Trump took office, the Federal Election Commission declined to defend the provision of federal law challenged by Vance and the other plaintiffs. The Supreme Court appointed lawyer Roman Martinez to do so. It also granted a request by the Democratic National Committee, Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee to intervene to defend the spending limits.

These spending limits have varied by state, being lower in states with smaller populations and higher in those with larger populations. In 2025, restrictions ranged from about $127,000 to $3.9m for Senate candidates and from approximately $63,000 to $127,000 for House of Representatives candidates.

The Supreme Court issued its campaign finance ruling with the November midterm elections looming, as President Donald Trump’s fellow Republicans seek to retain control of Congress.

The three major Republican committees – the Republican National Committee, the National Republican Congressional Committee, and the National Republican Senatorial Committee — ended May with $256m in cash and no debt. That was more than double the roughly $126m held by their Democratic counterparts, who also carried more than $18m in debt.

Election implications

The Supreme Court has issued multiple rulings during its current term that have election implications.

The justices on Monday backed state laws that allow mail-in ballots received after Election Day to be counted, rejecting a Republican-led challenge to a five-day grace period in Mississippi and dealing a setback to Trump.

The court in April gutted a key provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, opening the door for Republican-led Southern states to dismantle Democratic-held majority-Black and majority-Latino districts ahead of the midterms. Black and Latino voters tend to support Democratic candidates.

That decision prompted several Republican-led states to pursue redrawn electoral maps ahead of the midterms in an effort to threaten US House seats long considered safely Democratic.

EXPLAINER

China and Sudan signed off on a waiver of $50m as Sudan’s military-led government seeks support amid Western sanctions.

China has waived loans worth $50m that it had given to Sudan, the two countries said over the weekend. The agreement comes three years into a war between Sudan’s army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) that has shrunk the country’s economy by roughly 40 percent, according to the United Nations.

The sum is small compared with what Sudan owes overall to external governments or agencies, an amount estimated at more than $56bn before the war. But the waiver lands at a moment when Khartoum has few other international lenders extending any financial support.

China’s relationship with Sudan predates the war by decades, built on oil and infrastructure interests that survived multiple changes of government in Khartoum. But the war has narrowed Sudan’s options elsewhere, as Western governments have largely held back or imposed sanctions.

Here’s why this deal is significant for Sudan and China:

What do we know about the deal?

The signed protocol in Port Sudan cancels four interest-free loans worth 344 million yuan, about $50m, with immediate effect, according to Sudan’s official news agency, SUNA.

Sudan’s Finance Minister Gibril Ibrahim welcomed the move, reportedly saying that China has continued investing in the country throughout the war while Western governments, including the United States and European Union members, have largely held back. Gibril himself was added to the US Treasury sanctions list in September 2025 for his alleged “involvement in Sudan’s brutal civil war and … connections to Iran”.

China’s charge d’affaires in Sudan, Xu Jian, reportedly said at the signing ceremony that China was ready to help rebuild what was destroyed during the war in Sudan.

What’s in it for Sudan?

Sudan’s external debt of more than $56bn before the war is expected to have ballooned since.

The $50m debt relief amounts to not even 1 percent of the total external pre-war debt. In fact, Sudan was close to a far bigger debt write-off in 2021. It was on track with the IMF and the World Bank Heavily Indebted Poor Countries initiative to have more than $50bn of its debt forgiven within three years. The 2021 military coup in October derailed that debt relief plan, and the process was formally suspended a year later.

Still, China’s waiver arrives at a moment of acute need for the country. The war is now in its third year. More than 1.5 million people have been killed, according to the UN, and the war has displaced about 14 million people – about a quarter of the Sudanese population. The World Health Organization says less than 14 percent of health facilities are still functioning. Jobs have vanished in many parts of the country, and the rising cost of living has made it difficult for households to survive.

The Sudanese pound has collapsed since the start of the war. It went from roughly 600 to the dollar before the war to more than 5000 to the dollar by June 2026.

What’s in it for China?

In many ways, Beijing’s decision to waive the $50m loan is in keeping with a broader approach it has taken in recent years, one that has helped cement China as Africa’s largest trading partner for 17 consecutive years.

China has provided interest-free loan forgiveness as a diplomatic gesture to multiple countries, and these decisions are recurrent announcements at Beijing’s frequent leader-level summits with African nations. This is especially true for smaller loans. Research from the Johns Hopkins China Africa Research Initiative found that China forgave at least $3.4bn of these kinds of debts across the African continent between 2000 and 2019.

By contrast, larger loans are usually commercial loans through state banks that come with interest, and waiving those is harder.

At a time when the West is largely trying to isolate Sudan’s leadership, a small loan waiver gives China outsized influence in a country that sits at the intersection of the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa.

What have China-Sudan ties been like historically?

Oil has long served as a catalyst for their relationship. From the mid-1990s on, China’s National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) poured billions of dollars into Sudanese oil fields and the pipelines carrying that crude oil to Port Sudan. This was a time when many Western companies were pushed out due to sanctions.

The relationship changed when the southern part of the country voted in favour of independence in 2011. The world’s newest country, South Sudan, left the north and took most of the country’s oil fields with it.

Chinese investment largely dried up afterwards, but Sudan still has more than $5bn of outstanding debt to China. The war has aggravated Sudan’s economic challenges. The CNPC requested a formal exit from Sudan in December 2025.

South Korean president frames the push as a race against time to secure the country’s domination in AI boom.

South Korea has laid out a sweeping industrial strategy focused on semiconductor chips and artificial intelligence projects as President Lee Jae Myung pledges to cement overwhelming industry leadership with investments of hundreds of billions of dollars over several years.

Flanked by the heads of the world’s two biggest memory chipmakers, Lee cast the initiative on Monday as a “great leap forward” centred on the “triple axis” of semiconductors, physical AI and data centres.

“We must secure the core elements of AI faster than any other country,” the president said in a televised address.

The world’s two largest memory chipmakers, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, will invest 800 trillion won ($518bn) with suppliers to build two new chip fabrication sites each in South Korea’s southwest, Industry Minister Kim Jung-kwan said.

Lee said the country’s southwestern city of Gwangju and South Jeolla province will also invest 5 trillion to 20 trillion won ($3.2bn to $13bn) in the projects. Kim said a further 81 trillion won ($52.5bn) is expected to be invested for a chip-packaging cluster in the Chungcheong area near Seoul.

The government also unveiled plans to build AI data centres in the region, backed by 550 trillion won ($356bn) in investments from the SK Group, GS Group and Naver.

“By 2035, an additional 10-gigawatt AI data centre will be built with a total investment exceeding 18.4 gigawatts and 1,000 trillion won,” or $648bn, Science Minister Bae Kyung-hoon announced.

The announcement marks the government’s boldest push yet to align South Korea’s AI and chip ambitions with Lee’s pledge to narrow regional disparities and revive economies beyond the Seoul metropolitan area.

The opposition has criticised the plan, arguing that his government’s decision to locate a second semiconductor cluster in Honam, the traditional electoral stronghold of his liberal Democratic Party, is driven more by regional politics than by industrial logic.

They have accused the government of pressuring memory chipmakers to invest in the region to bolster political support rather than allowing companies to choose the most commercially viable locations.

As part of the overall initiative, the southwest would be the home of new, large chip production clusters, Lee said, in part to use the rich power resources yet untapped there.

The president defended the proposed southwestern chip hub in a series of X posts over the weekend, rejecting criticism that it favours a region where 85 percent of voters backed him in last year’s presidential election.

Every morning Marisol Winfrey Herrera’s three-and-a-half-year-old daughter Jo reminds her to turn off the tap while washing her hands and brushing her teeth.

When they leave home, she reminds her mother to keep a bottle of ice with them to offer it to homeless people, who they sometimes find wilting in the Tucson heat. At first, they press the ice-filled bottles on the homeless folks to help them revive, then they offer the water to drink and hydrate. At her daycare, Jo is taught water-saving habits to combat Tucson’s soaring heat.

It is what prompted Herrera to join No Desert Data Center, a residents’ group that opposes two large data centres coming up on either side of Tucson – the $3.6bn project on the city’s southeast edge and a $5bn project on its northwest side in the town of Marana, together known as Project Blue.

The group believes these would consume more water and power than the city set in the Sonoran Desert can afford.

“We are in the middle of a 30-year drought, which is now an extreme drought,” says Lisa Shipek, co-executive director of the Watershed Management Group, a Tucson-based nonprofit.

“Water was a unifying theme in our campaign. The Colorado River cuts are looming, and this project would take water away,” Herrera told Al Jazeera.

Water flows in the Colorado River, which provides much of Tucson’s water through the Central Arizona Project canal system, have dropped by 20 percent since the year 2000 compared with water flows in the 20th century due to climate change, melting snow caps and warmer weather, making water cuts to Tucson imminent as the state could face as much as 77 percent water cuts.

“We say Not One Drop for data centres,” says Herrera, speaking of the campaign’s particularly emotive appeal for residents as water cuts get deeper and temperatures rise, with Tucson recording the warmest weather in 125 years last July and August.

Beale Infrastructure, a San Francisco-based company that is owned by investment management company Blue Owl in New York, had asked the city of Tucson to acquire 290 acres that were outside city limits for Project Blue. That would make it the city’s largest water consumer and among its largest power consumers. Beale did not respond to an emailed request for comment.

But at city council meetings, City Councillor Kevin Dahl began seeing hundreds of residents turn up to express their opposition to the project.

“Not for many issues do we get so much response,” he said. Herrera was among those who went.

Pitting environment against unions

At council meetings, Beale executives proposed that Project Blue could be the economic engine the city needed. It would create a few thousand jobs for construction workers, ironmongers, plumbers and other such workers during the construction of the project and a few hundred after that.

“Sometimes people travel as far as Phoenix for work,” Dahl said about Arizona’s largest city, which is nearly a two-hour drive from Tucson.

The project could bring jobs closer. Beale also expected the project to generate nearly $250m in taxes for the city, county and state in the first 10 years.

This left councillors with a difficult decision to make, weighing the project’s economic benefits against allocating it a share of the city’s increasingly scarce water and power.

Activists also raised concerns about whether Tucson Electric Power (TEP), the power utility, would raise rates for consumers so it could expand capacity to provide power for Project Blue. After raising rates by 10 percent in 2023, TEP proposed a 14 percent rate hike in June 2025 for grid upgrades made in the previous year.

Lee Ziesche, an activist from the Democratic Socialists of America who is campaigning to make TEP a public utility, said Project Blue could “lead to higher temperatures and higher rates” because of the heat island effect of the air conditioners and higher rates for power.

She often hears from residents that a rate hike would make it hard to pay bills or put on air conditioning, even as the number of 100-degree Fahrenheit (37.8 degree-Celsius) days has increased in Tucson, which is among the hottest cities in the United States.

The same concerns of needing ramped-up air conditioning would plague data centres too, experts say.

“The viability of data centres in Arizona will always be subject to climate change and heat risks,” says Kate Gordon, chief executive of California Forward, a think tank that works on a sustainable economy.

“The heat in Arizona makes energy less efficient, and servers heat up, so projects will need higher amounts of water and cooling, which developers have to balance against a possibly lower real estate and labour cost,” she said. “I am always amazed at how climate does not figure in business plans.”

Dahl and Andres Cano, a supervisor in Pima County, in which Tucson is located, had discussions with Beale representatives.

“We thought they would go elsewhere if the city did not acquire the land” for the project, Dahl said. Cano also came away with the same impression.

In August 2025, Tucson councillors voted unanimously not to acquire the land for the project or provide it with water and power. In December, Cano became one of only two supervisors in Pima County to oppose the project, and it was approved for construction in an unincorporated part of the county.

“It will create short-term construction jobs for what will ultimately be a project with few wins,” Cano said. “This pitted the environment and unions, but industry is not for unions. This will have just about 100 jobs when it is done.”

With no access to Tucson’s water supply, Beale decided to cool its servers with air conditioners rather than water and use a closed-loop water system, so it would recycle and reuse water.

But Vivek Bharathan, a spokesperson for the No Desert Data Center, said using air conditioners would increase power usage.

Nearly half of TEP’s power comes from fracking, he says. Data centre demand will only mean “more fracking somewhere else, climate and health consequences all along the way”.

The state’s largest data centre

Even as Project Blue was making its way through a fraught approval process, Beale announced another data centre project in the neighbouring farming town of Marana. It was to be spread over 600 acres (242 hectares), twice the size of Project Blue. The area was spread over two farm plots, one owned by the Mormon church and the other by a family trust of city council member, Herb Kai.

This project, too, is slated to bring thousands of construction jobs to a farming town as well as tax revenues.

But when Jackie McGuire, a mother of three and former Wall Street banker, heard about it, she and other residents launched a campaign to stop the land from being rezoned for a data centre. Residents wanted Marana to stay a farming town.

McGuire, who works as a research analyst, said the data centres’ servers and large air conditioners that would be installed to keep them running would raise the project’s cost and make Marana unbearably hot.

Temperatures rose by up to 2.2F (1.22C) downwind from data centres in the Phoenix area, a study published in May had found.

“The heat generated will be like one to two million space heaters,” McGuire says. “It can go up to 112 degrees [44.4C] here already. The heat island effect could make Marana uninhabitable.”

The Marana data centre will be provided power by TEP and Trico, which announced a 7.23 percent rate hike in January.

McGuire and other residents campaigned to have a referendum on whether the land could be rezoned for a data centre. Their plea was not successful, and the city council approved the rezoning of the land.

But the experience of the campaign had invigorated McGuire, and she decided to run for city council herself. The central issue of her campaign is to bring transparency to the data centre’s functioning.

Even as the campaigns in Pima County and Marana raged on, La Osa, the state’s largest data centre project, took shape in Tucson’s neighbouring Pinal County. The 3,300-acre project by the Vermaland real estate group was expected to house 59 data centres and two of its own natural gas facilities, as well as a utility-scale battery storage system.

But residents worried about noise pollution from protracted project construction and a possible increase in power costs.

“I’m worried about the constituents in that area, about the power bills going up, even though you’re saying that they’re going to pay for it,” Pinal County Supervisor Rich Vitiello said in a board of supervisors meeting on May 27.

In the face of such opposition, a La Osa lawyer spoke at the meeting to say the project had been scaled down and would now house 11 data centres from the 59 planned earlier.

‘A straw to the aquifer’

Sharing limited water has long been an emotive issue in the state, and the looming Colorado River cuts and data centre projects have brought such concerns to a head.

Arizona fought one of the longest-running cases, stretching more than three decades, in the US Supreme Court over the sharing of Colorado River water with California. Eventually, Congress adjudicated to provide California with a greater share of the water, which turbocharged its economic growth.

“No water can flow into Tucson and Phoenix unless California gets its full share,” says Jason Robison, co-director of the Gina Guy Center for Land and Water Law at the University of Wyoming College of Law.  “Arizona has always been in a tough spot.”

It strengthened the state’s long-held tradition of conservation.

“Arizona communities have been preparing for the drought conditions we see today since 1980,” a spokesperson for the Arizona Department of Water Resources said in an emailed response.

Authorities have curtailed lawns in Tucson, he said, and educational campaigns of the kind Herrera’s daughter underwent are the norm.

It has meant that groundwater reserves go deep, and homeowners are assured of a water supply before it is given to data centres or farms.

“The use by data centres is low compared to farm use, especially alfalfa and hay,” says Eric Kuhn, retired general manager of the Colorado River Water Conservation District and co-author of Science Be Dammed: How Ignoring Inconvenient Science Drained the Colorado River.

However, “data centres are not under the same rules to replenish water” as other industries, says Sharon Medgal, director of the Water Resources Research Center at the University of Arizona. “So it adds a straw to the aquifer.”

Arizona’s governor, Katie Hobbs, who is up for re-election in November, has represented to the Bureau of Reclamation that the state is home to essential industry, including semiconductors, space and data centres, and so needs a higher share of water from the Colorado River. Water, as well as its use for data centres, has been an important issue in primary races across the state.

Construction began for Project Blue at the end of April. No Desert Data Centers’ activists arrived just after dawn to protest. Within days, they found subcontractors bringing in water to control dust on site from construction. County authorities cited Beale.

Then Beale began digging wells on site after reportedly receiving permits allowing that from the Arizona Department of Water Resources. This is likely for 31,000 gallons  (more than 117,000 litres) a year, which is just enough for toilets and kitchens and will likely be recycled for reuse after.

“This may not yet be a winning story,” Bharathan, the spokesperson for the No Desert Data Center, said. “But it is a continuing story.”

The advertisements all start the same way. It could be a barber, an aunt or a family member in discussion with others about the FIFA World Cup, but in each case, they assume Egypt will be heading home after the group stage.

Then an Egyptian footballer pushes back: “To all the doubters, this time we’re staying longer.”

It’s a line that’s resonating like never before in the nation of 120 million people, as Egyptian football fans wait with bated breath for the final round of group stage matches that could send The Pharaohs, as the national team are known, into uncharted territory: the knockout stages.

Here’s why these commercials have captured the zeitgeist in Egypt:

Egypt’s poor World Cup track record

Egypt was the first African and Arab nation ever to play in a World Cup, back in 1934. It has won the Africa Cup of Nations a record seven times. Football in Egypt isn’t just a sport, it’s a national identity, and The Pharaohs have long been a source of genuine pride and belief.

But the World Cup has always told a different story. Before this tournament, Egypt had qualified just three times — in 1934, 1990 and 2018.

It had never won a single match. Fans still carry the painful memories of a penalty shootout loss to Senegal that kept Egypt out of the Qatar World Cup 2022 entirely.

What’s different this time?

Everything — at least, so it seems.

After two games at the World Cup, Egypt sits at the top of Group G, above Iran, Belgium and New Zealand.

The 26th ranked Egypt drew 1-1 with Belgium — ranked 10 in the world — in its first match. Then, it beat lower-ranked New Zealand 3-1.

Its four points are the most Egypt has ever earned at a World Cup. Its four goals are the most Egypt has ever scored at a World Cup.

Now, on Friday night in Seattle — early Saturday morning in Egypt — the team faces Iran in their final group game. A win or a draw would guarantee that Egypt’s national team goes into the knockout stages for the first time.

If Egypt loses to Iran, they might still make it to the round of 32, but their fate will depend on what happens in the Belgium-New Zealand match that will be held at the same time, and potentially, on the outcomes of matches in other groups. Eight of the 12 teams places third in their groups will also move into the next round.

So in a nutshell, Egypt is on the cusp of going where it never has before — and only a rare set of permutations can deny it that chance.

But it isn’t just the performances. Part of what makes this year feel different, to many fans, is the identity of the main man standing outside the pitch, next to the Egyptian dugout.

Hossam Hassan is Egypt’s all-time top scorer and one of the most iconic figures in the country’s football history. In 1990, he scored the goal that ended a 56-year wait and sent Egypt to the World Cup in Italy. Now, more than three decades later, he is the national team’s coach, making him the first Egyptian ever to reach the World Cup as both player and manager.

For older fans, his presence carries the memory of a time when Egypt genuinely believed it could make its mark on the world stage.

So what are the advertisements really about?

They aren’t really making fun of the team. They’re making fun of the deeply ingrained expectation that Egypt won’t go very far. And that expectation, many argue, goes beyond football. Years of economic hardship and political uncertainty have made expecting the worst feel like common sense for many Egyptians. They protect themselves from disappointment. They assume it won’t work out before it doesn’t.

That’s what has also made the campaigns somewhat divisive. For some viewers, the humour felt honest — a reflection of a habit fans know they have. It prompted real questions about why low expectations have become so normal. Others argued the advertisements risked making those same low expectations feel permanent, even acceptable.

Either way, they underscore how the 2026 World Cup has reignited faith among Egyptian fans, as they wait for the Iran match. An advertisement campaign challenging doubters has come to reflect the broader hopes, doubts and debates surrounding The Pharaohs.

The United States Supreme Court has sided with the maker of Roundup weedkiller in a ruling expected to block thousands of lawsuits alleging it failed to warn people the product could cause cancer.

The ruling on Thursday was tied to a case that came before the justices after a tidal wave of litigation that included some multibillion-dollar verdicts against the global agrochemical manufacturer Bayer, a Germany-based company that acquired Roundup when it bought its original producer Monsanto in 2018.

The decision is a victory for US President Donald Trump’s administration, but one that could be tricky politically since allies in the “Make America Healthy Again” movement want to rein in pesticide use.

The high court, in a 7-2 ruling, found that the company cannot face failure-to-warn lawsuits in state courts because federal regulations have found a cancer link unlikely and do not require a warning label.

The justices overturned a jury verdict in Missouri awarding $1.25m to a man named John Durnell who said he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma after years of exposure to glyphosate in Roundup. The Supreme Court agreed with Bayer that a US law that governs pesticides precludes failure-to-warn claims that are brought under state law from moving forward in court.

Bayer shares jumped nearly 18 percent following the ruling.

Trump’s administration had backed Bayer in the case.

Conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who authored the ruling, said the US Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, has concluded glyphosate does not cause cancer and has not required a cancer warning on Roundup.

The law preempts Durnell’s claim because it “would require Monsanto to add a cancer warning to Roundup’s label even though federal law requires Monsanto to use the EPA-approved label without a cancer warning”, Kavanaugh wrote.

Liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, in a dissent joined by conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch, said that Durnell’s claim would impose equivalent labelling requirements on Monsanto that the federal law requires and so should not be preempted.

Jackson called the ruling “remarkable and regrettable, for it unjustifiably closes the courthouse doors to state tort plaintiffs like Durnell”.

Bayer acquired Roundup as part of its $63bn purchase of agrochemical company Monsanto in 2018. More than 100,000 plaintiffs have filed cases in US state and federal courts alleging a cancer link, and the German drugmaking and crop science company had said that the lawsuits could threaten its ability to supply the herbicide to farmers.

The torrent of litigation already prompted Bayer to remove glyphosate from its consumer version of Roundup. Bayer said before the Supreme Court ruled that a decision in its favour could largely end the Roundup litigation.

“The US Supreme Court decision is good for science, farmers, and industries that depend on regulatory clarity for innovation. It should help significantly contain the Roundup litigation after nearly a decade of legal battles. The ruling should result in the dismissal of current warning-based claims and bar future failure-to-warn claims,” Bayer spokesperson Tino Andresen said in a statement.

The company emphasised throughout the litigation that the EPA repeatedly found that glyphosate does not cause cancer and approved its product labels without a warning.

Facing billions of dollars in potential liability, Bayer announced in February a proposed $7.25bn settlement to resolve tens of thousands of current and future lawsuits. The settlement would not affect claims that stem from pending appeals or that fall outside the deal, according to the company. Those amount to nearly $1bn, it said.

‘Disaster for public health’

Environmental activists and others criticised the court’s ruling on Thursday.

“Once again, the Supreme Court has sided with big business over people and the environment. Today’s ruling is a disaster for public health,” said Tarah Heinzen, legal director at the advocacy group Food and Water Watch.

“The harm from this decision will perpetuate our cancer, infertility and general chronic disease epidemic for generations to come,” said Kelly Ryerson, co-executive director of advocacy group American Regeneration and a Make America Healthy Again activist who posts on social media under the moniker “The Glyphosate Girl”.

The sprawling dispute centres on a US law called the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act, or FIFRA, that governs the sale and labelling of pesticides and bars states from imposing differing or additional requirements.

The measure prohibits pesticides that are “misbranded” with labels that lack an adequate warning to protect health and the environment.

Bayer has argued that Durnell’s claims are preempted by this law. The EPA has repeatedly approved labels without such a cancer warning, demonstrating that these products are not misbranded, the company said, adding that labels cannot be substantially changed without the agency’s approval.

Durnell’s lawyers said that despite the EPA’s registration of Roundup, the label may still be challenged as misbranded. They also said Durnell’s claims are not preempted because Missouri state law that requires products to adequately warn of dangers imposes the same requirements as FIFRA’s prohibition on misbranding.

‘A new era’

Union Investment fund manager Markus Manns called Thursday’s ruling a significant milestone for Bayer, adding that a decade after the Monsanto acquisition, the company is “entering a new era”.

“While future lawsuits are not entirely off the table, they will become considerably more difficult. A final breakthrough would come if the settlement is accepted by the plaintiffs and approved by the competent court in July. This would bring Bayer’s glyphosate litigation chapter to a definitive close, allowing management to fully refocus on operational and strategic matters,” Manns said.

Durnell sued Monsanto in Missouri state court in 2019, claiming it failed to warn users of the dangers associated with Roundup and glyphosate.

He was diagnosed with a rare and often aggressive form of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a cancer that starts in the white blood cells, and attributed the disease to his exposure to Roundup starting in 1996. For about 20 years, he was the “spray guy” for a neighborhood association in St Louis, killing weeds at local parks without protective equipment, according to court papers.

A jury sided with Durnell in 2023, and in 2025, a state appeals court upheld that verdict.

The price of Brent crude has reached its lowest since February 27, before the war started.

Oil prices have extended their decline to levels last seen before the start of the Iran war, as expectations of rising supply from the Middle East outweighed demand concerns.

Prompt-month Brent crude futures for August delivery fell $1.06 (1.44 percent) to $72.68 a barrel by 06:39 GMT, while US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) lost 76 cents (1.08 percent) to $69.58 a barrel.

Both contracts hit their lowest since February 27.

August Brent was trading lower than September, which was priced at $73.59, signalling ample short-term supply.

Brent had fallen by more than $3 on Wednesday as supply concerns eased, while WTI settled down nearly $3.

US Energy Secretary Chris Wright told a forum that flows through the Strait of Hormuz were close to those before the start of the Iran war, with at least 20 million barrels having exited the strait in the past 24 hours.

A return to complete normality would take a few weeks, however, because the strait needs to be cleared of mines, he added.

Rising Middle East supply, together with Iran set to boost sales after a temporary reprieve from US sanctions, drove down prices of physical crude oil cargoes around the world.

New routes

An initial accord last week to end the US-Israeli war with Iran, which began on February 28, has allowed the resumption of traffic through the strait.

The accord set up a 60-day period of negotiations to tackle tougher issues, such as Iran’s nuclear programme.

Wright said oil would continue to flow through the strait even if the deal did not hold, and that Iran would not be able to close it again.

Tehran has said it plans to impose what it calls maritime service fees, as opposed to tolls, while the United States argues it is an international waterway and therefore should not be charged.

Oman opened temporary routes on Wednesday to ease tanker departures from the strait, with the International Maritime Organization and Omani authorities coordinating movements.

On Thursday, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards warned against any crossings of the Strait of Hormuz without authorisation, saying vessels not complying “will be dealt with” and condemning the new routes.

Lawsuit claims Tesla’s Autopilot shortcomings led to fatal crash; family seeks $1m in damages and punitive measures.

The family of a Texas woman who was killed has filed a lawsuit against Tesla after a driver using a Model 3’s automated driving assistance system crashed into a suburban Houston home last week.

The complaint, filed on Tuesday, argues that Tesla should be held liable for the wrongful death of 76-year-old Martha Avila. The family alleges that the automaker, led by Elon Musk, failed to adequately warn drivers about alleged defects in its Autopilot and Full Self-Driving systems.

Avila’s daughter, Jennifer Barbour, and her husband, Justin Barbour, said the Model 3’s driver, Michael Butler, told law enforcement he engaged Autopilot before ploughing through the front wall of Avila’s home in Katy, Texas, the United States, on June 19, pinning her before she succumbed to her injuries at a nearby hospital, according to the complaint.

Video obtained by KHOU – Houston’s CBS affiliate — shows the car travelling at top speed over the front lawn of Avila’s home in the Houston suburb before slamming into the front room.

The driver told the Harris County Sheriff’s Office that he was using the technology at the time of the accident. The driver in the incident was not under the influence of alcohol and is cooperating with authorities.

Butler is also a defendant in the Barbours’ lawsuit. It is unclear whether he has a lawyer.

Musk, the world’s richest person, posted on X on Monday night: “FSD drives slowly through neighbourhood streets and this was a high-speed crash!”

Ashok Elluswamy, vice president of AI software at Tesla, posted on X in response, saying that “the driver manually overrode self-driving by pressing the accelerator all the way to 100% of the accel pedal in this residential area.”

The lawsuit filed in a Harris County, Texas, state court seeks more than $1m in damages, and punitive damages reflecting Tesla’s alleged “reckless disregard for a substantial risk of severe bodily injury”.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has been investigating the crash.

Since 2016, the NHTSA has opened nearly 50 special investigations of Tesla crashes believed to involve advanced driver assistance systems. About two dozen deaths were reported.

In March, the NHTSA escalated its probe into 3.2 million Teslas equipped with Full Self-Driving, on concern the system may fail to detect or warn drivers in poor visibility. In 2023, Tesla recalled about two million vehicles, nearly all of its electric vehicles on US roads, to better ensure that drivers pay attention when using Autopilot.

Tesla has said Autopilot enables vehicles to steer, accelerate and brake within their lanes, while Full Self-Driving lets vehicles obey traffic signals and change lanes.

The carmaker has also said both technologies require “fully attentive” drivers whose hands are on the wheel.

The incident comes as the Musk-owned company is rolling out robotaxis using automated software in several US cities this year and plans to invite Tesla owners across the country to put their cars into the fleet using the same system.

Alan Greenspan, one of the most influential economic policymakers in modern US history, has died aged 100. Greenspan led the Federal Reserve for nearly two decades under four presidents, overseeing a long period of economic growth but also faced criticism linked to the 2008 financial crisis.

Coca-Cola and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) of the United States will face off in a Florida court this week in the latest episode of a decades-long legal battle over the beverage giant’s tax liability on overseas profits.

The Atlanta, Georgia-based company and the US tax service will begin oral arguments on Thursday in a dispute that centres on transfer pricing – the practice of setting prices for transactions carried out between a company’s own affiliates – and could result in Coca-Cola facing a tax bill of about $20bn.

The case is being closely watched in corporate circles because the outcome will have implications for the amount of tax US-based multinational corporations must pay on income generated through their foreign subsidiaries.

What is the case about?

Coca-Cola is appealing a 2020 US Tax Court ruling that upheld the IRS’s finding that the soft drink giant underreported profits from transactions between its foreign subsidiaries.

In 2015, the IRS notified Coca-Cola that it owed billions in back taxes after concluding that the company had undercharged its units in Ireland, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Costa Rica, Egypt and Eswatini, formerly known as Swaziland.

US multinationals often charge low licensing fees for their overseas units to minimise their reportable income in the US, which has a higher corporate tax rate than many of its peers.

“The IRS audited Coca-Cola because the company was earning astronomical profits in Ireland and a few other countries,” Alex Martin, an expert in transfer pricing at the tax consulting firm KBKG, told Al Jazeera.

The IRS first took Coca-Cola to court in 2015, but the origins of the dispute date back to 1996 when the two sides settled a tax audit for liabilities from 1987 to 1995.

Under the pricing formula agreed in that settlement, Coca-Cola’s foreign affiliates were allowed to retain a profit equal to 10 percent of their gross sales with the remaining income split evenly between the US headquarters and the overseas unit.

Coca-Cola argues that it should be able to continue to use this formula from 1996 while the IRS contends the terms of that settlement should have no bearing on the soft drink giant’s tax liabilities arising from audits in 2007, 2008 and 2009.

“The amount of potential exposure is about $20bn, so it is significant,” Reuven Avi-Yonah, an expert in taxation law at the University of Michigan Law School, told Al Jazeera.

Coca-Cola agreed to pay the IRS $6bn in back taxes and interest in 2024 while preparing its appeal but could be liable to pay up to $14bn more if the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit sides with the government.

Coca-Cola argues that the IRS “misinterpreted and misapplied the applicable regulations” and has expressed its confidence that it will be successful in its appeal.

Why does the case have implications beyond Coca-Cola?

The case is important because it could serve as a template for the US government to raise more tax revenue from large multinational companies that generate huge profits overseas.

“The IRS designated this case for litigation because this litigation can provide a template for the IRS to audit other US companies with highly profitable subsidiaries,” Martin said.

Under the administration of former US President Joe Biden, the IRS ramped up its tax collection efforts against companies benefitting from transfer pricing arrangements.

In one of the most high-profile transfer pricing cases in recent years, the IRS announced in 2023 that Microsoft owed $28.9bn in back taxes, plus penalties and interest, on income derived from the distribution of software through its subsidiaries in Puerto Rico, Ireland and Singapore.

Microsoft said it disagreed with the IRS’s reasoning and would appeal to the tax service and, if that failed, go to court.

In 2024, the IRS announced that the short-term rental platform Airbnb and Newell Brands, a consumer products manufacturer, had underpaid their taxes to the tune of $1.33bn and $90m, respectively.

Airbnb and Newell Brands have both challenged the IRS’s determinations in the US Tax Court.

The Coca-Cola case is particularly significant because the IRS has historically fared poorly in litigating transfer pricing complaints, losing a string of cases against major corporations through the decades, including Bausch & Lomb, US Steel Corp and Hospital Corp of America.

“It is important because it is the first clear victory of the IRS in this kind of case involving profit shifting out of the US in many decades, so if it is upheld on appeal, more companies may be inclined to settle rather than litigate,” Avi-Yonah said.