Algeria’s parliament has begun debating a draft law that would criminalise France’s colonial rule from 1830 to 1962. Al Jazeera’s Nada Qaddourah explains what we know about the bill.
Published On 24 Dec 202524 Dec 2025
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Russian forces have struck Ukraine’s southern Black Sea port of Odesa, damaging port facilities and a ship, the region’s governor says.
The attack late on Monday followed another at the weekend when Moscow carried out a sustained barrage of drones and missile attacks on the wider area around Odesa, which is home to ports crucial to Ukraine’s overseas trade and fuel imports. They followed Russian threats to cut “Ukraine off from the sea”.
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The escalation in Russia’s assault on Odesa, Ukraine’s biggest port city, has unfolded as Washington steps up diplomatic efforts to bring an end to the war. Ukrainian officials met members of a US delegation on Friday in Florida while US envoys held talks with Russian representatives on Saturday.
“The situation in the Odesa region is harsh due to Russian strikes on port infrastructure and logistics,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told reporters in Kyiv on Monday. “Russia is once again trying to restrict Ukraine’s access to the sea and block our coastal regions.”
On Tuesday, the head of the Odesa Regional Military Administration, Oleh Kiper, said Russian strikes overnight had damaged a civilian cargo vessel and a warehouse in a district of Odesa while the roof of a two-storey residential building had caught fire.
Meanwhile, strikes on Saturday on the port of Pivdennyi near Odesa damaged storage reservoirs, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Oleksii Kuleba said. Those came just one day after a ballistic missile strike, also in Pivdennyi, had killed eight people and wounded at least 30.
These are just the latest strikes in an escalation of hostilities in the area over the past few weeks.
Last week, Russia launched one of its largest aerial assaults of the war on the Black Sea region, damaging energy infrastructure and causing a power outage in Odesa, leaving hundreds of thousands of residents without electricity for several days.
Russia’s Ministry of Defence did not immediately comment on the strikes, but the Kremlin has previously described Ukraine’s economic infrastructure as a “legitimate military objective” during the nearly four-year war.
On the Telegram messaging app, Kuleba said on Friday that Russian forces were targeting power infrastructure and a bridge over the Dniester River near the village of Mayaky, southwest of Pivdennyi, which was struck five times in 24 hours.
That bridge links parts of the region separated by waterways and serves as the primary westbound route to border crossings with Moldova. It is currently out of operation. Kuleba said the route normally carries about 40 percent of Ukraine’s fuel supplies.
“The focus of the war may have shifted towards Odesa,” Kuleba said, warning that the “crazy” attacks could intensify as Russia tries to weaken Ukraine’s economy.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has previously said Moscow wants to restrict Ukraine’s Black Sea access in retaliation for Kyiv’s recent drone attacks on Russia’s sanctions-evading “shadow fleet” of vessels, which carry a variety of commodities.
Ukraine said those vessels are used to illegally export sanctioned oil, which provides Russia with its main source of revenue for financing its full-scale invasion of its neighbour.
Odesa’s port has long been central to Ukraine’s economy. Called a “pearl by the sea”, Odesa is Ukraine’s third most populous city after Kyiv and Kharkiv.
Black Sea ports – including Odesa and two others close by, Pivdennyi and Chornomorsk – and Mykolaiv to the east handled more than 70 percent of Ukraine’s exports before the war.
But Odesa’s role as a trading hub has grown in recent years as ports in the Zaporizhia, Kherson and Mykolaiv regions have been occupied by Russia.
Since the war began in February 2022, Ukraine has continued to rank among the world’s top five exporters of wheat and corn – largely through Odesa.
By targeting Odesa’s shipping facilities with missiles and drones, Ukrainian officials said, Putin aims to destroy Ukrainian trade and business infrastructure.
Zelenskyy, who has previously accused Russia of “sowing chaos” on the people of Odesa, said: “Everyone must see that without pressure on Russia, they have no intention of genuinely ending their aggression.”
If the port of Odesa were badly damaged, the economic impact for Ukraine would be severe. The city and its surrounding areas would suffer major job losses in the shipping and logistics industries, seriously squeezing local incomes. Meanwhile, port-dependent businesses would falter and investment would fall away.
Nationally, Ukraine’s export capacity would be hit hard. As a key gateway for grain and other commodities, disruptions there would raise transport costs, slow shipments and reduce export volumes, choking foreign currency earnings and piling pressure on the hryvnia, Ukraine’s currency.
Elsewhere, farmers would suffer from lower prices for their produce as well as storage bottlenecks with knock-on effects across rural economies. The government would also lose customs revenue just as reconstruction costs would rise, weakening the country’s overall economic resilience.
Over the past six months, maritime warfare between Ukraine and Russia has intensified. Both sides have targeted naval and commercial assets across the Black Sea and beyond.
Ukrainian forces have increasingly used underwater drones and unmanned surface vessels to strike ships tied to Russia’s shadow fleet.
Several shadow fleet tankers, including the Kairos and Virat, were hit by Ukrainian naval drones in the Black Sea near Turkish waters in late November.
Kyiv has expanded its reach elsewhere, claiming drone strikes in the Mediterranean on December 19 on the Qendil, a Russian-linked tanker, marking an expansion in Kyiv’s maritime operations.
At the same time, Russian forces have ramped up attacks on commercial targets, including a Turkish-flagged ship carrying trucks and other freight near Odesa with drone attacks on December 13.
These actions reflect a shift towards what is referred to as “asymmetric naval warfare”, in which drones and improvised systems play a growing role in disrupting each side’s economic and military support networks at sea, experts said.
The Israeli security cabinet has approved 19 new settlement outposts in the occupied West Bank as the right-wing government headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu moves to prevent the formation of a viable Palestinian state.
As Netanyahu’s government has made the annexation of occupied Palestinian territory a priority, the United Nations has said Israeli settlement expansions in 2025 have reached their highest level since 2017.
“These figures represent a sharp increase compared to previous years,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said, noting an average of 12,815 housing units were added annually from 2017 to 2022.
Under the current far-right government, the number of settlement and outposts in the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem has risen by nearly 50 percent – from 141 in 2022 to 210 now. An outpost is built without government authorisation while a settlement is authorised by the Israeli government.
Nearly 10 percent of Israel’s Jewish population of 7.7 million people lives in these settlements, which are considered illegal under international law.
Here’s everything you need to know about the newly approved settlements and what they mean for the future of Palestinian statehood.
The new settlements are spread across the West Bank – home to more than three million Palestinians – from Jenin in the north to Hebron in the south.
Most of them are close to the densely populated Palestinian villages of Duma, Jalud, Qusra and al-Lubban Asharqiya in the Nablus governorate and Sinjil in the Ramallah and el-Bireh governorate, according to Peace Now, an antisettlement watchdog group based in Israel. Other locations identified by the watchdog for the new settlement areas are in the northwestern West Bank, in the Salfit governorate, near the Palestinian towns of Sa’ir and Beit Sahour, and other areas near Bethlehem and in the Jericho governorate.
Israel’s construction spree is entrenching the occupation and squeezing Palestinians out of their homeland. Settlements dot the West Bank and are often connected by Israeli-only highways while Palestinians face roadblocks and security checks, making their daily commutes harrowing experiences.
Israel has also built Separation Barrier that stretches for more than 700km (435 miles) through the West Bank restricting movement of Palestinians. Israel says the wall is for security purposes.
Under a dual legal system, Palestinians are tried in Israel’s military courts while crimes committed by settlers are referred to a civilian court.
Israel’s latest approval also includes settlements in Ganim and Kadim, two of the four West Bank settlements east of Jenin that were dismantled as part of Israel’s 2005 disengagement plan, a unilateral withdrawal ordered by then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
Five of the 19 settlements already existed but had not previously been granted legal status under Israeli law, according to a statement from the office of Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.
Israel controls most of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, territory Palestinians want to be part of a future state along with Gaza. Israel captured East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in a 1967 war. It later annexed East Jerusalem, which Palestinians see as their future capital.
Israeli settlements and outposts are Jewish-only communities built on Palestinian land and they can range in size from a single dwelling to a collection of high-rises. About 700,000 settlers live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, according to Peace Now.
The latest approval comes at a time when the United States has been working with Israel and Arab allies to move the Gaza ceasefire into a second phase. After a meeting on Friday of top officials from the US, Egypt, Turkiye and Qatar in the US city of Miami, Florida, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan accused Israel of committing repeated violations of the ceasefire that began in October.
Israel still controls nearly half of Gaza’s territory since a ceasefire was announced on October 10 after more than two years of a genocidal war killed more than 70,000 Palestinians.
The new settlements bring the total number approved over the past three years to 69, according to a statement from the office of Smotrich, who is a vocal proponent of settlement expansion and a settler himself.
In May, Israel approved 22 new settlements in the West Bank, the biggest expansion in decades.
The UN chief has condemned what he described as Israel’s “relentless” expansion of settlements in occupied Palestinian territory. It “continues to fuel tensions, impede access by Palestinians to their land and threaten the viability of a fully independent, democratic, contiguous and sovereign Palestinian state”, Guterres said this month.
Palestinians have also been facing increasing settler violence since Israel’s war on Gaza began.
According to data from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), settlers have attacked Palestinians nearly 3,000 times over the past two years.
Settler attacks often escalate during the olive harvest from September to November, a vital time of year that provides a key source of income for many Palestinian families.
Settlers are often armed and frequently accompanied or protected by Israeli soldiers. In addition to destroying Palestinian property, they have carried out arson attacks and killed Palestinian residents.
Every West Bank governorate has faced settler attacks over the past two years, data from OCHA shows.
No. The UN, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Committee of the Red Cross all consider Israeli settlements as a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which outlaws settler activity.
In a landmark judgement in July 2024, the ICJ, the UN’s top court, found that Israel’s occupation, settlement activity and annexation measures are illegal. In its nonbinding advisory opinion, the ICJ ruled that Israel’s continued presence in occupied Palestinian territory is unlawful and should come to an end “as rapidly as possible”.
The judges pointed to a wide list of policies – including the building and expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, use of the area’s natural resources, the annexation and imposition of permanent control over lands and discriminatory policies against Palestinians – all of which it said violated international law.
Two months later, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution demanding that Israel end its occupation of Palestinian territory within a year.
But Israel has defied the resolution by the global body backed by its ally – the United States. Washington has extended diplomatic cover to Israel against numerous UN resolutions.
Since returning to power in January, US President Donald Trump has adopted a permissive stance towards Israeli settlement activity, breaking with longstanding US policy.
In 2019, he said Israeli settlements in the West Bank were not inherently illegal under international law. Trump also revoked his predecessor President Joe Biden’s sanctions on several settlers and groups accused of perpetrating violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.
US sanctions on settlers under Biden came under Washington’s long-held policy that settlements are the biggest impediments to the two-state solution to the conflict.
However, Trump and his officials have repeatedly said Israel cannot annex the West Bank. “It won’t happen because I gave my word to the Arab countries,” Trump told Time magazine in October. “Israel would lose all of its support from the United States if that happened.”
The growing settlements – together with other projects undertaken by Netanyahu’s government like the E1 settlement plan that will split the West Bank – are further squeezing Palestinians in occupied territory.
Settlement expansions have drawn criticism from the international community, including Israel’s European allies, who said the steps undermine prospects for a two-state solution.
But Netanyahu and his far-right cabinet, including Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, have doubled down on their rhetoric against a Palestinian state.
“On the ground, we are blocking the establishment of a Palestinian terror state,” Smotrich said in his statement on Sunday.
In June, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Norway slapped sanctions on Smotrich and Ben-Gvir for inciting violence.
Several European nations, including the UK and France, as well as Australia recognised Palestinian statehood in September in a push for the two-state solution.
Israel condemned the move, and Netanyahu said he won’t allow a Palestinian state. He has previously boasted how he scuttled the 1993 and 1995 Oslo peace accords by boosting settlement expansion in occupied territory.
“It’s not going to happen. There will be no Palestinian state to the west of the Jordan River,” Netanyahu said in an address in September. “For years, I have prevented the creation of that terror state against tremendous pressure, both domestic and from abroad.”
The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) has released thousands more documents relating to the prosecution of the late sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein, including photographs of prominent figures he spent time with. But campaigners behind the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which compelled the Justice Department on Friday to release all files still sealed, say far too much information in them has been redacted.
Furthermore, according to US media, at least 16 of the files – which they said were disclosed late – have since “disappeared” from the website where they were released. The deleted files included a photograph showing President Donald Trump.
The Epstein Files Transparency Act, which Trump signed into law after it passed through Congress in November, required the government to release all remaining unclassified material in its possession relating to Epstein’s and his girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex trafficking cases. Maxwell is currently serving 20 years in prison for her part in the scandal.
Despite heavy redaction of many of the documents, which has angered Democrats and some Republicans alike, there is some new information about the powerful people who associated with the disgraced late financier.
The Justice Department said it will release more documents in the coming weeks.
Here’s what we know about what’s been released so far:
This is just the latest release of documents relating to the prosecution of Epstein, who died by suicide in a New York jail in 2019. The first tranche of about 950 pages of court documents was made public in early 2024.
One document released this time around confirms that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was tipped off about the convicted sex offender’s crimes nearly a decade before he was first arrested.
In September 1996, Epstein survivor Maria Farmer complained to the FBI that the late financier was involved in child sex abuse. Farmer said officials failed to take steps to investigate.
While the name of the complainant is redacted in the document relating to this complaint to the FBI, Farmer has confirmed it was made by her.
Now in her 50s, Farmer said in a statement via her lawyers after the release on Friday that she feels “redeemed” and this was “one of the best days of my life”.
“I want everyone to know that I am shedding tears of joy for myself but also tears of sorrow for all the other victims that the FBI failed,” she said.
Newly released transcripts of grand jury proceedings also include testimony from FBI agents who described interviews that they conducted with girls and young women describing their experiences of being paid to perform sex acts for Epstein. The youngest interviewee was 14, according to local media.
One woman, then aged 21, told a grand jury that Epstein had hired her when she was 16 to perform a sexual massage and that she had gone on to recruit other girls to do the same.
“For every girl that I brought to the table, he would give me $200,” she said.
They were mostly people she knew from high school, she said, adding that she told them that if they were under age, “just lie about it and tell him that you are 18.”
Much of the material published had already been circulating in the public domain after years of court action and investigations.
However, many of the new photos – some of them heavily blacked out – feature well-known public figures.
Among the documents released on Friday are photographs in a folder labelled “DOJ Disclosures”. Most of the photographs were seized by the FBI during various searches of Epstein’s homes in New York City and the US Virgin Islands.
New photos show the musicians Mick Jagger, Michael Jackson and Diana Ross in photographs with Epstein and at times with other people whose faces have been blacked out.
In one image, Jagger can be seen sitting between Epstein and former US President Bill Clinton. Popstar Jackson is also pictured standing next to Clinton and posing for a photo with Epstein in front of a painting in another.
Other famous men featured in the newly released photos include the actor Kevin Spacey, comedian Chris Tucker, billionaire Richard Branson, former UK ambassador to the US Peter Mandelson and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor – formerly known as Britain’s Prince Andrew – and his former wife, Sarah Ferguson.
In one black and white image, Andrew can be seen lying across the laps of five people whose faces have all been blacked out while Maxwell stands behind them.
The Justice Department did not include any details about the contents or context of the photos.
Virginia Giuffre, who was one of Epstein’s most prominent accusers and who died by suicide in April aged 41, accused Mountbatten-Windsor of sexual abuse when she was 17. He settled a lawsuit with her in 2022 but continued to deny the allegation.
Another prominent figure among the photos is Clinton. One photo shows him in a swimming pool with Maxwell and another person whose face has been blacked out. Another photo shows the former US president in a hot tub with a woman whose face is also redacted.
While Clinton has never been accused of any wrongdoing in connection with Epstein’s crimes, his spokesperson said the White House was using him as a scapegoat.
“This is about shielding themselves from what comes next, or from what they’ll try and hide forever. So they can release as many grainy 20-plus-year-old photos as they want, but this isn’t about Bill Clinton. Never has, never will be,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
Clinton in the past has said he cut ties with Epstein before the late financier pleaded guilty to solicitation of a minor in Florida.
Trump hardly appears in the files at all. The few photos that do feature him are ones that have been circulating in the public domain for decades.
According to one court document released on Friday, Epstein was alleged to have taken a 14-year-old girl to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida and to have introduced her to the president.
While introducing her, Epstein elbowed Trump, asking him – referring to the teenager: “This is a good one, right?” Trump smiled and nodded in agreement, said the document from a case against Epstein’s estate and Maxwell in 2020.
In the court filing, the unnamed plaintiff herself makes no specific accusation against Trump.
In response to media requests for comment about this court document, White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said the Trump administration was “the most transparent in history” and by “recently calling for further investigations into Epstein’s Democrat friends, the Trump Administration has done more for the victims than Democrats ever have,” she added.
Apparently, yes. One image, originally labelled File 468, which showed the inside of a desk drawer, included a photograph of Trump alongside Epstein, US first lady Melania Trump and Maxwell.
Other missing photos were images of paintings depicting nude women and one showing a series of photographs on a cupboard and in drawers.
On Saturday, The Associated Press news agency reported that at least 16 files published on Friday had disappeared from the Justice Department’s webpage.
The department has not provided any explanation or statement to the public about this but said in a post on X that “photos and other materials will continue being reviewed and redacted consistent with the law in an abundance of caution as we receive additional information.”
Democrats on the Oversight Committee in the US House of Representatives also released 68 photos, drawn from the 95,000 photos and files the Oversight Committee has so far received from the Epstein estate.
Democrats in the committee said the images, which they released on Thursday, “were selected to provide the public with transparency into a representative sample of the photos” and “to provide insights into Epstein’s network and his extremely disturbing activities”.
Following the Justice Department’s release on Friday, the committee’s Democratic members questioned in a post on X why the image featuring a photo of Trump, a Republican, was missing, stating: “What else is being covered up? We need transparency for the American public.”
Among the thousands of documents published on Friday, at least 550 pages were reportedly fully redacted.
One 119-page document labelled “Grand Jury-NY” is completely redacted as is a set of three consecutive documents totalling 255 pages. Each page is fully blacked out.
Campaigners behind the Epstein Files Transparency Act said they had hoped to obtain more information about how the sex offender had been able to avoid serious federal charges for so many years.
However, many crucial FBI interviews with Epstein’s accusers and internal Justice Department memos on charging decisions are unreadable.
Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, sent a six-page letter to members of Congress laying out the redaction process, noting that the law mandates that the department omit or redact any references to victims and files that could jeopardise pending investigations or litigation.
Blanche explained that he had, therefore, instructed attorneys to redact or withhold material that contained personally identifiable information about victims; depicted or contained child sexual abuse materials; would jeopardise an active investigation or prosecution; or contained classified national defence or foreign policy information.
Without specifying which, Blanche added that in some instances, the department had withheld or redacted information covered by deliberative-process privilege, work-product privilege and attorney-client privilege.
The Justice Department has said the publication of thousands more documents concerning investigations into Epstein will be released in the coming days as the year-end holidays approach.
The department missed its original Friday deadline to release all the information it had on Epstein in violation of the law signed by Trump in November ordering a complete release within 30 days.
After the drop on Friday, the department published two much smaller tranches on Saturday, which went beyond the initial redactions and featured identities of prosecutors, FBI case agents and other law enforcement personnel who appeared before two federal grand juries in New York state.
Several US lawmakers expressed anger about the White House’s failure to produce all the documents required under the law within the time limit.
Representatives Ro Khanna, a Democrat, and Thomas Massie, a Republican – the duo who introduced the petition that eventually led to the passing of the Epstein Files Transparency Act – strongly criticised the partial release on social media.
Massie wrote that it “grossly fails to comply with both the spirit and the letter of the law”.
Khanna called the release so far “disappointing” and added: “We’re going to push for the actual documents.”
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer accused the Trump administration of being “hell-bent on hiding the truth” and reiterated that the failure to release all the Epstein documents by Friday’s deadline amounts to “breaking the law”.
Meanwhile, officials from the Trump administration have been publicising the photographs featuring former Democratic President Clinton and hailing the current government as “the most transparent in history”.
In a statement, Schumer said Senate Democrats are working “closely with attorneys for the victims of Jeffrey Epstein and with outside legal experts to assess what documents are being withheld and what is being covered up by [US Attorney General] Pam Bondi”.
Representatives Robert Garcia and Jamie Raskin, the ranking Democrats on the House Oversight and Judiciary committees, said they are examining “all legal options” after “the Department of Justice is now making clear it intends to defy Congress itself.”
“Donald Trump and the Department of Justice are now violating federal law as they continue covering up the facts and the evidence about Jeffrey Epstein’s decades-long, billion-dollar, international sex trafficking ring,” Garcia and Raskin said in a statement.
Senator Ron Wyden, another top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee who investigated Epstein’s financial ties, said on social media that the failure to release all the files was “a continuation of this administration’s coverup on behalf of a bunch of pedophiles and sex traffickers”.
The Associated Press reported that if Democratic lawmakers so choose, they could go to court to force the Justice Department to comply with the law. However, that would likely be a lengthy process.
Separately, the House Oversight Committee has issued a subpoena for the Epstein files, which could give Congress another avenue to force the release of more information to the committee. But that would require Republicans to join them in contempt-of-Congress proceedings against a Republican administration.
Singapore has reported a growing number of “rogue” or “shadow fleet” tankers operating off its shores in and around one of the world’s busiest maritime corridors.
According to Lloyd’s List Intelligence data cited by international maritime authorities, at least 27 such ships transited the Singapore Strait in early December, with another 130 clustered nearby around Indonesia’s Riau Archipelago.
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While traffic through the strait remains dense and appears outwardly routine – more than 80,000 vessels pass through it each year – ship-spotters and analysts say the profile of some of the ships using these waters has recently changed.
Conflict in Ukraine and the Middle East has sparked a surge in Western sanctions on oil exports from countries such as Russia and Iran. The European Commission and the United States Trump administration have both recently renewed or extended sanctions against Venezuelan oil, as well.
As a result, a parallel, unofficial maritime network has emerged to keep sanctioned oil moving.
The Singapore Strait is a vital artery for global maritime trade, carrying about one-third of the world’s traded goods at some point along their journeys. For tankers at sea, it is almost unavoidable – the strait is a natural gateway between the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea, also a busy trade artery.
The Maritime and Port Authority monitors vessel movements within Singaporean waters. But international law limits what action it can take once ships move into the high seas – in effect, international waters – allowing shadow fleets to thrive in regulatory grey zones.
In recent weeks, suspect shipping activity has been noted just beyond Singapore’s territorial waters – roughly 22.2 kilometres from its coast – in international waters, just outside of the city state’s law enforcement reach.
As a result of record sanctions by Western governments in recent years over Russia’s war in Ukraine, Iran’s nuclear programme and, most recently, United States President Donald Trump’s campaign against Venezuela, the number of falsely flagged ships globally has more than doubled this year to more than 450, most of them tankers, according to the International Maritime Organization database.
All vessels at sea are required to fly a flag showing the legal jurisdiction governing their operations in international waters. The body which grants ship nationalities is the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).
A shadow ship, or “ghost” ship, is typically an ageing vessel with obscure ownership. These vessels frequently change flags – for instance, when the US seized the tanker, Skipper, off the coast of Venezuela earlier this month, the government of Guyana, Venezuela’s neighbour, said it was “falsely flying the Guyana flag”, and clarified that it was not registered in the country.
Operators of shadow ships also falsify registration details, broadcast false geo-location codes, or even switch off tracking systems altogether to evade detection and skirt UNCLOS laws.
These vessels typically carry sanctioned oil and other restricted goods such as military equipment. They often conduct risky ship-to-ship transfers of cargo under the cover of night to avoid detection. This can create serious safety and environmental risks.
Additionally, most of the tankers are owned by shell companies in jurisdictions such as Dubai, where rapid buying and selling by anonymous or newly formed firms can take place, making it even harder to trace their origins.
Jennifer Parker, a specialist in maritime law at Australia’s University of New South Wales, said the increasing number of shadow fleets presents a “real challenge”.
Parker told Al Jazeera that “finding out who owns them and who insures them has been incredibly difficult because of the [murky] paper trail around them”.
She added that “often they would do what is called bunkering, which is the process of transferring fuel at sea between ships. So that makes it hard to track where that ship has actually come from and where that oil has come from.”
She added: “Sometimes, what they do is actually mix oil, so you will have a legitimate ship that will do a ship-to-ship transfer at sea with a shadow fleet and they will mix the oil so it becomes hard to really trace where that oil has come from … to avoid sanctions.”
When ageing, uninsured vessels are involved in accidents, it can lead to environmental disasters like oil spills.
According to Bunkerspot, a specialist maritime publication, a shadow tanker spill, which can cause enormous damage to water, wildlife and local coastlines, can cost up to $1.6bn in response and cleanup alone.
Last December, Russian authorities scrambled to contain an oil spill in the Kerch Strait caused by two 50-year-old tankers which had been damaged during a heavy weekend storm. The scale of the environmental damage and the associated cleanup costs remain unclear.
In addition to vessel collisions, they can cause environmental damage through chemical leaks and illegal waste dumping.
Russia is the primary beneficiary of ghost fleet trading. Moscow has largely maintained its oil exports despite Western sanctions, ensuring steady revenue for its war in Ukraine. Though not to the same extent, Iran and Venezuela also sell fossil fuels using ghost fleets.
China and India, currently the largest buyers of Russian crude, benefit from steep discounts, often purchasing oil well below the Western-imposed $60 per barrel price cap, which was imposed in December 2022 following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Tracking by S&P Global and Ukrainian intelligence shows that Russia relied heavily on its shadow tanker fleet in 2025. India has been the main destination, importing about 5.4 million tonnes (or 55 percent of Russian crude oil sales via shadow tankers) between January and September.
China has taken a smaller but still significant share of about 15 percent. Overall, most Russian seaborne crude now moves outside Group of Seven (G7)-compliant shipping, underscoring the shadow fleet’s central role in this trade.
To avoid enforcement of sanctions, many shadow tankers have moved out of major shipping lanes. In part, this is down to European authorities now requiring physical inspections during ship-to-ship transfers, making it riskier for these vessels to operate on conventional routes.
For instance, Denmark, Sweden, Poland, Finland and Estonia recently began carrying out insurance checks on tankers transiting the Gulf of Finland and the waters between Sweden and Denmark. This is aimed at ensuring compliance with 2022 sanctions on Russian oil.
Meanwhile, in July 2025, the United Kingdom imposed measures – such as restrictions on access to UK ports, insurance and financial services – on 135 shadow fleet vessels and two linked firms, aiming to reduce Russia’s shipping capacity and cut its energy earnings.
In the US, President Donald Trump has warned that comparable measures will follow if Russia refuses to agree to a ceasefire in Ukraine, raising the prospect of closer transatlantic coordination with the UK and Europe against shadow fleets.
Hollywood filmmaker Rob Reiner and his wife Michele Singer Reiner were found dead in their Los Angeles home on Sunday. The police and investigators believe the couple suffered fatal stab wounds.
On Monday, police arrested the legendary director’s 32-year-old son, Nick Reiner, in connection with the deaths.
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Rob Reiner directed several United States movie classics, including When Harry Met Sally and The Princess Bride. He was also a devoted activist for liberal causes and a frequent critic of US President Donald Trump.
So, what do we know about Nick Reiner, and what was his alleged involvement in his parents’ killing?
Nick was revealed to be in Los Angeles police custody on Monday after the bodies of his parents were discovered inside their home in the upscale Brentwood neighbourhood.
The Los Angeles Fire Department said it responded to a medical aid request shortly after 3:30pm on Sunday [02:30 GMT Monday], and found a man and woman dead inside.
Rob Reiner’s daughter was the first to find the bodies of her parents and called the authorities, according to multiple reports.
In a statement, the Los Angeles Police Department said it was treating the deaths as homicides. Police have not released a full official timeline of how the killings occurred or the motivation behind them.
Nick Reiner remains in custody without bail. On Monday, Los Angeles Police chief Jim McDonnell said Nick Reiner was “booked for murder”.
Prosecutors will receive the case on Tuesday as they weigh whether to file formal charges against him.
Nick Reiner is the middle child of Rob and Michele Singer Reiner. They have two other children, Jake and Romy.
Nick’s struggles with substance abuse were longstanding, about which he had publicly spoken.
Rob Reiner, in a 2016 interview, said his son’s heroin addiction began about age 15, leading him into a cycle of dependency that persisted for years.
He underwent multiple rehabilitation stays, at least 17, by some accounts, and experienced periods of homelessness as a result of his addiction and the difficulties he faced in recovery.
His addiction issues inspired the 2015 semi-autobiographical movie Being Charlie, co-written by the father and son duo, and directed by Rob Reiner, about the struggles of a famous father and an addicted son.
The film was seen as an attempt to explore and heal aspects of their relationship, reflecting how deeply addiction had affected their family.
“It forced us to understand ourselves better than we had,” Rob Reiner told the AP news agency in 2016. During a YouTube interview series when the film was released, Nick Reiner reflected on his upbringing with his father, stating, “We didn’t bond a lot,” and acknowledged that collaborating on the film helped them “feel closer”.
Rob Reiner was a highly influential figure in US film and television. He was the son of comedy legend Carl Reiner, who died in 2020 at the age 98.
The Emmy-winning actor first gained fame as Michael “Meathead” Stivic in the 1970s TV sitcom, All in the Family. Rob Reiner went on to become a celebrated director, responsible for such classics as This Is Spinal Tap, Stand by Me, The Princess Bride, and A Few Good Men.
Legendary actress and Oscar winner Kathy Bates, who won the coveted award as the star of Rob Reiner’s 1990 film, Misery, said she “loved Rob”.
“He was brilliant and kind, a man who made films of every genre to challenge himself as an artist,” she said in a statement. “He changed the course of my life. Michele was a gifted photographer.”
Beyond filmmaking, Rob Reiner was an active political and social voice, often engaging in public debates on issues ranging from civil rights to public policy. He was a fierce critic of US President Trump.
During Trump’s first term, Reiner repeatedly described the president as “mentally unfit” and “unqualified” to serve in office.
On Monday, Trump made a social media post in which he described Reiner as “tortured and struggling” and claimed that both he and his wife had died, “reportedly due to the anger he caused” by opposing Trump during his presidency.
“He was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump,” he wrote on Truth Social.
Trump, who is known for aggressively targeting critics and commending allies, did not present any proof that Rob Reiner’s political stance was linked to the couple’s deaths.
The post was met with sharp condemnation from politicians across the political spectrum, including both Democrats and Republicans.
New Delhi, India – A newly released Bollywood spy thriller is winning praise and raising eyebrows in equal measure in India and Pakistan, over its retelling of bitter tensions between the South Asian neighbours.
Sunk in a sepia tone, Dhurandhar, which was released in cinemas last week, is a 3.5-hour-long cross-border political spy drama that takes cinemagoers on a violent and bloody journey through a world of gangsters and intelligence agents set against the backdrop of India-Pakistan tensions. It comes just months after hostilities broke out between the two countries in May, following a rebel attack on a popular tourist spot in Pahalgam, in Indian-administered Kashmir, which India blamed Pakistan for. Islamabad has denied role in the attack.
Since the partition of India to create Pakistan in 1947, the nuclear-armed neighbours have fought four wars, three of them over the disputed region of Kashmir.
The film stars the popular actor Ranveer Singh, who plays an Indian spy who infiltrates networks of “gangsters and terrorists” in Karachi, Pakistan. Critics of the film argue that its storyline is laced with ultra-nationalist political tropes and that it misrepresents history, an emerging trend in Bollywood, they say.
Directed by Aditya Dhar, the film dramatises a covert chapter from the annals of Indian intelligence. The narrative centres on a high-stakes, cross-border mission carried out by India’s Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), and focuses on one operative who conducts operations on enemy soil to neutralise threats to Indian national security.
The film features a heavyweight ensemble cast led by Singh, who plays the gritty field agent tasked with dismantling a “terror” network from the inside. He is pitted against a formidable antagonist played by Sanjay Dutt, representing the Pakistani establishment, and gangsters such as one portrayed by Akshaye Khanna, while actors including R Madhavan portray key intelligence officers and strategists who orchestrate complex geopolitical manoeuvering from New Delhi.
Structurally, the screenplay follows a classic cat-and-mouse trajectory.
Beneath its high-octane set pieces, the film has sparked an angry debate among critics and audiences over the interpretation of historical events and some key figures.
Despite the longstanding geopolitical tensions between the two countries, India’s Bollywood films remain popular in Pakistan.
Depicting Pakistan as the ultimate enemy of India has been a popular theme retold for years, in different ways, especially in Bollywood’s spy thrillers, however. In this case, the portrayal of Pakistan’s major coastal city, Karachi, and particularly one of its oldest and most densely populated neighbourhoods, Lyari, has drawn strong criticism.
“The representation in the film is completely based on fantasy. It doesn’t look like Karachi. It does not represent the city accurately at all,” Nida Kirmani, an associate professor of sociology at Lahore University of Management Sciences, told Al Jazeera.
Kirmani, who has produced a documentary on the impact of gang violence in Lyari of her own, said that like other megacities in the world, “Karachi had periods of violence that have been particularly intense.”
However, “reducing the city to violence is one of the major problems in the film, along with the fact the film gets everything about Karachi – from its infrastructure, culture, and language – wrong”, she added.
Meanwhile, a member of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) has taken legal action in a Karachi court alleging the unauthorised use of images of the late former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated in 2007, and protesting against the film’s portrayal of the party’s leaders as supporters of “terrorists”.
Critics, including Kirmani, say the film also bizarrely casts gangs from Lyari into geopolitical tensions with India, when they have only ever operated locally.
Kirmani said the makers of the movie have cherry-picked historical figures and used them completely out of context, “trying to frame them within this very Indian nationalistic narrative”.
Mayank Shekhar, a film critic based in Mumbai, pointed out that the film “has been performed, written, directed by those who haven’t ever stepped foot in Karachi, and perhaps never will”.
“So, never mind this dust bowl for a city that, by and large, seems wholly bereft of a single modern building, and looks mostly bombed-out, between multiple ghettos,” Shekhar said.
He added that this is also in line with how Hollywood “shows the brown Third World in action with a certain sepia tone, like with Extraction, set in Dhaka, Bangladesh”.
Dhurandhar has been a huge commercial success in India and among the Indian diaspora. However, it has not escaped criticism entirely.
The family of a decorated Indian Army officer, Major Mohit Sharma, filed a petition in Delhi High Court to stop the release of the film, which, they claim, has exploited his life and work without their consent.
The makers of the film deny this and claim it is entirely a work of fiction.
Nonetheless, the film’s storyline is accompanied by real-time intercepted audio recordings of attacks on Indian soil and news footage, film critics and analysts say.
Shekhar told Al Jazeera that focusing on a deliberately loud, seemingly over-the-top, hyper-masculine hero’s journey is not a new genre in Bollywood. “There’s a tendency to intellectualise the trend, as we did with the ‘angry young man’ movies of the 1970s,” he said, referring to the formative years of Bollywood.
In recent years, mainstream production houses in India have, however, favoured storylines that portray minorities in negative light and align with the policies of the Hindu nationalist government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Kirmani told Al Jazeera that this frequently means “reducing Muslims across India’s borders and within as ‘terrorists’, which further marginalises Muslims in India culturally”.
“Unfortunately, people gravitate towards these kinds of hypernationalistic narratives, and the director is cashing in on this,” she told Al Jazeera.
Modi himself lavished praise on a recent film called Article 370, for what he said was its “correct information” about the removal of the constitutional provision that granted special autonomous status to the state of Jammu and Kashmir in 2019. Critics, however, called the film “propaganda” and said the film had distorted facts.
Another Bollywood film Kerala Story released in 2023 was accused of falsifying facts. Prime Minister Modi praised the film, but critics said it tried to vilify Muslims and demonise the southern Kerala state known for its progressive politics.
In the case of Dhurandhar, some critics have faced online harassment.
One review by The Hollywood Reporter’s India YouTube channel, by critic Anupama Chopra, was taken down after outrage from fans of the film.
Went looking for Anupama Chopra’s Dhurandhar review? It’s gone. The Hollywood Reporter India quietly made the video private.
For context, The Hollywood Reporter India was launched by RPSG Lifestyle Media, part of the RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group, which also owns Saregama –…
— newslaundry (@newslaundry) December 9, 2025
India’s Film Critics Guild has condemned “coordinated abuse, personal attacks on individual critics, and organised attempts to discredit their professional integrity”, in a statement.
“More concerningly, there have been attempts to tamper with existing reviews, influence editorial positions, and persuade publications to alter or dilute their stance,” the group noted.