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Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) are pushing hard to take Kordofan. In the sights of the paramilitary force – accused of committing grave human rights abuses during Sudan’s war – are the cities and towns of the vast central region, such as Babnusa and el-Obeid.

The momentum is currently with the RSF, which defeated their Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) opponents in el-Fasher, in the western region of Darfur, last month, unleashing a tidal wave of violence where they killed at least 1,500 people and forced thousands more to flee.

SAF soldiers are still able to repel RSF fighters in West Kordofan’s Babnusa, a major transport junction connecting several parts of the country. But continuing to hold the city will be difficult for the SAF, and if it does fall, then the RSF will likely press forward towards North Kordofan’s el-Obeid, and a vital gateway towards the capital Khartoum.

The RSF were forced out of Khartoum in March, a time when the SAF seemed to be on the ascendancy in the more-than-two-year war.

But now the tables have turned, and having lost Darfur completely with the fall of el-Fasher, the SAF now risks losing Kordofan, too.

“The RSF has momentum, which they will carry on through with,” said Dallia Abdelmoniem, a Sudanese political analyst, who pointed out that an RSF ally, the SPLM-N, already controls the Nuba Mountains region of South Kordofan.

“Hemedti was never going to be satisfied with just controlling the Darfur region – he wants the whole country,” she said, using a nickname for Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, the head of the RSF.

With the SAF overstretched and cut off from reliable arms procurement, Abdelmoniem believes that the balance of power is shifting. “The SAF is weakened unless they miraculously get their hands on weaponry equal, if not better, to what the RSF has.”

Ceasefire talks

It is notable that the RSF advances have taken place despite ongoing mediation efforts from the so-called “Quad” – Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States – aimed at reaching an end to the fighting.

The head of the SAF, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, last Sunday rejected a ceasefire agreement proposed by the Quad, saying that the deal benefitted the RSF. He also criticised the UAE’s involvement in the Quad, accusing it of supporting the RSF, a claim Abu Dhabi has long denied.

For its part, the RSF announced on Monday an apparently unilateral three-month ceasefire. However, since the announcement, the RSF has continued to attack Babnusa.

The Quad mediation efforts, which have included a push from US President Donald Trump, may perplexingly be the reason for the recent escalation in fighting.

“The pressure for a ceasefire coming from the Quad, including Egypt and Saudi Arabia, is pushing the SAF and the RSF to gain a territorial advantage as quickly as possible in case something shifts during the mediation,” said Kholood Khair, the founding director of Confluence Advisory. “Each side will always try to maximise its position before the talks.”

Khair points out that both sides had been amassing weapons over the summer rainy season, when conditions were more difficult for fighting. Now that conditions are dry, the weapons are being “put to use”, particularly as the RSF is emboldened following its victory in el-Fasher.

The strategic importance of Kordofan makes it an important prize, particularly if any ceasefire deal freezes the areas under the control of each side.

“[Kordofan’s] location makes it important to control due to its agricultural, livestock, and petroleum resources,” said Retired Lieutenant Colonel Omar Arbab. “The battle for Kordofan is not merely territorial – it is about controlling Sudan’s economic backbone.”

Arbab added that there is a military logic to the RSF’s push towards Babnusa, as it is the gateway linking their forces in Darfur to el-Obeid. “If the RSF controls it, they could pose a threat to el-Obeid – and certainly will attempt to besiege it.”

“They’ve been shelling it consistently for weeks. If they take it, then they will redeploy some of those troops toward el-Obeid,” said Khair. Should the city fall, she warned, the political shockwave will be enormous. “It’s a huge mercantile centre, a regional capital, and a major economic win. It also brings the RSF several steps closer to Khartoum.”

Potential partition

Beyond the battlefield, analysts warn that Kordofan’s escalation is intensifying the fault lines fragmenting Sudan’s political and ethnic map.

Khair pointed out that the fall of el-Fasher had cemented the territorial fragmentation of western Sudan, but added that there were also “dozens of armed groups”, either aligned to the SAF, the RSF, or independent, that each controlled their own fiefdoms.

For Khair, the real driver of Sudan’s disintegration is not territory but identity. “This war has become extremely ethnicised, by both the SAF and the RSF, so they can mobilise troops. Because of that, you now have a split of communities who believe their ethnic interests are served by the SAF, by the RSF, or by other groups.”

This ethnic competition, she said, is now steering the trajectory of the war more than military strategy. “There’s no singular Sudanese project right now – not intellectually, militarily, politically, or economically – and that is catalysing fragmentation.”

Abdelmoniem, however, warns that some within the SAF may be willing to accept fragmentation. “Undoubtedly, there are elements within the SAF who would be more than happy for further fragmentation of the country so they can continue to rule over the Arab Sudanese side,” she said. “Losing Darfur is not an issue, and they’re willing to forgo the alliance with the joint forces over it,” she added, referring to former rebel groups largely based in Darfur and allied to the SAF.

Many Sudanese in Darfur are non-Arab, and have been targeted in particular by RSF attacks.

But any approach that abandons Darfur, Abdelmoniem believes, is unsustainable. “Without the joint forces and other groups under their political-military umbrella, they cannot win. And how do you contend with public opinion when the Sudanese people will view the SAF as the entity that lost or broke up the country?”

Arbab takes a more cautious view. While he acknowledges the reality of de facto breakage, he believes formal partition is unlikely. “Division is not currently on the table,” Arbab said, “because the structure of alliances on both sides requires a political project encompassing all of Sudan. Social complexities and the diversity of actors make such an option extremely difficult.”

Humanitarian fallout

As the front lines expand, Korodofan now faces the prospect of a humanitarian disaster on the scale seen in Darfur. Abdelmoniem drew a direct parallel to the warnings issued before the fall of el-Fasher. “The atrocities committed will be on a different scale,” she cautioned. “We might not get the video uploads like before, but the crimes will be committed.”

Abdemoniem said international inaction has emboldened all armed actors. “That sense of impunity prevails and will only increase the longer the international community is content with releasing statements and not doing much else.”

Arbab echoed that concern. Global attention, he said, was focused on el-Fasher because the violence there contained “elements of ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity”. But Kordofan’s dynamics differ. In Babnusa, SAF and RSF forces come from the same overlapping tribal and ethnic communities, making the violence distinct from Darfur’s ethnic massacres. Yet the risks remain profound: reprisal killings, sieges, and mass displacement.

Khair warned that humanitarian access to Kordofan is already near impossible. “I don’t see SAF granting access, and I don’t see the RSF granting access into areas they control,” she said. Unlike Darfur, Kordofan lacks open borders where aid could be routed. “Access issues become even more heightened when you’re away from an international border.”

Ukraine has mounted a fierce defence of Pokrovsk for the fifth straight week since Russia’s concerted offensive began to take its eastern city, while at the same time it tries to finesse a Russian-inspired United States peace plan heavily criticised by US lawmakers.

The Russian Ministry of Defence said on Monday its “assault groups of the 2nd Army have completely liberated the Gornyak and Shakhtersky microdistricts in Pokrovsk.

On Tuesday, it said its forces were fighting in the Vostochny and Zapadny districts of Myrnohrad, to the east of Pokrovsk.

Both cities, in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, lie within an envelope which Russian forces have gradually tried to seal shut. Supplies and reinforcements can currently only reach Ukrainian forces from the west – and Russia claims to have effective fire control over those supply routes.

Ukrainian officials insisted the defence of Pokrovsk was still very much a contest. “Our positions are held in the centre of Pokrovsk, shooting battles continue, and the enemy fails to consolidate,” said Ukraine’s head of the Center for Countering Disinformation Andriy Kovalenko on Sunday, citing the 7th Air Assault Brigade fighting there.

Ukraine has evidently strained its resources to defend the Pokrovsk-Myrnohrad enclave, whereas the concentration of Russian offensive forces in Pokrovsk has not compromised their ability to assault elsewhere.

During November 20-27, Russia claimed to have seized Petropavlovka in Kharkiv, Novoselivka, Maslyakovka, Yampol, Stavki, Zvanovka, Petrovskoye, Ivanopolye and Vasyukovka in Donetsk, Tikhoye and Otradnoye in Dniperopetrovsk, and Novoye Zaporozhiye and Zatishye in Zaporizhia.

The Russian forces’ recent rate of advance has amounted to about half a dozen villages a week.

But Ukraine disputes some of Russia’s claims.

On November 20, Russian chief of staff Valery Gerasimov said his forces had seized the city of Kupiansk in Ukraine’s northern Kharkiv region, and were setting upon retreating Ukrainian units on the left bank of the Oskil River.

But Kovalenko replied on the Telegram messaging service: “Russia did NOT occupy Kupiansk. Gerasimov is just a liar,” and he repeated the claim a week later.

Ukraine has also had successes on the ground, according to its commander-in-chief, Oleksandr Syrskii. “Despite enemy pressure, the Defence Forces of Ukraine managed to carry out counteroffensive actions in the Dobropillia direction from the end of August to October this year,” he said, referring to a failed Russian flanking manoeuvre towards a town northwest of Pokrovsk.

“As a result, the units split the enemy’s offensive group and liberated over 430 square kilometres [166 square miles] north of Pokrovsk. Russian losses amounted to more than 13,000 killed and wounded.”

Russia also kept up pressure on Ukraine’s rear, launching 1,169 drones and 25 missiles at its cities during the week of November 20-26. Ukraine downed 85 percent of the drones and 14 of the missiles, but Zelenskyy called for more short- and medium-range defences.

Questionable diplomacy

Europe, Ukraine and members of the US Congress have all pushed back against a 28-point peace plan presented by the US administration of Donald Trump last week, describing it as too Russia-friendly.

In its original form, the plan granted key points that Russia has demanded. That included a promise from Ukraine never to join NATO and the surrendering of almost all the territory Russia has taken by force, along with the unoccupied remainder of Donetsk. The US and Ukraine’s other Western allies would have to recognise those annexations as legal.

Ukraine would have to hold an election within 100 days of the plan’s signature – one that Russia seems to believe would unseat Zelenskyy.

Russia has also demanded that Ukraine effectively disarm. The 28-point plan suggests reducing its armed forces by about a third, to 600,000 personnel.

“Right now is one of the hardest moments in our history,” Zelenskyy told the Ukrainian people after seeing the plan, describing it as a choice between “either the loss of our dignity or the risk of losing a key partner”.

The Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee Senator Roger Wicker said in a statement: “This so-called ‘peace plan’ has real problems, and I am highly skeptical it will achieve peace.”

Polish Premier Donald Tusk politely said on social media: “It would be good to know for sure who is the author of the plan and where was it created.”

The plan drew heavily from a Russian non-paper submitted to the White House in October, said the Reuters news agency.

“Trump’s 28-point plan, which we have, enshrines the key understandings reached during the Alaska summit,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told reporters.

“I would say not all, but many provisions of this plan, they seem quite acceptable to us,” Putin aide Yury Ushakov told the TASS Russian state news agency.

The United Kingdom, France and Germany drafted a counter-proposal on Sunday, and a Ukrainian delegation led by former Defence Minister Rustem Umerov met with US negotiators under Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Geneva to discuss both documents.

Europe ruled out accepting territorial exchanges resulting from aggression, and suggested territorial negotiations begin from the line of contact without prior Ukrainian concessions. It also suggested Ukraine maintain a strong army of no fewer than 800,000 people, and receive an effective NATO security guarantee.

Their joint statement on Monday simply said they would “continue intensive work”, with final decisions to be made by Trump and Zelenskyy.

Much had been done to refine the original 28 points into a workable agreement, said Zelenskyy. “Now the list of necessary steps to end the war can become doable,” he told Ukrainians somewhat cryptically, describing the work that remained as “very challenging”.

Ukraine has pushed for a meeting between Zelenskyy and Trump before December to thrash out the plan’s final form, but on Tuesday, Bloomberg released transcripts of a leaked telephone conversation between Trump confidant Steve Witkoff and Putin aide Yury Ushakov, in which Witkoff advised Ushakov to have Putin call Trump before Zelenskyy had a chance to meet him. Witkoff suggested that Putin flatter Trump as a peacemaker to win his favour and shape the peace plan directly with him.

That leak prompted opposition to Witkoff travelling to Moscow next week to discuss the reworked plan with Russian officials. The White House said he is to replace General Keith Kellogg, who resigned as mediator for Ukraine after seeing the original 28-point plan.

“It is clear that Witkoff fully favors the Russians. He cannot be trusted to lead these negotiations. Would a Russian paid agent do less than he?” wrote Republican Congressman Don Bacon on social media.

For those who oppose the Russian invasion and want to see Ukraine prevail as a sovereign & democratic country, it is clear that Witkoff fully favors the Russians. He cannot be trusted to lead these negotiations. Would a Russian paid agent do less than he? He should be fired. https://t.co/dxMsda0YV5

— Rep. Don Bacon 🇺🇸✈️🏍️⭐️🎖️ (@RepDonBacon) November 25, 2025

In his first extensive remarks on the peace proposal, in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan on Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin backed away from an agreement with Ukraine, saying, “Signing documents with the Ukrainian leadership is pointless,” because Zelenskyy was a president who had outlived his mandate.

“I believe that the Ukrainian authorities made a fundamental and strategic mistake when they succumbed to the fear of participating in the presidential elections,” he said, referring to the spring of 2025, when Zelenskyy’s four-year term expired.

Zelenskyy was elected in 2019, and the parliament has twice extended his tenure under the constitutional provision of a national emergency.

Putin said the 28 points did not amount to a peace treaty, calling them “a set of questions that were proposed for discussion and final wording”.

“In general, we agree that this can be the basis for future agreements,” Putin said.

THE race to crown the Christmas No1 will get under way in two weeks.

And a dark horse, or should that be lovable bear, has entered the fray.

Paddington has become a major contender with song One Of Us, which is actually sung by McFly’s Tom Fletcher, who wrote it for the new Paddington The Musical in London’s West End.

He has stiff competition in what is looking set to be the most closely fought contest in years.

Martin Talbot, chief executive of The Official Charts Company, said: “The vision of Paddington taking on this year’s diverse gaggle of new festive chart contenders, alongside seasonal classics from The Pogues, Mariah Carey and Wham!, will be something to savour.”

The winning song will be revealed on The Radio 1 Chart Show just after 5.30pm on December 19.

Lee Phelps, from bookies William Hill, said: “Wham! are our odds-on favourites to be Christmas No1 for the third year running.

“They’ve been popular in the betting and are now as short as 1/2

“Kylie Minogue is the only other single-figure price at 11/2, while Together For Palestine take third spot in our market at 12/1.

“At 14/1, Taylor Swift joins Alison Limerick and Mariah Carey to top the charts on Christmas Day for the first time in the UK.”

Associate Bizarre Editor Howell Davies casts his eye over the contenders . . .

• Odds provided by William Hill. See the full market at sports.williamhill.com.

Paddington and Tom Fletcher — One of Us

6/1

AS one of the nation’s favourite characters, Paddington has topped the box office multiple times.

Meanwhile McFly’s Tom Fletcher has scored seven No1 singles. Now they are joining forces with One Of Us, written by Tom for Paddington The Musical.

The video, which is out today along with the song, sees them appear together at Paddington train station in London and had to be filmed under the cover of ­darkness to keep the secret.

The full soundtrack to the musical will be released in March ­following rave reviews for the stage show.

Wham! — Last Christmas

1/2

WHAM!’s hit about a seasonal break-up, set against jingle bells, has reached No1 for the last two Christmases.

When it was first released in 1984, it was pipped to the top spot by Band Aid’s Do They Know It’s Christmas?.

It’s the third best-selling single in UK history and was already the highest ­charting Christmas song on last Friday’s rundown, when it was at No19.

The profits originally contributed to famine aid in Ethiopia, but in recent years George Michael’s estate has been dividing the proceeds between a series of other charity groups.

Roland Gift — Everybody Knows It’s Christmas

66/1

THIS number from Fine Young Cannibals frontman Roland Gift started off as a bet but has since racked up more than 86,000 views online.

It fuses glam rock with a festive, jingle bell ball and is being released on CD and 7in single, as well as streaming and download services, in a bid to boost sales.

Roland told The Sun: “It started out as a bet with my mate, who’s a big Slade fan.

“He said if I could write a Christmas song that was a hit, he’d give my car a free service and new tyres. I hope this song brings a bit of warmth, a smile and maybe a bit of that Christmas magic your way.”

Kylie Minogue — Xmas

11/2

SHE released her album Kylie Christmas in 2015 and now the Aussie star is back to spread joy with a savvy link-up.

Her new song Xmas is ­exclusive to Amazon Music, meaning it can only be downloaded there or played through its streaming service.

But it’s a clever move, because it is among the first tracks to be played when people ask their Alexa devices to play Christmas music.

The last two years have seen Tom Grennan’s It Can’t Be Christmas and Sam Ryder’s You’re Christmas To Me finish in second place in the festive chart because of the power of Amazon.

Alison Limerick — Where Love Lives

14/1

THIS track has swelled in popularity since a cover by Labrinth featured in this year’s John Lewis Christmas advert.

Alison Limerick’s pulsating house tune was originally released in 1990. It peaked at No9 in 1996 but recently re-entered the charts at No44.

Now it is being tipped to rise far higher as the TV ad gets more plays.

Alison said: “Music has always had the power to bring all kinds of peeps together, but I hope this year’s John Lewis Christmas advert will give those who see it a new, emotional connection with the song.”

Denise Welch — Slayyy Bells

100/1

THE firm festive outsider this year is actress Denise Welch with her borderline-unlistenable offering.

The track has been released as a tie-in with choc brand Celebrations – 30 years after she hit No23 with a cover of You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me.

Denise, whose son Matty Healy is lead singer for The 1975, said: “I love Christmas, but sometimes I want to shake things up a bit. We don’t always have to have turkey or play charades. We can celebrate this special holiday our way.

“This remix, apart from being cool, catchy and a sure- fire hit, is all about ­having fun.”

Mariah Carey — All I Want For Christmas Is You

14/1

AS the Queen of Christmas, Mariah is never far from the charts at this time of year.

All I Want For Christmas Is You was first released in 1994 and has returned to the Top 40 every year since 2007.

It is an unabashedly joyful belter, complete with bell chimes and lyrics about ditching a desire for materialistic gifts.

It topped the charts in 2021 and remains a strong contender for Christmas No1, finishing last year at No3.

In the US, it is even more ­popular and has been the ­festive No1 for the past six years.

Taylor Swift — Opalite

14/1

SHE already has five No1s to her name and has spent the same number of weeks at the top with The Fate Of Ophelia. But Opalite, another track from her The Life Of A Showgirl album, is poised to become a competitor after The Sun on Sunday revealed she had flown to London to shoot a festive video.

She hired out a shopping centre in ­Croydon to film the scenes, with the video believed to include cameos from singer Lewis Capaldi among others.

An updated version of Opalite is expected to be launched alongside the video, just in time for Christmas.

Together For Palestine — Lullaby

12/1

THERE have been plenty of Christmas songs for good causes. Now Together For Palestine are hoping to raise funds with their ­charity single Lullaby.

Musicians including Neneh Cherry, Leigh-Anne Pinnock, Brian Eno, Bastille frontman Dan Smith and Celeste have joined forces with Palestinian musicians to appear on the track, which is a reimagining of a ­traditional Palestinian lullaby.

Speaking about the song, out on December 12, Eno said: “We have a real shot at landing Christmas No1 – and turning that moment into vital life-saving support for Gaza’s families.”

IS SHE a crusader or a Rebel without a cause?

That’s the question surrounding Rebel Wilson this week, as she stares down the barrel of yet another legal wrangling — while passionately claiming she’s a “whistleblower” fighting for justice.

This week, in a bombshell TV interview, the 45-year-old broke her silence on the legal battle she is fighting surrounding her feature film directorial debut.

The star, who was born and raised in Sydney, told 60 Minutes Australia she had been the target of “incessant . . . bullying and harassment” by the producers of her comedy musical, The Deb.

The producers are suing her for defamation, breach of contract and sabotage and the lead actress has also launched a lawsuit against her.

It comes just 18 months after Rebel accused Sacha Baron Cohen of inappropriate behaviour on the set of another production — which he denies — and eight years after a landmark defamation battle.

Now, with her star showing signs of waning Down Under, have the endless litigations and allegations destroyed Rebel’s career?

In the latest real-life drama, the producers of The Deb — Amanda Ghost, Gregor Cameron and Vince Holden — launched their legal action after Rebel claimed they had embezzled film funds.

She also accused Amanda of sexually harassing lead actress Charlotte MacInnes on set.

Charlotte, who denies she made claims of sexual harassment, is suing Rebel for defamation after the latter implied she had “changed her story” and was backtracking to save her career.

Rebel says the producers’ complaints against her are “an attempt to sling mud at [her] reputation”, and that all the muck and mess surrounding the project has been her “worst nightmare”.

‘Smear campaign’

She is now countersuing the producers, accusing them of financial misdeeds, misconduct and coercion.

She claims she had been subjected to suppressive measures, saying: “They locked me in a room and forced me to sign documents. I was like, ‘This is like the KGB.’ ”

The producers vehemently deny Rebel’s allegations, which she initially highlighted in an Instagram video in July 2024.

In the original clip, Rebel accused them of “bad behaviour”, “embezzling funds” and of perpetrating “inappropriate behaviour towards the lead actress”.

She subsequently claimed it was Amanda Ghost who had taken things too far with Charlotte. Rebel alleged Amanda had “asked [Charlotte] to have a bath and shower with her and it made her feel uncomfortable”.

In an extra layer to the mudslinging, both Charlotte and the producers have also accused Rebel of being behind several websites allegedly created as a smear campaign, which have since been taken down.

What is very clear is that she is not as loved here in recent years as I think she expected to be

Eleanor Sprawson, a journalist based in Australia, on Rebel Wilson

These websites accused Amanda, who is of Indo–Trinidadian heritage, of being akin to “the Indian Ghislaine Maxwell” and referred to her as a “full pimp” who was “procuring young women for the pleasure of the extremely wealthy”.

Rebel has denied any involvement in a smear campaign or the creation of websites against her legal foes, claiming she was heavily involved in getting them removed.

The cases rumble on and Rebel remains undeterred.

Not only does she stand by her story and appears willing to fight to the end, she is also loudly promoting new projects on Instagram and is looking forward to seeing The Deb finally hit screens in Australia in January.

Rebel’s history suggests she is not someone to be provoked.

In 2016, Rebel — who found global fame in 2011 comedy Bridesmaids, before her scene-stealing turn as Fat Amy in 2012’s Pitch Perfect — set fire to the media landscape in Australia after launching a legal battle against Bauer Media.

In a landmark defamation case, Rebel sued the publisher over a series of articles published in 2015, that accused her of lying about her age, real name, and details of her upbringing, to advance her career.

Rebel said these stories had painted her as a serial liar and fraud, and had caused her to lose major film roles in Hollywood. She added that they had been perfectly timed to harm her as her career peaked post-Pitch Perfect.

Initially, the judge ruled in her favour, granting her $4.5million (£2.3million) — the largest defamation payout in Australian history — which she vowed to donate to charity and film projects.

But a later appeal saw the damages reduced to $600,000 — and Rebel was also ordered to pay 80 per cent of Bauer’s appeal costs.

While the appeal court upheld the initial verdict, it found the actress had not proved she had lost specific Hollywood roles solely because of the articles written about her. Another appeal followed — this time from Rebel — but the courts didn’t budge on the reduced payout.

Standing outside the High Court of Australia in November 2018, the actress told reporters: “To me, it was never about the money, but about standing up to a bully and I have done that successfully.”

Such a stance — pushing back against oppressors — is what Rebel has always argued she is doing. More so, perhaps, than the average celebrity — because, as time has passed, Rebel has continued to set the cat among the pigeons.

Last year, she hit the headlines again, as she released her  autobiography Rebel Rising — taking to Instagram to identify Sacha Baron Cohen as the unnamed “massive a**hole” that a controversial chapter of the book centres on.

The Borat actor had directed and starred opposite Rebel in their 2016 movie Grimsby.

Rebel claimed she had been pressured to perform a “lewd act” that was never in a script.

Reflecting on the filming process, Rebel alleged Sacha made repeated, inappropriate requests to her, like: “Just go naked, it will be funny”.

She said she had felt “bullied, humiliated and compromised”.

‘The boy who cried wolf’

While no legal action was taken by either side, Sacha slammed the claims as “demonstrably false” and argued that all evidence — including film footage, production notes and eyewitness statements — contradicted her account.

The book was published in its entirety in the US, but was partially redacted in the UK and Australia — with any mention of Rebel’s allegations against Sacha blacked out due to the legal risk of defamation.

In March 2024, Rebel railed against her suppressors, writing on social media that she would not be “bullied or silenced by high-priced lawyers or crisis PR managers”.

And now she is doubling down on that promise, thanks to her latest public battle.

So, where does that leave Rebel, who, ten years ago was considered to be one of Hollywood’s funniest women.

Eleanor Sprawson, a journalist based in Australia, where Rebel initially found fame, says the temperature has changed towards the actress in recent years.

“What is very clear is that she is not as loved here in recent years as I think she expected to be,” Eleanor explains.

“She was loved, way back 20 or more years ago when she was in a comedy series called Pizza, and I think people were excited for her when she took off in Hollywood.

“So when she presented a local show called Pooch Perfect, TV executives definitely thought they were on to a huge winner: ‘Local girl turned Hollywood star returning to do humble Australian TV’-type thing.

“But in fact the show bombed — and it bombed literally when people were locked in their houses because of the pandemic, with nothing to do EXCEPT watch TV. I think it proves that Australians have not taken her to their hearts.”

She adds: “She certainly did herself no favours by slagging off that old show Pizza in her memoirs. This show is very fondly remembered about a kind of class of people who don’t get much exposure on Australian TV in general.”

No one in the industry will want to work with her in the future if this behaviour is kept up. They’d be scared of legal issues or defamatory language

PR expert Quincy Dash

Meanwhile, Rebel could be seen as fighting causes that matter. In 2021, she donated $1million to the Australian Theatre for Young People.

She’s certainly combative, but has needed to be. In 2022, she came out as gay by posting an Instagram photo of her and her then girlfriend, now wife, Ramona Agruma.

Rebel revealed she’d had to “rush” her coming out after The Sydney Morning Herald contacted her representatives for comment on the new relationship

The actress also had to face constant scrutiny over her fluctuating weight, which — while she previously said made her the go-to funny girl.

But, as PR expert Quincy Dash tells The Sun, her litigious and provocative behaviour sometimes makes her seem like “the boy who cried wolf”.

He warns that “no one in the industry will want to work with her in the future if this behaviour is kept up. They’d be scared of legal issues or defamatory language.”

As it stands, Rebel is pushing ahead, and will next be seen in the Sky Original festive film Tinsel Town next month.

But as for her once-glistening career, she’s going to have to really ask herself: Does she really have a cause worth fighting for?

Madrid, Spain – Real Madrid fans were divided over plans announced this week by club President Florentino Perez to allow private equity investors to buy up to a 10% stake in the club.

Some fans of “los merengues” said it would mean selling off part of the club, even though Real Madrid remains the wealthiest football club in the world.

They also noted that in recent years, Real Madrid had already changed membership rules, contravening promises to keep memberships within families and diluting its character.

Others supported the investor plan, saying it made good business sense and would not alter the trajectory of a hugely successful club that has won the Spanish domestic title 36 times and collected a record 15 UEFA Champions League trophies.

Perez insisted that allowing private equity investors – who often deploy large amounts of capital into companies not listed on public stock exchanges – to take a stake in the club was an “indispensable project” for the future of football.

Speaking to club members on Sunday, Perez said he will propose a statutory reform during an extraordinary assembly to allow for the possibility of outside investors to take a minority stake in the club, according to reporting by The Associated Press news agency.

“We will continue to be a members’ club, but we must create a subsidiary in which the 100,000 members of Real Madrid will always retain absolute control,” he said.

“On that basis, this subsidiary could simply incorporate a minority stake, for example, 5% – never more than 10% – from one or more investors committed to the very long term and willing to contribute their own resources.”

Perez said that would be “the clearest and most compelling way to value our club”.

The 78-year-old added that it would allow the club to pay dividends to club members, which it is presently forbidden from doing.

Perez insisted investors would be obliged to “respect our values”, contribute to the growth of the club and “help us protect our assets from external attacks”.

He said Real Madrid could have the right to buy its assets back from investors.

Perez reiterated several times that members would never lose control of the club.

He said his proposal would make sure that the current 98,272 members are recognised as the real owners of the club, with the number of members fixed for the future.

“With this protection in place, no one will be able to diminish our status as owners or alter the balance that guarantees the independence and stability of Real Madrid,” Perez said. “It will be us, the members of today, who will have the responsibility of safeguarding our culture of values and ensuring that our club continues to lead world football for many generations to come.”

The Real Madrid president further explained the reform would “shield the club from external and internal attacks on our assets, and to highlight their value so that we are all aware of the treasure that we, as members, have in our hands”.

Spanish club ownership versus English

Real Madrid, like Barcelona and a small number of other Spanish football clubs, is classed as a nonprofit organisation as it is owned by its club members, or socios. Real Madrid, founded in 1902, has only ever had this ownership model.

This ownership structure prevents large private investors from forging a majority controlling stake in the clubs; it also means they can claim tax concessions.

This is despite the fact that Real Madrid was named the world’s wealthiest football club for the fourth straight year in 2025, with an estimated market valuation of $6.75bn, according to the Forbes List. It was also the first club to earn $1bn in revenue.

The nonprofit status allows Spanish clubs to preserve some traditions of their clubs and for members to take an active role in the organisations.

Graham Hunter, a British football journalist who specialises in Spanish football, pointed to the example of Joan Laporta, the current president of the other Spanish mega club, Barcelona.

“Laporta went from being a member and a lawyer to being [club] president in seven years,” he said.

In stark contrast, football clubs in England or the United States – Manchester United or Inter Miami being just two examples – can be owned by individuals, corporations and in some instances, acquired on public stock exchanges, resulting in more commercialised ownership structures.

It means their club’s performances are often centred on more short-run processes like profit maximisation, whereas in Spain, the club is in the hands of fans – not large private investors – allowing scope for longer-term business strategies to be enacted.

If Perez’s plan goes ahead, this could open the door for this famous Spanish club to become more like its foreign rivals.

The high-profile, multi-billionaire boss of Louis Vuitton, Bernard Arnault, was named in Spanish media on Monday as a potential investor in the club, should the new minority ownership rules be adopted.

Fans reaction

Some Real Madrid fans did not share Perez’s enthusiasm to open up the club to large private investors.

David Garcia, a former season ticket holder at the Santiago Bernabeu stadium, said Perez had previously told fans he would preserve the club for members.

“On Sunday, Florentino [Perez] misled the members again. He had told us that access to the club was restricted to the children or grandchildren of members to prevent a Russian or Chinese person from joining,” he told Al Jazeera.

Garcia added that in recent years, the rules of admission to membership had been changed several times, and Chinese and other foreigners had appeared on membership lists.

Alejandro Dominguez, a former vice president of the Real Madrid Veterans Pena, questioned why outside investors were needed to boost the coffers of such a profitable club.

“I don’t understand why we need more money when we are already the richest club in the world?” he told Al Jazeera.

However, Fernando Valdez, a lifelong Real Madrid fan who is part of La Gran Familia supporters club, said he believed the reform would not harm the character of the club.

“If we were selling off huge chunks of the club to raise money to compete with Paris Saint-Germain, then that would be worrying, as it would change the club forever. But it is not like that,” he said.

“We need to know more details about this, but on the face of it, it does not seem like anything to worry about. Five percent or 10% is nothing.”

David Alvarez, who writes about Real Madrid for El Pais newspaper, said Perez’s ownership plan was not designed to compete with other high-spending clubs like Manchester City.

“This will allow the club to pay dividends to socios (club members). At present, the law stops them from doing that. They would have to sell a much bigger stake to be able to compete with the other big clubs in Europe, so they are not trying to do that.”

SHE was known for late-night partying with showbiz pals during her ladette days and Sara Cox admits that behind doors she was full of energy too.

The DJ says “no surface was safe” when she was at home with her advertising executive husband Ben Cyzer, who she has been with for two decades.

But flash forward to today and the 50-year-old mum of three says that “every surface is safe” and they often sleep in separate rooms because she can’t stand his snoring.

Sara said: “When I sometimes get on my little stool in the kitchen to reach for some Tupperware, I do think, ‘Oh, look, my fun area is really parallel with his face right at the moment’.

“But as the kids get older, you just can’t be doing that — they’d never get past it.

“I mean, when you’re in your early 30s and stuff, no surface is safe in the kitchen or the bathroom, is it? But now pretty much everywhere is safe.”

Sara, who has just completed the equivalent of five marathons in five days to raise an astonishing £10million for Children In Need, opened up about their sleeping habits at home in North London.

Just days before the epic fundraiser, she told The Teen Commandments Podcast: “This is my issue that I’ve got with Ben in the night.

“Just general breathing — just him breathing is annoying. Not during the day, I have to point that out. I just mean any slight noises.

“You know on a wildlife documentary where they have a shot of an animal that’s on high alert for a predator? I think I’ve got that kind of feeling in the middle of the night.

“Like, if I just hear the tiniest sound, it’s so magnified in the middle of the night — I think there’s a bit of anxiety in there.

“Because I remember in my 20s, if I woke up at 1.30am — well, I probably wouldn’t be in bed at half one — but if I woke in the middle of the night and it was like 3am in my 20s, I’d be, like, ‘Yeah, I’ve got loads of time to sleep, amazing’.

“And now I’m 50, I just go, ‘F**k, it’s three, I’m not going to sleep’. I nudge him and he’s really patient — he’s great about it. But we keep sleeping in ­separate rooms, which is a bit depressing.”

Bolton-born Sara doubtless needs plenty of rest after running a total of 135 miles from Kielder Forest in Northumberland to ­Pudsey in Leeds earlier this month — carrying the annual Beeb telethon’s mascot ­Pudsey Bear on her back.

During her Great Northern Marathon Challenge, the star was sent a message of encouragement by Prince William, who said: “Keep going — you’ve done fantastically well and the nation’s so proud of you.”

Sara says she was inspired to raise money for vulnerable kids after recalling the bullying she suffered at school from “two girls who made my life hell”.

This week she revealed she battled through the challenge by listening to tracks by rapper Stormzy and said it was a lot tougher than she ever expected.

Behind-the-scenes footage shown on Sara Cox: Every Step Of The Way For Children In Need, on BBC One on Wednesday, revealed the heartbreaking reason she decided to take on the challenge.

And now I’m 50, I just go, ‘F**k, it’s three, I’m not going to sleep’

Sara said: “My brother David died suddenly in 2019 and it completely destroyed the family — like, it came out of nowhere and he was a real athlete who ran countless Ironman competitions.

“I don’t think he’d believe I’m doing this, I think he’d be super-proud. I’m hoping that I’ve just got a bit of strength from him today.”

Sara’s children are now nearly the age she was when she found fame. Her eldest, Lola — from her first marriage — is 21, while Isaac and Renee are 17 and 15 respectively.

Sara had been working as a model when, at the age of 22 she landed her first TV job hosting The Girlie Show on Channel 4.

Two years later she became a presenter on The Big Breakfast and a year on, in 1999, it was announced she would take over the Radio 1 Breakfast show.

Known as “Coxy” back then, she worked — and partied — hard. Her pals included fellow broadcaster Zoe Ball, model Gail Porter, actress Donna Air and TV host Jayne ­Middlemiss.

They became notorious for their wild nights and were dubbed ladettes — a term Sara has always hated, saying it suggested they were “just trying to be like the boys . . . and we were never trying to be like the boys”.

Her lifestyle changed dramatically when she became mum to Lola in 2004, a year before she separated from her first husband DJ Jon Carter, who she had married in 2001.

Sara began dating Ben, now 50, in 2005 and they married in 2013 a year after she signalled another shift by quitting BBC Radio 1 to host the breakfast show on its more mature sister ­station, Radio 2. ‘Mind-boggling behaviour’.

She has admitted: “Yes, I used to drink loads. I thought nothing of ­having wine with lunch then going to the pub later, but they were ­different times. It all stops when you have children, to be replaced with other things that are just as pleasurable.

“The first ten years of my career I was out a lot more and the second decade I was explaining my ­behaviour in the first decade and apologising for it.”

And she said she never felt pressure to bring back her “Coxy” alter ego, because she had “buried her with some vodka and Marlboro Lights”.

The first ten years of my career I was out a lot more and the second decade I was explaining my ­behaviour in the first decade and apologising for it

Now her work has changed too. The BBC Radio 2 presenter has been hosting the station’s Drivetime show since January 2019 and next up is a new BBC One series, starting on December 1, about professional model-makers, called The Marvellous ­Miniatures Workshop.

When she’s not on the TV or the radio, Sara is busy hosting The Teen Commandments podcast with her best friend Clare Hamilton, who she has known since they were ­children.

The pair launched the podcast in January, having raised five teenagers between them.

The show casts light on the “mind-boggling behaviour” of their ­youngsters and how they tackled it with “wisdom that only comes from being rule-breakers themselves”.

On this week’s episode, Sara reveal­ed she has been trying to break her family’s addiction to mobile phones.

She confided: “I just feel like a st mum because I am not stopping it, and I feel completely powerless.

My brother David died suddenly in 2019. He was a real athlete. I don’t think he’d believe I’m doing this, I think
he’d be super proud

“I did suggest something, but it was immediately . . .  I mean, the faces I was met with . . .

“I should have really got Ben more on side because what can happen sometimes is that I will suggest something for us to do as a family, and Ben will immediately side with the teenagers and undermine me.

“I told him that I wanted to do something where we start having more time together as a family and we put the phones away.

“So over dinner, I was like, ‘Right, this weekend, can we do it where we just have four hours without our phones or our laptops or anything?’

“Immediately, Ben piped up, ‘That’s too long’. I’m giving him daggers when the youngest pipes up that she’s got to revise. She needs her phone. Fair enough.

“But I’m really worried that we’re not living our lives together as a family, where we look at each other and where we chat and where we do things and hang out.

“So I’m just, like, ‘Whether we go out on a big dog walk or we just do something as a family, let’s put the phones away for four hours’.”

Sara is unlikely to be popping out for a stroll any time soon as she complains she cannot walk following her fundraising efforts.

But she still feels like she is in the best shape of her life, explaining on her podcast: “It’s good on this side of 50, I’ve got to say.

“I think — especially when you’re a woman — it’s always like, ‘How do you feel about turning 50? What are you going to do?’ But this age seems better than the alternative, babe.”

Tunis, Tunisia – Night had just about fallen in Halq al-Wadi, also known as La Goulette, a balmy coastal suburb of Tunis, when the Virgin Mary emerged from the local church, Saint-Augustin and Saint Fidele, into a packed square.

Carried on the shoulders of a dozen churchgoers, the statue of the Virgin was greeted with cheers, ululations and a passionately waved Tunisian flag.

Hundreds of people – Tunisians, Europeans, and sub-Saharan Africans – had gathered for the annual procession of Our Lady of Trapani.

Many of those participating in the procession, and the Catholic Mass that came beforehand, were from sub-Saharan Africa.

“It’s the Holy Virgin who has brought us all here today,” Isaac Lusafu, originally from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, told Al Jazeera. “Today the Virgin Mary has united us all”.

In a large, packed square just beyond the church gates, the statue moved in a circle as people prayed and sang hymns. It was all under the watchful eye of a mural of Claudia Cardinale, the renowned Italian actress born in La Goulette, a reminder of the distant past when the district was home to thousands of Europeans.

A melting pot

The Catholic feast of Our Lady of Trapani was brought to La Goulette in the late 1800s by Sicilian immigrants, in the days when the port town was a hub for poor southern European fishermen in search of a better life.

Immigration to Tunisia from Sicily peaked in the early 20th century. Nearly all of the fishermen, along with their families and descendants, have now returned to European shores, but the statue of the Virgin remained – and, every year on August 15, it is carried in procession out of the church.

“It’s a unique event,” Hatem Bourial, a Tunisian journalist and radio presenter, told Al Jazeera.

He went on to describe how, in the procession’s heyday in the early 20th century, native Tunisians, Muslims and Jews alike, would join Tunisian-Sicilian Catholics in carrying the statue of the Virgin Mary from the church down to the sea.

There, participants would ask Mary to bless the fishermen’s boats. Many residents would shout “Long live the Virgin of Trapani!”, Bourial said, while others threw their chechia, a traditional red cap worn in the Maghreb, in the air.

As well as its religious significance – for Catholics, August 15 marks the day that Mary was taken up into heaven – the feast also coincides with the Italian mid-August holiday of Ferragosto, which traditionally signals the high point of the summer.

Silvia Finzi, born in Tunis in the 1950s to Italian parents, described how, after the statue had been brought down to the sea, many of La Goulette’s residents would declare that the worst of the punishingly hot Tunisian summer was over.

“Once the Virgin had been taken down to the water, it was as if the sea had changed”, Finzi, a professor of Italian at the University of Tunis, told Al Jazeera.

“People would say ‘the sea has changed, the summer’s over’, and you wouldn’t need to go swimming to cool down any more”.

European exodus

The first European immigrants began to arrive in La Goulette in the early 19th century. Their numbers rapidly increased after 1881, when Tunisia became a French protectorate. At its height in the early 1900s, the number of Italian immigrants – who were largely Sicilians – across the whole of Tunisia is estimated to have been more than 100,000.

In the decade after 1956, when Tunisia gained its independence from France, the vast majority of its European residents left the country, as the new government pivoted towards nationalism.

In 1964, the Vatican signed an agreement with Tunisia, transferring control of the majority of the country’s churches – now largely empty – to the government for use as public buildings. The agreement also put an end to all public Christian celebrations, including the procession in La Goulette.

For more than half a century, August 15 was marked only with a Mass inside the church building, and the statue of Our Lady of Trapani remained immobile in its niche. The date remained important for La Goulette’s much-reduced Catholic population, but it largely ceased to be an important event for the wider community.

Nostalgia

In 2017, the Catholic Church received permission to restart the procession, initially just inside the church compound. This year, when Al Jazeera visited, the procession left the church property but only travelled as far as the square outside.

Many attendees were young Tunisian Muslims, with little connection to La Goulette’s historic Sicilian population.

A major reason for this is undoubtedly the high status accorded to the Virgin Mary in Islam – an entire chapter of the Quran is dedicated to her.

Other participants seemed to be drawn by a feeling of nostalgia for La Goulette’s multiethnic, multireligious past.

“I love the procession”, Rania, 26, told Al Jazeera. “Lots of people have forgotten about it now, but European immigration is such an important part of Tunisia’s history”.

Rania, a student, told Al Jazeera of her love for the 1996 film, Un ete a La Goulette (A Summer in La Goulette).

Featuring dialogue in three languages, and evocative shots of sunlit courtyards and shimmering beaches, the film is an ode to La Goulette’s past.

Directed by the renowned Tunisian filmmaker Ferid Boughedir, it follows the lives of three teenage girls – Gigi, a Sicilian, Meriem, a Muslim, and Tina, a Jew – over the course of a summer in the 1960s.

The film ends, however, on a bleak note, with the outbreak of the 1967 War between Israel and several Arab states, and the subsequent departure of almost all of Tunisia’s remaining Jewish and European residents.

New migrations

As Tunisia’s European population declined, the country has seen an influx of new migrant communities from sub-Saharan Africa.

The majority of these new migrants, who number in the tens of thousands, hail from Francophone West Africa. Many come to Tunisia in search of work; others hope to find passage across the Mediterranean to Europe.

Many of the sub-Saharan migrants – who face widespread discrimination in Tunisia – are Christian, and as a result, they now make up the vast majority of Tunisia’s churchgoing population.

This fact is reflected in a mural in the church in La Goulette, inspired by the feast of Our Lady of Trapani. Painted in 2017, it depicts the Virgin Mary sheltering a group of people – Tunisians, Sicilians and sub-Saharan Africans – under her mantle.

The air around the Virgin in the mural is full of passports. The church’s priest, Father Narcisse, who hails from Chad, told Al Jazeera that these represent the documents that immigrants throw into the sea while making the journey from North Africa to Europe in the hope of evading deportation.

The mural highlights the fact that the Madonna of Trapani, once considered the protector of Sicilian fishermen, is today called upon by immigrants of far more varied backgrounds.

“This celebration, in its original form, marked the deep bonds between the two shores of the Mediterranean,” Archbishop of Tunis Nicolas Lhernould told Al Jazeera. “Today, it brings together a more diverse group – Tunisians, Africans, Europeans; locals, migrants, and tourists.”

“Mary herself was a migrant,” Archbishop Lhernould said, referring to the New Testament story which narrates Mary’s flight, together with the child Jesus and her husband Joseph, from Palestine to Egypt.

From a Christian perspective, he suggested, “we are all migrants, just passing through, citizens of a kingdom which is not of this world”.

The spirit of La Goulette

La Goulette was once home to ‘Little Sicily’, an area characterised by its clusters of Italian-style apartment buildings. The vast majority of these structures – modest buildings built by the newly-arrived fishermen – have been torn down and replaced, and little more than the church remains to testify to the area’s once significant Sicilian presence.

As of 2019, there were only 800 Italians descended from the original immigrant community left in the whole of Tunisia.

“There are so few of us left”, said Rita Strazzera, who was born in Tunis to Sicilian parents. The Tunisian-Sicilian community meets very rarely, she explained, with some members coming together for the celebration on the 15th August, and holding occasional meetings in a small bookshop opposite the church.

Still, the spirit of Little Sicily has not entirely vanished. Traces of the old La Goulette linger – in memory, in film, and, Strazzera told Al Jazeera, in other, more surprising ways as well.

“Every year, on All Saints’ Day, I go to the graveyard”, said Strazzera, referring to the annual celebration when Catholics remember their deceased loved ones.

“And there are Tunisians there, Muslims, people who maybe had a Sicilian parent, or a Sicilian grandparent, and have come to visit their graves, because they know it’s what Catholics do.”

“There have been lots of mixed marriages”, Strazzera added, “and so, every year, there are more of them visiting the graves. When I see them, it’s like a reminder that Little Sicily is still with us.”

Marjayoun district, Lebanon – In his southern Lebanese hometown of Hula, a few metres away from the border with Israel, Khairallah Yaacoub walks through his olive grove. Khairallah is harvesting the olives, even though there aren’t many this year.

The orchard, which once contained 200 olive trees and dozens of other fruit-bearing trees, is now largely destroyed. After a ceasefire was declared between Hezbollah and Israel in November 2024, ending a one-year war, the Israeli army entered the area, bulldozed the land, and uprooted trees across border areas, including Hula – 56,000 olive trees according to Lebanon’s Agriculture Minister Nizar Hani. Israeli officials have said that they plan to remain indefinitely in a “buffer zone” in the border region.

Israeli forces are not currently stationed in what remains of Khairallah’s farm, but the grove is fully exposed to Israeli positions in Menora, on the other side of the border. That makes the olive farmer’s every movement visible to the Israeli army, and is why he has been so afraid to venture to his trees before today.

Harvesting under fire

“This was the place where my brothers and I lived our lives,” said Khairallah, as he walked next to the olive trees that he said were more than 40 years old. “We spent long hours here ploughing, planting, and harvesting. But the [Israeli] occupation army has destroyed everything.”

Khairallah now has 10 olive trees left, but their yield is small for several reasons, most notably the lack of rainfall and the fact that he and his brothers had to abandon the orchard when war broke out between Hezbollah and Israel on October 8, 2023. Khairallah’s aim now is to begin the process of restoring and replanting his olive grove, the main source of livelihood for the 55-year-old and his four brothers.

The farm in Hula, which lies in the district of Marjayoun, once provided them with not just olives, but olive oil, and various other fruits. They also kept 20 cows on the land, all of which have died due to the war.

But with the presence of the Israelis nearby, getting things back to a semblance of what they once were is not easy, and involves taking a lot of risks.

“Last year, we couldn’t come to the grove and didn’t harvest the olives,” Khairallah said. “[Now,] the Israeli army might send me a warning through a drone or fire a stun grenade to scare me off, and if I don’t withdraw, I could be directly shelled.”

Systematic destruction

Like Khairallah, Hussein Daher is also a farmer in Marjayoun, but in the town of Blida, about five kilometres (3.1 miles) away from Hula.

Hussein owns several dunams of olive trees right on Lebanon’s border with Israel. Some of his olive trees, centuries old and inherited from his ancestors, were also uprooted. As for the ones still standing, Hussein has been unable to harvest them because of Israeli attacks.

Hussein described what he says was one such attack as he tried to reach one of his groves.

“An Israeli drone appeared above me. I raised my hands to indicate that I am a farmer, but it came closer again,” said Hussein. “I moved to another spot, and minutes later, it returned to the same place I had been standing and dropped a bomb; if I hadn’t moved, it would have killed me.”

The United Nations reported last month that Israeli attacks in Lebanon since the beginning of the ceasefire had killed more than 270 people.

The dangers mean that some farmers have still not returned. But many, like Hussein, have no choice. The farmer emphasised that olive harvest seasons were an economic lifeline to him and to most other farmers.

And they now have to attempt to recoup some of the losses they have had to sustain over the last two years.

According to an April study by the United Nations’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), 814 hectares (2,011 acres) of olive groves were destroyed, with losses in the sector alone estimated at $236m, a significant proportion of the total $586m losses in the wider agricultural sector.

“We used to produce hundreds of containers of olive oil; today, we produce nothing,” said Hussein, who has a family of eight to provide for. “Some farmers used to produce more than 200 containers of olive oil per season, worth roughly $20,000. These families depended on olive farming, honey production, and agriculture, but now everything was destroyed.”

Abandoned

The troubles facing the olive farmers have had a knock-on effect for the olive press owners who turn the harvested olives into Lebanon’s prized olive oil.

At one olive press in Aitaroun, also in southern Lebanon, the owner, Ahmad Ibrahim, told Al Jazeera that he had only produced one truckload of olive oil this year, compared with the 15 to 20 truckloads his presses make in a typical year.

“Some villages, like Yaroun, used to bring large quantities of olives, but this year none came,” Ahmad said. “The occupation destroyed vast areas of their orchards and prevented farmers from reaching the remaining ones by shooting at them and keeping them away.”

Ahmad, in his 70s and a father of five, established this olive press in 2001. He emphasised that the decline in agriculture, particularly olive cultivation in southern Lebanon, would significantly affect local communities.

Many of those areas are still scarred from the fighting, and the weapons used by Israel could still be affecting the olive trees and other crops being grown in southern Lebanon.

Hussein points to Israel’s alleged use of white phosphorus, a poisonous substance that burns whatever it lands on, saying the chemical has affected plant growth.

Experts have previously told Al Jazeera that Israel’s use of white phosphorus, which Israel says it uses to create smokescreens on battlefields, is part of the attempt to create a buffer zone along the border.

But if Lebanese farmers are going to push back against the buffer zone plan, and bring the border region alive again, they’ll need support from authorities both in Lebanon and internationally – support they say has not been forthcoming.

“Unfortunately, no one has compensated us, neither the Ministry of Agriculture nor anyone else,” said Khairallah, the farmer from Hula. “My losses aren’t just in the orchard that was bulldozed, but also in the farm and the house. My home, located in the middle of the town, was heavily damaged.”

The Lebanese government has said that it aims to support the districts affected by the war, and has backed NGO-led efforts to help farmers.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Agriculture Minister Hani said that the government had begun to compensate farmers – up to $2,500 – and plant 200,000 olive seedlings. He also outlined restoration projects and the use of the country’s farmers registry to help the agricultural sector.

“Through the registry, farmers will be able to obtain loans, assistance, and social and health support,” Hani said. “Olives and olive oil are of great and fundamental value, and are a top priority for the Ministry of Agriculture.”

But Khairallah, Hussein, and Ahmad have yet to see that help from the government, indicating that it will take some time to scale up recovery operations.

That absence of support, Hussein said, will eventually force the farmers to pack up and leave, abandoning a tradition hundreds of years old.

“If a farmer does not plant, he cannot survive,” Hussein said. “Unfortunately, the government says it cannot help, while international organisations and donors, like the European Union and the World Bank, promised support, but we haven’t seen anything yet.”

Brazil’s proposal

The issue is set to come to a head next week, as the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) holds its 20th meeting.

Heightened restrictions on brazilwood are scheduled to be raised for a vote at the conference.

Since 1998, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has classified the tree as endangered.

But a proposal authored by the Brazilian government would increase CITES protections for brazilwood, placing it in the highest tier for trade restrictions.

CITES regulates the international trade of endangered species, and it classifies animals and plants in three appendices.

The third is the least restrictive: If a species is endangered in a given country, then export permits are required from that country.

The Appendix II has tighter standards: Export permits are required from wherever the species is extracted. Most endangered species, including brazilwood, fall into this category.

But Brazil hopes to bump brazilwood up to appendix one, a category for species faced with extinction.

Trade of plants and animals in that appendix is largely banned, except for non-commercial use. But even in that case, both import and export licences are required.

In its proposal, Brazil argues the upgraded restrictions are necessary to fight the plant’s extinction.

Only about 10,000 adult brazilwood trees remain. The population has shrunk by 84 percent over the last three generations, and illegal logging has played a dominant role in that decline, according to the proposal.

“Selective extraction of Brazilwood is still active, both inside and outside protected areas,” the proposal explains.

“In all cases recently detected, the destination of these woods is the bow-making industry for musical instruments.”

It adds that “520 years of intense exploitation” have led to the “complete elimination of the species in several regions”.

One operation launched by Brazilian police in October 2018 resulted in 45 companies and bowmakers being fined.

Nearly 292,000 bows and blanks — the unfinished blocks of wood destined to become bows — were seized.

Another investigation, between 2021 and 2022, led police to conclude that an estimated $46m in profits had come from the illegal brazilwood trade.

“The majority of bows and bow blanks sold by Brazilian companies over the past 25 years probably originated from illegal sources,” Brazil wrote in its proposal.

HE may be growing old very, very gracefully, but George Clooney is worried about ageing too fast – and forgetting his lines.

The Hollywood heartthrob, 64, was taken on a surprise walk down memory lane after shooting his latest film Jay Kelly, in which he plays a fictional famous actor.

Unknown to him, director Noah Baumbach had added snippets of George’s previous movies at the end of the Netflix release.

And watching the years roll by on screen was an eye-opener for the silver fox, not least when he was met with milestones he would rather forget.

His dodgy Eighties haircut in sitcom The Facts Of Life was one, as well as just how young he was when he starred in hospital drama ER in the Nineties.

George, whose hits include Ocean’s Eleven and Gravity, says: “It was really fascinating, because you go through all the things we all go through, which is you watch yourself age, which you have to make peace with.

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“You also look at some f***ing horrible mullets. And you have to kind of get through all that.

“And you do get this thing of, ‘God, that was just yesterday, wasn’t it?’. That I was on ER or something. It really does go by fast. And the older you get, the faster it seems to go.”

It is hard to imagine now, but there was a time when George was a struggling actor.

Having dropped out of university, where he was studying journalism, he sold insurance and shoes while also trying his luck as an extra on TV.

Sequels cancelled George recalls: “I came from Augusta, Kentucky, where I was a tobacco farmer. And you go on all these auditions and you go, ‘Well, I took a shot’. And if it doesn’t work out, it’s easy when you get older to go, ‘Yeah, I gave it a shot. It didn’t work out’, which happens.

“But you can’t do it when you’re old and you didn’t try. That’s regret.”

Back when opportunities were thin on the ground, George did take some roles he now recalls ruefully.

That includes the first movie he was cast in, called Grizzly II: Revenge, which suffered financial problems.

Backers pulled out of the 1983 low-budget horror flick, which also featured Charlie Sheen and Laura Dern, so the cast were stuck in Hungary for weeks while the funding was sorted out.

George reveals: “It was funded by these Hungarians. And then they lost the money.

“And so we got stuck there for, like, two months. And it was Laura, Charlie Sheen and me. It was all our first films.

“And we’re stuck there for two months. And we can’t get home. We don’t know what to do.

In Grizzly II, we get eaten by a bear in the first scene. It never comes out, thank Christ. Then some schmuck finds it. Now it’s ‘starring George Clooney’ and I get worst reviews of my life

George Clooney

“And literally, we get eaten by a bear in the first scene and so it never comes out. Thank Christ.”

Although the movie was not completed at the time, it was finally finished and released in 2020, with George given a top billing, even though he only appeared briefly.

He continues: “Some schmuck finds it and he gets a bunch of old footage of s**. And he puts it together.

“And now it’s like, ‘Starring George Clooney’. And it comes out. And after 40 years, I’m getting the worst reviews of my life.”

George’s screen breakthrough came in 1994 when he began playing paediatric doctor Doug Ross in ER, which was a global success.

It led to major movies including From Dusk Till Dawn two years later, and Batman & Robin in 1997.

The star is able to laugh off his much-panned version of the caped crusader, which was such a flop that the sequels were cancelled.

And he jokes that his eight-year-old twins Alexander and Ella will be left traumatised by the Batman outfit he wore.

The actor says: “We know they’re going to be in therapy no matter what, just from Batman & Robin. ‘My dad had rubber f***ing nipples’. Disaster.”

George, who was married to actress Talia Balsam, 66, for four years until 1993, dated a string of beautiful women, including Renee Zellweger and British TV presenter Lisa Snowdon, before settling down with lawyer Amal Alamuddin.

She is the mother of his children and the couple have been married for 11 years.

They have homes near Reading, Berks and in Kentucky, US.

It is clear that George is very content, unlike his latest character.

He says of the fictional Jay Kelly: “He regrets his relationship with his father. He regrets the relationship with his kids. “He regrets the relationship with the women in his life and not spending enough time with people you love. I don’t have much of that. I mean, I have kids that still like me.”

Even so, fans might have some difficulty separating fiction from reality when they see George in his latest role.

He is, after all, playing a Hollywood star who has experienced plenty of ups and downs.

When Noah Baumbach, who is married to Barbie director Greta Gerwig, wrote the script, he thought George was the natural choice for the lead role.

But the actor hopes he did not see any of Kelly’s nasty streak in him.

People will be like, ‘Oh, you’re just playing yourself in this’. And I go, ‘Well, I hope not, because the guy’s a d***’

George Clooney

He jokes: “People will be like, ‘Oh, you’re just playing yourself in this’. And I go, ‘Well, I hope not, because the guy’s a d***’.

‘I was scared’

“But, you know, maybe they’re telling me something. When he said, ‘I wrote this with you in mind,’ I was like, ‘F*** you’.”

This will only be George’s seventh movie in the past ten years. He has not received many scripts that interested him — and some of the roles he did take failed to “challenge” him.

That includes the 2024 Apple+ action comedy Wolfs that he made with Brad Pitt and the romcom Ticket To Paradise with Julia Roberts in 2022.

George says: “For the last ten years or so, for the most part, I was directing because I was more interested in telling stories and I wanted to continue to be a storyteller. But the parts I was getting offered weren’t all that interesting.

“And so I hadn’t really been in a film. I did a couple of movies. I did a movie with Julia Roberts and I did a movie with Brad, which were fun and they’re fun to work with and people that I know. But it’s not challenging yourself.

“We know what the audience wants delivered for those films.”

Neither of those movies were well received by reviewers and George hasn’t had a critically-acclaimed film since 2016’s Hail, Caesar!

Out of the nine movies he has directed, Good Night, And Good Luck was the biggest success, picking up Best Picture and Best Director Oscar nominations at the 2006 awards.

And while 2014’s The Monuments Men was a box-office hit, other offerings such as Leatherheads in 2008 lost money.

George is sanguine about any setbacks he has faced. “I was friends with Gregory Peck and I was friends with Paul Newman. Even those guys, and they were the biggest movie stars in the world, even their careers don’t just go like that,” he explains pointing upwards.

Making a rollercoaster motion, he continues: “Their careers do this, that’s how they ride. And my career has had many of those, many failures and many things that I wish I’d done better.”

I was friends with Gregory Peck and Paul Newman. Even those guys, and they were the biggest movie stars in the world, even their careers don’t just go upwards. My career has had many failures

George has taken risks by getting up on stage on Broadway, recreating Good Night, And Good Luck as a play earlier this year.

It received five Tony nominations, including best actor for the star himself.

Not bad for a man who struggled to remember the script.

He admits: “I hadn’t done a play in 40 years. And so I was nervous. And every night, you know, I was worried because as you get older, it’s hard to remember your lines.

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“And it’s hard to remember s***. And so I was scared. And it’s good to be 64 years old and not sure you can pull it off.”

• Jay Kelly is in cinemas now and will be on Netflix from December 5.

In the quiet of his Ramallah studio in the occupied West Bank, Palestinian artist Nabil Anani works diligently on artworks deeply rooted in a movement he helped create during the political tumult of the late 1980s.

Cofounded in 1987 by Anani and fellow artists Sliman Mansour, Vera Tamari and Tayseer Barakat, the New Visions art movement focused on using local natural materials while eschewing Israeli supplies as a form of cultural resistance. The movement prioritised self-sufficiency at a time of deep political upheaval across occupied Palestine.

“[New Visions] emerged as a response to the conditions of the Intifada,” Anani said. “Ideas like boycott and self-reliance inspired a shift in our artistic practice at the time.”

Each of the founding members chose to work with a specific material, developing new artistic styles that fit the spirit of the time. The idea caught on, and many exhibitions followed locally, regionally and internationally.

Nearly four decades later, the principles of New Visions – self-sufficiency, resistance and creation despite scarcity – continue to shape a new generation of Palestinian artists for whom making art is both an expression and an act of survival.

Anani, now 82, and the other founding members are helping keep the movement’s legacy alive.

Why ‘New Visions’?

“We called it New Visions because, at its core, the movement embraced experimentation, especially through the use of local materials,” Anani said, noting how he had discovered the richness of sheepskins, their textures and tones and began integrating them into his art in evocative ways.

In 2002, Tamari, now 80, started planting ceramic olive trees for every real one an Israeli settler burned down to form a sculptural installation called Tale of a Tree. Later, she layered watercolours over ceramic pieces, mediums that usually do not mix, defying the usual limits of each material, and melded in elements of family photos, local landscapes and politics.

Sixty-six-year-old Barakat, meanwhile, created his own pigments and then began burning forms into wood, transforming surface damage into a visual language.

“Other artists began to embrace earth, leather, natural dyes – even the brokenness of materials as part of the story,” Mansour, 78, said, adding that he had personally reached a kind of “dead end” with his work before the New Visions movement emerged, spending years creating works centred around national symbols and identity that had started to feel repetitive.

“This was different. I remember being anxious at first, worried about the cracks in the clay I was using,” he said, referring to his use of mud. “But, in time, I saw the symbolism in those cracks. They carried something honest and powerful.”

In 2006, the group helped create the International Academy of Art Palestine in Ramallah, which was open for 10 years before being integrated into Birzeit University as the Faculty of Art, Music and Design. The academy’s main goal was to help artists transition from older ways of thinking to more contemporary approaches, particularly by using local and diverse materials.

“A new generation emerged from this, raised on these ideas, and went on to hold numerous exhibitions, both locally and internationally, all influenced by the New Visions movement,” Anani said.

A legacy maintained but tested

The work of Lara Salous, a 36-year-old Palestinian artist and designer based in Ramallah, echoes the founding principles of the movement.

“I am inspired by [the movement’s] collective mission. My insistence on using local materials comes from my belief that we must liberate and decolonise our economy.”

“We need to rely on our natural resources and production, go back to the land, boycott Israeli products and support our local industries,” Salous said.

Through Woolwoman, her social enterprise, Salous works with local materials and a community of shepherds, wool weavers and carpenters to create contemporary furniture, like wool and loom chairs, inspired by ancient Bedouin techniques.

But challenges like the increasing number of roadblocks and escalating settler violence against Palestinian Bedouin communities, who rely on sheep grazing as a basic source of income, have made working and living as an artist in the West Bank increasingly difficult.

“I collaborate with shepherds and women who spin wool in al-Auja and Masafer Yatta,” said Salous, referring to two rural West Bank areas facing intense pressure from occupation and settlement expansion.

“These communities face daily confrontations with Israeli settlers who often target their sheep, prevent grazing, cut off water sources like the al-Auja Spring, demolish wells and even steal livestock,” she added.

In July, the Reuters news agency reported an incident in the West Bank’s Jordan Valley, where settlers killed 117 sheep and stole hundreds of others in an overnight attack on one such community.

Such danger leaves Palestinian women who depend on Woolwoman for their livelihoods vulnerable. Several female weavers working with Salous and supporting her enterprise have become their families’ sole breadwinners, especially after their spouses lost jobs due to Israeli work permit bans following the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, and the start of the Gaza war.

Visiting the communities where these wool suppliers live has become nearly impossible for Salous, who fears attacks by Israeli settlers.

Meanwhile, her collaborators must often prioritise their own safety and the protection of their villages, which disrupts their ability to produce wool to sustain their livelihoods.

As a result, the designer has faced delays and supply chain issues, making completing and selling her works increasingly difficult.

Anani faces similar challenges in procuring hides.

“Even in cities like Ramallah or Bethlehem, where the situation might be slightly more stable, there are serious difficulties, especially in accessing materials and moving around,” he said.

“I work with sheepskin, but getting it from Hebron is extremely difficult due to roadblocks and movement restrictions.”

Creating vs surviving

In Gaza, Hussein al-Jerjawi, an 18-year-old artist from the Remal neighbourhood of Gaza City, is also inspired by the New Visions movement’s legacy and meaning, noting that Mansour’s “style in expressing the [conditions of the occupation]” has inspired him.

Due to a lack of materials like canvases, which are scarce and expensive, al-Jerjawi has repurposed flour bags distributed by the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) as canvases for creating his artwork, using wall paint or simple pens and pencils to create portraits of the world around him.

In July, however, the artist said flour bags were no longer available due to Israel’s blockade of food and aid into the Gaza Strip.

“There are no flour bags in Gaza, but I’m still considering buying empty bags to complete my drawings,” he said.

Gaza-born artist Hazem Harb, who now lives in Dubai, also credits the New Visions movement as a constant source of inspiration throughout his decades-long career.

“The New Visions movement encourages artists to push boundaries and challenge conventional forms, and I strive to embody this spirit in my work,” he said while noting that it has been challenging to source the materials from Gaza that he needs for his work.

“The ongoing occupation often disrupts supply chains, making it difficult to obtain the necessary materials for my work. I often relied on local resources and found objects, creatively repurposing materials to convey my message.”

Anani, who said the conditions in Gaza make it nearly impossible to access local material, added that many artists are struggling but still strive to make art with whatever they can.

“I believe artists [in Gaza] are using whatever’s available – burned objects, sand, basic things from their environment,” Anani said.

“Still, they are continuing to create in simple ways that reflect this harsh moment.”

WHEN her best friend and co-star Ariana Grande was ambushed on the red carpet, quick-thinking Cynthia Erivo rushed to the rescue.

A prankster grabbed Ariana at the Singapore premiere of their new film Wicked: For Good on Thursday, but Cynthia, 38, stepped in and strong-armed the invader away.

The British actress admits she feels protective over Ariana, saying: “I love her, she’s a bright spark but you just want to take care of her.  And we really took care of each other.”

Luckily loyal pal Cynthia was already fighting fit thanks to the ­gruelling stunts she had to perform for the eagerly anticipated sequel.

“The flying in harnesses, ­chafing, we had it. Chafing was like a funny word to me until I realised what chafing actually looked like when you had it, repetitively.

“It took months for my hips to heal, scratched palms bleeding, bloody nose, like it was bad.

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“We were willing to do whatever it took to do this, but this one was a big one for us.”

Meanwhile, Cynthia  says she and  Ariana  prefer to go to bed early — like a pair of “grandmothers”.

The star revealed that because of the time difference and their schedules, they often struggle to catch up when she is in London and Ariana is at home in LA.

SHUNNED BY DAD

But while gearing up for the long-awaited sequel of the big-screen musical,  32-year-old Ariana, who plays Glinda, broke routine to make sure they could chat.

Cynthia, who plays Elphaba in the films,  said of one recent late-night text exchange with Ariana: “She’s a sweetheart. I was like, ‘Why are you up so late?’ Because we’re like grandmothers, the two of us.

“We like to sleep early. For some reason I was up at 11 here, which meant she was up at two wherever she was. I said, ‘Why are you up so late?’ She was like, ‘I know, it’s new, isn’t it? I’m never up this late’.

“I said, ‘No you’re not, what’s going on?’. And she said, ‘I’m taking every second I can get right now because you’re usually asleep by now’.”

The  first Wicked movie became the highest-grossing UK release of 2024, taking £59.6million at the box office.

It led to Cynthia being nominated for an Oscar, Bafta, Critics’ Choice, Golden Globe and SAG Award for Best Actress.

The sequel, Wicked: For Good, is expected to be just as big and hits UK cinemas on Friday, continuing the tale of the  witches of Oz.

Adapted from the hit musical, Wicked follows Elphaba, a student sorceress shunned by her own father for her green skin, who becomes the Wicked Witch of the West, while her spoiled roommate Glinda ends up as the Good Witch of the North.

Cynthia tells how she endured ­similar heartache when her own dad walked out of her life for good when she was a teenager.

She and her sister Stephanie were very young when their Nigerian father left their mother Edith, a nurse, to bring up the girls alone.

Edith remarried when Cynthia was five and she continued to see her dad “two or three times a week”.

I think he just was not set up to be a dad. I don’t think it was his bag

Cynhtia

She told The Armchair Expert ­podcast: “My mum was really, I think, kind and gave him the space to come and visit if he wanted to.

“We would go over to him from time to time as well. She really made the space for us if he wanted to build a relationship.

“And he just didn’t. I think he  was just not set up to be a dad. I don’t think it was his bag.”

Recalling how she became estranged from her father,  Cynthia added: “I was 16 when my dad decided not to be a part of my life.”

By then, she had already joined a local youth theatre group and was singing hymns at a Catholic church near her home in Stockwell, South West London.

She went on to start a degree in musical psychology at the University of East London, but quit after securing a place at top acting school Rada.

Her early bid to break into UK telly flopped with an appearance on Channel 4 reality show Trust Me, I’m A Teenager and a small part in ITV period drama Mr Selfridge.  Hopes of a breakthrough  in Simon Cowell and

Harry Hill’s £6million X Factor ­musical, I Can’t Sing, were dashed as the run closed after seven weeks.

But her singing voice impressed casting directors.

She made her West End debut in the stage musical The Umbrellas Of Cherbourg and, in 2013,  won a place in a British stage adaptation of The Color Purple, the 1985 movie that starred Whoopi Goldberg.

Since then, her roles have included Harriet Tubman in the film Harriet and a part in Netflix thriller Luther: The Fallen Sun.

But the one person  she always wanted to impress was her father.

She secretly hoped with her  ­becoming famous, he would change his mind about being in her life. Cynthia said: “I think I was using, for a small amount of time, my career as a conduit to find a way to get him back.

‘Look what you gave up, you’re going to regret leaving this’. Yeah, that kind of thing.”

Cynthia has turned to therapy to help her deal with the trauma.

‘MAKE MISTAKES’

She said: “Until you get your head around it and get some control on what it is that you’re actually looking for, what you’re trying to fix in that, it will keep going.

“Thank goodness for a good therapist — that s**t really helped.”

Now, she has finally let go and learned to forgive.  She told The Cruz Show podcast: “It took me ages to let go of parents. It’s like my father, I had to let that go and it’s taken me a long time to get there . . . to realise that it’s a human being who is also fallible and who will make mistakes.”

Cynthia admits that clinging on to that pain for such a long time held her back.

She said: “When you let go, you have to start living. What I keep doing is trying to find the things that challenge me the most, that force me to learn more, that keep me honest  in my craft, that don’t let me get complacent and lazy.”

Wicked was a challenge. The movies were filmed in the UK in chronological order,  back-to-back,  between Dec- ember 2022 and January 2024, with a break in 2023 due to an actors’ strike.

Cynthia, who is dating Lena Waithe, an American actress, producer, and screenwriter, admits that even today she still gets crippled by anxiety.

She explained: “I think if I lose the nervousness, then I know something’s wrong. Because my nervousness tells me I care. The second that disappears, we’ve got a problem.

“So I relish the moments when my heart’s beating fast and I’m nervous. I always forget the first line. Whenever I’m about to go on, the first line will go out  my head.  That’s nerves.

“But when I stand in front of people, it always comes back. It means I care about being here, I care about the people watching.”

Thank goodness for a good therapist, that s**t really helped

Cynthia

When those jitters hit, she relies  on strict pre-performance rituals. She said: “Breathing for me is always key.

“And I always say a prayer before I go on stage. Also, nervousness can sometimes be the mirror looking at yourself.

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“So what I try to do is turn the performance into something I can give. So I ask to be used like a vessel.

“Let whatever I’m singing be for whoever is out there listening. For whoever needs it.”

ONCE voted the greatest rock song of all time, Bohemian Rhapsody entered the charts 50 years ago this month – and became a huge No1. 

The six-minute track — which has sold more than 6million ­copies worldwide — climbed to top spot in the charts and stayed there for nine weeks while Queen were on the road touring. 

That meant its first Top Of The Pops airing in November 1975 was accompanied by a rushed video which had taken the band just four hours to make on a budget of £4,000. 

In fact, singer Freddie Mercury was terrified of performing the fan favourite live, and almost caused a riot by once leaving it off their setlist. 

The song even divided opinion over whether it was about his sexuality. 

The incredible tale of one of the most famous singles in UK history is now told for the first time in an interview with Peter Freestone — one of Freddie’s closest friends.

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Peter was also his housemate and personal assistant of 12 years. 

‘Genius move’ 

Today, he gives an intimate insight into Freddie’s life and the song that will forever be linked to him.

He tells The Sun: “For most people, if you mention Queen, the first thing they say is Bohemian Rhapsody. 

“But the reality was that Bohemian Rhapsody was the one song that he hated playing on the piano.

“He was scared every single time. 

“He didn’t enjoy it live because there is a section when it is just the piano, which you couldn’t hide among banging drums and thrashing guitars.

“Even some years after its release, he dreaded playing the piano solo in it.  

“He was petrified of playing the wrong notes, and that everybody would laugh at him.” 

Peter, 70 — who lived with Freddie at his Garden Lodge home in ­Kensington, West London — went on: “Just as iconic as the song is the video, but the truth is that it was filmed in a rush at Elstree Studios just so it could be given to Top Of The Pops while the band were away on tour. 

“Freddie was very much a man of today and tomorrow.  

“He likened his music to tissues — you pick them up, use them and throw them away.

“But I know he’d be proud of Bohemian Rhapsody’s relevance, 50 years on.” 

The song topped the charts in November and December 1975 and had sold more than a million copies by the end of January the next year. 

It peaked for another five weeks after Freddie’s death in 1991 and became the UK’s third best- selling single ever, also topping Greatest Hits Radio’s Top 500 songs of the 70s, 80s and 90s in 2020.  

It was basically three songs in one going around in ­Freddie’s head, but he couldn’t finish anything off. In the end, they sort of pitched it all together. It was a genius move from the band.

Peter Freestone on how the iconic song came to be

Queen guitarist Sir Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor performed Bohemian Rhapsody with a full orchestra and chorus at the Last Night Of The Proms in September. 

Brian — who stumbled over his ­guitar solo at the end — once said: “I think Bohemian Rhapsody is something you can never get bored with.” 

But Peter reveals the mega-hit is actually a mash-up of tunes the band struggled to make work individually, so they were merged into a rock- opera epic.  

He says: “It was basically three songs in one going around in ­Freddie’s head, but he couldn’t finish anything off.

“In the end, they sort of pitched it all together.

“It was a genius move from the band.” 

The true meaning of the song has long remained a mystery.

In 2015, ­lyricist Sir Tim Rice suggested it was about Freddie’s battle with his sexuality.

He said: “It’s fairly obvious to me this was Freddie’s ‘coming out’ song. 

“I’ve spoken to Roger Taylor about it.

“There is a very clear message in it. 

“This is Freddie admitting that he is gay.

“In the line ‘Mama, just killed a man’, he’s killed the old Freddie — his former image.”  

‘Crowd went mad’ 

But Peter revealed he has his doubts that Freddie would have ­written a song being so frank about his sexuality amid fears over what his parents would think.

He said: “Being gay was illegal until the Sixties, so he was fighting against his background.

“His parents were very religious and I don’t think he would have thrown it in their face like that.  

“Bohemian Rhapsody was about love, though.

“All his songs are either about finding it or losing it.”

Peter says Queen’s performance of the song for Live Aid in 1985 was one of his favourite live memories of the band.

He also revealed that the only time they left it out of a live show — on a 1980s tour date in Canada — it left the crowd fuming. 

Peter says: “It was the start of the tour, and the only time in the 12 years I knew them that they left it out — and the crowd went mad.  

“When the encore finished, the crowd started chanting for it.

“But the show had finished.

“It was back in the setlist the next night.” 

Yet for many, it is the ground-breaking video — showing the band performing, featuring close-up shots of their faces and portraying them in silhouette — that made the song so memorable.

It was first aired on BBC One’s Top Of The Pops on November 20, 1975 — ten days after it was filmed.

Peter said: “It was pioneering for its time.

“It was a product of its time.

“It was ­influenced by Doctor Who, which at the time had used silhouettes ­moving like in the video. 

“It was put together very quickly.

“The band were on tour at the time and needed to record a video for Top Of The Pops as they couldn’t be there in person.” 

It was through a ballet performance to Bohemian Rhapsody that Peter, who was working in costume for the Royal Ballet at the time, became Freddie’s personal assistant.  

He would watch Countdown every day, religiously. He loved playing Scrabble, too

Peter on Freddie

The pair met when the Queen frontman was performing a charity gala in 1979.

Peter said: “I never had a contract because they could never create a job description.  

“My job was basically living ­Freddie’s life alongside him.

“I did normal, day-to-day things like answer the telephone, answer the door, go shopping, do some cooking, do cleaning, so that he could concentrate on creating the music.”  

Peter also got to know the off-stage Freddie through sharing his home.

He recalled: “He loved laughing.

“He always enjoyed himself.

“He would wake at 9am every morning, even if he’d got into bed at 2am.  

‘I’m white trash’ 

“He’d have a cup of tea and loved to go to the garden at look at the koi carp.

“The Sotheby’s and Christie’s catalogue and the Architectural Digest were always in the house. 

“He would watch Countdown every day, religiously.

“He loved playing Scrabble, too. 

But Peter revealed there were also fun nights out — including one when Freddie flung model Samantha Fox around on stage.

Peter said: “I will never forget it, and I don’t think she will either. 

“It was at a party after the ­Wembley shows in 1986, on a roof garden in Kensington High Street.

“Freddie grabbed Samantha and was swinging her around.  

“And they were singing, and howling with laughter.

“I was thinking, ‘Oh God, don’t drop her’.” 

On another occasion, Peter had to pluck Freddie out of a bin following a 1980s booze session in a US bar with pop act The Village People after his drink was spiked. 

He said: “They were having a great time in this big American bar.

“Freddie was enjoying himself.  

“I went to the toilet then one of our friends came to get me and said, ‘You better come quick’.  

“I headed back in and I could hear raucous laughter.

“There was Freddie in white singlet, jeans and trainers, jumping up and down in this big, netted bin, full of beer cans and plastic cups . . . jumping up and down, and shouting, ‘I’m white trash. I’m white trash’.  

“We later found out his drink had been spiked, but he was okay.” 

Peter told how he misses Freddie “every day” and feels proud whenever he talks to others about him.  

He now does tours and shares memories of the singer’s life. 

Peter lives in the Czech Republic and runs an Aids foundation there.

He has talked to more than 70,000 people across the country about the illness, which Freddie had before his death from pneumonia in 1991. 

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Peter said: I feel proud that one of his great pieces of work, ­Bohemian Rhapsody, carries his legacy half a century on.” 

• To find out about Peter’s work, see peterfreestone.com. 

Sydney, Australia – Ju-rye Hwang grew up assuming her parents in South Korea were dead and that she was alone in the world after being adopted to North America at about six years of age.

That was until a phone call from a journalist in Seoul turned her world upside down.

“He told me that I was not an orphan,” Hwang said.

“And it was most certain that I was illegally adopted for profit,” she said.

The journalist went on to tell Hwang about the notorious Brothers Home institution in South Korea, a place where thousands had endured horrific abuse, including forced labour, sexual violence, and brutal beatings.

Hwang discovered that she had spent time at the institution as a child, before being offered for overseas adoption.

The journalist also explained how his investigative team had uncovered a file from the home’s archives containing a list of international adoptions, and among the clearly printed names was that of her adoptive mother.

Hearing “the truth”, Hwang said, “made me break down and lose my breath”.

“I felt physically ill,” she told Al Jazeera.

“I believed that my parents were not alive.”

‘Beggars don’t exist here’

Hwang is now a successful career woman in her mid-40s. But her origins link back to South Korea during the 1970s and 80s, when government authorities in the rapidly industrialising nation cracked down brutally on those considered socially undesirable.

Kidnapping was rampant among the children of the poor, the homeless and marginalised who lived on the streets of Seoul and other cities.

Children as well as adults were abducted without warning, bundled into police cars and trucks and hauled away under a state policy aimed at beautifying South Korean cities by removing those designated as “vagrants”.

By clearing the streets of the poor, South Korea’s government sought to project an image of prosperity and modernity to the outside world, particularly in the lead-up to the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul.

The then-president and military leader, Chun Doo-hwan, famously boasted of South Korea’s economic success when he told reporters: “Do you see any beggars in our country? We have no beggars. Beggars don’t exist here.”

The president’s push to “cleanse” the streets of the poor and homeless combined toxically with a police performance system based on the accumulation of points that propelled a surge in abductions.

At the time, police earned points based on the category of suspects they apprehended. A petty offender was worth just two performance points. But turning in a so-called “beggar” or “vagrant” to institutions such as the Brothers Home could earn an officer five points – a perverse incentive that prompted widespread abuse.

“The police abducted innocent people off the streets – shoe shiners, gum sellers, people waiting at bus stops, even kids just playing outside,” Moon Jeong-su, a former member of South Korea’s National Assembly, told Al Jazeera.

Brothers Home of horrors

Located in the southern port city of Busan, Brothers Home was founded in 1975 by Park In-geun, a former military officer and boxer.

It was one of many government-subsidised “welfare” institutions across South Korea, established at that time to house the homeless and train them in vocational skills before releasing them back into society as so-called “productive citizens”.

In practice, such facilities became sites of mass detention and horrific abuse.

“State funding was based on the number of people they incarcerated,” said former Busan city council member Park Min-seong.

“The more people they brought in, the more subsidies they received,” he said.

At one stage, up to 95 percent of the Brothers Home’s inmates were delivered directly by police, and as few as 10 percent of those confined were actually “vagrants”, according to a 1987 prosecutor’s report.

In a recent Netflix documentary dealing with the events at Brothers Home, Park Cheong-gwang, the youngest son of the facility’s owner, Park In-geun, admitted that his father had bribed police officers to ensure they sent abducted people to his facility.

Records reviewed by South Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, established to investigate historical abuse at Brothers Home and similar centres, revealed that an estimated 38,000 people were detained at the home between 1976 and its closure in 1987.

Brothers Home reached peak capacity in 1984, with more than 4,300 inmates held at one time. During its 11 years of operation, 657 deaths were also officially recorded, though investigators believe the toll was likely much higher.

The home was known among inmates as Park’s “kingdom”. It was a place where the founder wielded absolute control over every aspect of their lives. The compound had high concrete walls and guards stationed at the towering front gate. No one was permitted to leave without express permission.

Inside, children were forced to work long hours in on-site factories producing goods such as fishing rods, shoes and clothing, while adults were sent out for gruelling manual labour at construction sites.

Their labour was not supposed to be free.

A 2021 investigation by Al Jazeera’s 101 East investigative documentary series revealed that Park and members of his board of directors at Brothers Home had embezzled what would amount to tens of millions of dollars in today’s value, and which should have been paid to inmates for their work.

Those operating Brothers Home also profited from the country’s lucrative international adoption trade, with domestic and foreign adoption agencies frequently visiting the facility.

Former inmate Lee Chae-shik, who was held for six years at the home, told 101 East that young children, just like Hwang, would simply disappear overnight.

“Newborns, three-year-olds, kids who couldn’t yet walk … One day, all of those kids were gone,” Lee said.

‘The child said absolutely nothing’

Hwang’s intake form at the Brothers Home states that she was found in Busan’s Jurye-dong neighbourhood and “admitted to Brothers Home at the request of the Jurye 2-dong Police Substation on November 23, 1982”.

A black-and-white photo of a very young Hwang is affixed to the top corner of the document, which was seen by Al Jazeera.

Her head is shaved. The form is stamped with her identification number: 821112646, with a line in the comments section: “Upon arrival, the child said absolutely nothing.”

The document notes Hwang’s “good physique”, “normal face shape and colour”, and she is marked on the form as “healthy – capable of labour work”.

At the bottom of the page are Hwang’s tiny fingerprints. She was about four years old at the time.

“That girl is probably scared and in shock,” said Hwang, looking at her own intake document and the picture of her childhood self. Her voice quivering as she spoke, she referred to the “innocent” child who already “has a mugshot”.

“I 100 percent believe that I was kidnapped,” she said. “I know I was never supposed to be at Brothers [Home] as a four-year-old.”

A deeply unsettling discovery was also made in her adoption records: Her name, Ju-rye, was given to her by the home’s director, Park, who named her after the Jurye-dong neighbourhood where police say she was found – the same neighbourhood where the Brothers Home was located.

“I felt violated. I felt sick in the stomach,” she said, recalling the origins of her name.

Growing up, Hwang said she had fragmented memories of South Korea.

Of the few she could recollect, one was of a towering iron gate. The other was of children splashing in a shallow underground pool. For years, she dismissed those memories as probably imagined. Then, in 2022, six years after the call with the journalist, she finally mustered enough courage to investigate her past with the help of a fellow adoptee from South Korea, who had sent her links to a website detailing what the Brothers Home once looked like.

“I was just toggling through the different menus of that website when two vivid images clicked for me,” Hwang said, snapping her fingers.

“The large iron gate – that was the entrance. The underground pool was inside the facility,” she said, matching her unexplained dreams with the images featured on the website.

“It was overwhelming to know that I was not imagining my memories of Korea,” she said.

Hwang would discover that she was kept at the Brothers Home for nine months before being sent to a nearby orphanage, where she was deemed a “good candidate” for international adoption.

In the consultation notes for eventual adoption, the circumstances of Hwang’s so-called abandonment and her admission to Brothers Home, as well as details of her health, were all provided by Park. She was recorded as being in good health, weighing 15.3kg (33.7lb), measuring 101cm (3.3ft) in height, and having a full set of 20 healthy teeth.

Adoption records also described her as an outgoing and well-behaved young girl. Hwang was noted for her intelligence: she could write her own name “perfectly”, was able to count in numbers, recognised different colours, and was also capable of reciting verses from the Bible from memory.

“It seems odd that I had those skills and was well nourished, and yet the police claimed I was a street kid. It just doesn’t add up,” said Hwang, who is convinced she was well looked after before she was taken to the Brothers Home.

In 2021, Hwang submitted her DNA to an international genetics registry and was immediately matched with a fully-related younger brother who had also been adopted to Belgium. She describes her first video call with her long-lost brother as “surreal”.

“For an adopted person who has never had any blood relatives their entire life, coming face-to-face with a direct sibling was jaw-dropping,” Hwang recalled.

“There was no denying we were related,” she said.

“He looked so much like me – the shape of his face, the features, even our long, slender hands.”

Hwang soon learned that she had another younger brother, and both had been adopted to Belgium in early 1986.

Their adoption files, also seen by Al Jazeera, state the brothers were “abandoned” in Anyang, a city about 300km (186 miles) from Busan, in August 1982, about three months before Hwang was taken to Brothers Home.

The timing of her brothers’ adoptions made her wonder whether her parents may have temporarily left her with relatives in Busan, a common practice in Korean families, possibly while they searched for their missing sons, who may also have been taken off the streets in similar circumstances.

Among the few vivid memories that Hwang still retains from her very early childhood, before the Brothers Home, is of a woman she believes may have been her biological mother.

“The only image that stayed with me,” she said, her eyes filling with tears, “is of a woman with medium-length permed hair. I only remember her from the back – I have no memory of her from the front.”

Hwang still holds on to hope that one day she will be reunited with her mother and will discover her true identity.

“I would love to know my real name – the name my parents gave me,” she said.

Truth and Reconciliation

In 2022, South Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission declared that serious human rights violations had occurred at Brothers Home. This included enforced disappearances, arbitrary confinement, forced labour without pay, sexual violence, physical abuse, and even deaths.

In the report, the commission stated the “rules of rounding up vagrants to be unconstitutional/illegal”, that “the process of inmates being confined to be illegal”, and “suspicious acts” were discovered “in medical practices and the process of dealing with dead inmates”.

Most children at the home were also found to have been excluded from compulsory education.

The commission concluded that such acts had violated the “right to the pursuit of happiness, freedom of relocation, right to liberty, the right to be free from forced or compulsory labour, and the right to education, as guaranteed by the Constitution”.

The government, the commission said, was aware of such violations but “tried to systematically downscale and conceal the case”.

The commission also confirmed for the first time earlier this year that Brothers Home had collaborated with other childcare centres to facilitate illegal overseas adoptions.

Although many records were reportedly destroyed by the home’s former management, investigators verified that at least 31 children had been illegally sent abroad for adoption. The inquiry eventually identified 17 biological mothers linked to children sent for adoption overseas.

In one case, the commission uncovered evidence of a heavily pregnant woman who had been forcibly taken to Brothers Home. She gave birth inside the facility, and her baby was handed over to an adoption agency just a month later and then sent overseas three months after that.

Investigators found a letter of consent to adoption signed by the mother. But the adoption agency had taken custody of the baby the very day the form was signed, leaving no opportunity for the mother to reconsider or withdraw consent.

The commission noted the high likelihood of the mother being coerced into consenting to the overseas adoption of her child while held inside the Brothers Home, from which she could neither leave nor care adequately for her newborn under the home’s oppressive conditions.

Brothers Home’s former director, Park, died in June 2016 in South Korea. He was never held accountable for the unlawful confinement that occurred at his facility, nor did he ever apologise for his role in it.

The commission’s 2022 report strongly recommended that the South Korean government issue a formal state apology for its role in the abuses committed at the home. To date, neither the Busan city government nor the South Korean national police have apologised for involvement in the abuses or the subsequent cover-up, and, despite mounting pressure, no president of the country has issued a formal apology.

In mid-September, however, the government withdrew its appeals against admitting liability for human rights violations that occurred at the facility, following a Supreme Court ruling in March. The move is expected to expedite compensation for a number of the victims who had filed lawsuits against the state over the abuse they suffered.

Justice Minister Jung Sung-ho described the decision to drop the appeals as a “testament to the state’s recognition of the human rights violations [that occurred] due to the state violence in the authoritarian era”.

This week, the Supreme Court further ruled that the state must also compensate victims who were forcibly confined at Brothers Home before 1975, when a government directive officially authorised a nationwide crackdown on “vagrants”.

The court found that the state had “consistently carried out crackdowns and confinement measures against vagrants from the 1950s onwards and expanded these practices” under the directive.

Hwang submitted her case to the commission for investigation in January 2025, and she received an official response confirming that, as a child, she was subjected to “gross human rights violations resulting from the unlawful and grossly unjust exercise of official authority”.

‘Child-exporting nation’

In the decades after the 1950-53 Korean War, more than 170,000 children were sent to Western countries for adoption, as what started as a humanitarian effort to rescue war orphans gradually evolved into a lucrative business for private adoption agencies.

Just last month, President Lee Jae Myung issued a historic apology over South Korea’s former foreign adoption programme, acknowledging the “pain” and “suffering” endured by adoptees and their birth and adoptive families.

Lee spoke of a “shameful chapter” in South Korea’s recent past and its former reputation as a “child-exporting nation”.

The president’s apology came several months after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission released another report concluding that widespread human rights violations had occurred within South Korea’s international adoption system.

The commission found that the government had actively promoted intercountry adoptions and granted private agencies near total control over the process, giving them “immense power over the lives of the children”.

Adoption agencies were entrusted with guardianship and consent rights of orphans, allowing them to pursue their financial interests unchecked. They also set their own adoption fees and were known to pressure adoptive parents to pay additional “donations”.

The investigation also revealed that agencies routinely falsified records, obscuring or erasing the identities and family connections of children to make them appear more “adoptable”. This included altering birthdates, names, photographs, and even the circumstances of abandonment to fit the legal definition of an “orphan”.

Under laws in place at the time of Hwang’s adoption, South Korean children could not be sent overseas until a public process had been conducted to determine whether a child had any surviving relatives.

Adoption agencies, including institutions such as the Brothers Home, were legally required to publish public notices in newspapers and on court bulletin boards, stating where and when a child had been found. This process was intended to help reunite missing children with their parents or guardians, and to prevent overseas adoption while those searches were still under way.

However, the commission found that in cases involving the Brothers Home, such notices were published only after formal adoption proceedings had begun. This indicated that the search for an orphan’s relatives was considered a procedural formality rather than a genuine safeguard to protect children who still had family.

The notices were also published by a district office in Seoul rather than in Busan, where the children had originally been reported as found.

The commission concluded that the government had failed “to uphold its responsibility to protect the fundamental human rights of its citizens” and had enabled the “mass exportation of children” to satisfy international demand.

‘Right your wrongs’

Hwang now lives in Sydney, Australia, and her new home is coincidentally the same city where some of the extended family of the late Brothers Home director, Park, now live.

An investigation by 101 East revealed that the director’s brothers-in-law, Lim Young-soon and Joo Chong-chan, who were directors at the Brothers Home, migrated to Sydney in the late 1980s.

Park’s daughter, Park Jee-hee, and her husband, Alex Min, also moved to Australia and were operating a golf driving range and sports complex in Sydney’s outer suburbs, 101 East discovered.

Noting the coincidence of living in the same city as relatives of the late Brothers Home director, Hwang said she believed “things happen for a reason”.

“I’m not sure why, but maybe there’s a reason I’m here,” Hwang told Al Jazeera, adding that if she ever had the opportunity to speak with the Park family, her message would be simple: “Right your wrongs.”

Park’s son, Park Cheong-gwang, admitted in the Netflix documentary series about Brothers Home – titled “The Echoes of Survivors” – that abuses had taken place at the centre.

But he insisted that the South Korean government was largely responsible and that his father had told him that work at the home was carried out under direct orders from the country’s then-President Chun, who died in 2021.

Park Cheong-gwang also used his appearance in the Netflix show to issue the first formal apology of any member of his family.

He apologised to “the victims and their families who suffered during that time at the Brothers Home, and for all the pain they’ve endured since”.

Other relatives living in Australia have dismissed the reported abuses at the home.

Hwang said their lack of remorse “was sickening”.

“They’re running away from their history,” she said.

“It’s not only the adoption, but it’s the fact that everything in my life was erased,” she added.

“My identity, my immediate family, my extended family, everything was erased. No one has the right to do that.”

New Delhi, India – Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s cabinet late Wednesday described the car explosion which jolted New Delhi earlier in the week as a “heinous terror incident, perpetrated by antinational forces”.

The Indian government’s words, two days after a slow-moving car blew up near the Red Fort, an iconic 17th-century monument in New Delhi, killing at least 13 people and wounding several, have since led to questions about how it might respond, raising concerns over the prospect of a new spike in regional tensions.

Earlier this year, in May, the Indian government had declared a new security doctrine: “Any act of terror will be treated as an act of war.”

That posture had come in the aftermath of an intense four-day air war between India and Pakistan, after India blamed Islamabad for an attack in Indian-administered Kashmir that killed 26 civilians.

Now, six months later, as India grapples with another attack – this time, in the heart of the national capital of the world’s most populous country – the Modi government has so far avoided blaming Pakistan.

Instead, say political analysts, New Delhi’s language suggests that it might be veering towards intensifying a crackdown on Kashmir, at a time when Islamophobia and anti-Kashmiri sentiments have skyrocketed across India in the aftermath of the car explosion.

A crackdown in Kashmir

Even before the blast in New Delhi, police teams from Indian-administered Kashmir had been carrying out raids across the national capital region, following a lead from Srinagar, which led to the seizure of a significant amount of explosives and arrests of nearly a dozen individuals.

Among the suspects are several Kashmiri doctors – including Umar Nabi, a junior doctor who is suspected of being the driver of the car that exploded – who were serving in hospitals in satellite towns outside New Delhi.

Since the explosion near the Red Fort, police in Indian-administered Kashmir have detained more than 650 people from across the Valley as they dig deeper into what sections of the Indian media are describing as a “white-collar terror module” that had gathered enough explosives for the biggest attack on India in decades, if members hadn’t been arrested.

Police teams have raided several locations, including the residences of members of banned sociopolitical outfits.

Indian forces on Thursday also demolished the home of Nabi, the alleged car driver. In recent years, Indian authorities have often demolished homes of individuals accused of crimes without any judicial order empowering them to do so, even though the Supreme Court has ordered an end to the practice. Rights groups have described the act of demolishing the homes of suspects as a form of collective punishment.

Students of medicine and practising doctors in Kashmir are also increasingly facing scrutiny – more than 50 have been questioned for hours, and some have had their devices seized for investigation.

“There is a sense of complete disbelief among all of us,” said a junior doctor at a government-run hospital in Srinagar, the capital of the federal territory of Indian-administered Kashmir.

The doctor requested anonymity to speak, fearing repercussions from the police.

The 34-year-old has seen conflict in Kashmir up close, treating injured protesters firsthand for weeks on end, during previous clashes with security forces. “But I never thought that we would be viewed with suspicion like this,” he said, adding that the explosion that killed 13 in New Delhi was “unfortunate and should be condemned”.

“It is unreal to us that a doctor can think of such an attack,” the doctor said. “But how does that malign our entire fraternity? If a professional defects and joins militants, does it mean that all professionals are terrorists?”

‘Away from Pakistan, towards an enemy within’

India and Pakistan have fought three wars over Kashmir since the nations were partitioned in 1947 as the British left the subcontinent. Today, India, Pakistan and China all control parts of Kashmir. India claims all of it, and Pakistan seeks control of all of Kashmir except the parts held by China, its ally.

After the April attack in the resort town of Pahalgam in Indian-administered Kashmir, India had launched missiles deep inside Pakistan. Modi claimed that the attacks killed more than 100 “terrorists”. Pakistan insisted that civilians and soldiers, not armed fighters, were killed. Pakistan, which had rejected Indian accusations of a role in the April killings in Pahalgam, hit back.

Over four days, the nuclear-armed neighbours fired missiles and drones across their contested border, striking each other’s military bases.

When the Modi government agreed to a ceasefire on May 10, it faced domestic criticism from the opposition – and some sections of its own supporters – for not continuing with attacks on Pakistan. The government then said Operation Sindoor is “only on pause, not over”.

Six months later, though, New Delhi has been significantly more cautious about who to blame for the Delhi blast.

“There is a lot of due outrage this time, but there is no mention of Pakistan,” said Anuradha Bhasin, a veteran editor in Kashmir and author of a book, A Dismantled State: The Untold Story of Kashmir After Article 370, about how the region changed under the Hindu majoritarian Modi government. The Kashmir administration has banned her book in the region.

“This time, it is not about a crackdown on Pakistan,” she told Al Jazeera. “The public anger is being directed away from Pakistan, towards ‘an enemy within’.”

She said the Modi government appeared to be aware that finger-pointing at Pakistan “would create pressure from the public to take [military] action” against the neighbour.

Instead, she said, “public anger can be assuaged by creating any enemy.”

‘Pandering to domestic gallery’

Analysts point to the Modi government’s use of the term “antinational forces” to describe the alleged perpetrators of the Delhi attack.

That’s a phrase the Modi government has previously used to describe academics, journalists and students who have criticised it, as well as other protesters and dissidents. Since Modi took office in 2014, India has continuously slid in multiple democracy indices for alleged persecution of minorities in the country and its crackdown on press freedom.

To Sumantra Bose, a political scientist whose work focuses on the intersection of nationalism and conflict in South Asia, the Indian cabinet resolution was significant in the way that it shied “away from naming and blaming Pakistan, which was a rather reflexive reaction for decades”.

After the fighting in May, the Indian government learned, the hard way, Bose said, that “there is no appetite and indeed no tolerance anywhere in the world for a military escalation in South Asia.”

Bose was referring to the lukewarm global support that India received after it bombed Pakistan without providing any public evidence of Islamabad’s links with the attackers in Pahalgam.

Instead, India was left disputing the repeated assertions of United States President Donald Trump that he had brokered the ceasefire between New Delhi and Islamabad, even as he hosted Pakistan’s army chief, praised him, and strengthened ties with India’s western neighbour. India has long held the position that all disputes with Pakistan must be resolved bilaterally, without intervention from any other country.

The contrast in New Delhi’s response to this week’s blast, so far, appears to have struck US State Secretary Marco Rubio, too.

Reacting to the Delhi blast, Rubio said “it clearly was a terrorist attack,” and “the Indians need to be commended. They’ve been very measured, cautious, and very professional on how they’re carrying out this investigation.”

India’s new security doctrine – that an act of terror is an act of war – “was a dangerous, slippery slope”, said Bose, who has also authored books on the conflict in Kashmir. His last work, Kashmir at the Crossroads: Inside a 21st-Century Conflict, published in 2021, is also banned in Kashmir.

The doctrine, he said, was aimed at pandering to Modi’s “domestic gallery” – a way of showing muscular strength, even at the risk of “serious military escalation” between India and Pakistan.

Now, by using terms like “white-collar terrorism”, analysts said Indian officials risked blurring the line between Kashmiri Muslims and armed rebels fighting Indian rule.

“The term doesn’t make sense to me, but it does put the needle of suspicion on young, educated Muslim professionals,” said Bose.

“The fact has been for decades that militants come from all sorts of social backgrounds in Kashmir – from rural farming families, working-class backgrounds, to educated professionals,” Bose argued. “If anything, it reflects the discontent that has been in the society across the groups.”

Bhasin, the editor from Kashmir, said the Indian government’s posture would lead to “adverse economic impact for Kashmiri Muslims and further ghettoisation, where they find it harder to get jobs or a place to rent”.

‘Everyone is so scared’

Kashmiris across India are already facing the brunt of hate and anger following the Delhi blast.

Since the bomb exploded on Monday in New Delhi, Indian social media platforms have been rife with rampant hate speech against Muslims.

Nasir Khuehami, the national convener of a Kashmiri student association, has spent four days fielding calls from Kashmiri Muslims.

“Across northern Indian states, Kashmiris are being asked to vacate their homes, there is active profiling going on, and everyone is so scared,” Khuehami told Al Jazeera, speaking from his home in Kashmir.

This is only the latest instance of this pattern playing out: An attack in Kashmir, or by a Kashmiri armed rebel, has often led to harassment and beating of Kashmiri Muslims – students, professionals, traders, or even labourers – living in India.

Khuehami said “to end this endless cycle of crises for Kashmiris” – where they are detained at home and abused outside – “the government needs to take confidence-building measures.”

Otherwise, Khuehami said, the Modi government was marginalising Kashmiris in India. By doing that, he said, India would be playing into the hands of the very country it accuses of wanting to grab Kashmir: Pakistan.

HE’S a happily married dad of two but Olly Murs is still a lad at heart and he wanted his new album to reflect that fun part of his personality. 

And by laddish, the upbeat singer means a good old-fashioned knees up — the title of his eighth record. 

“There’s always a moment to be a lad, right?” he laughs. “And that’s what this album is about — I’m going back to my roots. 

“This was probably the kind of album that I wanted to launch my career with, but I didn’t.

“For a long time, I was making records for other people, my fans and what I thought they wanted to hear.

“This time I wanted to make an album for me.” 

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I meet the singer at his record label where he’s about to head into an afternoon of rehearsals.  

And, surprisingly, unlike most dads with newborn babies, he’s managed a full night’s sleep.  

“Albert — Alby — is a dream,” he says of his son, born in September. “I’ve had a really good time with him, it’s been lovely.

“I’ve been getting loads of time with him.”

“Cuddles, seeing him grow, that little smile. 

“He’s such a good baby and he sleeps, which is important because I need sleep.

“If sleeping was an Olympic sport, I’d be there. 

“Maybe he takes after me. 

“We’ve been blessed so far after ten weeks. 

“He’s giggling, he doesn’t really cry.  

“He had his vaccines this week which were horrible.

“I had to cancel work yesterday because [his wife] Amelia did it with [daughter] Madi and I never did, so I wanted to be there.  

“Bless him, he wasn’t in a good place, he was proper aggy.

“So, I cancelled a bit of work, which is unlike me, but family comes first.” 

For years, Murs put his career first and everything — and everyone — else came a distant second. 

“Now life is very different,” he tells me.

“Now Amelia and the kids are everything and my career is still there, but I have a different way of looking at life — and I love it.” 

He has no expectations for the new album, which makes the prospect of putting it out even more exciting. 

He says: “I’m out here doing my thing, and if people like it, great. If you don’t, it is what it is.  

“I’m just happy doing my thing. 

“I’ve got to a point where I want to try different things and musically this isn’t too far away from what I’ve done before – it feels authentic to me, and I’m enjoying it.  

“I’ve got to tell myself that more, because there is the other side of me that’s the ego.

“I want a number one, I want that trophy.

“I want that plaque on the wall. And I’ve got to keep that desire, otherwise, what’s the point?

“I want things to matter. Of course, I do. 

“My thing is that I don’t sit in one place.

“My unique selling point is that I can jump on radio or TV and present a show, and at the same time, I can release music and have success and also tour the country.  

Caroline was a good friend and she took her own life. The documentary has come out this week so it’s been difficult. It has brought things back.

Olly on Caroline Flack

“There is a uniqueness with me that I am proud of.” 

Knees Up draws heavily on the ska and pop influences of Madness and The Specials, the bands Murs adored as a kid. 

He says: “When I first started, I was asked to list all the songs I liked if I was to make the best album ever.  

“It was The Specials, Madness, a bit of Stevie Wonder, The Kooks who were my favourite band at the time, Robbie Williams and Paolo Nutini. 

“Save Me, the first song on the album is very Madness and that spearheaded which direction the music went in.

“I feel like it’s Madness meets The Streets, with a bit of Rizzle Kicks.

“This could be an album Heart Skips A Beat fits on.” 

There’s plenty of fun moments on the album.

Still Getting Used To The Ring is a mischievous song about settling into marriage.  

“That song is definitely the cheeky side of me,” laughs Murs.

“It came from a lyric I wrote on my phone.

“Sometimes when I’m writing songs, I will say to co-writers Ed Drewett and James New, ‘If I sing that the Mrs won’t be happy’, but then we’ll write it in a sense that I’m still getting used to being a husband, I’m still getting used to being dad.  

“So, I forget to do the little things and I might not be perfect, but I’m still getting used to the ring.” 

When it comes to choosing a favourite from Knees Up, Murs says Honest is the one he keeps coming back to. 

“Honest for me is every bloke’s nightmare,” he explains.

“It’s about when they walk in from a day at work and they just know that there’s a cloud upon the house. 

“There’s been times when I’ve got home and I just know that Amelia is annoyed about something I’ve done — but I don’t know what that is.  

“The song is about not knowing what you have done wrong.

“That song was fun to write.” 

Cut To The Chase, which Murs jokingly calls “my sexy song”, sees him tapping into a flirtier, more confident vibe. 

He says: “It is about how sometimes in life we are busy and with kids we don’t get any intimacy or moments together.  

“It’s about the cut to the chase which really resonated with me as we are always crossing paths.  

“It is also a fun song to sing and when I played it to Amelia she loved it.  

“She also thinks my fans will love that one, because it’s ‘big bandy’. 

“It’s got the brass and is very old school London with ukulele and banjo in it.  

“Like music from an old gentlemen’s club, or a cool bar with fancy tables. 

“It’s got a very classic feel to it.

“Classic AND classy — you’d never know it was about sex.” 

I’ve done a lot of tours in the last three years and I’ve got married. I’m now on Heart radio station every Saturday with Wrighty [Mark Wright], I’ve written an album and I just think I need a bit of time for me.

Olly on why he might not be doing many gigs for a while

Chin Up, the song that closes the album, carries a more serious tone.  

Murs says: “That’s about mental health and to do with what I went through with some friends in the last year.  

“It’s been a tough year for a lot of my friends who have reached out to me to chat and that song came from that. 

‘Her feelgood vibe’ 

“That song is about encouraging men to speak out and talk. And when we were writing it, we felt it was important to keep your chin up and everything is going to be fine. 

“I went to a charity dads’ club recently for a TV show — it was a Sunday club at a school where all the dads can turn up with their kids once a month and they play games and have a couple of hours together.  

“It’s important, because a lot of dads go to work in the week as of course woman do too, but it’s important for dads to come along and meet other dads and feel like they’ve got a group.  

“One guy was telling me about the positives but also that they’d lost one guy to suicide.

“A dad had taken his own life. And it really hit me.  

“So I’m glad I’ve written that song and hopefully it can help someone.” 

The subject is clearly a personal one for Murs, and it leads him to think about a loss closer to home, that of TV presenter Caroline Flack, who died in 2020.

The documentary Search For The Truth by her mum Christine premiered on Disney+ this week. 

“Caroline was a good friend and she took her own life. The documentary has come out this week so it’s been difficult,” he says, the emotion clear.  

“It has brought things back.

“I try and always remember the positive things with Caz.  

“I don’t try and think too much about the negative stuff, because if I do, I go down a rabbit hole of emotions, and unfortunately, it’s not going to bring her back.

“I just remember her laugh, her jokes and her feelgood vibe.

“I wish she was still here, of course, and it hurts to watch her old shows.” 

A different loss felt by Murs is that of his estranged twin brother Ben, who cut himself off from Murs and his parents when the singer missed Ben’s wedding in 2009 to perform in the live semi-finals of The X Factor. 

‘Always on the go’ 

Murs says: “I’m proud of Ben.

“I don’t see him, but I’m proud of him.  

“There isn’t any bitterness or anger there. 

“I’m just really proud of where my career is, and from what I hear, Ben’s doing great too, and that’s all I care about.  

“We’re older men now, we’re in our 40s, so I’m sure at some point we’ll figure it out.” 

Next month Murs plays a London show to celebrate the new album and he is excited about what might be his only gig in a while. 

He says: “The truth is I don’t even know what I’m doing next year.

“I don’t even know if I’m ever going to tour this album properly.  

“I’m doing this show at Kentish Town Forum and it might even be the only one I do for this album.  

“I’ve done a lot of tours in the last three years and I’ve got married.

“I’m now on Heart radio station every Saturday with Wrighty [Mark Wright], I’ve written an album and I just think I need a bit of time for me.”

“But then I’m always on the go and I like that.

“I don’t know what I’m doing next — I’ve got plans and ideas but I’m just going to see what happens. 

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“I’m going to roll with it.” 

• Knees Up is out on November 21. Olly Murs headlines Kentish Town Forum on December 8. 

KNEES UP  

Olly Murs 

★★★★☆

Oanaminthe, Haiti – It’s a Monday afternoon at the Foi et Joie school in rural northeast Haiti, and the grounds are a swirl of khaki and blue uniforms, as hundreds of children run around after lunch.

In front of the headmaster’s office, a tall man in a baseball cap stands in the shade of a mango tree.

Antoine Nelson, 43, is the father of five children in the school. He’s also one of the small-scale farmers growing the beans, plantains, okra, papaya and other produce served for lunch here, and he has arrived to help deliver food.

“I sell what the school serves,” Nelson explained. “It’s an advantage for me as a parent.”

Nelson is among the more than 32,000 farmers across Haiti whose produce goes to the World Food Programme, a United Nations agency, for distribution to local schools.

Together, the farmers feed an estimated 600,000 students each day.

Their work is part of a shift in how the World Food Programme operates in Haiti, the most impoverished country in the Western Hemisphere.

Rather than solely importing food to crisis-ravaged regions, the UN organisation has also worked to increase its collaborations with local farmers around the world.

But in Haiti, this change has been particularly swift. Over the last decade, the World Food Programme went from sourcing no school meals from within Haiti to procuring approximately 72 percent locally. It aims to reach 100 percent by 2030.

The organisation’s local procurement of emergency food aid also increased significantly during the same period.

This year, however, has brought new hurdles. In the first months of President Donald Trump’s second term, the United States has slashed funding for the World Food Programme.

The agency announced in October it faces a financial shortfall of $44m in Haiti alone over the next six months.

And the need for assistance continues to grow. Gang violence has shuttered public services, choked off roadways, and displaced more than a million people.

A record 5.7 million Haitians are facing “acute levels of hunger” as of October — more than the World Food Programme is able to reach.

“Needs continue to outpace resources,” Wanja Kaaria, the programme’s director in Haiti, said in a recent statement. “We simply don’t have the resources to meet all the growing needs.”

But for Nelson, outreach efforts like the school lunch programme have been a lifeline.

Before his involvement, he remembers days when he could not afford to feed his children breakfast or give them lunch money for school.

“They wouldn’t take in what the teacher was saying because they were hungry,” he said. “But now, when the school gives food, they retain whatever the teacher says. It helps the children advance in school.”

Now, experts warn some food assistance programmes could disappear if funding continues to dwindle — potentially turning back the clock on efforts to empower Haitian farmers.

FORGET who will be the next Bond or AI taking over acting.

There’s currently a bigger issue that’s tearing Hollywood in two… and standing in the middle of it is a doe-eyed firebrand named Sydney Sweeney, who might – or might not – know exactly what she’s doing.

Over the past few months, Sydney, 28, has found herself in the eye of a raging public storm, thanks to never-ending questions over her social and political leanings, and her unapologetic refusal to set the record straight. 

On the one side, we have fans, mostly on the right, praising their “anti-woke warrior” after she chose not to comment on or apologise for her controversial American Eagle advert. 

On the other, the woke corner of the internet accuses her and the commercial – which plays on saying she has “good jeans/genes” – of having a Nazi-like stance on eugenics. 

So, the fact that she hasn’t desperately begged for forgiveness in the wake of all the frenzy and outrage is music to woke-fatigued ears.

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Add to that the fact that Sydney’s been revealed to be a registered Republican and a MAGA supporter – with President Donald Trump himself publicly praising her – and it’s no surprise she’s copping flak to go with her fandom. 

In the past week, whether coincidental or not, her Oscar-touted biopic Christy has definitively bombed at the box office, making a paltry $1.3million in the US in its opening weekend.

Now, no one knows what to think. Has the young budding starlet, who could have been Hollywood’s next leading lady, shot herself in her genetically blessed foot? Or is this all just a storm in a teacup?

The jury’s still out, but for every commenter yelling “anti-woke warrior”, there’s another shouting “white supremacist!”

Yes, Sydney’s swiftly becoming the most polarising thing since pineapple on pizza.

And that’s before you consider her other public stunts – including, but not limited to, her overtly sexual self-branding and her apparent romance with another very controversial character in Scooter Braun.

Scooter, 44, is the disgraced record executive who people’s princess Taylor Swift called a “manipulative bully” after he bought the rights to her first six albums and blocked her performing some of the songs.

He’s also had very public fall-outs with his former protegés Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande and Demi Lovato.

With all this in mind, getting into bed – so to speak – with such a figure may not do Sydney any favours. But does she care? 

Fresh fury

Last week, the star caused fury again, after speaking to GQ to promote her new movie Christy, in which she plays the boxer Christy Martin. 

During the – at times – uncomfortable chat, the topic turned to all the noise surrounding the alleged white supremacist undertones of her American Eagle “good jeans” ad. 

The interviewer began: “White people shouldn’t joke about genetic superiority; that was the conversation. Since we’re talking about this, I just wanted to give you an opportunity to talk about that situation specifically.”

Seemingly unfussed, Sydney simply replied: “I think that when I have an issue that I want to speak about, people will hear.”

Elsewhere in the Q&A, she said: “I did a jean ad. I mean, the reaction definitely was a surprise, but I love jeans. All I wear are jeans. I’m literally in jeans and a T-shirt every day of my life.” 

As for President Trump’s praise for the jeans campaign – he called it “the hottest ad ever” specifically after hearing that Sydney was a registered Republican – the actress remained coy. She simply responded that his endorsement was “surreal”. 

Again, the masses were divided. Fans – and some loyal celebrity friends – spoke out in defence of the Euphoria star.

Sydney’s former Anyone But You co-star Glen Powell called the public indignation over the ad “bulls***”, while Amanda Seyfried – who’s starring in the upcoming movie The Housemaid alongside Sydney – commented under one of her posts: “You Kill. Brave and true.”

She’s also been publicly supported by Euphoria co-star Maud Apatow and fellow lightning rod Nicola Peltz-Beckham, who have both liked her Instagram posts over the past week.

Woke backlash

But then, there are the celebrities who have no time at all for Sydney’s supposed alt-right politics – and they’re letting it be known. 

In response to YouTuber Jupiter Baal’s video – shared to Instagram – in which he chastised the actress and said, “She was given an opportunity to push back, she didn’t, therefore she’s in on it”, actress Christina Ricci responded: “100%” .

Likewise, fellow The White Lotus star Aimee-Lou Wood made her own feelings known – posting a vomit emoji under a post that talked about the now notorious ad. 

According to insiders, Sydney’s Euphoria co-star Zendaya is refusing to speak to her co-worker, and she won’t be associated with her in any capacity…which makes their future promo trail for season three of Euphoria tricky. 

“It’s a difficult position for Zendaya to be in,” a source told Mail Online this week. “Because if she even stands next to Sydney on the red carpet, it can be read as her excusing Sydney’s views on Trump and her refusal to apologise for the racist ad.” 

I did a jean ad. I mean, the reaction definitely was a surprise, but I love jeans. All I wear are jeans.

Sydney Sweeney

Then, there’s model and actress Ruby Rose, who went apoplectic on Tuesday in response to a post shared by Sydney.

Earlier in the week, Sydney had reflected on the film’s box office failure, telling her followers: “We don’t always just make art for numbers, we make it for impact. And Christy has been the most impactful project of my life.”

But Ruby – who had previously been cast in the project before being let go – was having nothing of it, writing in a scathing Threads post: “Everyone had experience with the core material. Most of us were actually gay [like Christy]. It’s part of why I stayed in acting. Losing roles happens all the time.

“For her PR to talk about it flopping and saying SS [Sydney Sweeney] did it for the ‘people’. None of the ‘people’ want to see someone who hates them, parading around pretending to be us. You’re a cretin and you ruined the film. Period. Christy deserved better.”

She later doubled down in her comments again, calling Sydney a “psychopath”.

Joining the anti-Sydney brigade, Downton Abbey actor Dan Stevens reshared a post which read: “Sydney Sweeney’s GQ interview is a reminder that ‘not having a stance’ on white supremacy is 100% having a stance on white supremacy.”

So, what’s the strategy? And is there even one to begin with?

Brand and culture expert Nick Ede is unconvinced. Speaking exclusively to The Sun, he says that – whether it’s naivety or not –  Sydney’s not helping her career prospects, proven by the fact that her most recent film flopped. 

He explains: “She’s a young girl – she’s making a lot of money, but this proves she’s not a box office draw.

“That not only goes towards her movie career, but her brand deals too, and suggests that the equity she had really isn’t there anymore.

“She might decide to write an autobiography at this early age and be really honest about her opinions and how she felt. And that’s always a cathartic way of getting your story across and winning the affection of the public again. 

“But I think she’s almost too big now to be a character in a film or a show. You just go and see Sweeney and that can be really detrimental to her in the future.”

No backing down

All evidence so far suggests that apologising for herself is the one thing Sydney’s not willing to do. 

Last year, she teasingly wore a T-shirt that read: “Sorry for having great tits and correct opinions”. 

The suggestion was that she knew that people were writing her off as an overtly sexualised starlet – but that she was laughing all the way to the bank.

What’s more, in her most recent GQ interview, she again hinted at her secret shrewdness. 

She said: “I think as time goes on, people will see that I’m way more aware of things than people think.”

Then, in response to the interviewer’s claim that – by not speaking more about her intentions – she’s giving us permission to “keep taking what you do and putting it up on our board of ‘What does Sydney think?’ the actress remained non-committal. 

“I can’t wait to see what the board says,” she deadpanned. 

Last laugh

Sweeney has also got billionaire Jeff Bezos in her corner, who’s reportedly invested “seed money” into a private equity business that will help Sydney launch her very own lingerie line soon. 

Now that Jeff’s Amazon Prime empire has the rights to the James Bond franchise, his admiration for the actress might just clinch her that ultimate prize of being the next Bond girl.

In which case, again, this could all be nothing but hot air surrounding her supposed demise – and prove she might have the last laugh anyway.

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One thing we do know is that Sydney’s not about to go on some self-flagellating apology tour anytime soon. 

Love her or hate her, like Marmite, she’s here to stay. 

Cape Town, South Africa – On an August evening in 1977, 30‑year‑old Steve Biko was on his way back from an aborted secret meeting with an anti-apartheid activist in Cape Town, taking the 12‑hour drive back home to King William’s Town. But it was a journey the resistance fighter would never finish, for he was arrested and, less than a month later, was dead.

Against the backdrop of increasingly harsh racist laws in South Africa, Biko, a bold and forthright youth leader, had emerged as one of the loudest voices calling for change and Black self-determination.

A famously charming and eloquent speaker, he was often touted as Nelson Mandela’s likely successor in the struggle for freedom after the core of the anti-apartheid leadership was jailed in the 1960s.

But his popularity also made him a prime target of the apartheid regime, which put him under banning orders that severely restricted his movement, political activities, and associations; imprisoned him for his political activism; and ultimately caused his death in detention – a case that continues to resonate decades later, largely because none of the perpetrators have ever been brought to justice.

On September 12 this year, 48 years after Biko died, South Africa’s Justice Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi ordered a new inquest into his death. The hearing resumed at the Eastern Cape High Court on Wednesday before being postponed to January 30.

There are “two persons of interest” implicated in Biko’s death who are still alive, according to the country’s National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), which aims to determine whether there is enough evidence that he was murdered, and therefore grounds to prosecute his killers.

While Biko’s family has welcomed the hearings, the long wait for justice has been frustrating, especially for his children.

“There is no such thing as joy in dealing with the case of murder,” Nkosinathi Biko, Biko’s eldest son, who was six at the time of his father’s death, told Al Jazeera. “Death is full and final, and no outcome will be restorative of the lost life.”

The Biko inquest is one of several probes into suspicious apartheid-era deaths that South Africa’s justice minister reopened this year. The inquiries are part of the government’s plan to address past atrocities and provide closure to families of the deceased, the NPA says.

But analysts note that the inquest comes amid growing public pressure on the government to bring about the justice it promised 30 years ago, as a new judicial inquiry is also probing allegations that South Africa’s democratic government intentionally blocked prosecutions of apartheid-era crimes.

Biko: ‘The spark that lit a fire’

Steve Biko was a medical student and national youth leader who, in the late 1960s, pioneered the philosophy of Black Consciousness, which encouraged Black people to reclaim their pride and unity by rejecting racial oppression and valuing their own identity and culture.

The philosophy inspired a generation of young activists to take up the struggle against apartheid, pushed forward by the belief that South Africa’s future lay in a socialist economy with a more equal distribution of wealth.

In his writings, Biko said he was inspired by the African independence struggles that emerged in the 1950s and suggested that South Africa had yet to offer its “great gift” to the world: “a more human face”.

By 1972, Biko’s student organisation had spawned a political wing to unify various Black Consciousness groups under one voice. A year later, he was officially banned by the government. Yet, he continued to covertly expand his philosophy and political organising among youth movements across the country.

In August 1977, despite the banning order still being in effect, Biko had travelled to Cape Town with a fellow activist to meet another anti-apartheid leader, though the meeting was aborted over safety concerns, and the duo left.

According to some reports, Biko heavily disguised himself for the road journey back east, but his attempts at going unnoticed were to no avail: When the car reached the outskirts of King William’s Town on August 18, police stopped them at a roadblock – and Biko was discovered.

The two were taken into custody separately, with Biko arrested under the Terrorism Act and first held at a local police station in Port Elizabeth before being transferred to a facility in the same city where members of the police’s “special branch” – notorious for enforcing apartheid through torture and extrajudicial killings – were based. For weeks in detention, he was stripped and manacled and, as was later discovered, tortured.

On September 12, the apartheid authorities announced that Biko had died in detention in Pretoria, some 1,200km (746 miles) away from where he was arrested and held. The minister of justice and police alleged he had died following a hunger strike, a claim immediately decried as false, as Biko had previously publicly stated that if that was ever cited as a cause of his death, it would be a lie.

Weeks later, an independent autopsy conducted at the request of the Biko family found he had died of severe brain damage due to injuries inflicted during his detention. Following these revelations, authorities launched an investigation. But the inquest cleared the police of any wrongdoing.

Saths Cooper, who was a student activist alongside Biko, remembers the moment he found out about his friend’s death. Cooper was in an isolation block on Robben Island – the prison that also held Mandela – where he spent more than five years with other political prisoners who had taken part in the 1976 student revolt.

“The news stilled us into silence,” the 75-year-old told Al Jazeera, recalling Biko’s provocatively “Socratic” style of engagement and echoing Mandela’s description of Biko as an inspiration. “Living, he was the spark that lit a veld fire across South Africa,” Mandela said in 2002. “His message to the youth and students was simple and clear: Black is Beautiful! Be proud of your Blackness! And with that, he inspired our youth to shed themselves of the sense of inferiority they were born into as a result of more than 300 years of white rule.”

After initial shock at the news of Biko’s death, “then the questions flowed of what had occurred,” Cooper recalled, “to which we had no answers.”

About 20,000 people, including Black and white anti-apartheid activists and Western diplomats, attended Biko’s funeral in King Williams Town on September 25. The day included a five-hour service, powerful speeches and freedom songs. Though police disrupted the service and arrested some mourners, it marked the first large political funeral in South Africa.

His death sparked international condemnation, including expression of “concern” from Pretoria’s allies, the US and the UK. It also led to a United Nations arms embargo against South Africa in November 1977.

Three years later, the British singer Peter Gabriel released a song in his honour, and in 1987, his life was depicted in the film Cry Freedom, in which Biko was played by Denzel Washington.

Nevertheless, Biko’s stature did nothing to hasten justice.

‘The unfinished business of the TRC’

Under the apartheid regime, any further investigation into Biko’s death was effectively put to rest for decades following the official 1977 inquest.

Then in 1996, two years after the end of apartheid, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was set up to investigate past rights violations, with apartheid-era perpetrators given the opportunity to disclose their crimes and apply for amnesty from prosecution.

Former security police officers Major Harold Snyman, Captain Daniel Siebert, Warrant Officer Ruben Marx, Warrant Officer Jacobus Beneke and Sergeant Gideon Nieuwoudt – the five men suspected of killing Biko – applied for amnesty.

At TRC hearings the following year, the men said that Biko had died days after what they called “a scuffle” with the police at the Sanlam Building in Port Elizabeth, while he was held in shackles and handcuffs. Up to that point, the commission heard, Biko had spent several days in a cell – naked, they claimed, in order to prevent him from taking his life.

In the decades since, it’s come to light that after being badly beaten at the Sanlam Building on September 6 and 7, Biko suffered a brain haemorrhage and was examined by apartheid government doctors, who said they found nothing wrong with him. Days later, on September 11, the police decided to transfer him to a prison hospital hours away in Pretoria. Still naked and shackled, Biko was put in the back of a van and moved. Although he was examined in Pretoria, it was too late, and Biko died on September 12 alone in his cell.

Despite admitting to beating Biko with a hose pipe and noticing his disoriented, slurred speech, the former officers claimed at the TRC that they had no indication of the severity of his injuries. Therefore, they saw nothing wrong with transporting him 1,200km away.

Eventually, the men were denied amnesty in 1999, partly for their lack of full disclosure of the events that caused Biko’s death. The suspected killers, some of whom have since died, were recommended for prosecution by the commission.

However, like most TRC cases, the prosecutions never materialised.

“The Biko case, along with others, must be viewed as the delayed activation of the unfinished business of the TRC – a matter that is a national imperative if we are to instigate a culture of accountability in South Africa,” Nkosinathi, now 54, said of the reopened inquest into his father’s death.

Though the scope of the Biko inquest has not been publicly stated, Gabriel Crouse, a political analyst and fellow with the South African Institute for Race Relations, worries that it will not examine new evidence, but that its goal will simply be to decisively determine whether Biko was murdered.

If this is the case, it would leave many questions unresolved, he says. For example, who pressured the initial forensic pathologist to declare a hunger strike as the cause of death; who ordered Biko’s killing; and what was the official chain of command?

‘The worms are among us’

Although the Biko inquest has renewed hope among his family that some of the perpetrators of his death will finally be brought to justice, analysts warn that the process may reveal uncomfortable truths about the nation’s past – including possible collusion between South Africa’s current government and the apartheid regime.

Nkosinathi now heads a foundation that promotes his father’s legacy. He points out that it is only pressure on the government that brought about this moment.

Months before the Biko inquest reopened, President Cyril Ramaphosa ordered the establishment of a commission of inquiry into whether previous governments led by his African National Congress (ANC) party intentionally suppressed investigations and prosecutions of apartheid-era crimes.

His move in April came after 25 survivors and relatives of victims of apartheid-era crimes launched a court case against his government in January, seeking damages.

The allegations of probes being blocked go back more than a decade. In 2015, former national prosecutions chief Vusi Pikoli caused a stir when he submitted an affidavit in a court case about the death of anti-apartheid fighter Nokuthula Simelane, in which he blamed the stalled cases on senior government officials interfering in the work of the NPA.

Former President Thabo Mbeki, who was head of state during Pikoli’s tenure, has denied that any such political interference took place. But the judicial inquiry, announced in April and now under way, lists former senior officials among those it considers interested parties.

The inquiry will look at why so few of the 300 cases that the TRC referred to the NPA for prosecution, including Biko’s, have been investigated in the last two decades.

“That it has become necessary to have to look into such an allegation tells much about how the huge sacrifice that was made for our democracy has been betrayed,” Nkosinathi told Al Jazeera.

Cooper believes the delayed prosecutions are a result of a compromise made by the apartheid regime and the ANC to conceal one another’s offences, including alleged cases of freedom fighters colluding with the white minority government.

“It’s justice clearly denied,” Cooper said, adding that he once questioned TRC commissioners about why they had concealed the names of rumoured apartheid-era collaborators who went on to work in the new democratic government. “The response was, ‘Broer, it’ll open a can of worms,’” Cooper told Al Jazeera.

“I see one of the commissioners died, the other is around, and when I see him, I say, ‘There’s no more can of worms, the worms are among us.’”

Like Cooper, political analyst Crouse also believes some kind of “backdoor deal” was struck following the transition from apartheid to democracy in 1994.

Many political actors failed to apply for amnesty, he says, despite prima facie evidence of their guilt. “And so it became very apparent that white Afrikaner supremacists and Black ANC liberationists, some from both camps, had gotten together and said, ‘Let’s both keep each other’s secrets and go forward into the new South Africa on that basis,’” he said.

Pikoli’s 2015 affidavit seems to echo such analysis. In his document, Pikoli recalls a meeting in 2006, where former ministers grilled him about the prosecution of suspects implicated in the attempted murder of Mbeki’s former chief of staff, Frank Chikane. Pikoli does not specify what the ministers objected to but says it became clear they did not want the suspects prosecuted “due to their fear of opening the door to prosecutions of ANC members, including government officials.”

A plea bargain was struck with the suspects while Pikoli was on leave in July 2007, as part of which the suspects refused to reveal the masterminds behind the compilation of a hit-list targeting activists. Pikoli believes a court trial would have forced them to disclose more details.

‘A stress test’ for democratic South Africa

Mariam Jooma Carikci, an independent researcher who has written extensively about the failure of justice in the democratic era, believes the official inquiry into the hundreds of unprosecuted TRC cases, including Biko’s, is “a stress test” of democratic South Africa’s honesty.

“For three decades we treated reconciliation as an end in itself – truth commissions instead of prosecutions, memorials instead of justice,” she said.

She sees Biko’s ideas continuing to flourish in today’s student movements, for example, in the #FeesMustFall campaign that called for free university tuition and the decolonisation of education in 2015.

“You see his echo in decolonisation debates and student movements, but the truest honour is policy – land, work, education, healthcare – designed around human worth, not investor or political comfort,” Jooma Carikci said.

While the country waits to hear the outcomes of the Biko inquest and the wider TRC inquiry, Nkosinathi Biko remains haunted by constant reminders of his father.

His younger brother Samora, who recently turned 50, looks exactly like Biko, he says, but being only two at the time of his death, “he was unfortunate not to have had memories of his father because of what happened.”

Meanwhile, for the country in general, Nkosinathi sees connections between Biko’s death and the 2012 Marikana massacre, during which police shot and killed 34 striking miners – the highest death toll from police aggression in democratic South Africa.

In his mind, the image of police opening fire on unarmed protesting workers echoes the country’s dark history – a sign that the state brutality that ended his father’s life has spilled over into democratic South Africa.

On Marajo Island, at the confluence of the Amazon River and Atlantic Ocean in northern Brazil, life ebbs and flows with the tides.

For more than four decades, Ivanil Brito found paradise in her modest stilt house, just 20 metres (65ft) from the shoreline, where she and her husband Catito fished, cultivated crops, and tended to livestock.

“I was a very happy person in that little piece of land. That was my paradise,” she says.

That paradise vanished during a violent storm in February 2024, when relentless waters surged through Vila do Pesqueiro town, eroding the coastline that had nourished generations. “Even though we didn’t move far, it feels like a completely different world,” says Ivanil from their new settlement less than a kilometre (half a mile) inland. “This is a mangrove area – hotter, noisier, and not a place where we can raise animals or grow crops.”

Vila do Pesqueiro, home to about 160 families, lies within the Soure Marine Extractive Reserve, a protected area under the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation. Established to preserve traditional ways of life and sustainable resource management, the reserve now confronts the harsh realities of climate change. While fishing remains the primary livelihood, local cuisine and tourism provide supplementary income to the residents. Yet, intensifying tides and accelerating erosion threaten their existence.

For Ivanil’s son Jhonny, a fisherman studying biology at Universidade do Para, in the Marajo-Soure campus, these transformations are worrying. “The place where our houses used to be is now underwater,” he says. “For me, moving isn’t just about safety – it’s about protecting the place and the people who shaped my life.”

Meanwhile, residents like Benedito Lima and his wife Maria Lima have chosen to remain, despite their home now standing perilously close to the water’s edge. Leaving would mean surrendering their livelihood. “Every new tide shakes the ground,” Benedito says, gazing towards what used to be a safely distant canal. “This isn’t even the high-tide season yet.”

Climate adaptation here takes various forms. Some rebuild farther inland, while others adjust their daily routines to accommodate the sea’s advance. Community leader Patricia Ribeiro believes a collective resilience sustains Vila do Pesqueiro. “Our stories have always been passed down through generations,” she says. “This is our home, our ancestry. We want to stay here to protect what our families built. As long as we’re together, we won’t give up.”

As Brazil prepares to host the 30th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30) in nearby Belem, communities like Vila do Pesqueiro exemplify what is at stake. Through its initiatives, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) says it supports efforts to enhance resilience, protect livelihoods, and ensure these families can continue living safely on their ancestral lands.

This photo gallery was provided by the International Organization for Migration.