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The U.S. Navy is reportedly evaluating a major change to the Ford class aircraft carrier design that would move the island superstructure further forward on the flight deck. President Donald Trump is said to be pushing the service to reposition the island on aesthetic grounds, to make the ships look more like World War II-era carriers. Just last Thursday, Trump publicly ordered the Navy and the Pentagon to come up with a plan for abandoning the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS) catapults and Advanced Weapons Elevators (AWE) on the Ford class, starting with the future USS Doris Miller, as you can read more about in our reporting here.

Perhaps even more so than replacing EMALS and the AWEs, shifting the island would be an extremely costly and complex proposition. The Navy also chose the island’s location for very specific reasons to provide a host of operational benefits.

The Washington Post was the first to report Trump’s push to relocate the island on the Ford class on Sunday, citing anonymous current and former U.S. officials. Another story followed from The Hill, which also cited a former senior U.S. official.

“The timing and extent of the Navy’s evaluation is unclear, with current and former officials cautioning that the service was concerned that such a change would require significant time and money,” according to the Post. “Trump’s preference, current and former officials said, is for the new aircraft carriers to look more like those that were in service during World War II.”

“The review, which was kick-started in part because of Trump’s concerns about the aesthetics of the Ford class aircraft carriers, is due in ‘several’ weeks,” per The Hill‘s story. “A Navy official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Trump ordered the Navy to ‘implement design changes to our future aircraft carriers’ and that the service branch ‘has begun moving out on options to meet the President’s intent.’”

Currently, the USS Gerald R. Ford is the only carrier in this class in operational service. The Navy has three more on order: the future USS John F. Kennedy, USS Enterprise, and USS Doris Miller. The service hopes to take delivery of John F. Kennedy this year. The stated plan is to eventually acquire at least 10 Ford class carriers in total. Two more ships in the class have already been formally assigned names: the future USS William J. Clinton and USS George W. Bush.

John F. Kennedy (CVN 79) Successfully Completes Builder’s Sea Trials

To be clear, this is hardly the first time Trump has pushed for major U.S. naval ship design and force planning changes, especially when it comes to the aesthetics of those vessels. “I’m a very aesthetic person,” the President declared in December 2025 at the public rollout of plans for the Trump class battleship.

For the Navy, the placement of the island on the Ford class, as well as its overall design, was not an aesthetic decision. It was also not a decision that was made quickly. During a presentation at the U.S. Naval Academy Museum back in 2015, retired Navy Capt. Tal Manvel, who served for a time as Program Manager for Future Carriers, said the service examined 75 different conceptual configurations between 1996 and 2000. In addition to a host of different hullforms and flight deck layouts, these designs had islands placed at a wide variety of different points.

You can watch Tal Manvel’s full 2015 presentation below.

Shifley Lecture: USS Ford-class carrier design

Ultimately, the Navy settled on the design as it exists today. The total length of the Ford class is very similar to that of the Nimitz class it is in the process of replacing: 337 meters (1,106 feet) versus 332.8 meters (1,092 feet). However, the island on the Ford is 140 feet further aft compared to that of the Nimitz.

The Ford‘s island is also smaller and more angular overall. This was enabled in part by the decision to use a completely different main radar arrangement on the Ford compared to the Nimitz, paring down the total number of distinct radars required as a result. However, the Dual Band Radar (DBR) proved to be extremely complex and troublesome. As a result, the future USS John F. Kennedy and every future carrier in the class is now set to have the AN/SPY-6(V)3, also known as the fixed-face version of Raytheon’s Enterprise Air Surveillance Radar (EASR), in place of the DBR. The broad dimensions of the island remain unchanged. The DBR was also set to be a feature on the Navy’s trio of Zumwalt class stealthy destroyers, but the decision was subsequently made to eliminate the S-band arrays on those ships as a cost-cutting measure. Those three destroyers may eventually see the remaining X-band arrays replaced with a variant of the AN/SPY-6 radar coupled with a version of the Aegis Combat System in the future.

The matter of the radar aside, the island is sized to minimize its total footprint and maximize available open deck space, and has a very visible impact on the flight deck layout. The Ford has three aircraft elevators, two on the starboard side, both forward of the island, and another on the port side. Nimitz class carriers have three aircraft elevators on the starboard side, one of which is aft of the island, as well as one on the port side. These changes and other design choices mean the Ford has more total flight deck space than the Nimitz – five acres (217,800 square feet) compared to 4.5 acres (196,020 square feet), according to the Navy.

In an exclusive interview with TWZ back in 2022, then-Navy Capt. Paul “Paulie” Lanzilotta, captain of the USS Gerald R. Ford’s at the time, talked at length about the benefits of the island’s position.

The Navy uses “cyclic flight operations to continue to generate sorties over many hours a day,” Lanzilotta told us following a panel on the history of aircraft carriers at the annual Sea Air Space symposium that year. “And we do that by launching the cycle and then recovering that cycle.”

“If you’re a little bit late, you need to troubleshoot, maybe it’s just reset a system that’s built into the aircraft, you reset the system and off you go, you can taxi to the catapult,” he explained. “If you’re parked after the island on the older ships, you need a break in the recovery in order to do that because everything we do happens very, very quickly, very efficiently.”

“So on my ship? Less likely that you’re going to need that break and a lot more likely that I can refuel you and rearm you more efficiently,” he continued. “It’s based on the design of where the island is plus the weapons elevators and the way we fuel aircraft.”

What this all means in more layman’s terms is that the configuration of the flight deck, including the placement of the island, creates additional flexibility for launch and recovery operations and helps contribute to a better sortie generation rate. The way the space is configured would offer benefits for other activities, including hot-deck refueling and maintenance, as well. The Washington Post‘s story says the configuration also offers an added margin of safety for aircraft coming in to land by helping reduce the chance of turbulence generated at the stern.

In his interview with us in 2022, Lanzilotta, who has since been promoted to rear admiral and is now commander of Carrier Strike Group 12 (CSG-12), acknowledged that Ford had fewer aircraft elevators and less deck space in the back of the island. However, he said the elevators were designed to be more efficient and downplayed any negative impacts from the reconfiguration of the flight deck.

“I still have room back there to park aircraft. Fly helicopters back aft of the island when we want to work and park airplanes back there,” Lanzilotta said. Together with the smaller overall size of the island, “if anything, I probably gained overall area on the flight deck.”

“From a ship handling perspective, being further away from the bow kind of increases the shadow zone forward,” he did note, referring to something of a blind spot toward the bow that is only exacerbated by moving the island aft.

However, “we just manage [that challenge] organically,” he explained, “whether it’s a sensor forward, to watchstanders that are forward, and additional assets that we naturally have with us all the time, like our helicopters, and our security boats and stuff like that.”

“I’m amazed by how well we’re able to move in the narrow channel in San Diego Bay,” he added. “It’s a great bay, but a busy one.”

It is worth noting here that the Ford uses a distributed aperture remote video system to help the ship’s crew keep tabs on flight deck operations and to just provide valuable general situational awareness. This system supplants the Island Camera Room found on Nimitz class carriers. This also eliminates the need for individual camera operators at various points around the island, as is the case with the Integrated Launch and Recovery Television Surveillance (ILARTS) system on the older carriers. There are additional camera systems around the ship, as well. You can read more about this here.

The placement of the island on the Ford class reflects a broader trend, too. The design of France’s future “porte-avions de nouvelle génération,” or PA-Ng, (which translates to New Generation Aircraft Carrier), as it has been shown to date, has a very similarly shaped island that is also positioned well toward the stern. In 2023, renderings emerged of notional next-generation Chinese aircraft carriers with this same kind of island and flight deck configuration.

It is possible there are non-aesthetic reasons, as well as aesthetic ones, behind Trump’s report push to relocate the island on the Ford class. However, if that is the case, this has yet to be publicly articulated.

Very broadly speaking, since the end of World War II, the islands on U.S. aircraft carrier designs have been progressively moving further and further aft, in general. It is also worth noting that the island placement on World War II-era carrier designs was not universally further toward the bow, either. Some U.S. and foreign classes of the time, particularly lighter designs, lacked a traditional island on top of the flight deck at all.

Regardless of any pros and cons about where the island is placed on the Ford class design, moving it now would be exceedingly costly and complex. It has been pointed out that relocating the island would involve far more than just moving the superstructure. It is deeply integrated into the ship’s overall configuration, and shifting it would have much broader impacts that would need to be addressed just in terms of seakeeping, structural stability, and basic balance. A host of other accompanying changes would also be required. Since the island is where the ship’s main radars and many other key systems are positioned, a substantial amount of additional testing would have to be done to ensure everything works as intended in the new location.

“The Navy also examined the issue during his [Trump’s] first term as president,” according to The Washington Post. “A study found that moving the island could cost billions of dollars in redesign costs and significantly delay the program.”

More delays with the Ford class is something the Navy can ill afford. The program is already running years behind schedule due in no small part to issues with the aforementioned EMALS catapults and AWEs, as well as a host of other long-troubled aspects of the ship’s design. The Navy had originally planned to take delivery of the John F. Kennedy in 2022.

The potential pitfalls of a major reworking of the Ford design could have cascading effects that go well beyond this class of ships. As TWZ wrote last week after the announcement regarding plans for the catapults and weapons elevators on the future Doris Miller and other following ships in the class:

Trump’s memo yesterday also focused heavily on further steps to address now long-standing concerns about U.S. naval shipbuilding capacity across the board. America’s specific ability to produce new nuclear-powered surface warships and submarines has now become even more of a focal point in these discussions with the addition of the plans for the Trump class battleships. In May, the Navy confirmed the Trump class warships will have nuclear propulsion using the same type of reactors developed for the Ford class.

The Navy has not acquired a new nuclear-powered surface combatant in decades. Newport News is currently the only U.S. shipyard producing nuclear-powered surface vessels of any kind, and is already heavily strained by current demands, which also include production of new non-nuclear warships. There is only one other yard in the country that produces nuclear-powered vessels of any kind, and is focused on submarine production.

Pushing the schedule for the delivery of Ford class carriers even further to the right, along with adding billions to the program’s cost, would only add to the strains on the Navy’s existing Nimitz class carriers, which have been building into a low-level crisis. As we also wrote:

In a time of peace, without all the threats and operational demands the United States is currently facing, or if there was any kind of surplus carrier capacity, making fundamental changes to the Ford class carrier program might very well have been a logical decision. However, all of this also comes at a time when the Navy’s operational carriers are experiencing exceptional pressure. The Nimitz class carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, which has been on a marathon deployment in the Middle East, has become something of a poster child for growing readiness concerns amid reports of severely flagging morale and mental health among the crew. The Navy is now moving to relieve Lincoln.

Still, this is a worrisome situation that has already been building for many years, due in large part to a succession of global crises, and has now been further exacerbated by the ongoing conflict with Iran. Even so, the Navy is trying to keep to its existing schedule for inactivating aging Nimitz class carriers, though the date for when the USS Nimitz is set to leave service has now been pushed back until next year. Retiring existing carriers will only create further strains if the arrival of new members of the Ford class continues to be pushed back.

As we also previously mentioned, it very much remains to be seen if any plans for major changes to the Ford‘s core design actually become a reality. Trump’s second term in office ends in January 2029, and any such work could easily bleed over into the next presidential administration, which could then reverse course. Congress could well step in to take action even sooner.

Whatever happens, it would be a huge undertaking in terms of both time and resources to relocate the island on the Ford class carrier, and would upend a decision that was made years ago with clear operational benefits in mind.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

FCC faces scrutiny as Disney claims licence renewal order is tied to political motives against ABC’s coverage.

Disney has filed a lawsuit against the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) amid efforts to stop an early licence review for eight ABC-owned and -operated stations around the United States.

In the lawsuit filed in a federal court in Washington, DC, the media giant alleged the early renewal is an effort by the administration of US President Donald Trump to intimidate the company after infuriating the president.

In April, the FCC ordered the network’s stations, which include its affiliates in New York and Los Angeles, to file their licence renewals ahead of schedule despite the fact that for six of its stations, the current term isn’t even halfway finished. The station with the closest deadline is WTVD in Durham, North Carolina, but that is not until December 2028. The network says the move is part of a political “retaliatory campaign”.

“Again and again, the Administration has attacked ABC’s speech – the stories its journalists report and the viewpoints its network programs air. Over time, those attacks have escalated into express demands that ABC be stripped of its broadcast licenses because of its speech,” the 46-page complaint said.

The suit presented a wave of Truth Social posts that the president posted in 2025 threatening the network, among them one saying that the network “should lose their Licences for their unfair coverage of Republicans and/or Conservatives”.

The FCC said the April licence renewal call was a result of diversity, equity and inclusion practices at ABC’s parent company, Disney, and an investigation into the ABC network’s talk show programme The View.

In March, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr threatened broadcasters, saying stations airing “fake news” could lose their licences amid Trump’s frustration with coverage of the US-Israel war on Iran.

Not long after, Trump demanded that ABC fire late-night host Jimmy Kimmel over comments he made before the White House correspondents dinner shooting in which he called first lady Melania Trump an “expectant widow”. Trump responded to them after the shooting, characterising them “a call to violence”.

Free speech advocates have praised ABC for the lawsuit.

“It’s about time for someone to take Brendan Carr and his FCC to court over their endless campaign of intimidation and retaliation against journalism that displeases Carr’s thin-skinned boss,” Seth Stern, director of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, told Al Jazeera.

“No matter what pretexts he asserts, Carr’s modus operandi is clear: to serve as Trump’s censorship tsar and abuse his office to repeatedly and exclusively target Trump’s perceived adversaries in the media, whether through sham proceedings or threatening letters and X posts.”

The network called for a “speedy hearing” in the complaint as well as a temporary restraining order.

News of the lawsuit sent Disney’s stock surging in morning trading by 1.1 percent.

Amid trade embargoes, asset freezes and attacks on ships as part of a naval blockade, Washington has announced a plan to enact a new wave of restrictions on Iran, targeting its economy.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said last Thursday that the United States was planning to inflict more economic damage on Tehran as early as this week. The US would apply measures that have “never been seen in the history of economic isolation on a country”, Bessent said.

A day later on Friday, President Donald Trump echoed Bessent and said that Iran would be hit hard economically.

As the memorandum of understanding (MoU) expired on Monday, Trump called on Tehran to hold up the “white flag of surrender” but insisted that he was in no rush to end the war.

Since February 2025, following the start of Trump’s second term in office, Washington has sanctioned “more than 1,000 Iran-related persons, vessels, and aircraft”, the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) said in May.

Remaining defiant, Iran’s authorities have said they could shift to offensive operations, and are simultaneously prepared to counter a potential ground invasion.

According to Mohammad Reza Farzanegan, professor of economics of the Middle East at Philipps-Universitat Marburg in Germany, the naval blockade creates a new situation in which traditional sanctions packages are combined with the use of military force to generate a physical shortage of goods in the Iranian economy.

“This is an additional burden that raises new questions for policymakers in Tehran: Should they choose a deal whose terms are dictated by the Trump administration, or should they continue the armed conflict to break the blockade of the ports? It currently seems that Iran is leaning toward the second option,” he told Al Jazeera.

Farzanegan said that for the US to achieve its goals, namely changing the behaviour of the Iranian government, it should also “open a diplomatic exit and offer it as an option”.

If armed conflict does fully resume, he said “the costs will not be confined to the target of sanctions; the global economy will also pay a price” through continued disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz and attacks across the region.

Iran emphasises MoU commitments

Meanwhile, talks have stalled in finding a way out of the war, although Iran’s negotiations have been ongoing with Oman and other mediators over a potential temporary arrangement in the Strait of Hormuz, where one-fifth of the global oil and natural gas used to flow before the war.

Iran’s parliament speaker and top negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, told state media on Tuesday that the Strait of Hormuz would remain closed until the US meets the conditions of the now-expired MoU.

“Let me state clearly: Until the commitments made by the United States in the memorandum of understanding, including the lifting of the blockade, the release of frozen assets, the lifting of oil sanctions, the end of threats and military operations on all fronts, and other conditions to which America agreed in the memorandum, are implemented, the strait will not be opened,” Ghalibaf said.

With tensions soaring before the war, Iran’s government delegated some authorities to border provinces to import essential goods and build up inventories.

To survive the blockade over recent months, Iran has also focused more on rerouting imports of food, consumer goods and industrial inputs through land borders with Pakistan, Turkiye and others, as well as through the Caspian Sea with Russia and Central Asia.

During the brief ceasefire period established under the MoU, the blockade was lifted for several weeks in late June and early July, enabling the rapid export of oil stored on board supertankers and giving the military time to regroup.

But Iran’s oil exports have stopped once again since the breakdown of the deal, and US and Israeli authorities have discussed disrupting Iran’s inland imports to ramp up the pressure.

The mounting pressure has only exacerbated Iran’s structural economic issues, rooted in decades of domestic corruption and mismanagement, as well as sanctions and international isolation.

For the country’s roughly 90 million people, the consequences include persistent inflation, insecure and poorly paid work, declining purchasing power and growing uncertainty about the future.

Against this backdrop, President Masoud Pezeshkian’s administration this week named stabilising markets, protecting livelihoods and strengthening national resilience as its priorities for the next two years.

However, Mahdi Ghodsi, a senior economist at the Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, said Iran’s prolonged stagnation over most of the past 15 years suggested that government policy had not been aligned with those objectives.

He told Al Jazeera that to guarantee sustainable economic growth, the Islamic Republic would have to reduce confrontation with the US, the West and Israel while pursuing meaningful domestic reforms that would involve moving away from coercive social controls to restore some public trust.

“Without both external de-escalation and domestic political reform, the government may be able to slow the deterioration in living standards and market conditions, but it is unlikely to deliver durable stability, stronger livelihoods or genuine national resilience,” Ghodsi said.

Energy in the crosshairs

US media outlets have reported that Washington’s forthcoming measures against Iran could include sanctioning additional independent Chinese refineries – known as “teapots” – that buy or process Iranian crude.

OFAC has already imposed secondary sanctions on smaller China- and Hong Kong-based entities processing Iranian oil money, but it could go a major step further by following through on its threat of designating larger Chinese banks if they touch Iran-linked funds.

That move risks prompting a response from China, at a time when Washington is concerned about curtailed exports of critical minerals.

Economist Ghodsi said energy remained the most powerful source of US leverage over Iran, particularly after US and Israeli attacks damaged the country’s infrastructure.

“If the blockade persists into autumn and winter, the country risks severe supply shortages. Iran was already struggling with electricity, gas and water imbalances before this shock; further constraints would mean deeper rationing and temporary shutdowns in industry to preserve household supply,” he said.

The government has also reduced some subsidised petrol quotas for personal vehicles and has been considering raising fuel costs – after an earlier increase last December. Necessary but costly fuel imports amounting to several billion dollars per year have stopped as a result of the war and blockade.

Ghodsi said that is why the US would likely target Iran’s external energy trade, involving maritime transport, shipping services, insurance, payments and the foreign buyers and intermediaries that keep those flows operating.

“In practice, that means tighter enforcement against entities in China and elsewhere that facilitate sanctioned energy transactions, together with closer scrutiny of trans-shipment and payment routes through neighbouring countries and other trade partners,” he said.

Following the start of the US-Israel war on Iran,, the first match of the Iranian league was played last week.

Iranian clubs have been confirmed to play at neutral venues against their Qatari and United Arab Emirates opponents following the draw for the group stage of the Asian Champions League Elite.

Matches in the Asian Football Confederation’s (AFC) premier event, which was drawn on Tuesday, begin on September 14.

Tehran’s Esteghlal and Tabriz-based Tractor will face UAE sides Al Ain, Al Wasl and Shabab Al-Ahli, and Qatari clubs Al Gharafa, Al Sadd and Al Shamal, despite the ongoing conflict in the region.

Esteghlal and Tractor avoided the heavily favoured Saudi Arabian contingent.

Since the United States and Israel attacked Iran in February, Iran has struck targets in Qatar and the UAE, saying it is retaliating for allowing US bases to be used for strikes.

Iran’s neighbours have implored Tehran to stop firing at them. On Sunday, Iran claimed three of its pilots who went missing in March were being held in Qatar, though Doha denied the charge.

Iran’s domestic league was suspended in February as attacks began but returned last weekend with one match behind closed doors and others under capacity restrictions.

The AFC Elite features two 16-team regional zones. In the west, Saudi Arabia has five representatives, including Jeddah’s Al-Ahli, which is aiming to become the first club to win three straight Champions League titles. Coach Matthias Jaissle left this month to take over English Premier League side Newcastle.

Riyadh rival Al-Hilal is seeking a fifth title, while Cristiano Ronaldo leads Al-Nassr back into the competition after winning the Saudi Pro League in May.

In the east, Japan reached the final in the past two editions, with Kawasaki Frontale and Machida Zelvia losing to Al-Ahli, though neither has qualified this year.

Gamba Osaka won in 2008, and South Korea also supplies two former champions: Jeonbuk Hyundai Motors, aiming for a third crown, and Pohang Steelers, looking for a fourth.

The top eight from each group advance to the round of 16. From the quarterfinals onward, all matches will be played in Saudi Arabia, with the final set for May 1.

A potentially very strong El Niño is emerging as a major risk for global agricultural markets, threatening to disrupt rainfall, raise temperatures and expose some of the world’s most important tropical crops to severe weather stress.

The U.S. Climate Prediction Center now sees a greater than 90% chance of a very strong El Niño during the northern hemisphere autumn and winter of 2026 to 2027. For commodity markets, the concern is not simply that El Niño causes drought. Its effects vary sharply by region, meaning excessive rainfall in one major producing country can occur alongside extreme dryness in another.

That makes the phenomenon particularly important for soft commodities such as cocoa, coffee and sugar, whose production is concentrated in climate sensitive tropical regions.

Why El Niño matters for commodity markets

El Niño occurs when sea surface temperatures in the eastern Pacific become unusually warm as trade winds weaken. The pattern generally lasts between nine and 12 months and can alter global temperature and rainfall patterns.

For farmers, the problem is timing. Crops can be damaged not only by drought but also by excessive rainfall, heat, fungal disease and disrupted flowering or harvesting cycles.

This year’s potential El Niño also arrives at an unusually difficult moment for agricultural producers. Farmers are already dealing with higher fertiliser and diesel costs linked to the U.S. Israeli war on Iran. Another major weather shock could therefore amplify existing production pressures.

Historically, strong El Niño episodes have been associated with substantial increases in soft commodity prices. But the effects differ considerably between crops.

Cocoa faces one of the clearest risks

Cocoa appears particularly vulnerable because production is heavily concentrated in a relatively small number of countries.

Ivory Coast and Ghana together account for roughly half of global cocoa production, while Ecuador is the third largest producer. All three can experience significant El Niño related weather disruptions.

Every strong El Niño over the past 55 years has reduced cocoa output, according to WisdomTree.

The previous El Niño illustrates why the relationship is more complicated than simply associating the phenomenon with drought. During the initial phase of the 2023 to 2024 event, West Africa experienced unusually heavy rainfall. Excess moisture contributed to fungal disease affecting cocoa trees.

Conditions subsequently shifted toward intense heat and unusually dry Harmattan winds. Trees weakened by disease struggled to flower, further damaging production.

That sequence demonstrates the real danger for cocoa: El Niño can produce multiple weather shocks during the same crop cycle.

The consequences can quickly reach global consumers. Cocoa prices nearly tripled in 2024 after the West African harvest failed, eventually exceeding $12,000 per metric ton.

A very strong El Niño could therefore revive fears of another supply deficit if weather conditions deteriorate across major growing regions.

Coffee faces a divided outlook

Coffee presents a more complicated picture because the world’s two major varieties are concentrated in different regions.

Robusta coffee is particularly exposed to El Niño because Vietnam and Indonesia, which together account for about half of global robusta production, typically experience higher temperatures and reduced rainfall under the weather pattern.

The timing is especially important. Dry conditions can hit these countries during crop development, with the consequences becoming visible during harvesting later in the year.

Citi analysts warned that dryness in Vietnam and Indonesia could significantly reduce robusta yields.

Arabica coffee presents a different picture.

Brazil, responsible for nearly half of global arabica production, can initially benefit from warmer conditions because they reduce the risk of damaging winter frosts.

But that advantage could prove temporary. El Niño typically brings hotter and drier conditions to Brazilian coffee growing regions later in the year, when the next crop is developing.

That creates the possibility of a delayed supply shock in 2027.

Sugar could be the exception

Sugar demonstrates why El Niño does not automatically translate into a bullish commodity market.

Brazil, the world’s largest sugar exporter, can experience heavier rainfall during the second half of the year. Excessive rain can disrupt harvesting and affect sugar quality.

India and Thailand face the opposite problem. El Niño generally reduces rainfall during the summer monsoon, creating additional pressure on production.

India is already expecting its lowest monsoon rainfall in 11 years, at around 90% of the long-term average. Hedgepoint estimates that even a moderate El Niño could reduce Indian sugar production by around 1 million metric tons.

Yet there is an important counterweight.

El Niño’s wetter conditions in Brazil could ultimately support the country’s following sugar crop. Since Brazil accounts for roughly half of global sugar exports, stronger Brazilian production could offset losses elsewhere.

That means sugar may not experience the same sustained price pressure as cocoa or robusta coffee.

The bigger problem is climate uncertainty

The most important market implication is not simply whether El Niño becomes “very strong.” It is where its effects materialise and when.

Agricultural markets operate on highly specific growing cycles. Rain arriving at the wrong stage can be just as damaging as drought. Excessive rainfall can create disease, while heat can interfere with flowering and crop development.

Climate change further complicates the picture.

The relationship between El Niño and agricultural weather is becoming harder to interpret because rising global temperatures can intensify the consequences of existing climate patterns. A weather event that might previously have produced manageable stress can now occur against a much hotter baseline.

This means commodity traders increasingly have to price not just the probability of El Niño, but the interaction between El Niño, climate change and already strained agricultural supply chains.

What could happen to prices?

The clearest risk is concentrated in cocoa and robusta coffee, where production is particularly exposed to adverse conditions in major growing countries.

Cocoa has perhaps the greatest vulnerability because West Africa dominates global supply and has already experienced serious weather related production problems. Another major disruption could quickly tighten inventories and push prices higher.

Robusta coffee faces a similar risk if drought develops across Vietnam and Indonesia.

Sugar is more balanced. Production losses in India and Thailand could be partly or potentially substantially offset by improved Brazilian conditions for the following crop.

The broader lesson is that El Niño is not a uniform commodity shock. It redistributes weather risks across producing regions, creating winners and losers within the same market.

Why consumers should care

The effects will ultimately extend beyond commodity exchanges.

Higher cocoa prices can increase chocolate production costs. Coffee shortages can raise prices for roasters and consumers, while sugar disruptions can affect everything from beverages to processed foods.

And because agricultural markets are interconnected, a weather shock in one producing region can encourage buyers to compete more aggressively for supplies elsewhere.

The potential super El Niño therefore arrives at a particularly sensitive moment for global food markets.

If forecasts prove correct, the next several months could test whether commodity markets have adequately priced the risks of increasingly volatile weather.

The real threat is not El Niño alone. It is El Niño hitting an agricultural system already under pressure from rising costs, concentrated production and a changing climate.

With information from Reuters.

Primary races across the country have offered an early read on where voters want their parties to head before November’s consequential midterms in the United States.

With only a handful of US states remaining in the congressional primary calendar, voters in Alaska and Wyoming — two reliably Republican strongholds — head to the polls on Tuesday, with races that could send ripples well beyond their small electorates.

Although the state has long been safe Republican territory in federal elections, this year marks the third consecutive election cycle in which Alaska finds itself among a handful of states at the centre of the fight for control of Congress.

Wyoming offers a different kind of race: a rare wholesale turnover of Republican leadership. Wyomingites have a glut of new leaders to choose from at the statehouse, in the governor’s mansion and in the US Capitol. Contests that could further consolidate the state’s ultraconservative politics or begin to push them to the centre.

Here’s what’s on our radar.

Alaska

When do polls open and close?

Polls open at 7am (15:00 GMT) and close at 8pm local time (04:00 on Wednesday GMT), although Alaska’s two time zones stagger poll closings across the state.

What makes Alaska’s primary different?

Unlike most states, Alaska uses a single primary rather than separate Republican and Democratic contests. This comes after Alaska voters approved Ballot Measure 2 back in 2020, which effectively eliminated the state’s traditional party-primary system for most offices. Instead, all candidates appear on a single, nonpartisan primary ballot. The top four vote-getters advance.

What are the key races to watch in Alaska?

The US Senate race carries the clearest national stakes because it could tip control of the chamber. The governor’s race is worth watching because of its exceptionally crowded and competitive field.

Seventeen candidates are running to replace Alaska’s staunchly pro-Trump Republican Governor Mike Dunleavy, who is barred by term limits from seeking a third term. Among them is former Governor Bill Walker, who is running as an independent. Republican candidates include former state Senators Click Bishop, Shelley Hughes and Lesil McGuire, former Anchorage Mayor Dave Bronson, former state revenue Commissioner Adam Crum, Matanuska-Susitna Borough Mayor Edna DeVries, former state Attorney General Treg Taylor and business owner and conservative activist Bernadette Wilson.

Former state Senator Tom Begich and former state Representative Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins are the two Democrats in the race.

Meanwhile, sixteen candidates are running for Alaska’s US Senate seat, but the race has two chief frontrunners: incumbent Republican Senator Dan Sullivan and former Democratic Representative Mary Peltola. The Cook Political Report ranks the race among the country’s most competitive Senate contests.

Why the Senate race matters nationally

Though Alaska has not sent a Democrat to the Senate since 2008, former Representative Peltola, who represented Alaska in the US House from 2022 to 2025, demonstrated that a Democrat can win statewide there.

The race has drawn millions in campaign spending, including money being spent to elevate political unknowns who are unlikely to win the seat, but could materially alter the November field.

Super PACs have spent more than $2m trying to boost candidates who are not considered serious contenders for the seat, according to Alaska Public Media.

An Alaska Survey Research poll conducted in March found Peltola ahead of Sullivan among primary voters, 46.4 percent to 40.9 percent. In a simulated general-election matchup using Alaska’s ranked-choice system, Peltola also polled ahead of Sullivan.

A tale of two Dan Sullivans

There is an unusual Senate subplot: two Republicans named Dan Sullivan are on the ballot. One is the incumbent senator; the other, Dan J Sullivan Jr is a retired teacher from Petersburg. The state’s Division of Elections initially removed him from the ballot after determining that his candidacy appeared intended to confuse voters, but the Alaska Supreme Court later ordered officials to restore him to the primary ballot.

That creates a problem that is particularly acute in Alaska’s primary. Unlike the November election, the primary is not ranked-choice: voters select a single candidate, and the four highest vote-getters prevail in the general election. With two Dan Sullivans vying for the same electoral spot, even a relatively small number of mistaken votes could influence which candidate clears the hurdle.

Senator Sullivan will appear on the ballot as “Dan S. Sullivan” alongside the labels of “Registered Republican” and “Incumbent”. Challenger Sullivan will be listed as “Daniel J. Sullivan Jr.” without any party affiliation listed, although he filed for office as a Republican.

On Israel, Sullivan and Peltola find common ground

Much of the attention around incumbent Dan Sullivan’s fundraising reflects the issues that have defined his Senate career, including his strong support for Israel and his hawkish approach to Iran.

The 61-year-old has repeatedly backed military aid and closer US-Israel defence ties while vehemently opposing efforts by the International Criminal Court (ICC) to prosecute Israeli officials. His congressional record includes repeated efforts to maintain or strengthen sanctions on Iran.

Sullivan’s reelection run has attracted substantial backing from high-profile political organisations, including the Republican Senate Leadership Fund, which has committed at least $15m towards his campaign. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC ) has also helped funnel about $250,000 in individual contributions to Sullivan during the first quarter of 2026.

Peltola has also championed Israel-related legislation during her time in the House, and sometimes even broke with fellow Democrats on Israel-related votes. The Jewish Democratic Council of America, which describes itself as advocating for a strong US-Israel relationship, endorsed her Senate campaign back in March.

Wyoming

When do polls in Wyoming open and close?

Voting begins at 7am local time (13:00 GMT) and ends at 7pm local time (01:00 GMT the following day).

What’s one big race to watch?

The Senate Republican primary.

In deep-red Wyoming, the Senate primary is less a contest about whether the GOP will hold the seat than about which Republican candidate will win it.

The Cowboy State has voted Republican in every presidential election since 1964, with the exception of 1976, when Jimmy Carter carried Wyoming. The Senate race is also interesting because it is an open-seat succession fight.

What are the important races in the Wyoming primary election?

The US’s least populated state is in for a political makeover, with a shake-up at nearly every level. With incumbent Senator Cynthia Lummis declining to seek re-election and Representative Harriet Hageman relinquishing her House post to try to succeed her in the Senate, Wyoming is poised for an unusually broad reshuffling in elected officeholders.

Wyoming’s Republican Party is divided between a hard-right bloc that already controls the state House and more traditional conservatives who retain greater influence in the Senate.

Hageman, the Trump-backed hard-lined congresswoman who rose to national prominence after unseating Liz Cheney in the 2022 Republican primary, is the clear favourite to succeed retiring Senator Cynthia Lummis. Among the other Republicans running to replace Lummis in the US Senate are former Kirby Mayor Sam Mead and former environmental services business owner Jimmy Skovgard.

In an April interview with Jackson Hole Community Radio (KHOL), Mead said that the endorsements Hageman received from Trump, Lummis and Barrasso come with an expectation that she will support the administration “no matter what.” While Mead has promised that he would push back against Trump on public lands, tariffs and foreign wars when he believes the administration’s policies run counter to Wyoming’s interests.

Nine active candidates are competing for the Republican nomination to replace Hageman in the US House in what’s shaping up to be the most expensive contest on Tuesday’s ballot. The field includes former state Superintendent of Public Instruction Jillian Balow, state Senate President Bo Biteman, businessmen Steve Friess and Reid Rasner, and Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray.

By chaining bilateral naval exercises across a widening circle of partners — Russia, Malaysia, Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, and now Indonesia — Beijing is not assembling an alliance. It is manufacturing the impression that a Chinese warship’s presence near every regional flashpoint, including the waters off Taiwan, is unremarkable.

On July 29th, the Indonesian frigate KRI I Gusti Ngurah Rai wrapped up a two-day naval drill with the Russian navy in Vladivostok, part of Exercise Orruda 2026. Two weeks later, on August 12th, China’s Ministry of National Defense announced that the same ship, on its way home, would run a “passing exercise” with a Chinese frigate, the Honghe — not in Indonesian waters, not in the South China Sea, but east of Taiwan. Jakarta’s navy described it in the blandest terms available: communications drills, a resupply run, “a universal naval tradition.” Taipei was not reassured. Taiwan’s foreign ministry said it “sternly condemns” the move and complained that Beijing had “unilaterally claimed” Indonesian participation before Jakarta had said a word about where, or why, this was happening.

That gap — between Jakarta’s shrug and Taipei’s alarm — is the story. It is also a useful corrective to how most coverage of Chinese naval activity is currently framed. The default lens is bilateral and confrontational: China versus the Philippines at Second Thomas Shoal, China versus Japan around the Senkakus, China versus Taiwan in the Strait. That lens catches real events, but it misses the connective tissue between them — a growing schedule of joint drills with third parties, each one small and individually deniable as “routine,” that collectively do something the confrontational track cannot: they make China’s presence in the surrounding water look normal to everyone except the state it is actually disputing with.

Indonesia and China have their own maritime dispute: Beijing’s nine-dash line overlaps Indonesia’s exclusive economic zone around the Natuna Islands, and Chinese fishing incursions there froze bilateral naval drills between 2015 and 2021. Those “Sharp Knife” exercises resumed in 2021 and have picked up pace since 2024. That history matters, but it is not what explains this month’s drill, because this drill did not happen anywhere near Natuna. It happened off Taiwan — waters Indonesia has no claim to and, until now, no naval presence in alongside China. Indonesia is simply the newest and most sensitive addition to a list that already includes Russia (the mature anchor partnership, most recently “Joint Sea-2026” in July), Malaysia (“Peace and Friendship 2025” in the Strait of Malacca last October), Cambodia (“Golden Dragon” at the newly built Ream Naval Base logistics center last spring), Thailand (“Blue Strike” and “Falcon Strike,” the latter launched again this month), and Vietnam (a Beibu Gulf coast guard and navy patrol series now past its fortieth iteration). All of this sits alongside a separate, unilateral track — a 100-plus-vessel show of force spanning the Yellow Sea to the western Pacific last December, and routine coast guard patrols around Scarborough Shoal and Second Thomas Shoal.

The claim of this piece is that these two tracks are not separate stories about Chinese assertiveness. They are one story, working in tandem: the unilateral patrols draw the lines, and the bilateral drills erase them, by training a widening circle of regional navies — and the publics who read about them — to treat a Chinese warship’s presence near contested space as routine bilateral traffic rather than a signal.

The Indonesia case is the clearest evidence yet, because the location was Beijing’s choice, not Jakarta’s. Indonesia had no dispute-driven reason to be operating near Taiwan; its dispute with China sits in the Natuna Sea, hundreds of miles away. What Jakarta had was a frigate already at sea, returning from Russia, and a willingness to let Beijing choose the itinerary’s final leg. Global Times, writing for a domestic Chinese audience, called the drill’s timing “of great significance” — language China’s defense ministry does not use for routine port calls. The exercise also landed in the same week that Elbridge Colby, the U.S. Under Secretary of War for Policy, was in Jakarta courting Indonesia’s alignment. Chaining a Chinese passing exercise onto the tail of an Indonesian-Russian one, in waters adjacent to the most dangerous flashpoint in the region, at the exact moment Washington was making its own pitch, is not the profile of a routine bilateral courtesy call.

The strongest objection to this argument comes from analysts of Malaysia’s drills with China, who point out that Kuala Lumpur treats “Peace and Friendship” as a hedging tool it controls, not a concession Beijing extracted — the exercises are deliberately unsophisticated (humanitarian assistance, counter-piracy, no live fire), and Malaysia’s own defense establishment remains wary of Chinese assertiveness even as it participates. That is a fair description of Malaysia’s intent, and it likely holds for Cambodia and Thailand too: these governments are managing great-power competition on their own terms, not capitulating to it. But intent on the partner’s side does not determine the effect on Beijing’s side. Whatever Kuala Lumpur or Phnom Penh tell their own publics, every additional bilateral drill lowers the diplomatic and psychological cost, for Beijing, of being seen operating a warship near water someone else disputes. Indonesia’s case shows why that distinction matters: Jakarta’s intent was almost certainly routine — a frigate coming home. Beijing’s was not. It picked the coordinates.

None of this means China is close to fielding a formal coalition in the NATO sense; nothing here involves interoperability, shared command, or mutual defense. What it means is narrower and, in some ways, more useful to Beijing: a maintenance routine that makes normalization cumulative rather than a single dramatic claim to defend. Each additional partner adds one more government that has, at least once, treated a joint Chinese naval presence near contested water as unremarkable — and one more precedent for the next invitation.

The guest list is also instructive. The one claimant conspicuously absent from it is the Philippines — the country with the loudest ongoing disputes with Beijing, at Scarborough Shoal and Second Thomas Shoal, and the one treaty ally the United States has directly on the South China Sea’s rim. Manila gets unilateral coercion, not invitations: coast guard patrols, water-cannon incidents, and jamming, rather than passing exercises. Every partner on the actual list — Russia, Malaysia, Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, Indonesia — either has no U.S. mutual defense treaty or, like Thailand, treats its treaty commitments as dormant rather than active. That is not a coincidence; it is a selection criterion. Beijing is not inviting the states most capable of resisting the normalization effect. It is inviting the states most likely to accept it, and saving coercion for the one state structurally immune to the charm offensive.

What happens next

Base case (roughly 55 percent).  The Indonesia relationship deepens but recalibrates location. A higher-tempo revival of the Sharp Knife series continues, concentrated in Indonesian or South China Sea-adjacent waters near Natuna rather than repeated performances off Taiwan. Jakarta absorbs the diplomatic cost of this month’s episode privately — quiet reassurances to Taipei and Washington — while keeping the relationship with Beijing intact. The key assumption: the backlash from Taiwan and the attention from Washington made a second Taiwan-adjacent rerun more costly to Jakarta than its benefit to Beijing.

Downside case.  Beijing repeats the chaining tactic with a second partner within the next twelve months, most plausibly Brunei — the quietest South China Sea claimant, which in February 2025 already agreed to joint oil-and-gas development with Beijing in disputed waters it claims. A first-ever Brunei-China passing exercise, timed to overlap with a Brunei exercise involving another power and staged near a genuinely contested reef rather than international water, would confirm this is a repeatable playbook rather than an Indonesia-specific improvisation — and would be far harder for the U.S. and Japan to counter, since Brunei has never been a vocal claimant to rally around.

Upside case.  Taiwan’s public condemnation, paired with Washington’s trilateral drills with Australia and the Philippines, hardens into an explicit regional habit of naming the chaining tactic itself — not just the individual exercise — making it reputationally costly for the next candidate partner to accept the choreography. The coalition-of-drills strategy stalls not because China stops asking, but because fewer navies say yes.

The takeaway

Beijing did not build a coalition off Taiwan this month; it borrowed one, for two days, from a country with no stake in the fight. That is a cheaper and more durable tool than a formal alliance would be, and it will not show up as a single dramatic escalation — it will show up as a pattern, one passing exercise at a time.

Watch for:  whether Indonesia’s navy does it again, and where. A repeat performance near another sensitive location within the next two quarters would confirm the pattern; a retreat to home waters would suggest Jakarta drew its own line. Watch, too, whether Brunei’s navy — quiet for decades — puts to sea with a Chinese frigate for the first time following its 2025 oil-and-gas pledge in disputed waters.

Root, England’s greatest batter and a veteran of 166 Tests, said he hoped his “natural persona” is suited to bringing a sense of calm to the men’s national team.

Off-field issues dominated last winter’s tours, including an incident involving Harry Brook being punched by a nightclub bouncer in Wellington and the team’s drinking during a mid-Ashes trip to Noosa, culminating in a heavy 4-1 defeat by Australia.

The issues continued into the summer when Stokes broke a team curfew, setting in motion a chaotic six weeks that resulted in a 2-1 series defeat by New Zealand, Stokes’ retirement and the sacking of McCullum.

Fellow New Zealander Stephen Fleming has been appointed as McCullum’s replacement, but batting coach Marcus Trescothick will take interim charge of the Test side for the three-match series against Pakistan.

Root, who has already led England in 65 Tests having held the role between 2017 and 2022, said one of his “big challenges” is “trying not to be Ben Stokes”.

“He is a very unique player with unbelievable qualities that I don’t think are easy to replicate,” Root said. “I don’t think there is any point trying to.

“It is going to have a slightly different look to it but that is OK.

“There has been a lot of good stuff that has happened in the past four years that will serve us really well.

“It is about not ripping it up, just fine tuning and evolving that and taking that to the next level. We have got to find a way of evolving the team without him.”

More to follow

United States President Donald Trump has threatened to bomb Oman if it “gets in the way” of a peace deal between the US and Iran.

Oman is currently negotiating with Iran over the reopening of the critical Strait of Hormuz, while Iran has repeatedly stated that it will not speak directly to the US.

On Monday, as Iranian officials said they were close to announcing an agreement with Oman, a 60-day Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between Washington and Tehran – which had provided for a period of peace talks but largely fell apart early on – expired with little hope for renewal.

This is not the first time Trump has threatened Oman, a US ally which has never entered into any direct conflict with the US. Oman, through whose territorial waters the contested Strait of Hormuz also flows, has positioned itself as a neutral party in the US-Iran war. Despite that, it has suffered a number of strikes by Iran, which has targeted US military assets and infrastructure around the region in retaliation for US-Israeli attacks.

Now, Trump is threatening to strike it as well.

Here is more about what Trump has threatened, and why.

What did Trump threaten Oman with?

Trump told US broadcaster Fox News on Monday that Iran should surrender, and claimed that his administration had opened a direct backchannel for talks with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

During the interview, he threatened to bomb US ally Oman if it “gets in the way” of US talks with Iran.

“If Oman gets in the way, we’ll bomb the s*** out of them,” he said.

An IRGC spokesman denied Trump’s claim of direct talks, telling Iran’s semi-official Tasnim News: “There are no talks taking place between IRGC officials and the Americans, and this lie by Trump is merely fantasies caused by the delusions and nightmares he has suffered as a result of defeat and desperation in the war.”

Has he threatened Oman before?

Monday was not the first time Trump threatened Oman over the course of the five-month war between the US and Iran. In May, he made a similar threat.

At a cabinet meeting on May 27, a reporter asked Trump what he thought about the idea of Oman and Iran jointly overseeing shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.

“ Would you accept a short-term deal that allows Iran and Oman to control the strait?” the reporter asked.

Trump replied with a seemingly offhand threat. “Nobody is going to control it. It’s international waters, and Oman will behave just like everybody else, or we will have to blow them up.”

While there was initial speculation that Trump might have misspoken and said “Oman” instead of “Iran”, the US State Department later shared the comment on social media, with a transcript of the quote that referred to the Arab country.

What is the context for all this?

For the past few weeks, Iran and Oman have been engaged in direct talks, facilitated by mediators in Qatar, to reach an agreement over how to manage maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz in the future.

While Iran had agreed to keep the strait open to shipping without charge for 60 days following the signing of the MoU with the US on June 17, this quickly fell apart as the two sides disagreed over who had ultimate control over the strait – in particular which routes ships should take. Towards the end of June, Iran launched strikes on a number of ships which had followed an Oman-issued route, approved by the US, rather than its own route, and the US restarted strikes on Iran for nearly two weeks.

Following that, Iran refused to talk directly to the US, saying it had violated the terms of the MoU which included a cessation of hostilities on all fronts, and began talks with Oman over the future of the strait instead. Iran also issued a list of new demands relating to the lifting of sanctions and a permanent end to US strikes before it would resume talks, it said.

On Monday, Tehran said the two countries have reached an agreement on a new shipping route in the strait and are now preparing a joint declaration.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said the proposed mechanism for control of the strait seeks to protect the interests of both Iran and Oman while allowing commercial shipping to pass through.

“This is the first time that a mechanism is being developed to simultaneously safeguard the sovereign rights of the two littoral states and ensure the safe passage of commercial vessels,” said Baghaei.

The Strait of Hormuz is a critical waterway through which one-fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) supplies were shipped before the US-Israel war on Iran began on February 28. Roughly 130 ships sailed through the strait each day.

Iran closed the strait in early March, allowing only a few ships it deemed “friendly” to pass through the strait until it signed the MoU with the US on June 17. Since then, it has become the key issue holding up talks for a lasting peace plan to end the war on Iran.

The US, meanwhile, has established its own blockade on Iranian ports in and around the strait. Last week, it fired on a Panama-flagged cargo vessel it accused of attempting to reach Iranian ports and which, it said, had failed to follow orders to change course.

The crisis has triggered global energy shortages and the price of oil has soared. The price of Brent crude, the global benchmark, was about $66 a barrel just before the Middle East conflict began. Over the course of the war, the price has surged past $100 on several occasions, most recently on July 23. In March, the price rose as high as $119.

Global benchmark Brent crude futures rose to $91.22 a barrel on Tuesday, inching close to a three-week high.

What is Oman’s position on the Iran war?

Oman, which is known for its neutrality, has not publicly stated that it intends to join Iran in controlling the Strait of Hormuz. The US and Oman are close partners with a relationship stretching back nearly 200 years.

The two countries have multiple cooperation treaties, including security partnerships, a free trade agreement and a science and technology deal.

During the war, Iran launched multiple strikes on US military assets and energy infrastructure in neighbouring countries, including Oman.

Oman previously acted as a key mediator between Washington and Tehran as they sought a resolution to the war that began on February 28, when the US and Israel attacked Iran.

So, why is Trump threatening Oman now?

A potential Iran-Oman understanding covering the Strait of Hormuz could cut against one of Washington’s core demands: that Iran relinquish control of the strait as a condition of ending the war. Rather than curbing that control, such a deal would lend it greater legitimacy by formalising Iran’s position.

But experts say Trump is also likely angry that the US has seemingly been cut out of the deal relating to the strait.

“In part, a solution mediated without US intervention and which in fact allows Oman and Iran to manage passage through Hormuz, which lies entirely within the two countries’ territorial waters, would show how impotent the United States is and has been,” Laleh Khalili, a professor of Gulf studies at the University of Exeter, told Al Jazeera.

The US and Iran have also strongly disagreed about whether Iran should be allowed to charge fees to shipping companies using the strait. Under international law, tolls for passing through natural waterways such as Hormuz are forbidden, even when they are not technically in international waters. However, fees for services such as insurance, environmental protection and docking can be charged. It has yet to be seen whether this issue will be addressed in an Iran-Oman agreement.

In late July, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned that Iran should not be allowed to charge tolls on vessels traversing Hormuz. Days earlier, Trump himself pledged there would be no tolls for passage through the strait, unless they are collected by his own country.

On August 14, Trump went a step further, telling his supporters in New York that he had plans to declare the Strait of Hormuz a “territory” of the US. “After we finish defeating Iran, which is being very badly defeated, pretty soon I’ll be declaring the Hormuz Strait a territory of the United States,” Trump said.

Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran’s deputy foreign minister for legal and international affairs, responded to that threat on social media with defiance.

“Trump said that, after Iran’s defeat, he will soon declare the Strait of Hormuz as American territory,” Gharibabadi wrote.

“The Strait of Hormuz cannot be taken over by a tweet, nor by an aircraft carrier, nor by issuing a decree, nor by an election speech. Iran is neither afraid of threats nor intimidated by a show of force.”

The Rohingya of Myanmar have faced decades of discrimination and forced displacement, and a case alleging genocide now sits before the International Court of Justice.

This film describes how military regimes rewrote citizenship laws to exclude Rohingya from registers and used identity documents, checkpoints and travel permits to control movement. It also highlights how segregation, incitement and continuing waves of violence normalised their erasure from the community.

Focusing on the 2016-2017 “clearance operations”, the film documents village burnings, mass killings and the flight of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya to Bangladesh. Through survivor testimony and interviews with officials and legal experts, Myanmar: The Architecture of Statelessness examines whether these crimes meet the legal threshold for genocide, how Myanmar defends itself against the allegation and what is ultimately at stake when the court delivers its verdict.

Russia summons Japan’s ambassador to Moscow over Prime Minister Sanae ⁠Takaichi’s ‘anti-Russian’ remarks.

Russia has strongly protested to Japan’s ambassador ‌to Moscow the “anti-Russian” comments made by ⁠Prime Minister Sanae ⁠Takaichi after Russian President Vladimir Putin visited one of the disputed Kuril Islands for the first time last week.

Putin’s controversial visit to the territories last Thursday prompted Japan to summon Russia’s ambassador in protest.

Japan’s prime minister called Putin’s visit to the disputed islands “grave” and “absolutely unacceptable”. “The Northern Territories are inherently part of Japan’s territory, both historically and under international law,” she said.

“This visit has further hardened anti-Russian sentiment within Japan and has made the restoration of relations over the medium- to long- term more difficult,” Takaichi added.

Japan’s ambassador to Moscow left the meeting at Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Tuesday after 25 minutes without making any comment.

Disputed islands

Ties between Russia and Japan have long been dogged by the Kuril Islands, known in Japan as the Northern Territories.

The islands were seized in 1945 by the Soviet Union, which went on to expel the Japanese population.

The dispute over the southern Kuril Islands – Iturup, Kunashir, Shikotan and the Habomai Islands – prevented Russia and Japan from signing a post-World War II peace treaty.

Deteriorating relations

On Monday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Takaichi’s comments on Putin’s visit had “crossed the line of decency” and criticised Tokyo’s “militaristic line”.

Relations between Moscow and Tokyo have worsened since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Japan has joined other G7 countries in sanctioning Russia and giving financial and non-lethal defence aid to Ukraine, which recognises Japan’s claim over the disputed islands.

Japan indirectly supports Ukraine’s air defence by exporting domestically produced Patriot interceptor missiles to the United States, helping replenish US stockpiles that have been reduced by military aid to Kyiv.

Analysts said Putin’s visit to the Kurils could be a warning to Japan not to deepen its support for Ukraine by supplying Patriot missiles directly to Kyiv or working closer with NATO.

In recent years, Japan has relaxed pacifist policies by lifting a ban on lethal weapons exports. But it remains unable to supply lethal military equipment directly to a country at war, including Ukraine.

The U.S. Army is on track to stand up a new battalion equipped with the Patriot surface-to-air missile system on Guam in October. The unit will also have Enduring Shield, a lower-tier air defense system that currently uses the AIM-9X Sidewinder as its interceptor. This is a major step forward in the U.S. military’s years-long effort to bolster air and missile defenses on the extremely strategic U.S. island territory in the Western Pacific. It is also a significant development for the Army’s Patriot force, which continues to be worryingly overstretched due to heavy operational demands, something TWZ calls attention to regularly.

The new Army air defense unit on Guam will be designated 3rd Battalion, 43rd Air Defense Artillery Regiment (3-43rd ADA). It will be under the purview, at least in part, of the 94th Army Air and Missile Defense Command (94th AAMDC) headquartered at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii.

“So, over the past couple of years, we’ve been working to increase the level of protection on Guam. In the past, we’ve had the THAAD [Terminal High Altitude Area Defense] battery there, and of course, Aegis BMD [ballistic missile defense capable] ship[s],” Army Col. Matt Dalton, Deputy Commander of the 94th AAMDC, said last week. “We’ve been working the past few years to increase that to provide a 360-degree defense, cruise missile defense, of the homeland [on Guam].”

Dalton was speaking during a panel discussion at the annual Space & Missile Defense (SMD) Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama, at which TWZ was in attendance. An Army unit, known as Task Force Talon, has operated the THAAD battery on Guam since 2013.

“What does that entail? Construction, planning, barracks, housing, defense design, coordinating with the local authorities in the joint community, the governor’s office, FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] – so many, many things over the last couple of years,” he continued. “I think right now what we’re seeing is we’re starting to see the fruits of all that labor. This summer, the battalion commander arrived. This fall, 3-43rd ADA will stand up in October. Currently, there are about 120 or so soldiers specifically for that battalion on [the] island, on top of the the soldiers already there for the THAAD battery. And then over the next few months, we’re going to see the delivery of the weapon system.”

“The battalion will have both the Patriot Missile System and IFPC, or mobile ground-based launchers, which they will integrate to provide 360-degree, layered air and missile defense for Guam as part of our expansion to the defensive architecture to better protect everyone living there,” an Army spokesperson told TWZ when asked for more information about the “weapon system” Col. Dalton had referred to.

IFPC stands for Indirect Fire Protection Capability. IFPC dates back to the early 2000s, but the Army transitioned to the second phase, or Increment 2, of the program in 2021. That, in turn, led to the acquisition of the Enduring Shield system, which is primarily intended to help defend against cruise missiles and drones. We will come back to this in a moment.

Whether the Patriot systems headed for 3-43rd ADA are new-production assets or available with the Army’s existing inventory as part of a reorganization of other units is unclear, and TWZ has reached back out for more details. At the time of writing, the service is known to have 15 operational Patriot battalions, as well as two more that are non-deployable dedicated training units. A typical one of these battalions consists of a headquarters element and between three and five firing batteries. A single Patriot firing battery can have up to eight trailer-mounted launchers, along with a fire control radar and other supporting equipment.

“We know we have to grow that [Patriot force]. We have plans on the table to build a 16th, 17th, and 18th [battalions],” now-retired Army Gen. James Mingus, then the service’s Vice Chief of Staff, said last year. “And that’s not to include the Patriot battalion that we’re going to put in Guam as part of the Guam defense system.”

At that time, the Army general also talked about the possibility of future composite battalions with Patriot and IFPC/Enduring Shield systems. The Army also has plans to establish nine dedicated IFPC/Enduring Shield battalions.

“The IFPC battalions that are coming online will help offset that [demand for Patriot] as well, even though it’s not quite the same capability,” Mingus said. “In some environments, that [IFPC] actually is more appropriate to apply than a full-up Patriot battalion.”

Recent fighting with Iran has underscored the challenges posed by barrages that include a high-low threat mix. Furthermore, lower-tier IFPC/Enduring Shield systems can also provide critical defense for high-tier air defense assets like Patriot and THAAD, which are themselves high-priority targets for adversaries.

How many IFPC/Enduring Shield systems will be assigned to 3-43rd ADA is also unclear. The Army has said in the past that a typical IFPC/Enduring Shield platoon, multiple of which would be contained with a single battery, consists of four launchers linked to at least one AN/MPQ-64 Sentinel-series radar via the Army’s Integrated Battle Command System (IBCS) network. In their current form, each palletized launcher can be loaded with up to 18 AIM-9Xs. The Army is working to fielding at least one new interceptor for IFPC/Enduring Shield, primarily to help improve the system’s ability to defeat ever-more capable supersonic cruise missiles, though it would also boost its capabilities more broadly.

As an aside, the Army moved to acquire IFPC/Enduring Shield after deciding not to adopt a service-specific version of the Israeli Iron Dome system. An Iron Dome system was briefly deployed to Guam in 2021 as a test.

3-43rd ADA is still just one part of the larger plan to bolster air and missile defenses on the island as part of what is currently called the Guam Defense System (GDS). A prototype of a ground-based launch system based on the Mk 41 Vertical Launch System (VLS) used on various U.S. and foreign warships has already been emplaced on the island. There have been plans, at least in the past, for a Guam-specific version of the Aegis Ashore system that use Mk 41-based launchers to fire Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) and Standard Missile-6 (SM-6) interceptors.

Guam is also getting an entirely new sensor architecture as part of the GDS. Work to date has included the establishment of a radar site with a prototype AN/TPY-6, a design derived from Lockheed Martin’s AN/SPY-7 Long-Range Discrimination Radar (LRDR) in Alaska. Questions about the future of the AN/TPY-6 have been raised in the past, but it was still in place as of July.

The Army has also previously deployed a Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor (LTAMDS) to Guam. LTAMDS can be used as a standalone sensor, but also intended as next-generation radar for Patriot, and it could easily be tied with 3-43rd’s other assets when the battalion stands up later this year.

“So instead of what we have today, with our Q-series [AN/MPQ-65] radars that have about a 270-view look, which grows – or, kind of negates how much coverage that you can have, the new LTAMDS is 360 [degrees],” Gen. Mingus said last year. “It also goes from about 85 kilometers [close to 53 miles] up and 85 kilometers out to 300 by 300 [kilometers; around 186 miles]. So [it] greatly expands the range, the altitude, and it’s a 360.”

In works since 2021, the overall GDS plan reflects the extremely strategic position Guam occupies in the Western Pacific and the growing threats the island faces. As we previously wrote:

“Since 2021, expanding air and missile defenses on Guam has been a centerpiece of larger U.S. military efforts to reorient itself to preparing for future large-scale conflicts, especially a potential high-end fight with China in the Pacific. Guam is a vital hub for U.S. air and naval operations in the Western Pacific. It is also an important location for staging ground forces for onward movement across the region. In turn, being able to adequately protect key facilities on the island, including Andersen Air Force Base, Naval Base Guam, and Marine Corps Base Camp Blaz, especially from a growing array of Chinese ballistic, cruise, and hypersonic threats, is seen as critical. Various tiers of drones are also a real and still evolving threat. Guam could be a target for other adversaries, as well. Concerns about increasingly longer-range North Korean ballistic missiles prompted Task Force Talon’s initial deployment more than a decade ago.”

As mentioned, the Army establishing a new Patriot battalion, even one also equipped in part with IFPC/Enduring Shield is a significant development in of itself. The service’s existing Patriot force has been heavily in demand, and under significant strain as a result, for years, most recently due to the ongoing conflict with Iran. TWZ routinely highlights the worryingly inadequate capacity of the Army’s existing Patriot battalions to meet operational requirements now, let alone should a high-end fight, such as one against China in the Pacific, break out.

The PATRIOT Missile in Action

At the same time, work to establish the 3-43rd ADA highlights continued challenges the Army faces in bolstering its Patriot force, as well as its air and missile defense capabilities and capacity more broadly. As noted, it will have taken more than a year just to stand up this composite battalion on Guam, which will also be dedicated to defense of the island. The Army’s timeline for establishing the three other planned Patriot battalions is unclear. Prime contractor Raytheon is itself under immense strain to meet existing global orders for new Patriot systems due to competing priorities, and not just ones emanating from the United States. Last year, Switzerland saw its orders for new Patriot batteries deferred to meet urgent requests from Ukraine, and authorities in Geneva subsequently raised the prospect of canceling the deal altogether as a result of the delays.

Patriot systems also need stocks of interceptors to go along with them, and this has also become its own area of serious concern, especially in light of heavy expenditures in fighting with Iran. Transfers to Ukraine have also had significant impacts on U.S. stockpiles, as well as those of other countries. Questions have been raised about the ability of Raytheon and Lockheed Martin to meet still-growing demand for PAC-2 and PAC-3-series Patriot interceptors, respectively. These are long-lead items that take years to deliver. Both companies have been working to bolster their production capacity, but it will take time for this to translate into increased deliveries. Lockheed Martin is now also developing a lower-cost PAC-3 variant, called the Adapted Capability Effector (ACE), which it sees as another way to help boost total production. Just this year, the Army put in its first order for a new-production batch of older PAC-2 interceptors in more than three decades, further underscoring the current level of demand.

The establishment of 3-43rd ADA on Guam in October will still be an important development. At the same time, there is still much work to be done before the Army meets its larger goals for a sorely needed expansion of its Patriot force.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

New Delhi, India — On August 13, Abdul Hafeez returned to the primary school he once went to, in Karisunda, a village in Bankura district in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal.

The 26-year-old was visiting his alma mater as part of a campaign by the Cockroach Janata Party, a popular Indian pressure group, to audit conditions of the country’s under-funded, often dilapidated government-run schools.

The CJP had just succeeded in forcing the resignation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s education minister, Dharmendra Pradhan, in July, after a 37-day sit-in in the national capital that prompted antigovernment Gen Z protests across the country.

But in Bankura, things would turn deadly. Hours after Hafeez’s visit to his school, he alleged that local workers of Modi’s Hindu majoritarian Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) arrived at his home and assaulted him and his father, Mohammad Mafik. Two days later, Hafeez’s 51-year-old father died from his injuries.

On Sunday, Suvendu Adhikari, the chief minister of BJP-ruled West Bengal, said the attackers were “criminals with no BJP connection” and assured action.

But a day after burying his father, Hafeez told Al Jazeera that he stands firm in calling for accountability and reforms in government-run schools. “We will fight for justice for my father, but these attacks will not stop us from demanding better education,” he said.

That demand marks a new line in the sand for the CJP. Fresh from successfully forcing Modi and his government onto the defensive — the Indian PM has only rarely sacked ministers even in the face of credible accusations of wrongdoing or public pressure — the group has now announced its next battleground: India’s public-funded schools.

CJP leaders have asked their supporters, who thronged the protests in New Delhi from different parts of the country, to visit their nearby schools and audit their conditions.

They are working around a basic four-point checklist for what the CJP is calling its Fix the Schools campaign: drinking water and functional toilets; electricity and usable classrooms; boundary walls and campus safety; and midday meals and teacher attendance.

And the murder of Hafeez’s father has raised the already high stakes in a battle between the well-oiled machinery of Modi’s BJP and the fledgling, thin-on-organisation CJP.

“Abdul went to inspect the [government] school in Bengal where he once studied,” said Abhijeet Dipke, founder of the CJP. “It makes my blood boil that people are being murdered simply for demanding better schools.”

‘A disruptive change’

Ashutosh Ranka, a co-convenor of the Cockroach group, appeared emotional after meeting Hafeez’s family on Monday. He told reporters that the group proposed to press the government for compensation; however, Hafeez requested that a school be named after his father.

In Rajasthan, Ranka’s home state in western India, the group has faced other challenges.

Ranka joined a sit-in with primary school students in Alwar district on August 14 to demand additional rooms, clean toilets and drinking water. Local publications reported that the officials accepted the demands.

On Sunday, the Rajasthan government, also led by Modi’s BJP, imposed restrictions on so-called outsiders entering government schools and on taking photos and videos, citing students’ privacy.

The government notice, which ordered the school management to pursue criminal action against such surveys, came after Ranka had announced visits by CJP volunteers across the state.

Samina Bano, an education-policy expert who has advised several Indian states on reforms, told Al Jazeera that “it is essentially the system itself that is not working anymore for the people”.

In the last 10 years, Bano said, she had found “drunk teachers on duty during spot checks”, fake appointments in rural areas that many teachers do not want to go to, and other systemic failures that she insisted are common in the Indian public school system.

“Education in government-run schools a sorry state of affairs.
 It requires a disruptive change,” Bano said.

“The real problem is the quality of teaching, learning outcomes and the food,” Bano added, crediting the Cockroach pressure group for bringing the demands for reform into mainstream politics.

“They are bringing it into the discourse, but once people start demanding, there needs to be actual institution building, and that’s different work altogether,” Bano said. “There has to be an appetite to reimagine public education in India.”

‘Playing to strength’

After Gen Z protesters returned from the streets in New Delhi, the internet was instead flooded with videos of school-going children asking for better facilities across several states. They were blocking roads, circling local administration offices and fighting with bureaucrats.

The Cockroach party tapped into the momentum and announced its next phase in a smart mobilisation strategy, said Asim Ali, a political analyst in New Delhi.

“It plays to their strength of leveraging social media. Without many volunteers [like a traditional political party], they can outsource the grassroots work to followers on social media itself,” he said.

“By leveraging the power of social media, which is now felt in the remotest of corners in India, the Cockroach party has dramatically driven down organisational resource costs of a movement,” Ali added.

But Ali cautioned that this approach of relying on volunteers without political or organisational skills, protest experience or institutional support also exposes them to violence, as happened with the Hafeez family in West Bengal.

Yet the blood spilled in the eastern state hasn’t dimmed the drive from the CJP to demand accountability from authorities.

On Tuesday, Ranka announced on X that multiple venues in West Bengal’s capital Kolkata had cancelled or refused permission to the CJP to hold meet-ups with students.

“This only reinforces the fact that the BJP is scared from the cockroaches,” he wrote. “Cockroaches of Bengal will continue to visit govt schools and push the Bengal govt to get them fixed.

“The more you stop us, the bigger we become.”

Newcastle United have signed defender Amar Dedic from Benfica for about £30m.

Dedic has joined the club on a five-year deal after having a medical on Tyneside on Monday.

He has reunited with manager Matthias Jaissle, with whom he previously won the Austrian title at Red Bull Salzburg in 2023.

“It’s a special feeling and a really big honour for me to join Newcastle United,” he said after the move was announced on Tuesday, his 24th birthday.

“I’m really happy to be here and can’t wait to start playing for the club and the amazing fans.

“Working with Matthias again was a big factor for me. We know each other well. He knows what I can bring on the pitch and I’m really happy to be playing for him again.

“Playing Premier League football at St James’ Park is going to be really special. Every game feels like a big occasion, with an amazing atmosphere. I’m really excited to get started.”

Newcastle had been in the market for a new right-back following the departure of veteran Kieran Trippier, who joined Wolves on a free transfer when his contract expired earlier this summer.

Dedic could quickly be called upon to feature in Newcastle‘s season opener at home to Liverpool on Sunday as Tino Livramento is still recovering from a calf injury he sustained on international duty with England in June.

Jaissle said he was “really looking forward” to working with the defender again.

“He’s a player who I know really well, having worked with him from a young age in Austria and followed his career since,” he said.

“He will bring both defensive and attacking qualities to our squad, which suits the style of football that we want to play.

“He’s athletic, aggressive and technically very good, but also has a lot of potential to develop further.”

Supreme Court grants jailed ex-PM Imran Khan transfer to hospital for nearly a month after concerns were raised over his blood pressure.

Islamabad, Pakistan — Pakistan’s Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered the transfer of Imran Khan, former prime minister and founder of the opposition Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, from Rawalpindi’s Adiala prison to Islamabad’s Shifa International Hospital within two days, accepting a demand his party had been making for months.

Uzair Bhandari, one of Khan’s lawyers, told Al Jazeera the three-member bench also ordered a medical board be formed to oversee Khan’s treatment, including the ex-prime minister’s sister, Dr Uzma Khan, and his personal physician, Dr Faisal Sultan.

“The court also directed that Khan’s family be allowed to meet him at the hospital and that he be permitted to speak with his sons, who live abroad,” Bhandari said.

The next hearing has been fixed for September 16, and Khan should remain hospitalised until at least then as per the order, according to the lawyer. This will be the longest period that Khan will be physically outside jail premises since he was imprisoned in August 2023, convicted in several corruption-related cases that he and his party insist are politically motivated.

The order followed a report Adiala jail’s superintendent submitted to the court on Monday, detailing a cardiac board’s August 10 review of Khan, 73, which recorded fluctuating blood pressure and anxiety linked to restricted contact with his family.

During Tuesday’s hearing, the court pressed Pakistan’s advocate general over gaps in the report, saying Khan’s “pulse and heart condition were not normal” and that his vital organs “had started being affected”.

Courts had twice declined similar transfer requests since February, including an Islamabad High Court ruling that ordered a medical board’s assessment instead.

Zulfi Bukhari, a senior PTI leader, told Al Jazeera the ruling reinforced the party’s longstanding position that Khan needed independent, specialised treatment outside Adiala jail.

“Medical care provided within the prison system is no substitute for a thorough evaluation by independent specialists of his choosing,” he said, adding that PTI had consistently called for Khan’s transfer to Shifa International and access to his own doctors.

Government officials have insisted any transfer required judicial authorisation rather than executive discretion.

Rana Sanaullah, adviser to the prime minister, told the Senate on Monday that Khan was receiving “the best available medical treatment” and that his condition did not support PTI’s concerns.

The order lands amid a wider standoff over access to Khan, which PTI has increasingly framed as the precondition for reviving talks with the government. The government, for its part, has renewed efforts to engage in dialogue but to no avail as yet, while PTI leadership has announced a countrywide protest on September 27.

The attacks injured at least three people, including a girl, and damaged a Wildberries warehouse, Russian officials say.

Russian officials have reported more than 620 overnight drones targeting Moscow, in what appears to be one of Ukraine’s largest attacks on the Russian capital in years.

Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said Russian defences shot down 180 drones over the capital region between Monday evening and ‌5am (02:00 GMT) on Tuesday. He said 17 more drones were shot down en route to the capital later.

Russia’s state-run news agency TASS described the barrage as the largest drone attack on Moscow in the past two years.

The drone attack wounded three people, including a 10-year-old girl, Moscow region’s Governor Andrey Vorobyov said on Telegram. He said the “most serious consequences” were reported in the Pavlovsky Posad district, where a house burned down. Several more homes and a guesthouse were damaged in Bogorodsky district, he added.

A warehouse east of Moscow belonging to e-commerce giant Wildberries was damaged in Tuesday’s drone assault. In a statement, the company said its logistics complex sustained “minor damage” after “debris hit the wall of the building”.

Ukraine has struck multiple Wildberries warehouses in recent weeks, saying the company supplies components for Russian drones.

Five injured in Ukraine’s Kharkiv

Meanwhile, the Ukrainian air force reported shooting down or suppressing 111 of 147 “enemy” drone attacks overnight.

Kharkiv’s regional Governor Oleh Syniehubov said five people, including a nine-year-old boy, were injured in an overnight Russian attack on the city of Izyum.

Russian drones also sparked fires and damaged buildings in Kyiv region’s Brovary city, including an office building and warehouses, said Mayor Ihor Sapozhko.

With front-line fighting at a near standstill and talks frozen, Ukraine and Russia have significantly stepped up long-distance attacks, pushing the civilian death toll to its highest levels since the war’s first months in 2022.

In July alone, 437 civilians were killed in Ukraine, the highest monthly toll since May 2022, according to a United Nations tally.

Russian authorities reported 79 civilians killed in Ukrainian attacks in July, up from the previous month.

The number of job vacancies has fallen to its lowest level in more than five years as smaller businesses cut back on recruitment, the latest official figures indicate.

Vacancy numbers dipped slightly over the May-to-July period to 707,000, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), which said small firms were citing labour and operating costs as reasons for scaling back hiring.

The ONS said the labour market was “little changed overall”, with the unemployment rate remaining at 4.9%.

Growth in regular earnings – which excludes bonuses – picked up slightly, rising at an annual pace of 3.5% in the three months to June.

“The UK labour market remains stuck in a low-churn limbo, with employers reluctant to hire, fire or offer bigger pay rises as they grapple with rising costs, intensifying global headwinds and heightened policy uncertainty,” said Suren Thiru, chief economist at the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales.

“The persistent slide in vacancies is a red flag for the jobs market, suggesting labour demand is shrinking amid soaring employment and energy costs, while greater automation is also squeezing some entry-level roles.”

Yael Selfin, chief economist at KPMG, noted that while pay growth picked up, this was “driven by a rise in public sector wages”.

Private sector pay growth, which she said gave more accurate picture of underlying conditions in the labour market, slowed to 2.8%.

President Donald Trump doubled down on Monday about one of his reasons for ordering the Pentagon to “substantially reduce” joint military training exercises with South Korea. Trump said he is upset Seoul would not assist his war against Iran after years of U.S. protection from North Korea. This all started a day earlier in a Truth Social post where he said his close relationship with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un and concerns about the cost of military exercises were motivating factors for his decision.

“South Korea has been protected by us for many, many years, and during my first term, they agreed to pay close to $3 billion a year for protection because they essentially weren’t paying,” Trump explained at an afternoon press conference. “And I asked them to do that at my request. They weren’t happy about it, but they agreed. I asked for $10 billion and they were very unhappy, but we agreed for a short term that it would be $3 billion, and next year would go up, and the next year would go up. So they start paying for their protection.”

That stopped when Joe Biden became president, Trump complained.

“When I called recently, the president of South Korea, who I like, I think he’s very nice actually. But I called him. I said, ‘Would you like to give us a little hand? We don’t need help with Iran, but if you’d like, give us a hand with Iran.’ He said, ‘No thanks.’ And I said, ‘Wait a minute. We have 39,000 soldiers over there guarding you from Kim Jong Un, your next-door neighbor, and you’re not going to help us on a very easy military operation in Iran. That’s strange.’”

Trump claimed South Korean President Lee Jae-Myung said, “No, no, we’d rather not get involved.”

“I said, ‘well, why are we involved in helping you?’” the American leader proclaimed.

Monday afternoon, the Pentagon said it “is actively working on executing the Commander-in-Chief’s directive” regarding the annual Ulchi Freedom Shield military exercise in South Korea. It already began on Monday as scheduled. When asked by TWZ for details about the timeline or how much U.S. support for the exercise will be reduced, the Pentagon declined comment.

South Korea’s presidential Blue House said it was reviewing Trump’s comments, adding that it would continue working with the U.S. on details related to the drills and the “maintenance of firm combined defense posture,” CNN noted.

There are about 28,500 U.S. troops on the peninsula and many have already begun preparation for the exercise, according to U.S. Forces Korea (USFK). While the U.S. has typically provided few details about how many of its troops take part in Ulchi Freedom Shield, there will be about 18,000 South Korean forces involved, which mirrors last year’s levels.

Scheduled to run through Aug. 27, Ulchi Freedom Shield is “a defense-oriented exercise featuring live-fire, constructive, and field training exercises that engage alliance forces and governmental agencies,” according to U.S. Forces Korea. This year’s drills were designed to reflect evolving threats from North Korea including drones, GPS disruption and cyberattack.

The goal is to “build understanding between Combined Forces Command, United States Forces Korea, the United Nations Command, and ROK Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), ROK government agencies.”

The exercise traditionally integrates ground, air, naval, space, cyber and information elements. It focuses on a wide range of training for urban warfare, counter Weapons of Mass Destruction, wet-gap crossing, air defense mobilization, tactical aviation dogfighting, contested logistics and combat search and rescue among many other aspects. 

“This combined exercise program highlights the ironclad commitment between the two nations to maintain a robust combined defense posture and to defend the people of the ROK from any threat,” USFK said about last year’s exercise. 

As noted earlier in this story, Trump said he ordered the rollback in U.S. participation in joint exercises on the peninsula as a result of his bonds with North Korea’s leader and concerns about cost involved. He also said South Korea’s decision not to provide more support for the war against Iran was a factor.

“Based on my very good relationship with Kim Jong Un, of North Korea, I am not happy with the fact that the United States has, long ago, agreed to participate in Joint Military Exercises with South Korea,” Trump stated on Truth Social. “These exercises are not only costly, with much of these costs paid for by the United States of America (as usual!), but send a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile, to a Country that, as long as Donald J. Trump has been President, has been unthreatening and respectful. Therefore, and based on the fact that it is too late to cancel, I have instructed Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, to substantially reduce the Joint Military Exercises!”

In addition, Trump proclaimed that: “While somewhat unrelated (?), I recently asked the President of South Korea if they would like to join us in the Denuclearization of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and they said, ‘No thanks!’”

Trump’s Truth Social post came days after North Korea fired a ​ballistic missile toward the sea off the Korean peninsula’s east coast as a message of protest against the looming training exercise. As we have noted in the past, joint exercises like these are typically met by missile tests and other saber-rattling from north of the border, although Ulchi Freedom Shield is a regular summer occurrence, albeit one that focuses closely on North Korean threats.

Last week, the South Korean military “fired warning shots after a group of North Korean soldiers crossed the inter-Korean land boundary, prompting them to return to their side,” the Yonhap News Agency reported on Sunday. “It marked the South Korean military’s first warning shots this year in response to North Korean troops crossing the boundary. No prior MDL violations by the North Korean military had been reported this year.”

Trump’s Truth Social post hit just as South Koreans – 13 hours ahead of Eastern Time – were starting their work week. In-Bum Chun, a retired South Korean lieutenant general who ran that nation’s special operations forces and is now a military analyst, told TWZ that Ulchi Freedom Shield is a “very” important event for South Korea. He suggested there will be mixed reactions to Trump’s move in the country, with people on the left favoring the move, people on the right seeing it as “a good reason for nuclear weapons” and moderates not taking a stand either way.

With plans to build its own nuclear-powered submarines with ballistic missile capabilities, Seoul is at least keeping its nuclear options open, which you can read more about here.

Meanwhile, South Korea’s president has proposed officially ending the conflict with the North. The Korean War, which erupted in 1950, has been effectively frozen since an armistice was signed in 1953.

The president’s move toward a détente with the North is a repeat of previous actions toward Pyongyang. During his first term in 2018, Trump promised Kim that he would halt U.S.-South Korea military exercises, saying they are “provocative” and “tremendously expensive.”

In addition, he has also previously suggested reducing troop levels in South Korea. While his Truth Social post didn’t raise that issue, earlier this year, the Pentagon moved air defense assets from South Korea to the Middle East to help defend against Iranian missile and drone barrages. It is unclear if those systems have been returned.

Given the ongoing presence in the Middle East, the U.S. military is under strain, which is likely an unspoken motivating factor as well for the move to curtail training with South Korea.

There is growing concern among Asian allies about Trump’s commitment to the region. In January, the National Defense Strategy was unveiled and no longer focused primarily on countering China — a dramatic shift from even the first Trump administration. Last week, Trump ordered the USS George Washington, the only aircraft left in the western Pacific, to head toward the Middle East to relieve the beleaguered USS Abraham Lincoln. The Lincoln is at the center of a controversy over the mental and physical health conditions of those aboard after a long deployment.

USS George Washington (CVN 73) Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, USS Robert Smalls (CG 62) Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser and USS Shoup (DDG 86) Arleigh Burke-class Flight IIA guided missile destroyer westbound in the Singapore Strait – August 13, 2026 SRC: INST- dc_ah pic.twitter.com/kZWHc9QISt

— WarshipCam (@WarshipCam) August 13, 2026

America’s strongest ally in the region, Japan, is forging closer relations with South Korea over growing anxieties about U.S. reliability.

The two countries’ “exposure to a nuclear-armed North Korea, adds urgency to moving the relationship beyond its current surface-level fence-mending,” the East Asia Forum recently noted. 

Faced with concerns about the future of U.S. commitments, as well as growing tensions with China, Tokyo is undergoing its largest military buildup since World War II.

Meanwhile, in an issue that has spanned several U.S. administrations, there is a large backlog in the amount of U.S. military aid promised to Taiwan. Under the Trump administration, however, there is growing distrust in Taiwan about whether America will come to its aid should China invade. 

It is unclear why Trump is once again making overtures to Kim. Today at the White House, he said that the North Korean leader has responded to his request for a conversation, though he offered no further details.

How a reduction in U.S. participation in training exercises Kim sees as a direct threat will affect the North Korean leader’s actions remains unknown. As we have frequently reported, he is building up his military, including his nuclear arsenal and ballistic missiles and has sent his troops to Russia, gaining experience fighting Ukraine.

During his first term, Trump sent three aircraft carriers to patrol the waters off the peninsula after a 2017 Pyongyang ballistic missile test and promised to unleash “the fire and fury” of America’s nuclear arsenal on North Korea. While that eventually spurred three face-to-face meetings between Trump and Kim, there was no change in the North Korean leader’s ambitions and his nuclear program only grew.

Contact the author: howard@twz.com

In opening arguments, the prosecution portrayed Davis as the ringleader of the group responsible for the shooting – and point to a memoir he co-authored where he wrote in detail about the night of the shooting.

“Let’s be clear, Duane Davis did not pull the trigger. But he did plan the shooting in retaliation of the beating of his nephew,” Chief Deputy District Attorney Binu Palal told the jury. “Remarkably, you will learn that from Duane Davis himself.”

Davis’ attorneys called the narrative “fiction”, dubbing the case a product of a flawed-decades-long investigation. Davis has distanced himself from the memoir, saying he didn’t write all of it and parts were fictionalised to sell more copies.

Davis, wearing a navy suit and blue tie, sat with his defence team as they questioned why no one had been arrested for nearly three decades and asked why “no one corroborates any of this”.

“What facts do they have after 30 years?” his attorney Michael Sanft questioned.

The prosecution’s first witness was Garry Dale, who was working for the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department at the time of the shooting in September 1996.

The officer detailed riding in an ambulance with Shakur after he’d been shot. He said the rapper refused to offer any information on what happened and who had shot him. “We’ll take care of it,” Shakur said, according to the officer’s testimony.

At the core of the case is East Coast vs West Coast rap rivalries and turf wars between the Bloods and the Crips street gangs that were immortalised in rap lyrics and news reports in the 1990s.

Police have long said said a lack of cooperation in the case led to dead ends in their investigation. Members of the rapper’s entourage, though, have accused authorities of initially treating them like suspects and failing to follow important leads.

Throughout the day on Monday, prosecutors painted that picture for the jury, explaining that there were no formal criminal charges in the shooting because in the world of guns and gangs “silence means survival”.

But “one person” who had a hard time staying silent was the defendant, prosecutors said, noting that Davis gave a “number” of statements on the case between 1998 and 2003.

Prosecutors allege Davis planned the shooting after his nephew Orlando Anderson was involved in a fight with Shakur in Las Vegas hours earlier. They argued Davis believed the attack on his nephew could not “go unanswered”.

The iconic rapper was just 25 years old when he was gunned down after a Mike Tyson boxing match on 7 September 1996. He died six days after the shooting.

Prosecutors contend that Davis – a former leader of the South Side Compton Crips street gang – was the “on-ground, on-site commander” who “ordered the death” of Shakur.

The murder case had largely gone cold until public statements made by Davis himself, who published a memoir in 2019. In it, and in various interviews, Davis has claimed he was a passenger in the vehicle that fired into Shakur’s car that night.

He said in the book that he gave the gun used in the murder to his nephew, Anderson, who shot the rapper.

His attorneys have argued the book is fiction and shouldn’t be used as evidence in a criminal trial relating to a case from three decades ago, but a judge ruled it could be used in court.

His defence team has pointed to missing police reports, disputed evidence and “biased, sloppy and incomplete” detective work.

They alleged prosecutors relied on “unreliable people with criminal records, financial motivations and inconsistent statements”.

The defence also argued witnesses changed their stories over time and were influenced by money, media attention or information supplied by investigators.