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One soldier was injured Thursday morning after an explosion occurred inside the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) separating the two Koreas, officials said.

The explosion took place at 9:20 a.m. on the western front of the DMZ in Paju, just northwest of Seoul, for unknown reasons, according to officials.

A 24-year-old Army staff sergeant, who was on a mission to detect land mines on the southern side of the inter-Korean border at the time, sustained what is presumed to be an ankle fracture due to the blast.

He was wearing anti-mine protective gear and sustained non-life-threatening injuries, officials said.

Military authorities are investigating the exact cause of the accident.

Copyright (c) Yonhap News Agency prohibits its content from being redistributed or reprinted without consent, and forbids the content from being learned and used by artificial intelligence systems.

Bola Tinubu says he suspended the trip in light of the abductions and a separate church attack in which armed men killed two people.

Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu has postponed his trip to South Africa for the Group of 20 summit, promising to intensify efforts to rescue 24 schoolgirls abducted by armed men earlier this week.

The president’s spokesperson, Bayo Onanuga, said in a statement on Wednesday that Tinubu suspended his departure in light of the girls’ abduction and a separate church attack in which gunmen killed two people.

Tinubu had been set to leave on Wednesday, days before the two-day summit of the world’s leading rich and developing nations was due to begin on Saturday.

“Disturbed by the security breaches in Kebbi State and Tuesday’s attack by bandits against worshippers at Christ Apostolic Church, Eruku, President Tinubu decided to suspend his departure” to the G20 summit, Onanuga said.

It was not clear immediately if or when Tinubu would leave for the weekend summit in Johannesburg.

Search for abducted girls ongoing

The schoolgirls were abducted by unidentified armed men from a secondary school in the northwestern town of Maga in Kebbi State late on Sunday night.

The attackers exchanged gunfire with police before scaling the perimeter fence and abducting the students.

One of the girls managed to escape, authorities said, but the school’s vice principal was killed. No group immediately claimed responsibility for abducting the girls, and their motivation was unclear.

Authorities say the gunmen are mostly former herders who have taken up arms against farming communities after clashes between them over strained resources.

In a separate attack on a church in western Nigeria on Tuesday, armed men killed two people during a service that was recorded and broadcast online.

Supporters of United States President Donald Trump have seized on the violence to embolden their claim that Christians are under attack in Nigeria.

Trump has threatened to invade Nigeria “guns-a-blazing” over what right-wing lawmakers in the US allege is a “Christian genocide“.

Nigeria has rejected the US president’s statements, saying more Muslims have been killed in the country’s various security crises.

The tourist boats that typically navigate Kenya’s renowned Lake Naivasha have recently taken on a new role: rescuing hundreds from inundated homes.

Though the lake’s water level has been increasing for more than a decade with repeated flooding, residents of the modest Kihoto district are stunned by this year’s unprecedented scale.

“It hasn’t happened like this before,” said resident Rose Alero.

According to local officials, the Rift Valley lake has advanced an unprecedented 1.5km (about 1 mile) inland.

“People are suffering,” said Alero, a 51-year-old grandmother, noting that many neighbours have fallen ill.

In her home, water reaches waist height, while throughout the district, toilets are overflowing.

“People are stuck … they have nowhere to go.”

The devastation is widespread: hundreds of homes are completely underwater, churches are destroyed, and police stations are submerged, surrounded by floating vegetation.

During one sudden water surge, children evacuated a school on improvised rafts.

Joyce Cheche, Nakuru County’s disaster risk management head, estimates 7,000 people have been displaced by the rising waters, which also impact wildlife and threaten tourism and commerce.

The county has provided transport assistance and implemented health measures, Cheche said, though financial compensation has not been offered yet.

Workers in the crucial flower export sector are avoiding work, fearing cholera and landslides.

She also highlighted the danger of encounters with the lake’s numerous hippos.

“We didn’t see it coming,” Cheche admitted.

At the lake’s edge, bare acacia trunks that were once lush now stand submerged in waters advancing about 1 metre (3.3 feet) daily.

This phenomenon affects other Rift Valley lakes and has displaced hundreds of thousands.

Numerous studies primarily attribute this to increased rainfall driven by climate change.

However, Kenyan geologist John Lagat, regional manager at the state-owned Geothermal Development Corporation, points to tectonics as the main cause, noting the lakes’ position along a major geological fault.

When English settlers arrived in the late 19th century, the lake was even larger before shifting tectonic plates reduced it to just 1km (0.6 miles) in diameter by 1921.

Subsequent tectonic movements increasingly sealed underground outflows, trapping water, Lagat explained, though he acknowledged that increased rainfall and land degradation from population growth also play a “substantial” role in flooding.

“We are very worried,” said Alero from her flooded home, dreading the upcoming rainy season.

“We can’t tell what will happen.”

Andy Burnham has twice failed to rule out a Labour leadership bid, after an MP said he would vacate his seat so the Greater Manchester mayor can return to Westminster.

Burnham has been at the centre of speculation about a move against Sir Keir Starmer since Labour’s autumn conference but could only do so if he was an MP.

On Wednesday, Norwich South MP Clive Lewis said he was willing to step down to potentially make way for Burnham to return to the Commons via a by-election.

Burnham was quizzed on the MP’s offer on both BBC Breakfast and BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, but would only say he is “fully focused” on his current role as mayor.

On BBC Breakfast, presenter Naga Munchetty tried to pin Burnham down on whether he would see out his full term as mayor, running until 2028.

“I don’t know what the world holds but I’m focused on my job here in Greater Manchester,” he responded.

Pushed further, he said “I haven’t launched any leadership challenge” before adding “I’m not going to sit here this morning and rule out what might or might not happen in future – I don’t know what the future will hold.”

Burnham then criticised journalists for speculating, saying he is “constantly answering hypothetical questions” and claimed MPs in Westminster were “constantly speculating and not putting forward solutions”.

The Labour Party rules for any leadership challenge state that candidates must be an MP and also secure the backing of at least 80 MPs to run against the incumbent.

Two Manchester MPs, Andrew Gwynne and Graham Stringer, previously ruled out stepping down from their seats so Burnham could run.

On Wednesday, Lewis told BBC’s Politics Live that stepping aside for Burnham was “a question I’ve asked myself,” adding that the answer would have to be “yes”.

The MP, who has represented Norwich South for 10 years, later told The Sun he had “no plans to stand down” and had been answering a “hypothetical question”.

The Norwich South MP last week said Sir Keir’s position as prime minister was “untenable” and told Channel 4 News that Burnham should be given the chance to “step up”.

On the Today programme, presenter Emma Barnett asked Burnham whether he would take Lewis up on his offer of vacating a seat, but he would only say “I appreciate the support” and repeated how he was focused on his current job.

Before becoming Manchester mayor in 2017, Burnham served as a cabinet and shadow cabinet minister under successive Labour leaders and made two unsuccessful Labour leadership bids.

Lewis first won his seat in 2015, and last year he increased his majority to more than 13,000.

But if he were to step down, any would-be successor would first need to win a selection contest before a by-election was held.

Nov. 20 (UPI) — A Philippine judge on Thursday sentenced a former mayor convicted of human trafficking in connection with an illegal offshore gambling operation in her town, according to local reports.

Alice Guo, the disgraced 35-year-old former mayor of Bamban, Tarlac, located about 62 miles northeast of the capital Manila, was sentenced by the Pasig Regional Trial Court to life in prison, Rappler reported.

She was convicted along with seven co-defendants, while five others were acquitted. The case remains open.

“This eagerly awaited ruling is not only a legal victory but also a moral one,” the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission said in a statement.

“It delivers justice to victims, reaffirms the government’s united stance against organized crime and marks a defining moment in the country’s fight against large-scale trafficking and online scam syndicates.”

Guo was charged following a March 2024 raid on a Bamban casino operated by Chinese-owned Zun Yuan Technology Inc., rescuing nearly 800 people, more than half of them foreigners. Authorities alleged human trafficking was being perpetrated by the offshore gaming operator.

Prosecutors said the company that had leased the 7.9-hectare compound to Zun Yuan Technology was Baofu, which was incorporated by Guo. Rappler reported that her business partner in Baofu was Huang Zhiyan, a notorious Chinese gang leader wanted in China.

Guo said she had divested from Baofu before running for mayor, but it was proven in court that she did not do so. Guo was elected mayor of Bamban in 2022, but was removed from office after it was ruled that she was a Chinese citizen, born Guo Hua Ping.

She was arrested in September 2024 in Indonesia after fleeing the Philippines.

According to the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission, the court ordered the criminal forfeiture of the 7.9-hectare compound of the illegal offshore gambling operation that contains 36 buildings worth about $66 million.

The government continues to seek the civil forfeiture of additional assets linked to Guo, including 27 bank accounts holding $1.23 million as well as 18 vehicles and 14 properties, it said.

“The Alice Guo case is a story of a nation that refused to be deceived, of institutions that stood firm and of victims whose voices now echo through every courtroom decision,” PAOCC Executive Director Undersecretary Benjamin Acorda Jr. said in a statement.

“It is proof that no matter how elaborate the scheme, how powerful the mastermind or how long the deception, justice will find its way.”

The U.S. Army’s top brass is in Ukraine to help reinvigorate a moribund peace process. Led by Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, it includes Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George, the commander of U.S. Army Europe and Africa Gen. Chris Donahue, and Sergeant Major of the Army Michael Weimer. It is the highest-ranking Trump delegation so far to visit the war-torn nation. 

Driscoll and his contingent are set to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky tomorrow and have already been briefed by top Ukrainian military leaders. The meetings are taking place amid swirling rumors about a peace plan in the works that we will discuss in greater length later in this story.

Their visit comes on a day that Kyiv continues to lose ground on the battlefield, Russia carried out one of its deadliest strikes on western Ukraine and Zelensky finds his administration embroiled in its biggest political scandal that threatens to fracture his government.

In addition to talking about the peace plan, Army leaders were also in Kyiv to learn more about Ukraine’s battlefield innovations.

Driscoll told “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” on Sunday that Ukraine’s use of drones and AI technology is an “incredible treasure trove of information for future warfare.” He particularly noted Operation Spider Web, the surprise attack Ukraine launched in June deep inside Russia. Driscoll pointed out that a “couple hundred thousand dollars worth of drones” to destroy Russian equipment valued at about $10 billion. During Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s visit to the White House last month, he offered drone technology to the U.S.

During his meeting with the Driscoll contingent, Ukraine’s military commander-in-chief said he explained the latest battlefield conditions, Kyiv’s ongoing need for weaponry and his nation’s defense technology advancements.

“I emphasized that the enemy is building up its troop formations, continuing offensive operations and increasing their intensity, and launching missile strikes against residential areas, resulting in numerous civilian casualties,” Oleksandr Syrskyi said on Facebook. “We discussed strengthening Ukraine’s capabilities in air and missile defense, deep-strike systems, unmanned systems, training of the Defense Forces personnel, and other priority areas,” Syrskyi added. “I once again stressed that reinforcing the protection of Ukraine’s airspace, expanding our long-range strike capabilities against enemy military targets, and maintaining and stabilizing the front line will undermine the offensive potential of the adversary and ultimately compel it toward a just peace.”

Syrskyi also noted that Ukraine has severely damaged Russia’s energy infrastructure in long-range strikes and that his country’s “unique combat experience and rapid innovation cycles will contribute to scaling up mutually beneficial Ukrainian–American cooperation in the defense sector.”

However, as Syrskyi was meeting with the Americans, Russian forces were pushing deeper into yet another eastern Ukrainian city.

“BREAKING on the Donetsk front: Russian forces have broken through Ukrainian defenses south of Siversk,” former Zelensky spokesperson Iulia Mendel proclaimed on X. “Russians entered Siversk from the south and now control roughly 20% of the city. Ukrainian soldier ‘Muchnyi’ confirms the southern flank is gradually collapsing; Russians are infiltrating in small assault groups and trying to dig in inside the private residential sector. Siversk is under direct threat.”

The growing encroachment into Siversk comes as Russian forces are working to encircle Ukrainian troops across the Donetsk region. The Russian advances there come as they are also getting closer to seizing the former coal mining city of Pokrovsk, about 60 miles to the southwest. For more than a year, Pokrovsk has served as a bulwark against Russian advances in the region, inflicting a tremendous amount of damage on the invaders. You can see more about that fight in the following video by Kyiv Independent reporter Francis Farrel.

Beyond the frontlines, Russia staged one of its most deadly attacks on western Ukraine. 

At least 25 people, including three children, were killed in a Russian missile and drone attack that struck two blocks of apartments in the city of Ternopil, Zelensky said. Another 93 people were wounded.

“Again, the Russians killed innocent peaceful people who were simply sleeping in their homes,” he stated. “My condolences to all who lost relatives and loved ones.”

Right now, all our services keep working in Ternopil to help the victims and save as many lives as possible. Points of Invincibility have been set up, where people can receive the support they need.

Tragically, tonight, the people of Ternopil suffered the most from Russian… pic.twitter.com/AT5iswjqwj

— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) November 19, 2025

Meanwhile, Zelensky finds himself in tremendous political peril at home as members of his inner circle stand accused of stealing $100 million from the state-owned nuclear power company.

“At the heart of the case is Energoatom, the nuclear power company,” The New York Times explained. “Investigators said that participants in the scheme had pressured Energoatom contractors to pay kickbacks of 10 to 15 percent.”

“If contractors refused, they were denied payments owed by Energoatom, according to investigators,” the Times added. “The scheme, they said, exploited a rule under martial law that prevents contractors from collecting debts in court from companies providing essential services, including Energoatom, which covers more than half of Ukraine’s electricity needs.”

According to investigators, the scheme was led by Timur Mindich, who co-owned a television studio founded by Zelensky, now facing growing calls for a purge of his associates. “Fedir Venislavskiy, a member of Mr. Zelensky’s party, said that the president’s powerful chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, should resign” as a result, the publication noted.

The issue has raised the ire of international donors and has weakened the Ukrainian leader’s hand, the BBC noted in the following newscast.

“Zelenksy is in the weakest position he’s been [in]…”

Robert Wilkie, who served in the first Trump administration, says corruption allegations facing the Ukrainian Government could weaken its hand in a reported US peace plan, and even force a change in leadership.#Newsnight pic.twitter.com/lPNGuzgbpc

— BBC Newsnight (@BBCNewsnight) November 19, 2025

Against the backdrop of all these events, the Trump administration is taking another stab at bringing the nearly four-year-old full-scale war to a close.

“U.S. and Russian officials have quietly drafted a new plan to end the war in Ukraine that would require Kyiv to surrender territory and severely limit the size of its military,” the Guardian noted. 

“The 28-point Trump plan calls for Russia to gain full de facto control of Luhansk and Donetsk (together referred to as the Donbas), despite Ukraine still controlling around 14.5% of the territory there, per the latest analysis by the Institute for the Study of War,” Axios reported.

“Despite being under Russian control, the areas in Donbas from which Ukraine would withdraw would be considered a demilitarized zone, with Russia not able to position troops there,” the outlet added. “In two other war-torn regions, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, the current lines of control would mostly be frozen in place, with Russia returning some land, subject to negotiations.”

“Crucially, it also calls for Ukraine to abandon key categories of weaponry and would include the rollback of U.S. military assistance that has been vital to its defense, potentially leaving the country vulnerable to future Russian aggression,” Financial Times suggested. “Additionally, no foreign troops would be allowed on Ukrainian soil and Kyiv would no longer receive western long-range weapons that can reach deep inside Russia.”

Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s envoy Kirill Dmitriev are believed to have been involved in working on the 28-point peace plan,” the BBC pointed out. Zelensky and Trump “have already agreed to stop the conflict along the existing lines of engagement, and there are agreements on granting security guarantees,” according to the BBC.

The Trump administration has signaled to Zelensky “that Ukraine must accept a U.S.-drafted framework to end the war,” Reuters wrote. 

It is still early in the process, however, and it is possible that some of these reports may prove premature or inaccurate, and it is possible the terms may change or still be in flux.

Zelensky, meanwhile, was meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Ankara to talk about a potential peace plan.

“We discussed in detail the real ways to a reliable and dignified end to the war,” Zelensky explained. “Since the beginning of this year, we in Ukraine have supported all decisive steps and the leadership of President Trump, every strong and fair proposal to end this war.”

“And only President Trump and the United States of America have enough power to finally end the war,” he added. “But the main thing to stop the bloodshed and achieve lasting peace is that we work in coordination together with all partners and that American leadership remains effective, strong, and brings peace that will last long and provide security to the people.”

There is still a very long way to go before the guns fall silent, and the success of this latest Trump effort remains uncertain. However, given all the pressure he is under at home and abroad, Zelensky finds himself in his weakest bargaining position since Russian forces rolled into his country in February 2022.

Contact the author: howard@thewarzone.com

One month before he opened this year’s United Nations climate summit, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva helped open a new mega-factory at the site of a former Ford car manufacturing plant.

The new plant, in Brazil’s Camacari, Bahia, is one of many being built around the world by China’s BYD, the world’s largest manufacturer of electric cars.

BYD’s presence is also being felt at the ongoing COP30 climate summit in Brazil’s Belem, where it is a cosponsor alongside GWM, another Chinese electric carmaker.

The sponsorship is just one of many ways that China’s investments in green technology are being felt at the UN’s top climate meeting, where the Chinese official delegation of 789 people is second only to Brazil’s 3,805.

It is a stark contrast to the United States, whose federal government has not sent an official delegation. California’s Governor Gavin Newsom has accused US President Donald Trump of “handing the future to China” and leaving states like California to pick up the slack, in a speech at the summit.

“ China is here. Only one country’s not here: United States of America,” Newsom said. Trump has called concerns over climate change a “hoax” and a “con job”.

But the UN Climate Change Conference COP30 is not the only event where the diverging paths that China and the US are taking on addressing the climate crisis are being felt.

Back in the US, and in neighbouring Canada, trade barriers aimed at punishing Chinese electric vehicles have made them far costlier than what the manufacturers want to sell them for.

These tariffs are a legacy of former US President Joe Biden’s administration, and place North America as an outlier at a time when Chinese EVs otherwise dominate the global market.

How dominant is China in EVs?

Joel Jaeger, a senior research associate with the World Resources Institute, told Al Jazeera that Chinese EVs have “really upended the car market” in recent years.

China has gone “from basically not a major player five years ago” to becoming “the number one exporter of cars globally in terms of the units”, says Jaeger.

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), China manufactured 12.4 million electric cars in 2024, more than 70 percent of the 17.3 million electric cars manufactured globally last year.

Of these, China exported about 1.25 million cars, representing 40 percent of global exports, while the remaining Chinese-made cars — the vast majority — were sold domestically.

This dominance has been built on the back of “subsidies that China’s put in place to develop its industry, which I think is a very strategic thing that China has done, both for its own economic growth as well as decarbonisation”, Jaeger said.

But on the streets of the US or Canada, Chinese EVs are still relatively rare.

Why are Chinese EVs less affordable in the US and Canada?

According to Jaeger, “prohibitive” tariffs mean that Chinese EVs are almost impossible to buy in the US and Canada.

“In the last year, the US and Canada both put on basically completely prohibitive tariffs on EVs [of] over 100 percent in both places,” he added.

Notably, the steep import taxes on Chinese EVs in the US were introduced under Biden, a Democrat, who championed renewable energy, in contrast to Trump, who has pledged to fight it and “drill, baby, drill” for oil.

A month after the US introduced 100 percent tariffs on Chinese EVs in September 2024, Canada brought in identical tariffs of its own.

It means that a car that a Chinese EV manufacturer might be selling at $30,000 actually costs at least $60,000 in the US or Canada. This makes it hard for even cheaper Chinese models to compete with the higher-end US electric models, which on average retail for approximately $55,000.

These tariffs, along with other US policies, have meant that Chinese manufacturers have yet to set up shop in the US.

In Canada, Addisu Lashitew, an associate professor of business at McMaster University, told Al Jazeera that the steep tariffs conflict with targets set to transition fully to electric cars by 2035, but are also complicated due to Canada’s close trading ties with the US.

“The problem is that one, we are going through a very complex trade talk with the US now,” said Lashitew. “And two, our supply chain has also [been] very much integrated. Many of the American manufacturers are here, and Canadian firms are mainly suppliers.”

But while it is almost impossible to buy a cheap Chinese electric car in the US, Jaeger says this does not mean that North America is completely missing out on importing new Chinese technology.

“The US, for example, imports a lot of batteries from China. It’s actually the second-biggest importer of lithium-ion batteries behind Germany in the world, from China. So, they’re using them in US-made EVs,” he said.

Where can you buy cheap Chinese electric cars?

In contrast with the US and Canada, said Jaeger, many other countries have been more open to China’s EV market.

“You see different reactions from different countries, depending on their relationship with China, but mostly depending upon their domestic auto manufacturing presence,” he said.

Lashitew told Al Jazeera that Chinese exporters, including BYD as well as some smaller firms, are “targeting many emerging and developing countries”.

“Ironically, we’re in a situation where in the transportation sector, the energy transition is happening much faster in the Global South than in North America, at least.”

Chinese electric cars have also continued to sell well in many European countries, says Jaeger, despite those countries also imposing some tariffs, though lower than the US and Canada, “for what they see as unfair competitive practices in China”.

Still, while BYD has built factories in Japan, Hungary and India, as well as Brazil, its biggest presence remains in China, where the company was founded in Shenzhen in 1995. A majority of the 4.27 million electric cars that BYD sold in 2024 were bought by Chinese consumers. BYD also has a manufacturing presence in Lancaster, California, where it builds electric buses and batteries, but not cars.

In China, the local market has grown in part due to incentives from the government, which also saw electric cars as part of its strategy to bring down air pollution in big cities like Beijing and Shanghai.

Customers in China have benefitted from the government’s approach, including through access to new technology. For example, a new battery, which BYD announced in March with the promise of charging for 400km (about 250 miles) of travel in just five minutes, is first being made available for preorder to customers in China only.

How expensive are EVs?

They used to be costlier than cars that run on petrol or diesel. But according to the IEA, the cost of owning an electric car over the vehicle’s entire lifetime is now less than fossil fuel-powered cars, due to the reduced costs of fuel and maintenance.

Buying an electric car is still often more expensive, though.

That is where China’s subsidies to manufacturers help. The IEA has found that prices for electric cars in China are similar to petrol and diesel cars, with half of all electric cars being sold for less than $30,000 and a wide range of lower-priced models available.

By contrast, in the US and Europe, “the range [of available EVs] was skewed towards higher-end models with higher prices”, according to the IEA.

Under Biden, the US tried to boost its domestic electric vehicle industry, while also trying to get the sector to reduce dependence on China.

Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) introduced incentives for US manufacturers that did not use any Chinese parts. The IRA also introduced subsidies for consumers who bought EVs, though these have largely been overturned by Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill, which became law in July.

Nevertheless, even with the Biden-era incentives, only one in 10 cars sold in the US in 2024 was electric, while more than half of all new cars sold last year in China were electric.

Not just cars

While electric cars grab most headlines on sustainable transport, people are also increasingly turning to electric bicycles, scooters, motorcycles, buses and even trains in many parts of the world.

Even in the US, says Jaeger, there has been a significant growth in the number of electric scooters and two-wheelers imported from China.

According to data from the Observatory of Economic Complexity (OEC), the US imported $1.5bn worth of electric two-wheelers from China in the 12 months up to September 2025, an increase of $275m — or more than 20 percent — from the previous year. Experts say that is because scooters are cheaper than cars, and because US tariffs on Chinese electric scooters are also lower than on electric cars.

Meanwhile, in Vietnam, the government has said it will ban petrol-powered motorbikes in the centre of its capital, Hanoi, from July next year, as part of a plan to tackle local air pollution.

According to the IEA, some 40 percent of bus sales are now electric in European countries, including Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands and Norway.

There have also been increases in electric bus sales in Central and South America. In Mexico, for example, “close to 18 percent of all bus sales were electric in 2024, up from just above 1 percent in 2023”, according to the IEA.

Still, the US continues to struggle here, too. Electric bus sales declined in 2024, according to the IEA, after the leading electric bus manufacturer went bankrupt and a second company stopped manufacturing in the US market after suffering sustained financial losses.

This article will discuss the political context and strategic implications of the dissolution of the Partiya Karkerên Kurdistanê (PKK) as a development that reconstructs the domestic political dynamics of Turkey and the Middle East region. For more than four decades, the Kurdish insurgency in Turkey initiated by the Partiya Karkerên Kurdistanê (PKK) has represented the rise of non-state actors as a new force in the international system while challenging the dominance of the state as the sole actor in the modern political configuration. The struggle for recognition of identity and official governmental autonomy ended with an official statement from its main pillar, Abdullah Öcalan, who was still in prison in February 2025. This call was then conveyed by a member of parliament from the pro-Kurdish party, containing orders to lay down arms, disband and end the armed conflict with Turkey. The dissolution of the PKK reinforced Ankara’s consolidation of power and strengthened the legitimacy of Turkey’s foreign policy under the Neo-Ottoman ideology. At the same time, the decision to dissolve the PKK reduced the space for Kurdish political articulation, which had opposed the government’s nationalist-Islamist and centralised narrative within the framework of the state.

PKK: Evolution of the Struggle, Regional Factors and Influences

The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), also known as the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, is a militant organisation with Kurdish nationalist leanings, founded by Abdullah Öcalan in the late 1970s. The PKK rebellion was motivated by the Turkish government’s lack of sympathy towards Kurdish culture and its human rights violations against the population. This then encouraged the PKK group’s aspirations to gain political autonomy and territory through an independent Kurdish state. From the outset, this group has placed armed action as the main pillar of its struggle and has not hesitated to use violence against Kurds who are considered pro-Turkish government. Since 1984, this group has waged an armed rebellion against Turkey, which by 2024 had claimed the lives of more than 40,000 people, with thousands of other Kurds forced to flee the violence in southeastern Turkey to cities in the north.

As the decades of rebellion progressed, various internal and external factors began to shape new boundaries for the sustainability of the PKK’s armed movement. This was then supported by the involvement of several cross-border actors, including the PKK’s internal structure and militant wing, which included pro-Kurdish political parties and regional Kurdish networks, particularly the Yekîneyên Parastina Gel (YPG) or Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in Syria and the KDP (Kurdistan Democratic Party) in Iraq. At the regional level, the dynamics of the PKK rebellion are influenced by the role of three major countries, namely Iran, Iraq and Syria, each of which has strategic and political interests in domestic Kurdish affairs that indirectly shape the PKK’s room for manoeuvre. Although it temporarily ceased its activities in the 2000s, the group is indicated to have resumed guerrilla attacks in south-eastern Turkey, resulting in a domino effect of various violent incidents.

Military Pressure, Regional Dynamics and the End of the PKK Rebellion

In the 1990s, Turkey targeted PKK bases operating in the Kurdish safe zone in northern Iraq through air strikes, which were then followed by ground operations. Ultimately, 2007 marked the peak of the Turkish government’s response to this conflict with the passing of a mandate for cross-border military operations against the PKK in Iraq, followed by a series of air strikes and ground operations in February 2008. Although attempts were made to pursue a peace process, this did not prove to be a solution due to the presence of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), which played a significant role in the Syrian Civil War and ultimately triggered the peak of the fighting in 2015 and 2016. Since 2015, the insurgency has resulted in nearly 6,000 casualties, including 600 civilians, 1,300 soldiers, and 4,000 PKK and TAK members (CSIS, 2023).

Subsequently, these developments ultimately crystallised in a political decision in 2025, when the PKK declared an official end to its armed struggle. The author argues that this was influenced by several key factors, including a lack of significant political achievements coupled with a continuing weakening of military capacity, a narrowing operational area, and instability in external support, meaning that the costs of armed struggle were not commensurate with the results obtained. In addition, the PKK has been under constant military pressure from Turkey since Erdoğan came to power, resulting in the loss of safe havens for the PKK to train, hide and mobilise its forces. Öcalan’s ideological shift, which began to question the effectiveness of armed action, also led to the end of the rebellion, as he stated last February that the democratic path was the only way to realise a political system. Based on this statement, Öcalan has emphasised that armed struggle is no longer relevant and that the PKK must abandon its military strategy and choose the political path.

The PKK and the Consolidation of Neo-Ottomanism in Turkey

Neo-Ottomanism is a political and cultural orientation that developed in Turkey after the reform from a secular government to an approach more based on Islamic values, which grew stronger under the leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. This doctrine is manifested in Turkey’s expansive foreign policy, which encompasses geopolitical strategies, overt military intervention, strategic alliances and cultural expansion, with the aim of restoring Turkey’s role as a major regional power and repeating the glory days of the Ottoman EmpireOne of the main ideas of this doctrine emphasises the importance of uniting all ethnic groups, regardless of ethnic background or religious affiliation, with the aim of maintaining the sustainability of the Ottoman Empire and ensuring the welfare of its people (Ivaylo, 2019). Based on this framework, the existence of Kurdish groups such as the PKK, whose main ambition is to gain autonomy and political identity, is considered a serious challenge to the narrative of statehood and Turkey’s dominant role in the region. Therefore, this shows intense tension between local identity aspirations and Turkey’s vision to assert its influence both domestically and regionally.

The Neo-Ottomanism doctrine aims to emphasise Turkey’s image as a strong, stable and leading country in the region. Meanwhile, the PKK rebellion has hindered the positive narrative that the government, particularly the Justice and Development Party (AKP), wants to build. The Erdoğan administration combines Ottoman rhetoric with modern nationalism and the narrative of national security, so that military operations against the PKK become part of Turkey’s duty to maintain unity and buffer zones in areas that were historically under Ottoman rule. In this case, consistent military pressure through Euphrates Shield (2016), Olive Branch (2018) and Claw Operations (2019-2013), accompanied by regional diplomacy and gradual political-economic integration efforts, has reduced the operational capacity and limited the movement of rebel groups such as the PKK. Ultimately, these factors, which were also supported by internal strategic transformations, including Öcalan’s ideological influence leading to the decision to “surrender”, reflect the implementation of the Neo-Ottomanism doctrine strategy and mark a new phase in both the Turkish government’s relationship with Kurdish groups and the opportunity to reshape the domestic and regional security landscape.

A New Phase and Paradigm Shift

Overall, the end of the PKK rebellion in 2025 not only marks the end of an armed conflict that has lasted more than four decades, but also manifests Turkey’s success in enforcing its Neo-Ottoman ideology at the domestic and regional levels to maintain its sovereignty and territory. The dissolution of the PKK was the result of consistent military pressure, structured diplomatic strategies and political-economic integration to limit the movement of non-state actors, in this case the rebels, while strengthening Ankara’s dominance. However, the author argues that it is not impossible that the rebellion will return with new patterns and strategies, although this will take a long time. Thus, this phenomenon is a tangible manifestation of the implementation of Neo-Ottomanism principles, which emphasise strengthening Turkey’s security, political legitimacy and regional influence, supported by a combination of military instruments, diplomacy and ideological pressure on local identities.

Nov. 20 (UPI) — President Donald Trump announced he will meet New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani in the Oval Office on Friday.

Trump made the announcement on his social media platform Truth Social on Wednesday.

“Communist Mayor of New York City, Zohran ‘Kwame’ Mamdani, has asked for a meeting. We have agreed that this meeting will take place at the Oval Office on Friday, November 21st,” Trump said in the brief statement.

Mamdani was elected mayor Nov. 4, besting former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, historically a Democrat who ran as an independent with Trump’s endorsement, after losing the Democratic nomination to Mamdani.

Trump has been a vocal critic of Mamdani, and warned ahead of the election that if Mamdani won he would throttle federal funding to the city, calling him a “Communist Lunatic” who is “going to have problems with Washington like no Mayor in the history of our once great city.”

Trump also threatened to arrest Mamdani if he interfered with his federal immigration crackdown in New York City.

During the campaign, Mamdani positioned himself as someone who would stand up to Trump. A self-described social democrat, Mamdani has warned Trump against threatening to impose punitive measures against the city.

In his victory speech, Mamdani addressed Trump directly: “Hear me, President Trump, when I say this: To get to any of us, you will have to get through all of us.”

Mamdani spokesperson Dora Pekec confirmed in a statement that the meeting had been scheduled.

“As is customary for an incoming mayoral administration, the Mayor-elect plans to meet with the President in Washington to discuss public safety, economic security and the affordability agenda that over 1 million New Yorkers voted for just two weeks ago,” Pekec said.

In a Wednesday night interview with MS NOW, Mamdani said they did “reach out” to the White House to speak with Trump about fulfilling the campaign pledges he made to New Yorkers.

“I want to just speak plainly to the president about what it means to actually stand up for new Yorkers and the way in which New Yorkers are struggling to afford this city,” he said.

On Sunday, Trump told reporters that the White House was working on arranging a meeting with Mamdani.

“We’ll work something out,” Trump said. “We want to see everything work out well for New York.”

The air attack in the Bani Suheila area, east of Khan Younis, comes a day after Israel killed 30 people across Gaza.

Indian-administered Kashmir – On the night of September 2, Shabir Ahmad’s home was swallowed by mud and swept into the river after relentless rains triggered a landslide in Sarh village in Indian-administered Kashmir’s Reasi district.

“I had been building my house brick by brick since 2016. It was my life’s work. Only less than a year ago, I had finished constructing the second floor, and now there is nothing,” the 36-year-old father of three children told Al Jazeera.

Ahmad’s was among nearly 20 houses in Sarh lost to the Chenab River that night, including one belonging to his brother, as dozens of families helplessly watched their farmlands, shops and other properties worth millions of rupees vanish without a trace.

“We don’t even have one inch of land left to stand on,” said Ahmad from a government school in Sarh, where his family and other villagers were sheltering after the deluge.

The tragedy at Sarh was among the latest of increasingly frequent climate disasters across India that destroy lives and livelihoods, and displace millions of people to an uncertain future.

According to the Geneva-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), climate-related disasters forced more than 32 million people from their homes in India between 2015 and 2024, with 5.4 million displacements recorded in 2024 alone – the highest in 12 years. This makes India one of the three nations most affected by internal displacements due to climate change in that period, with China and the Philippines being the top two.

Moreover, in the first six months of 2025, more than 160,000 people were displaced across India due to natural disasters, as the country received above-average rainfall, triggering huge floods and landslides, and submerging hundreds of villages and cities.

Zero adaptation money for two years

To help millions of people like Ahmad who are vulnerable to the climate crisis, India’s Ministry for Environment, Forest and Climate Change launched a National Adaptation Fund on Climate Change (NAFCC) in 2015. Its goal was to finance projects that help communities cope with floods, droughts, landslides, and other climate-related stresses across India.

Managed by the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD), the flagship scheme supported interventions in agriculture, water management, forestry, coastal protection, and climate-resilient infrastructure. Between 2015 and 2021, it financed more than two dozen projects, benefitting thousands of vulnerable households.

During a roundtable in Brazil’s Belem city last month – before the 30th United Nations climate change conference, or COP30, which officially opened on Monday – India’s minister for environment, forest and climate change, Bhupender Yadav, said the global meet should be the “COP of adaptation”.

“The focus must be on transforming climate commitments into real-world actions that accelerate implementation and directly improve people’s lives,” he said, according to a statement released by the Indian government on October 13. He highlighted “a need to strengthen and intensify the flow of public finance towards adaptation”, said the statement.

In another statement last Tuesday, a day after COP30 opened, India said climate “adaptation financing needs to exceed nearly 15 times current flows, and significant gaps remain in doubling international public finance for adaptation by 2025”.

“India emphasised that adaptation is an urgent priority for billions of vulnerable people in developing countries who have contributed the least to global warming but stand to suffer the most from its impacts,” said the statement.

But the actions of the Indian government back home do not match those words at the climate summit.

Government records show NAFCC received an average of $13.3m annually in the initial years of its launch. But the allocation steadily declined. In the financial year 2022-2023, the fund’s spending was just $2.47m. In November 2022, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change moved NAFCC from the category of a government “scheme” to a “non-scheme”, providing no clear outlay for funds.

Since the financial year 2023-2024, zero money has been earmarked for the crucial climate adaptation fund.

As a result, several climate adaptation projects in areas prone to floods, cyclones and landslides have been stalled even as widespread climatic devastation continued to kill and displace people. While presenting the federal budget in parliament in February this year, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman did not even include the words “climate change” and “adaptation” in her hour-long speech.

“Announcing lofty adaptation goals abroad while starving the fund that safeguards our own citizens is misleading and a moral failure,” Raja Muzaffar Bhat, an environmental activist in Indian-administered Kashmir, told Al Jazeera, calling Yadav’s statements in Brazil “a gross distortion of reality and a dangerous distraction”.

Al Jazeera reached out to the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change for their comments on cutting NAFCC funds, but has not received any response.

An official in the Environment Ministry, however, defended the government’s shift in funding priorities, claiming the authorities have not abandoned climate adaptation efforts.

“Funds are now being channelled through broader climate and sustainability initiatives rather than standalone schemes like the NAFCC,” the official told Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the media.

‘Climate injustice at its most blatant’

Meanwhile, climate crises continue to kill and displace people across India.

In the Darbhanga district of Bihar, India’s poorest state, 38-year-old Sunita Devi has been displaced five times in seven years as floods in the nearby Kosi River repeatedly destroyed her mud house built on bamboo stilts.

“We live in fear every monsoon. My children have stopped going to school because we shift from camp to camp,” she said, holding on to the family’s only lifeline: A government ration card that allows them to buy food grains at subsidised rates or get them for free.

This year saw one of the worst monsoons across India, as above-average rains killed hundreds and displaced millions. In Bihar alone, floods affected more than 1.7 million people, killed dozens and submerged hundreds of villages.

In Odisha, another impoverished eastern state, fisherman Ramesh Behera*, 45, watched his house in Kendrapara district’s Satabhaya village collapse into the Bay of Bengal in 2024, as rising seas continue to erase entire hamlets. “The sea swallowed my home and my father’s fields. Fishing is no longer enough to survive,” he told Al Jazeera.

Behera was forced to give up his family’s traditional livelihoods – fishing and farming – and was driven into distress migration to survive. He now works as a manual labourer in Srinagar, the main city in Indian-administered Kashmir.

In West Bengal state’s Sundarbans Islands, one of the largest mangrove forests in the world, rising seas and coastal erosion have consumed lands and homes, forcing thousands of families in the fragile ecosystem to relocate.

In the southern state of Tamil Nadu’s Nagapattinam district, 29-year-old Revathi Selvam says saltwater intrusion from the Bay of Bengal has poisoned her farmland and their paddy harvest has collapsed.

“The soil is no longer fertile. We cannot grow rice any more. We may have to leave farming altogether,” she told Al Jazeera, adding that many in her village are considering migrating to the state capital, Chennai, to work as construction workers.

In the Himalayan state of Himachal Pradesh, 27-year-old hotel worker Arjun Thakur saw his livelihood vanish when a cloudburst in 2024 buried the small tourist lodge where he worked. “The mountain broke apart. I saw houses collapse in seconds,” he recalled.

Thakur now stays with his relatives in the state capital Shimla, unsure if he can ever return to his native place.

Yet, with funds for NAFCC gone, people like Devi, Behera, Selvam and Thakur have no access to a government scheme that helps them cope with their tragedies.

A government official, who previously worked with NAFCC, told Al Jazeera several schemes approved by the government under NAFCC were never implemented after funds began to dry up as early as 2021, exposing thousands of households to a recurring climate crisis.

“The fund was created to help vulnerable communities adapt before disasters struck, and to reduce the kind of repeated displacement we are now witnessing,” the official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the media.

“Once the allocations stopped, states lost a key channel to protect people living on the front lines of floods, landslides, and droughts. Now, these families are left to rebuild on their own, again and again.”

Activist Bhat said the government’s attitude to the NAFCC “signals that adaptation is no longer a priority, even as India faces record internal displacement from climate extremes”.

“People are losing homes, farms, and livelihoods, and the government has left them entirely to their fate. If this continues, the next generation will inherit a country where climate refugees are a daily reality,” he said.

“This is climate injustice at its most blatant.”

‘Migration no longer a choice but a survival strategy’

Climate Action Network South Asia is a Dhaka-based coalition of about 250 civil society organisations, working in eight South Asian countries to promote government and individual action to limit human-induced climate change. Its estimate says roughly 45 million people in India could be forced to migrate by 2050 due to the climate crisis – a threefold increase over current displacement figures.

“We are a vast nation with hot and cold deserts, long coastlines, and Himalayan glaciers. From tsunamis on our shores to flash floods, cloudbursts, and landslides in the mountains, we face the entire spectrum of climate extremes,” Bhat told Al Jazeera.

Bhat said it is not just nature causing displacement, but also unchecked “development” of vulnerable areas.

“Earlier, floods or cloudbursts were occasional, and population density was low. Now, haphazard construction around mountain passes, waterways and streams, along with rampant deforestation, has amplified these disasters,” he said.

“People who once fled New Delhi’s air pollution to settle down in [the Himalayan states of] Himachal Pradesh or Uttarakhand now find themselves living under a constant threat of landslides. Migration is no longer a choice but a survival strategy.”

Bhat warned that neglecting people affected by climate-related displacement could cause the world’s largest climate migration crisis.

“We are no longer behaving like the welfare state promised in our constitution. We pay taxes like a developed country but get services that leave people to die in a climate crisis… We are utterly unprepared for the mass migrations that will inevitably come from both our mountains and our plains,” he said.

Back at the temporary government shelter in Kashmir’s landslide-hit Sarh village, Ahmad fears an uncertain future for him and his family.

“If land and shelter are not provided, we will not merely be homeless; we will become refugees in our own land, cast aside without place or protection,” he said.

“When the state neglects the consequences of climate change, it issues a declaration: You are free to drown, but not free to rebuild.”

Former Ukrainian officer Serhii Kuznietsov faces charges in Germany of collusion to cause an explosion, sabotage and destruction of infrastructure.

Italy’s top court has approved the extradition to Germany of a Ukrainian man suspected of coordinating the sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines between Russia and Europe in 2022.

The suspect, Serhii Kuznietsov, 49, has denied being part of a cell of saboteurs accused of placing explosives on the underwater pipelines in the Baltic Sea, severing much of Russia’s gas transfers to Europe and prompting supply shortages on the continent.

After Italy originally blocked Kuznietsov’s extradition last month over an issue with a German arrest warrant, Italy’s Supreme Court of Cassation approved the transfer on Wednesday.

Kuznietsov “will therefore be surrendered to Germany within the next few days”, his lawyer Nicola Canestrini said.

The suspect, a former officer in the Ukrainian military, has denied any role in the attack and has fought attempts to transfer him to Germany since he was detained on a European arrest warrant in the Italian town of Rimini, where he was vacationing with his family, in August.

“However great the disappointment, I remain confident in an acquittal after the full trial in Germany,” Canestrini said in a statement.

Last month, a court in Poland ruled against handing over another Ukrainian suspect wanted by Germany in connection with the pipeline explosions and ordered his immediate release from detention.

Kuznietsov faces charges in Germany of collusion to cause an explosion, sabotage and destruction of important structures.

German prosecutors said he used forged identity documents to charter a yacht that departed from the German city of Rostock to carry out the attack near the Danish island of Bornholm on September 26, 2022.

According to extradition documents, prosecutors said Kuznietsov organised and carried out the detonation of at least four bombs containing 14kg to 27kg (31lb to 62lb) of explosives at a depth of 70 to 80 metres (230ft to 263ft).

The explosions damaged both the Nord Stream 1 and the Nord Stream 2 pipelines so severely that no gas could be transported through them. In total, four ruptures were discovered in the pipelines after the attack.

Kuznietsov says he was a member of the Ukrainian armed forces and in Ukraine at the time of the incident, a claim his defence team has said would give him “functional immunity” under international law.

Earlier this month, members of the European Parliament (MEPs) sent a letter to Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni expressing concern about Kuznietsov’s extradition.

“The destruction of the pipelines dealt a significant blow to Russia’s war machine in its ongoing war of aggression against Ukraine,” the MEPs wrote.

“From the standpoint of international law, actions undertaken in defence against such aggression, including the neutralisation of the enemy’s military infrastructure, fall within the lawful conduct of a just war,” they wrote.

“We, therefore, urge the Italian government to suspend any steps toward extradition until the guarantees of functional immunity and state responsibility are thoroughly and independently assessed,” they added.

Kuznietsov, who faces up to 15 years in prison if found guilty by a German court, has been held in a high security jail in Italy since his arrest and at one point staged a hunger strike to protest against his prison conditions.

Six other suspects in the case remain at large.

Nov. 19 (UPI) — Tech giant Nvidia on Wednesday posted record revenue and strong profit for the third quarter, beating Wall Street expectations, amid exploding growth in artificial intelligence.

Nvidia, which has the world’s largest market capitalization at $4.5 trillion, reported record sales. It said sales grew 62% in one year to $57 billion through Oct. 26. Wall Street had projected a $54.9 billion figure.

On Oct. 29, Nvidia became the first company worldwide with a $5 trillion cap one day before CEO Jensen Huang met with President Donald Trump in the White House.

“There’s been a lot of talk about an AI bubble. From our vantage point, we see something very different,” Huang said during a conference call with investors.

Fourth-quarter sales are estimated to be around $65 billion, contrasting with $61.66 billion by analysts.

Profit was up 65% from last year in the quarter to $31.9 billion or 78 cents per share, slightly ahead of expectations. The net income represents 58% of revenue.

NVIDIA will pay its next quarterly cash dividend of 1 cent per share on Dec. 26.

Nvidia builds chips and software platforms for the AI industry. The company, founded in 1993 in the Silicon Valley in California, pioneered the graphics processing unit, initially for 3D video games.

The chips are made in the United States by GlobalFoundries, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company and Samsung in South Korea. Taiwan’s new factory in Arizona focuses on chips for Nvidia.

The design work is done in the United States, GeekBitz reported.

Most AI companies’ technology runs on Nvidia’s chip, CNN reported.

Its best-selling chip is the Blackwell Ultra, a second generation. The company is banned from selling the new ones to China.

“Blackwell sales are off the charts, and cloud GPUs are sold out,” Huang said in a statement about its best-selling chip.

“Compute demand keeps accelerating and compounding across training and inference — each growing exponentially. We’ve entered the virtuous cycle of AI. The AI ecosystem is scaling fast — with more new foundation model makers, more AI startups, across more industries, and in more countries. AI is going everywhere, doing everything, all at once.”

In October, Huang said there were $500 billion in AI chip orders for 2025 and 2026 combined.

“The number will grow,” Nvidia finance chief Colette Kress said during the earnings call with analysts.

Nvidia said there were $51.2 billion in revenue in data center sales, a 66% rise year-over-year.That includes $43 billion in revenue was for “compute,” or the GPUs. The company said most growth was from GB300 chips.

Nvidia’s stock price rose 5.08% in after-hours trading on Wednesday night on NASDAQ. The stock was at $196.00, below the record $207.04 on Oct. 29.

The stock, with the ticker symbol NVDA, initially traded at $12 per share, through its Initial Public Offering on Jan. 22, 1999.

The strong Nvidia report boosted after-hours trading of tech firms Meta, Microsoft, Amazon and Google.

“This answers a lot of questions about the state of the AI revolution, and the verdict is simple: it is nowhere near its peak, neither from the market-demand nor the production-supply-chain sides for the foreseeable future,” Thomas Monteiro, senior analyst at Investing.com, said in emailed commentary following the report.

In September, Nvidia announced a $100 billion investment in OpenAI in exchange for chip purchases.

On Monday, Anthropic committed to buying $30 billion in computing capacity from Microsoft Azure in exchange for an investment in the AI lab from both tech giants.

Nvidia announced a collaboration with Intel to jointly develop multiple generations of custom data center and PC products with NVIDIA NVLink.

Nvidia has reviewed plans to accelerate seven new supercomputers, including with Oracle to build the U.S. Department of Energy’s largest AI supercomputer, Solstice, plus another system, Equinox.

Nvidia said it had $4.3 billion in gaming revenue, which is a 30% boost from one year ago.

Despite the boom, CEO of one of the world’s largest independent financial advisory organizations warnsthere is a “real risk” because of complacency.

“Exceptional results don’t remove the need for discipline,” Nigel Green of deVere Group in Britain said in an email to UPI. “The AI ecosystem is growing fast, but fast growth doesn’t protect anyone from the consequences of over-extension.”

He said the path from deployment to real commercial returns “remains untested” in many industries.

“Investors must examine whether business models can convert this scale of capital investment into sustained earnings,” he said. “Complacency could be a real risk.”

‘Soon, you’ll no longer be able to use Facebook’, Meta said in messages it sent to young people ahead of the social media ban.

Meta will prevent Australians younger than 16 from accessing Facebook and Instagram from December 4, as Canberra prepares to enforce a sweeping new social media law that has sparked concerns from young people and advocates.

The US tech giant said it would start removing teenagers and children from its platforms ahead of the new Australian social media ban on users under 16 coming into effect on December 10.

The Australian government is preparing to enforce the law with fines of up to 49.5 million Australian Dollars (US$32 million) for social media companies even as critics say the changes have been rushed through without addressing questions around privacy, and the effects on young people’s mental health and access to information.

“From today, Meta will be notifying Australian users it understands to be aged 13-15 that they will lose access to Instagram, Threads and Facebook,” Meta said in a statement.

“Meta will begin blocking new under-16 accounts and revoking existing access from 4 December, expecting to remove all known under-16s by 10 December.”

There are around 350,000 Instagram users aged between 13-15 in Australia and around 150,000 Facebook accounts, according to government figures.

Meta has started warning impacted users that they will soon be locked out.

“Soon, you’ll no longer be able to use Facebook and your profile won’t be visible to you or others,” reads a message sent to users that Meta believes to be under 16.

“When you turn 16, we’ll let you know that you can start using Facebook again.”

In addition to Facebook and Instagram, the Australian government has said that the ban will be applied to several other social media platforms, including Reddit, Snapchat, Threads, TikTok, X and YouTube.

Ban ‘doesn’t add up’

A number of young people and advocates have expressed concerns about the implementation of the new ban, including journalist and founder of youth news service 6 News Australia Leo Puglisi, 18, who told an Australian senate inquiry that young people “deeply care” about the ban and its potential implications.

Puglisi says that many of the people who engage with 6 News are young people who find their content on social media.

“I think young people do have the right to be informed,” he told the inquiry.

“We’re saying that a 15 year old can’t access any news or political information on social media. I just don’t think that that adds up.”

Australian Senator David Shoebridge, has expressed concerns that “an estimated 2.4 million young people will be kicked off social media accounts… just as school holidays start.”

“I’m deeply concerned about the impacts on the ban including on young people’s mental health and privacy,” Shoebridge wrote in a recent post on X.

John Pane, from Electronic Frontiers Australia, also told a senate inquiry that the new legislation creates new risks, while trying to address other issues.

While Pane acknowledged the ban seeks to address young people potentially seeing “unsuitable content” online, he says it also creates a new “far greater, systemic risk” of “potential mass collection of children’s and adults’ identity data.”

This will further increase “the data stores and financial positions of big tech and big data and increasing cyber risk on a very significant scale,” Pane said.

Since most Australians aged under 16 don’t yet have official government ID, social media companies are planning to require some users to verify their age by recording videos of themselves.

Other countries mull similar bans

There is keen interest in whether Australia’s sweeping restrictions can work as regulators around the globe wrestle with the mixed dangers and benefits of social media.

In New Zealand, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon is planning to introduce a similar bill to restrict children’s social media use.

Indonesia has also said it is preparing legislation to protect young people from “physical, mental, or moral perils”.

In Europe, the Dutch government has advised parents to forbid children under 15 from using social media apps like TikTok and Snapchat.

The Utah Air National Guard demonstrated new capabilities that expand the KC-135 aerial refueling tanker’s ability to also act as an airborne communications and data-sharing node during major exercises in the Pacific earlier this year. Additional datalinks and other systems were packed into heavily modified underwing Multipoint Refueling System (MPRS) pods normally used to send gas to receivers via the probe-and-drogue method. More network connectivity for the U.S. Air Force’s KC-135s, as well as its KC-46s, opens the door to a host of new operational possibilities for those aircraft, including when it comes to controlling drones in flight.

At least one KC-135 from the Utah Air National Guard’s 151st Wing flew with the podded networking suites during this year’s Resolute Force Pacific 25 (REFORPAC 25) exercise. REFORPAC 25 was one of a series of large force exercises that saw thousands of personnel operate from dozens of locations spread across thousands of miles of the Pacific this past summer. The Air Force has touted the overarching Department-Level Exercise series as having been an extremely important opportunity to explore how it might operate in a future high-end fight in the region, such as one against China. Evaluating new capabilities, as well as tactics, techniques, and procedures, was a central aspect of REFORPAC 25 and the rest of the DLE events.

“REFORPAC 25, part of the Department of the Air Force’s broader Department-Level Exercise series, tasked units across the Indo-Pacific to rapidly disperse, operate, and integrate across thousands of miles,” according to a release today from the 151st Wing. “The exercise offered an ideal environment to push new technologies under real-world stressors and demonstrate how rapid modernization strengthens America’s ability to respond in the Pacific.”

151st Wing partnered with the Air National Guard-Air Force Reserve Command Test Center’s (AATC) KC-135 Test Detachment for this particular demonstration.

“AATC evaluated the Datalink Enhancement–Minimum Viable Product (DE-MVP), a capability designed to fuse data from three Line-of-Sight (LOS) Tactical Data Link networks and multiple Beyond Line-of-Sight (BLOS) connections,” the release continues. “Using Advanced Intelligent Gateway technology aboard the KC-135, the system connected joint and coalition mission partners in real time, tightening decision timelines and extending sensing and targeting information across the battlespace.”

“The capability reduces traditional decision-making cycles from hours to minutes. While conventional intelligence processes often follow a 72-hour battle rhythm from collection to action, the KC-135 platform demonstrated the ability to condense that cycle to near-real time, enabling rapid repositioning and mission execution across contested environments,” it adds. “Enhanced systems provide real-time situational awareness through moving map displays while sharing that information across both LOS and BLOS [line-of-sight and beyond-line-of-sight] pathways with national, joint, and coalition partners. This shift enables tanker crews to make timely, independent tactical decisions in contested and degraded environments, turning a traditionally support-focused aircraft into an active node in the command-and-control ecosystem.”

It is important to note here that the 151st Wing, in cooperation with the AATC, has been at the very forefront of Air Force efforts to advance new communications and data-sharing capabilities for the KC-135, specifically, for some time now. The development of podded systems similar, if not identical to the ones demonstrated at REFORPAC 25, traces back at least to 2021, and builds on years of work before then on roll-on/roll-off packages designed to be installed in the aircraft’s cargo deck.

A self-contained podded system offers a different degree of flexibility when it comes to loading and unloading from aircraft, as required. A KC-135 can only carry one pod under each wing at a time, so being able to readily swap out ones filled with communications gear for standard MRPS types between missions would be very valuable. Leveraging the established MRPS pod design, which the KC-135 is already cleared to carry, also helps significantly reduce costs and overall time required for integration and flight testing.

Officials at Air Mobility Command (AMC), the active duty Air Force command that oversees the majority of the service’s aerial refueling tankers, as well as cargo aircraft, have also been outspoken for years now about the importance of new networking capabilities. This is seen as particularly critical for ensuring the continued relevance of existing non-stealth tanker fleets, especially when it comes to the aging KC-135s, in the face of a threat ecosystem that only continues to expand in scale and scope. The Air Force does have plans to significantly evolve its tanker force, possibly including the possible acquisition of new stealthy tankers, but many of those prospective developments are not expected to enter real operational service until sometime well into the next decade at the earliest. Right around the end of last year, the Air Force put out a report that notably highlighted concerns about anti-air missiles with ranges of up to 1,000 miles entering service with potential adversaries by 2050.

“So as the potential adversary has increased in [sic] threat systems, one of our big priorities is being able to mitigate those threats. And so there’s a couple of steps to it, I would say,” Air Force Gen. John Lamontagne, head of AMC, told TWZ and other outlets at a roundtable on the sidelines of the Air & Space Forces Association’s 2025 Air, Space, and Cyber Conference in September. “The first step is being able to sense and make sense of the environment. If you can’t make sense of the threat environment, you [sic] got no chance. That’s what we’re trying to do on connectivity.”

At the same time, AMC sees increased networking capabilities as enabling a path to new operational opportunities well beyond just greater survivability for individual aircraft.

“What I’m striving for is this connectivity that allows me and our [tanker and airlift] crews to know where the priority is, where the risk is, where the opportunity is, so that we can make best use of the force that we have,” now-retired Air Force Gen. Mike Minihan, then-head of Air Mobility Command (AMC), also told TWZ and other outlets at a roundtable on the sidelines of the Air & Space Forces Associations’ annual Warfare Symposium in February 2024. “When we have the connectivity, we are a game changer for the entire joint force. So it’s not just about situational awareness for my crews. It’s about how we enable the joint force to be more successful through that connectivity. It has high correlation to my survivability. But it also has an enormous correlation to the success of the joint force.”

Tanker crews being able to control various tiers of drones, including ones launched in mid-air from their aircraft, is one particularly notable element of this future vision. Those drones could help provide further situational awareness, or even a more active defense against incoming threats, as well as perform other missions, as you can read more about here. A Utah Air National Guard KC-135 demonstrated just this kind of capability in a previous test also involving a Kratos Unmanned Tactical Aerial Platform-22, or UTAP-22, also known as the Mako, a low-cost loyal wingman-type drone, back in 2021.

The pod’s line-of-sight links could even be used to control future stealthy collaborative combat aircraft (CCA) type drones and/or send and receive data from stealthy crewed aircraft, like F-22 and F-35 fighters and the future B-21 Raider bombers. Beyond the immediate value of that information exchange for tankers, including when it comes to survivability, this could open up additional possibilities for data fusion and rebroadcasting. If the pods can communicate with the low probability of interception/low probability of detection (LPI/LPD) datalinks that stealthy aircraft use, such as the Multifunction Advanced Data Link (MADL) and Intra-Fighter Data Link (IFDL), and more general-purpose ones, they could turn tankers into invaluable ‘translator’ nodes between various waveforms. Basically, they could allow aircraft with disparate datalink architectures to share data with each other, with the KC-135 acting as a forward fusion and rebroadcasting ‘gateway.’ The tankers could also use their beyond-line-of-sight links to share critical information globally in near real time. The fact that they would already be operating forward in their tanker role means they can provide these added services alongside their primary refueling mission.

The 151st Wing and AATC are also looking toward additional podded capabilities for the KC-135.

“At Roland R. Wright Air National Guard Base in Salt Lake City, AATC is also developing the High Value Airborne Asset (HVAA) Pod, aimed at providing self-protection capabilities to the KC-135 when operating in high-threat areas,” according to today’s release. “The pod represents a significant leap from simple awareness to survivability, ensuring tankers can continue enabling operations even in environments where threat envelopes are expanding.”

The release does not elaborate on the expected capabilities of the HVAA pod, or whether it will also make use of repurposed MPRS pods. The Air Force has talked in the past about turning MPRS pods into modular shells that could accommodate a variety of “communication, defensive, and sensor technologies.”

The pods being developed now for the KC-135 could easily make their way onto other aircraft, including the Air Force’s KC-46s, as well as other types. For reference, as of September, the Air Force, including the Air National Guard, had some 370 KC-135s and 96 KC-46s in inventory, in total.

There is some precedent for this already with the U.S. Navy’s development of pods containing towed decoys to help protect its P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol planes from growing threats. Prototypes of those pods notably used an outer shell that was based on the shape of the AGM-84 Harpoon anti-ship missile.

At least for the Air Force’s KC-135 fleet, new pods filled with communications and data-sharing systems have now been demonstrated and could be set to see more widespread use soon. Other pods, including ones offering additional layers of defensive capabilities, are also on the horizon.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

All 267 passengers and crew were safely rescued hours after their ferry ran aground off South Korea’s southwestern coast this week, the Coast Guard said Thursday, with investigators giving weight to errors in navigation as a potential cause of the accident.

The 26,546-ton Queen Jenuvia II carrying 246 passengers and 21 crew members was reported to have run aground at the uninhabited islet of Jok near Jangsan Island off the coast of Sinan County, 366 kilometers south of Seoul, at around 8:17 p.m. Wednesday, according to the Coast Guard. It was en route to the port city of Mokpo after departing from the southern island of Jeju.

Half of the vessel’s hull was said to have moved onto Jok Islet. No serious injuries were reported, with 27 people reporting pain due to the shock that they experienced when the vessel ran aground.

All people aboard the ferry were safely moved to a nearby port aboard Coast Guard and other vessels.

For the rescue operations, the Coast Guard deployed 17 patrol ships, four coastal rescue vessels, a plane and special rescue personnel.

Maritime authorities presumed that the ferry ran aground due to human error.

“We confirmed that the vessel veered belatedly, deviating from the regular course,” an official from the Mokpo Coast Guard said during a press briefing in the southwestern city of Mokpo.

In an earlier briefing, Korea Coast Guard Commissioner Kim Yong-jin also attributed the cause to errors by a captain or navigator.

Neither the captain nor navigator were found to be under the influence.

At the time of the accident, the waves were measured at around 0.5 meters and calm.

The Coast Guard said it received the first distress call at 8:16 p.m., a minute before the ship ran aground, from a person tentatively identified as a navigator.

An investigation team has been set up to determine the cause, including through data recorders and surveillance cameras on the vessel, and by questioning crew members.

Some passengers described the incident in real time on social media. “There was a loud bang, and then the ship tilted,” one passenger wrote. “An announcement told everyone to put on life jackets, so we’re wearing them and waiting on the top deck.”

Children, pregnant women and older adults were reportedly taken off first, while other passengers and crew waited their turn on deck wearing life jackets.

President Lee Jae Myung ordered swift rescue efforts immediately after being briefed on the accident during his visit to the United Arab Emirates.

“Lee immediately ordered the relevant authorities to act swiftly to prevent any loss of life and to provide real-time updates on the rescue operations to reassure the public,” the presidential office said.

Copyright (c) Yonhap News Agency prohibits its content from being redistributed or reprinted without consent, and forbids the content from being learned and used by artificial intelligence systems.

In October 2025, a group of powerful states attempted to do in a few days what fifty years of occupation, war and repression had failed to achieve: close the file of Western Sahara in Morocco’s favour at the UN Security Council.

Using diplomatic blitzkrieg tactics, Morocco’s allies pushed a strongly pro-Moroccan “zero draft” resolution that they hoped to pass as a fait accompli. Had it gone through unchanged, Western Sahara would have been pushed closer toward erasure as a decolonisation question and recast as an internal Moroccan matter.

Instead, on 31 October 2025, the Council adopted Resolution 2797. Far from rubber-stamping Morocco’s claims, the final text reaffirmed every previous Security Council resolution on Western Sahara and restated an essential truth: any political solution must be just, mutually acceptable and consistent with the purposes and principles of the UN Charter, including the right of the Sahrawi people to self-determination.

Several Council members pushed back against the original US-circulated draft, which had aligned closely with Morocco’s position. Their amendments restored the text to the legal framework that has governed this issue for decades. The result is not perfect, but it is unmistakable: Western Sahara remains an unfinished decolonisation process. It is not a settled dispute, and it is not Morocco’s to absorb.

Had the Council endorsed the early draft, it would have risked becoming a 21st-century version of the Berlin Conference, a chamber where great powers redraw Africa’s map without Africans present. In 1884–85, European states divided a continent in ways that still shape its borders. The danger today is subtler but no less serious: that the future of Western Sahara might once again be written in foreign ink, this time on UN letterhead.

Western Sahara in International Law: An Unfinished decolonisation

Legally, Western Sahara’s status is unambiguous. It remains listed by the UN as a Non-Self-Governing Territory, one of the last awaiting decolonisation. International law recognises the Sahrawi people as possessing an inalienable right to self-determination and independence.

When Spain withdrew in 1975, it failed to organise the required act of self-determination. Instead, it divided the territory between Morocco and Mauritania. Mauritania later withdrew; Morocco did not. Its military occupation sparked a long war with the Sahrawi liberation movement, the Frente Polisario.

The 1991 UN-brokered ceasefire created MINURSO, the UN Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara. The mission’s very name is a reminder of the international commitment made: a referendum in which Sahrawis would choose between independence and integration with Morocco. That referendum has never taken place.

Today, around 200,000 Sahrawis remain in refugee camps near Tindouf, Algeria, waiting in harsh conditions for the vote they were promised. In the occupied territory, Sahrawis face systematic repression and severe constraints on political expression. Yet they remain the only people with no seat at the table where their future is being debated.

Autonomy and the Logic of Conquest

The current situation cannot be understood without the US administration’s 2020 recognition of “Moroccan sovereignty over the entire Western Sahara territory” in exchange for Morocco’s normalisation with Israel. This reversed decades of US adherence to UN-led self-determination and signalled that territorial questions could once again be traded as diplomatic currency.

Support for Morocco’s autonomy proposal is the political expression of that bargain. Marketed as a pragmatic compromise, it is predicated on accepting Moroccan sovereignty upfront, removing independence from consideration and redefining self-determination as ratification of annexation. A solution that excludes independence is not self-determination. It is the formalisation of conquest.

Those who insist that independence is “unrealistic” are elevating raw power above law. As scholars such as Stephen Zunes have warned, accepting autonomy as the final settlement would mark an unprecedented moment: the international community would be endorsing the expansion of a state’s territory by force after 1945. Every aspiring land-grabber on the planet would take note.

This argument that diplomacy must conform to power rather than principle dresses surrender up as pragmatism. “Realism” that ignores law and rights is not realism; it is complicity. The entire post-1945 legal order was built to end the idea that war and annexation are acceptable methods of drawing borders. Undermining that norm in Western Sahara does not make the world safer; it normalises the very behaviour many of these same states claim to oppose elsewhere.

A proposal is not a peace plan. A “solution” written by one side and handed to the other as the only acceptable outcome is not a negotiation — it is an ultimatum for surrender.

A Call to President Trump: A chance to stand on the Right Side of History

There is still time, and still a path, for the United States to reclaim a constructive role in resolving this conflict. For President Donald Trump in particular, the question of Western Sahara offers a rare opportunity to stand on the right side of history, to uphold the very Wilsonian principle of self-determination that the United States once championed, and to return American policy to its long-standing position of neutrality and respect for international law.

For decades, Republican and Democratic administrations alike supported a UN-led process and recognised Western Sahara as a decolonisation question, not as a bargaining chip. Restoring that principled approach would not only correct the 2020 departure from US tradition, but would reaffirm the American commitment to a world where borders cannot be changed by force and where the rights of small nations are protected from the ambitions of larger ones.

If President Trump were to bring the United States back to its historical role, supporting a fair, just and lasting solution rooted in genuine self-determination, he would achieve something that eluded every administration before him. He would be remembered not as a participant in a geopolitical trade, but as the president who helped resolve one of the world’s longest-running and most clear-cut decolonisation cases. He would be remembered as the leader who chose law over expediency, principle over pressure, David over Goliath.

There is a rare chance here: to correct a historic wrong, to end a conflict that has defeated presidents, prime ministers and UN Secretaries-General, and to bring justice to a small, peaceful and long-suffering people. Standing with the Sahrawi right to self-determination is not only the moral choice; it is the choice that aligns the United States with its own ideals and its own stated values and ultimately its interests.

Anything else, any endorsement of the logic of conquest or any attempt to force a people to accept subjugation as “autonomy”, would be a political act that history will not forget, and the Sahrawi people will not forgive.

Call for International Solidarity

Behind every debate in New York are people living under occupation, in refugee camps and in exile, waiting for a vote they were promised decades ago. The Sahrawi people are not seeking special treatment. They are asking for the same right that helped dismantle colonial rule from Asia to Africa: the right of a people to freely determine their political future.

What was right for Timor and Namibia is right for Western Sahara.

History offers many examples of colonial powers that looked immovable until, suddenly, they were not. East Timor, Namibia, Eritrea, all show that no amount of repression or diplomatic engineering can extinguish a people’s demand for freedom. In each case, global civil society, more than great powers, ultimately helped shift the balance.

The Sahrawi people are determined to reclaim their homeland. Determination alone, however, cannot overcome tanks, drones, a 2,700-kilometre sand berm, prisons and diplomatic horse-trading. Stronger international solidarity is urgently needed—not only in support of a just cause, but in defence of the international system itself. The Sahrawi struggle today stands at the frontline of protecting both the right to self-determination and the principles on which the United Nations was built.

To stand with Western Sahara is to defend the rule that borders cannot be changed by force and that colonialism cannot be rebranded as “autonomy”. States that champion a “rules-based international order” should match their rhetoric with action: refuse to recognise Moroccan sovereignty; support a free and fair act of self-determination that includes independence; and ensure that UN resolutions are implemented rather than endlessly recycled.

Civil society and solidarity networks also have important roles to play, from advocacy to material support for Sahrawi institutions and refugee communities.

The Final Question

The UN Security Council is not mandated to rubber-stamp an illegal occupation and baptise it as decolonisation. Doing so would violate the UN Charter, particularly Article 24. Under the Charter and decolonisation law, the Council’s room for manoeuvre is constrained by the peremptory right of self-determination. It cannot lawfully override that foundational right. Article 24(2) requires the Council to act in accordance with the purposes of the Charter—including self-determination—and its decisions cannot derogate from jus cogens norms.

Decolonisation remains the only lawful path to ending this conflict. The core question is simple: does the international community still believe that peoples, especially colonised peoples, have the right to choose their own future? If the answer is yes, then sovereignty in Western Sahara remains, in law and in principle, with the Sahrawi people.

The map of Africa was once drawn in imperial ink. Whether Western Sahara remains the last stain of that era or becomes part of a different future depends on whether the world insists that decolonisation means what it says.

United States President Donald Trump has announced that he has signed a bill ordering the full release of files related to the late sex offender and disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.

Trump made the announcement on social media late on Wednesday.

“Perhaps the truth about these Democrats, and their associations with Jeffrey Epstein, will soon be revealed, because I HAVE JUST SIGNED THE BILL TO RELEASE THE EPSTEIN FILES!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

The legislation compels the US Justice Department to release all documents related to Epstein, who died in a Manhattan jail cell in 2019 while facing sex trafficking charges, within 30 days.

US Attorney General Pam Bondi had earlier told a news conference that the administration would “follow the law and encourage maximum transparency” in the case.

More to follow…

Hakimi is the first Moroccan since 1998 and the first defender since 1973 to win Africa’s most prestigious award.

French side Paris Saint-Germain footballer Achraf Hakimi has been named African Footballer of the Year, becoming the first defender to claim the prize in 52 years.

Moroccan right back Hakimi finished ahead of Liverpool’s Egyptian forward Mohamed Salah and Nigeria striker Victor Osimhen in Wednesday’s vote at the 2025 CAF Awards in the Moroccan city of Rabat.

Hakimi was awarded the trophy after helping PSG to their first ever Champions League title in May when they bulldozed Italy’s Inter Milan 5-0 in the final as part of a historic treble-winning season in which they also won the Ligue 1 title and the Coupe de France.

In August, PSG also beat English side Tottenham Hotspur in the UEFA Super Cup to pick up their fourth trophy in the 2025 calendar year.

Hakimi – the first Moroccan to win the award since Mustapha Hadji in 1998 and the first defender since Bwanga Tshimen of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, then Zaire, in 1973 – said it was “really a proud moment”.

“This trophy is not just for me but all the strong men and women who have dreams of being a footballer in Africa,” he said.

“And for those that always believed in me since I was a child, that I would be a professional footballer one day, I would like to thank them all,” he added.

A recognition that crowns years of hard work, success, and unforgettable moments.

My gratitude goes to my family, my teammates, and everyone who works with me every day, on and off the field. Your trust, dedication, and support make me stronger and allow me to grow.

Thank you… pic.twitter.com/ZssdnZ2T55

— Achraf Hakimi (@AchrafHakimi) November 19, 2025

Hakimi also finished sixth in the men’s 2025 Ballon d’Or rankings in September, the annual award for the world’s best footballer, achieving the highest position ever by a Moroccan. His teammate and French international forward Ousmane Dembele was named the Ballon d’Or winner.

Moroccan footballers also picked up the men’s Goalkeeper of the Year award and the Women’s Footballer of the Year awards as they were awarded to Saudi Arabia-based players Yassine Bounou and Ghizlane Chebbak, respectively.

Heart, talent, impact. Never unnoticed.

For giving her all, Ghizlane Chebbak is the Women’s Player of the Year. 🌟🇲🇦#CAFAwards2025 pic.twitter.com/kYSSHtdsi5

— CAF_Online (@CAF_Online) November 19, 2025

Nigerian goalkeeper Chiamaka Nnadozie, who recently sealed a move to the English club Brighton & Hove Albion in the Women’s Super League, won the Women’s Goalkeeper of the Year award for a third successive year.

Cape Verde manager Bubista was awarded Coach of the Year after leading the African island nation of 525,000 people to a debut appearance at next year’s World Cup in the United States, Mexico and Canada.

Cape Verde will not be the smallest country at the World Cup, however, after the Caribbean island nation Curacao, home to just 156,000 people, qualified after a 0-0 draw with Jamaica on Wednesday.

Nov. 19 (UPI) — Indonesia’s Mount Semeru sent volcanic ash columns 6,500 feet high after erupting Wednesday afternoon, posing a danger to regional air traffic and forcing more than 300 to evacuate.

The eruption occurred at 4 p.m. local time on East Java’s tallest peak at 12,060 feet and triggered a red aviation alert by Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology’s Volcanic Ash Advisory Center in Darwin.

The alert indicates a threat to aviation, and officials at Qantas and Jetstar Airways said they are monitoring the situation but so far have not changed any flights.

The airlines will contact any customers who might be affected if the situation changes.

Virgin Australia also has not cancelled any scheduled flights.

Officials in Indonesia increased Mount Semeru to a Level 4 for volcanic activity, which is the highest warning level and indicates an eruption that is in progress, Fox Weather reported.

The volcano is capable of ejecting pyroclastic rocks as far as 5 miles from its peak, and local officials are prohibiting people from coming within 12 miles of the volcano due to the dangers posed by potential lava flows and clouds of hot ash.

Indonesia has 101 volcanoes and frequently experiences eruptions, according to the Smithsonian Institution Museum of Natural History Global Volcanism Program.

The family of Mohammed Ibrahim, a Palestinian American boy who has been detained by Israel since February, is demanding that an independent doctor assess the teenager’s condition amid alarming reports about his situation in prison.

Mohammed’s uncle, Zeyad Kadur, said an official from the United States embassy in Israel visited the 16-year-old last week at Ofer Prison.

The official told the family afterwards that Ibrahim had lost weight and dark circles were forming around his eyes, Kadur told Al Jazeera.

The consular officer also said he had raised Mohammed’s case with multiple US and Israeli agencies.

“This is the first time in nine months that they showed grave concern for his health, so how bad is it?” Kadur asked in an interview on Wednesday.

Despite rights groups and US lawmakers pleading for Mohammed’s release, Israel has refused to free him, and his family said the administration of President Donald Trump is not doing enough to bring him home.

Israeli authorities have accused Ibrahim of throwing rocks at settlers in the occupied West Bank, an allegation he denies.

But the legal proceedings in the case are moving at a snail’s pace in Israel’s military justice system, according to Mohammed’s family.

Rights advocates also say that the military court system in the occupied West Bank is part of Israel’s discriminatory apartheid regime, given its conviction rate of nearly 100 percent for Palestinian defendants.

Adding to the Ibrahim family’s angst is the lack of access to the teenager while Mohammed is in Israeli prison. Unable to visit him or communicate with him, his relatives are only able to receive updates from the US embassy.

The teenager has been suffering from severe weight loss while in detention, his father, Zaher Ibrahim, told Al Jazeera earlier this year. He also contracted scabies, a contagious skin infection.

The last visit he received from US embassy staff was in September.

Israeli authorities have committed well-documented abuses against Palestinian detainees, including torture and sexual violence, especially after the start of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza in October 2023.

“We hear and see people getting out of prison and what they look like, and we know it’s bad,” Kadur said.

“Mohammed is an American kid who was taken at 15. He is now 16, and he’s been sitting there for nine months and hasn’t seen his mom, hasn’t seen his dad.”

He added that the family is also concerned about Mohammed’s mental health.

“We’re requesting that he gets sent to a hospital and evaluated by a third party, not by a prison medic or nurse. He needs some actual attention,” Mohammed’s uncle told Al Jazeera.

Mohammed, who is from Florida, was visiting Palestine when in the middle of the night he was arrested, blindfolded and beaten in what Kadur described as a “kidnapping”.

The US Department of State did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment on the latest consular visit to Mohammed.

When Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited Israel last month, he appeared to have misheard a question about Palestinian prisoner Marwan Barghouti and thought it was about Mohammed’s case.

“Are you talking about the one from the US? I don’t have any news for you on that today,” Rubio told reporters.

“Obviously, we’ll work that through our embassy here and our diplomatic channels, but we don’t have anything to announce on that.”

But for Kadur, Mohammed’s case is not a bureaucratic or legal matter – it is one that requires political will from Washington to secure his freedom.

Kadur underscored that the US has negotiated with adversaries, including Venezuela, Russia and North Korea, to free detained Americans, so it can push for the release of Mohammed from its closest ally in the Middle East.

The US provided Israel with more than $21bn in military aid over the past two years.

Kadur drew a contrast between the lack of US effort to free Mohammed and the push to release Edan Alexander, a US citizen who was volunteering in the Israeli army and was taken prisoner during Hamas’s attacks on southern Israel on October 7, 2023.

Alexander was released in May after pressure from the Trump administration on Hamas.

“The American government negotiated with what they consider a terrorist organisation, and they secured his release – an adult who put on a uniform, who picked up a gun and did what he signed up for,” Kadur said of Alexander.

“Why is a 16-year-old still there for nine months, rotting away, deteriorating in a prison? That’s one example to show that Mohammed – and his name and his Palestinian DNA – [are] not considered American enough by the State Department first and by the administration second.”