shaken

Since April 2023, more than 12 million people have been displaced, nearly 9 million inside Sudan and over 3 million across borders. The United Nations now identifies Sudan as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, with 25 million people facing acute food insecurity and famine conditions already recorded in multiple areas.

These are not statistics; they are markers of systemic collapse. Mass graves, torched health facilities, and emptied towns tell the story. UN officials and independent human rights bodies have documented that the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and allied militias committed genocide in Darfur, a finding echoed by the recent fall of El Fasher to RSF forces and the disturbing images that followed, underscoring the scale of brutality: civilians hunted in displacement camps, aid workers killed, humanitarian corridors severed. Each captured city tightens the noose on civilians and erodes any remaining space for lifesaving assistance.

The $4.2 billion required under the 2025 Sudan Humanitarian Response Plan remains largely unfunded. Agencies, including the WFP, UNICEF, UNHCR, and IOM, warn of an imminent operational collapse. Inaction is not neutral — it accelerates mass hunger, disease, and death. Sudan’s implosion will intensify displacement, fuel illicit economies, exacerbate extremist recruitment, and heighten volatility in food and fuel supplies. The outcome is predictable: expanded violence, deteriorating governance, and prolonged economic decline across West and Central Africa.

This crisis does not end at Sudan’s borders. It reverberates across a Sahel already destabilised by insurgency, climate shocks, and hollowed-out state institutions. Since 2020, a succession of coups in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger has entrenched military rule and normalised authoritarian recourse. Weak governance and porous borders transform humanitarian emergencies into regional security threats.

The international response must shift from caution to conviction:

• Close the funding gap immediately. Multiyear, flexible financing is essential. Underfunding today guarantees higher security and social costs tomorrow.

• Enforce accountability. Genocide determinations and credible atrocity reports demand criminal investigations, targeted sanctions, and civilian protection mechanisms. Impunity is a policy choice — and one that invites repetition.

• Reform and empower Africa’s institutions. The African Union must evolve from a consultative platform into a body capable of deterrence. Continent-wide resilience requires real incentives and penalties for unconstitutional rule, as well as rapid protection capacity. AU, ECOWAS, and the UN should align political mediation, enforcement tools, and governance support to reduce the appeal of coups masquerading as solutions.

The AU’s intervention is both urgent and crucial for the continent’s stability. Africa cannot afford perpetual crises while its people are uprooted and its natural wealth siphoned off. Sudan is a warning. The Sahel is the echo. Failure to act decisively will cement a trajectory of conflict, authoritarian drift, and economic paralysis. Accountability, protection, and reform are not aspirations; they are minimum requirements for continental stability.

A Texas court has issued a stay of execution for Robert Roberson, a man whose 2003 murder conviction has raised serious questions about the validity of “shaken baby syndrome” as a medical diagnosis.

Thursday’s decision arrived with only a week remaining until Roberson’s scheduled execution date on October 16.

Roberson, a 58-year-old autistic man, was accused of having killed his two-year-old daughter Nikki Michelle Curtis in January 2002, after he brought her to a hospital emergency room unconscious.

He has maintained that Nikki had been sick and fell from her bed overnight. But prosecutors argued that her head trauma must have been caused by “shaken baby syndrome”, a diagnosis popularised in the late 1990s as evidence of physical abuse in infants and toddlers.

But that diagnosis has been increasingly rejected, as doctors and medical researchers point out that the symptoms of “shaken baby syndrome” — namely, bleeding or swelling in the eyes or brain — can be caused by other conditions.

Roberson’s defence team has argued that Nikki suffered from chronic pneumonia in the lead-up to her death, and the medications she was given, including codeine, contributed to her death.

In Thursday’s decision, the judges on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals agreed to pause his execution in light of a similar case being overturned in 2024.

Judge Bert Richardson contrasted the shifting nature of the medical research with the finality of execution in his concurring opinion.

“There is a delicate balance and tension in our criminal justice system between the finality of judgment and its accuracy based on our ever-advancing scientific understanding,” Judge Richardson wrote.

“A death sentence is clearly final and, once carried out, hindsight is useless. Thus, when moving forward in such a way, we should require the highest standards of accuracy so that we can act with a reliable degree of certainty.”

But the court limited its judgement to reopening Roberson’s petition for habeas corpus, which questions the constitutionality of a person’s imprisonment.

It declined to reconsider Roberson’s case as a whole. That prompted some of the judges on the court to issue a partial dissent.

Judge David Schenck, for instance, argued that “a new trial is necessary and mandated by our Constitution”, given the new evidence that has emerged in the two decades since Roberson was sentenced to death.

“The merits of Roberson’s claims and the cumulative effect of the evidence Roberson presents — in his fifth application as well as his previous and subsequent applications — would be more properly and more swiftly assessed at this point by a jury in a new trial,” Schenck said.

He added that a new trial would also offer the state of Texas “an opportunity to present this case on its merits”.

Still, some judges on the panel said they were opposed to reopening the case, arguing that the shift in medical consensus did not rule out an act of violence in Nikki’s death.

“Arguably credible and reliable scientific evidence still exists to suggest that shaking a child can cause serious injury or death,” Judge Kevin Yeary wrote in his opinion.

This is not the first time that Roberson’s case has been delayed. He has spent nearly 23 years on death row and was also slated to be executed a year ago, in October 2024.

But that execution date was scuttled in an extraordinary series of events. With his execution scheduled for October 17 of that year, a bipartisan group of legislators in the Texas House Committee on Criminal Jurisprudence agreed to issue a subpoena for Roberson on October 21 — effectively setting up a battle between the legislature’s will and the court’s.

The subpoen sparked a court case about the separation of powers in Texas: A witness could not answer a legislative subpoena if the justice system executed him first.

Further, the members of the Texas House committee had argued that a 2013 state law barring the use of “junk science” in court cases had failed to be applied in Roberson’s case.

The case reached the Texas Supreme Court, which halted Roberson’s execution while the matter was resolved. Execution dates are set with at least 90 days’ notice in Texas, resulting in a prolonged pause.

On July 16, after appeals from Roberson’s defence team, a new execution date was set for this month.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, has accused critics of Roberson’s sentence of “interfering with the capital punishment proceedings” and has repeatedly pledged to push forward with the execution.

But even those involved in Roberson’s original capital murder trial have sought to see his sentence overturned.

Brian Wharton, the lead investigator in Roberson’s case, had once testified in favour of the prosecution. But last year, he told the Texas House committee that he supported Roberson’s appeal, given the new evidence that has come to light.

“He is an innocent man, and we are very close to killing him for something he did not do,” Wharton said.

On Thursday, one of the jurors who helped convict Roberson also published an opinion column in the Houston Chronicle, asserting that she was “wrong” to side with the prosecution.

“If we on the jury knew then what I know now — about the new evidence of Nikki’s missed pneumonia, how her breathing would have been affected by the Phenergan and codeine doctors gave her that last week, the signs of sepsis, and all the things that were wrong with the version of shaken baby syndrome used in the case — we would have had a lot more to discuss,” Terre Compton wrote.

“Based on all that has come out since the trial, I am 100% certain that Robert Roberson did not murder his child.”

Texas has executed 596 people since 1982, the most of any state.

SEOUL — The immigration raid that snatched up hundreds of South Koreans last week sent a disconcerting message to companies in South Korea and elsewhere: America wants your investment, but don’t expect special treatment.

Images of employees being shackled and detained like criminals have outraged many South Koreans. The fallout is already being felt in delays to some big investment projects, auto industry executives and analysts said. Some predicted that it could also make some companies think twice about investing in the U.S. at all.

“Companies cannot afford to not be more cautious about investing in the U.S. in the future,” said Lee Ho-guen, an auto industry expert at Daeduk University, “In the long run, especially if things get worse, this could make car companies turn away from the U.S. market and more toward other places like Latin America, Europe or the Middle East.”

The raid last week, in which more than 300 South Korean nationals were detained, targeted a factory site in Ellabell, Ga,. owned by HL-GA Battery Company, a joint venture between Hyundai and South Korean battery-maker LG Energy Solutions to supply batteries for EVs. The Georgia factory is also expected to supply batteries for Kia, which is part of the Hyundai Motor Group. Kia has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on its factory in West Point, Ga.

“This situation highlights the competing policy priorities of the Trump administration and has many in Asia scratching their heads, asking, ‘Which is more important to America? Immigration raids or attracting high-quality foreign investment?” said Tami Overby, former president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Korea. “Images of hundreds of Korean workers being treated like criminals are playing all over Asia and don’t match President Trump’s vision to bring high-quality, advanced manufacturing back to America.”

A protester wears a mask of President Trump at a rally Tuesday in Seoul protesting the detention of South Korean workers in Georgia. The signs call for “immediate releases and Trump apology.”

(Ahn Young-joon / Associated Press)

South Korea is one of the U.S.’ biggest trading partners, with the two countries exchanging $242.5 billion in goods and services last year. The U.S. is the leading destination for South Korea’s overseas investments, receiving $26 billion last year, according to South Korea’s Finance Ministry.

Trump is banking on ambitious projects like the one raided in Georgia to revive American manufacturing.

Hyundai is one of the South Korean companies with the largest commitments to the U.S. It has invested around $20 billion since entering the market in the 1980s. It sold 836,802 cars in the U.S. last year.

California is one of its largest markets, with more than 70 dealerships.

Earlier this year, the company announced an additional $26 billion to build a new steel mill in Louisiana and upgrade its existing auto plants.

Hyundai’s expansion plans were part of the $150-billion pledge South Korea made last month to help convince President Trump to set tariffs on Korean products at 15% instead of the 25% he had earlier announced.

Samsung Electronics announced that it would invest $37 billion to construct a semiconductor factory in Texas. Similarly large sums are expected from South Korean shipbuilders.

Analysts and executives say the recent raid is making companies feel exposed, all the more so because U.S. officials have indicated that more crackdowns are coming.

“We’re going to do more worksite enforcement operations,” White House border advisor Tom Homan said on Sunday. “No one hires an illegal alien out of the goodness of their heart. They hire them because they can work them harder, pay them less, undercut the competition that hires U.S. citizen employees.”

Many South Korean companies have banned all work-related travel to the U.S. or are recalling personnel already there, according to local media reports. Construction work on at least 22 U.S. factory sites has reportedly been halted.

The newspaper Korea Economic Daily reported on Monday that 10 out of the 14 companies it contacted said they were considering adjusting their projects in the U.S. due to the Georgia raids.

It is a significant problem for the big planned projects, analysts say. South Korean companies involved in U.S. manufacturing projects say they need to bring their own engineering teams to get the factories up and running, but obtaining proper work visas for them is difficult and time-consuming. The option often used to get around this problem is an illegal shortcut like using the Electronic System for Travel Authorization, a non-work permit that allows tourists to stay in the country for up to 90 days.

Unlike countries such as Singapore or Mexico, South Korea doesn’t have a deal with Washington that guarantees work visas for specialized workers.

“The U.S. keeps calling for more investments into the country. But no matter how many people we end up hiring locally later, there is no way around bringing in South Korean experts to get things off the ground,” said a manager at a subcontractor for LG Energy Solution, who asked not to be named. “But now we can no longer use ESTAs like we did in the past.”

Trump pointed to the problem on Truth Social, posting that he will try to make it easier for South Korean companies to bring in the people they need, but reminding them to “please respect our Nation’s Immigration Laws.”

“Your Investments are welcome, and we encourage you to LEGALLY bring your very smart people … and we will make it quickly and legally possible for you to do so,” the post said.

Sydney Seiler, senior advisor and Korea chair at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that the timing of the raids was an “irritant” but that South Korean companies would eventually adjust.

“Rectifying that is a challenge for all involved, the companies, the embassies who issue visas, etc.,” Seiler said, adding that the raids will make other companies be more careful in the future.