Politics

Pentagon Briefs NATO on Europe Troops: August 26, 2026

The Pentagon’s policy chief is due in Brussels on Thursday to tell NATO ambassadors what Washington wants from a six-month review of U.S. forces in Europe — a review European officials still cannot decide is a genuine consultation, a gesture, or a bargaining chip. Arab News, from Brussels, said Under Secretary of Defense Elbridge Colby will meet ambassadors from the 32-country alliance. “The United States is consulting with Allies as part of its force posture review,” a NATO official said. Washington launched the review in July as it presses Europe to take primary responsibility for the continent’s conventional defence. The United States currently has roughly 80,000 troops in Europe.

The move was announced by Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth amid U.S. anger at European restrictions on American forces using bases at the start of the Iran war. As part of the process, the United States is quizzing countries over defence spending and access for American forces. “We need to send a united European message on Thursday to show how we are stepping up together as a whole,” one diplomat told Arab News. “It is not a beauty contest.” Colby has described the review as meant to advance “NATO 3.0,” an alliance where Europe takes primary responsibility for conventional defence.

President Donald Trump’s administration has long pressured Europe to spend more as it signals it wants to step back and focus on other challenges such as China. The Pentagon has already told allies it is reducing the number of assets it makes available for NATO defence plans. Washington also said in May it would withdraw 5,000 troops from Germany, but Trump later said he was sending the same number to neighboring Poland. European countries agreed in 2025 to Trump’s demand to devote five percent of GDP to security-related spending by 2035. Thursday’s briefing is the first time Colby is expected to walk the whole ambassadors’ table through the review.

Sources: Arab News; Defense News.

Bolivia Deploys Troops Over Diesel: August 26, 2026

Bolivia put soldiers and police on the highway through Yapacaní, in Santa Cruz, on Tuesday to stop a farm blockade over diesel prices — then a deputy minister sat down with the same farmers and talked about tearing the price decree up. EFE, from the town, said the road toward Cochabamba stayed open. Defence Minister Ernesto Justiniano said the overnight deployment was “to prevent the blockade, protect the highway and, above all, avoid clashes.” A 90-day state of emergency, declared on 20 June after weeks of protests demanding President Rodrigo Paz resign, is still in force until 20 September. People can march and meet, Justiniano said. They cannot block roads.

Supreme Decree 5676, issued 17 August, set a reference price of 18 bolivianos a litre (about $1.55) for industry, companies, and other “large consumers,” against 9.80 bolivianos (about $0.84) for public transport and anyone using less than 5,000 litres a month. MercoPress put the increase at 83.7 percent. Producers in Yapacaní, a rice area on the east–west corridor about 131 kilometres from Santa Cruz de la Sierra, say supply has dropped by half. Interior Vice Minister Hernán Paredes and a YPFB official met the Intercultural Federation of Agricultural Producers. Farm leader Juan Cáceres told EFE that Paredes committed to work “so that in 48 hours” the decree would be annulled. “And if this decree is not repealed, the organisations … will unify to see the path to take on mobilisation,” Cáceres said.

Paredes, speaking to EFE, said he shared the farmers’ view that the rule “has not met its original objectives,” because subsidised diesel is still being diverted and is not reaching small producers. He told local media the cabinet wanted the decree repealed, modified, or replaced, and that it “cannot stay as it is.” He talked about letting more sectors import fuel, about YPFB refineries running at 18 to 20 percent of capacity, and about sending tankers to test distribution near the fields. He did not name a new price or a date. As of Wednesday, MercoPress reported, the decree was still on the books and at least ten organisations — mining cooperatives, transport workers, market traders, and coca growers among them — were already defying the emergency rules. Groups aligned with former president Evo Morales were due to meet in the Trópico de Cochabamba to decide on their own measures.

Long lines at service stations have been a fact of life for weeks. The state of emergency was supposed to keep the roads open. Yapacaní is where that promise and the diesel decree met.

Sources: MercoPress; EFE via ABC Color.

Australia Lets Queensland Burn Coal for Data Centres: August 26, 2026

Queensland will be allowed to power data centres with coal or gas. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the state premiers met as National Cabinet in Sydney on Wednesday to set national standards for the boom in AI halls, and Canberra blinked. The federal government had wanted new large centres to underwrite extra renewable generation. Queensland Premier David Crisafulli had said energy sources should be “technology-neutral.” After the meeting he called the carve-out a “good win” for a state that owns much of its own electricity system. The Northern Territory, which also wants gas, got the same recognition.

Albanese said both jurisdictions were in a “different position” to the others. He still claimed “buy-in on Australia’s first national AI laws,” and said the new standards — covering energy, water, land use, and community consultation — would be legislated early next year. South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas rejected the idea that the prime minister had been rolled, and said leaders were aligned that data centres should add to the grid without wrecking the national energy market. “What we agreed upon is that renewables will principally be the form of energy that will power data centres in the future in Australia,” he told 7.30. The communique talked about consistency for investors, sovereignty, and national interest. It did not restore the renewables mandate Energy Minister Chris Bowen had said he would legislate over the top of holdouts.

The numbers underneath the argument are not small. The Australian Energy Market Operator said Tuesday that data-centre electricity use on the National Electricity Market — everywhere except Western Australia and the Northern Territory — is expected to rise sevenfold in ten years, from about 3 percent of the grid now to around 13 percent by 2036, roughly what New South Wales and Victorian homes use together. There are already more than 200 centres. Opposition energy spokesman Dan Tehan said Albanese had “clearly been rolled.” Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young said Labor had “opened the door to more gas, more pollution and a fossil fuel free-for-all.” Crisafulli’s line, from state parliament on Tuesday, was simpler: “We should choose the energy mix, not a minister in Canberra who is driven by ideology.”

National Cabinet also agreed that Australian citizenship will be a condition of holding a firearm licence, with some exceptions. A national gun buyback after last December’s Bondi attack barely moved: Queensland is still out, Victoria and South Australia have not signed up, and Albanese said the offer was “still there.” Bird flu, now detected in all six states, got another $125 million. GST was left alone. The fight that actually changed on Wednesday was over who gets to burn what to keep the servers on.

Sources: ABC News.

Meta Settles Child-Safety Cases: August 26, 2026

Meta will pay up to $18 billion and change how teenagers use Facebook and Instagram under a deal with nearly every U.S. state, announced Wednesday in Oakland, California, while a federal trial over those claims was still underway. BBC said it is the company’s largest payment yet over child-safety litigation, going to 48 states plus the District of Columbia and three U.S. territories, in annual instalments over ten years. Meta denied wrongdoing. U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers approved the settlement Wednesday, BBC and CNBC reported. Instagram head Adam Mosseri had testified Tuesday; Mark Zuckerberg had been expected.

The first lawsuit, in 2023, came from 29 states. They said Meta designed the apps to keep children hooked, misled people about safety, and collected children’s data without parental consent. Four of those states — California, Colorado, Kentucky, and New Jersey — had been looking at civil penalties the company once put as high as $1.4 trillion; closer to trial the states talked about $200 billion. “The trial did not go well for Meta,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said Wednesday. “This is a major moment to clean up an industry that has been hurting our kids.” District of Columbia Attorney General Brian Schwalb called it a “monumental public health victory.”

Under the deal, teens get a default two-hour daily limit across Instagram and Facebook that only a parent can lift, and a “night mode” that blocks notifications from midnight to 6 a.m., on by default and only a parent can switch off. There is also a “school mode” mute on notifications from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. on school days, prompts after 15 minutes of continual use, hidden likes, a way to turn off autoplay, and a feed that is not driven by an algorithm. Extreme makeup filters come off. The two-hour cap would drop to one hour if TikTok, Snap, and YouTube took similar steps. Reuters reported that about $12.7 billion is guaranteed and another $5 billion is contingent on those other companies moving, and that Meta would also pay $459 million to settle separate Cambridge Analytica privacy claims. California could receive $2.2 billion. The settlement does not make Meta drop personalized recommendations or targeted ads.

Gonzalez Rogers called the agreement “a good step forward” and said she expected to approve it. “I am quite happy to not have to finish up this trial.” New Mexico is not in the deal; a judge there this month already found Meta a public nuisance and added $567 million to a $375 million jury award from March. Florida’s attorney general, James Uthmeier, said his state would keep going: “The payouts to the states are peanuts compared to the profound harms Meta’s profit-driven addictive features have inflicted on our children. We’ll see them at trial.” Texas reached a separate settlement of about $1 billion. Meta shares were higher. The company still faces thousands of other suits from individuals, schools, and cities.

Sources: BBC; CNBC.

Swiss Neutrality Vote: August 26, 2026

Swiss voters get a say next month on whether to lock a harder version of neutrality into the constitution — no peacetime NATO training, no sanctions unless the United Nations has already voted them. The referendum is on 27 September in Switzerland. Reuters, datelined Zurich on Wednesday, said posters of doves have gone up around the country. One recent poll had 62 percent against and 36 percent in favour, though campaigners for the change are outspending the other side, pollster Fabio Wasserfallen said, and the gap could move.

Neutrality has been recognised since 1815 and written into the constitution since 1848. It is not defined there in any detail. The 1907 Hague Convention is what actually says a neutral country cannot let its territory be used for war and has to stay impartial between the sides. Christoph Blocher, the veteran Swiss People’s Party politician behind the campaign, told Reuters that status is already gone because Bern copied the European Union’s sanctions on Russia after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. He said Switzerland has not had a war for 200 years because it stayed armed and neutral, and that a third world war may not be far off. The initiative, tabled by Pro Suisse, would bar Switzerland from joining or cooperating with any military or defence alliance unless it is attacked, and from joining sanctions that the UN has not approved.

Moscow has noticed. Foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, who is herself under Swiss sanctions, wrote that “flexible neutrality” means there is no neutrality at all. The Federal Council and parliament reject the initiative without a counter-proposal. Official Swiss foreign ministry material says the country already does not join NATO, already takes UN sanctions, and would lose the room it needs to train with partners before an attack, not after one. Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis has said the change would hurt national security and would stop joint exercises with NATO. Franz Perrez, the foreign ministry’s head of international law, said the current formula is understood and that adopting the measures would not make Switzerland more neutral.

Laurent Goetschel, a political scientist at the University of Basel, told Reuters that posters with the slogan “No to war, yes to neutrality” could appeal to people who do not fully understand how neutrality works, and that how it is handled should be left to the government, not fixed in the constitution. All major parties except the Swiss People’s Party oppose the measure. The government has already used its present flexibility this year, including a ban on overflights by U.S. military aircraft during the Iran conflict. The vote does not ask whether Switzerland stays neutral. It asks how tight the box should be.

Sources: Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs; SWI swissinfo.ch; Swiss Federal Council.

Taiwan Drone Budget Goes to a Vote: August 26, 2026

Taiwan’s president spent Wednesday telling his party to pass a six-year, NT$210 billion ($6.6 billion) special budget for military drones, hours before an opposition-controlled parliament was due to vote on competing bills in Taipei. Lai Ching-te said the island has to show it will defend itself. The government wants about 210,000 new military drones, arguing that the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East have already shown what uncrewed weapons do. China claims Taiwan as its territory. The government’s line is that the drones are needed to turn any fight into a “hellscape” for the Chinese military.

“This is not only a matter of national defence buildup, but also an important step for Taiwan to demonstrate its determination for self-defence,” Lai told a weekly meeting of the Democratic Progressive Party. The Cabinet plan would run from August 2026 through the end of 2031, with the Ministry of National Defense in charge. Focus Taiwan, citing the ministry’s request, said it would fund 1,446 coastal reconnaissance drones, 208,200 coastal attack drones, and 1,320 small suicide unmanned surface vessels. Parliament had already passed separate industry spending this month aimed at a “non-red” supply chain, meaning not dependent on China, which dominates the civilian drone market.

The opposition, which controls the legislature, has its own numbers. The Kuomintang wants NT$240 billion from the regular budget over six years, capped at NT$40 billion a year, and wants the economy ministry — not defence — to run it. KMT lawmaker Lai Shyh-bao told Wednesday’s meeting that was the more practical option. “The technology is advancing rapidly, and if you buy a huge quantity all at once, it will quickly become out of date,” he said. Defence Minister Wellington Koo said the government plan is still annual procurement and upgrades, not one bulk buy, and that a NT$40 billion cap would not work: the ministry already plans to spend NT$42.1 billion on drones in 2027 alone. “The fact of the matter is that NT$40 billion a year would not be enough,” he told the caucuses.

They did not agree. Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu moved the plenary vote up to Thursday morning so members could get back to southern districts flooded this week, and because Typhoon Saudel is expected to pass north of Taiwan. At a regular briefing in Beijing on Wednesday, Taiwan Affairs Office spokesperson Zhang Han repeated the charge that Lai is “seeking independence by force.” “The overwhelming trend towards reunification cannot be stopped,” he said. Lai rejects Beijing’s claim and says only Taiwan’s people can decide their future.

Sources: Focus Taiwan (CNA); Taipei Times.

US Seizes Chinese Hacking Platforms: August 26, 2026

Washington said Wednesday it had knocked out a Chinese hacking operation that broke into, or tried to break into, some of the most sensitive networks in the United States. The Justice Department and FBI announced court-authorized seizures of domains used by two platforms, QScan and QTRouter, run by a state-sponsored group the department calls QTFY. Among the victims named in unsealed court papers: NASA, the Federal Reserve, the Energy Department, the Justice Department itself, Health and Human Services, the National Institutes of Health, and the U.S. Senate. Reuters, citing the affidavit, also listed four unnamed companies in the United States and South Korea.

The tools belonged to Nanjing Xinjiuwei Network Technology Company, a China-based firm whose clients, the department said, included the Ministry of State Security and the People’s Liberation Army. QScan scans and infects internet-of-things devices worldwide. Those machines, plus commercial proxies and leased servers, feed QTRouter, an “obfuscation network” that makes Chinese-origin traffic look as if it is coming from somewhere else — sometimes even from inside the target country. Because the seized domains were hard-coded into both platforms for communication and authentication, the seizures made them inoperable. FBI Assistant Director Brett Leatherman said QTFY exploited devices in more than 130 countries and that Nanjing Xinjiuwei “sells stolen data and hacking services to Chinese military and intelligence agencies.”

The affidavit traces the infrastructure to at least 2018. Hackers unsuccessfully tried to get into NASA in August 2019 through a Pulse Secure VPN hole. In September 2024, the filing said, they got into three unnamed Energy Department laboratories, the NIH, an unnamed HHS agency, and a U.S. security-device maker. Investigators kept going through an attack on the Senate this year; the affidavit does not say which senators or committees. Attorney General Todd Blanche said “state-sponsored malicious hackers preying on America’s critical infrastructure will be stopped and prosecuted.” FBI Director Kash Patel called it “just the latest technical operation against PRC-sponsored hacking.”

The Chinese embassy in Washington did not immediately comment. Beijing routinely denies hacking. Reuters could not immediately reach Nanjing Xinjiuwei. Dakota Cary, a China analyst at SentinelOne, told Reuters that over the last decade “the number of companies offering niche offensive services has exploded.” The FBI and NSA published a cybersecurity advisory on QTFY the same day. This is the department going after the plumbing, not a courtroom conviction. The claim is that the plumbing ran through NASA, the Fed, and the Senate.

Sources: U.S. Department of Justice; Reuters; The Record (Recorded Future News).

Armenia Detains Former President Kocharyan: August 26, 2026

Armenia’s former president is in custody in Yerevan. Robert Kocharyan, 71, and his eldest son, Sedrak, were detained Tuesday after raids on businesses linked to the family, the Anti-Corruption Committee said. The Prosecutor General’s Office opened a case against him for abuse of authority, bribery, and large-scale money laundering. Four other people were detained with them, the office said. RFE/RL’s Armenian Service, citing the committee, put the wider case at 14 people charged. Investigators say that while Kocharyan was president, from 1998 to 2008, state assets were sold to private companies below market value. The prosecutor-general said he used the office to transfer state property to himself and associates on “advantageous terms” and hide its “criminal origin,” including Defense Ministry land sold to an associate for a quarter of market price.

The timing is not subtle. The raids came less than 24 hours after Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan clashed in parliament with Kocharyan’s younger son, Levon, an opposition lawmaker. Levon accused the prime minister of leaning on courts and police. Pashinyan asked where the family’s money came from and said assets taken at public expense should go back to the state. Kocharyan leads the Armenia Alliance, parliament’s second-largest opposition bloc, which RFE/RL described as pro-Moscow; it took almost 10 percent in June’s election. His office chief, Bagrat Mikoyan, called the detentions “yet another attack on President Kocharyan and his family.” The Alliance called it “personal vengeance” and “the open subjugation of the state apparatus.” Kocharyan felt ill after his detention and was taken to a hospital.

Former President Serzh Sargsyan, Kocharyan’s old prime minister and successor, is also facing abuse-of-power charges in the same file and was summoned Tuesday. Opposition figures Gagik Tsarukian and Samvel Karapetian are already in pretrial detention or under house arrest. Catholicos Karekin II is on trial. Kocharyan himself was tried after 2018 over the deadly 2008 post-election unrest, when at least 10 people were killed; those charges were later dropped.

Alexander Iskandaryan, director of the Caucasus Institute in Yerevan, told the Associated Press the case will sharpen the fight between the pro-Russian opposition and Pashinyan’s government, which is pushing closer to the European Union. “Of course, this is a signal to the Kremlin,” he said. “Kocharyan effectively positions himself as a Russian proxy, and we see a trend where the authorities have begun to fight — intensively and by all possible means — against political forces aligned with Russia.” Kocharyan has long had personal ties with Vladimir Putin; Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in 2021 the two had “good relations for a very long time.”

Sources: Associated Press; RFE/RL; Euronews; Reuters.

Israeli Lawmaker Smashes West Bank Memorial: August 26, 2026

A far-right Israeli lawmaker took a sledgehammer to a Palestinian memorial in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday, with army escorts standing nearby. Video showed Zvi Sukkot, a Religious Zionism member of the Knesset, and several others striking the stone monument in Madama, south of Nablus. “This is something we cannot leave standing here, because any place that glorifies terrorism, we must remove it,” he said on the footage. He posted that he had asked the military to take the monuments down in Madama and Burin, they were still there, “so I went there myself.”

Rami Nasar, head of Madama’s village council, told the BBC the memorial went up in 2008 to remember Palestinians killed in the 1968 battle of Karameh and in the first and second intifadas. He told AFP it also includes names up to the present. The Israel Defense Forces said it had approved a “tour” of monuments for Sukkot and diverted soldiers from operational duties to protect him. Then, it said, he and his aides “acted deceptively and manipulatively, without authorisation,” and started demolishing the Madama memorial. Soldiers reported it, commanders told them to stop, and the group was “quickly escorted out of the village.” The military called it a misuse of its protection and said it views the episode “with the utmost severity.” Nasar rejected that account, telling Haaretz via Middle East Eye that soldiers stood by.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office condemned the method, not the target. “The IDF is the sovereign authority in Judea and Samaria,” the statement said, using the biblical term for the West Bank. “Taking the law into one’s own hands, especially when it involves public figures, is a reprehensible practice that prevents the IDF from focusing on its missions of combating terrorism and incitement to violence.” Gadi Eisenkot, Netanyahu’s main rival ahead of the October 27 election, called Sukkot’s behavior “a disgrace” and said the prime minister was “allowing anarchists like Zvi Sukkot and his ilk to do whatever they please.” Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who leads Sukkot’s party, aimed his fire at the opposition for rushing to condemn Sukkot “rather than terrorism itself.”

The temperature in the West Bank was already high. Israeli media reported Monday that Maj. Gen. Avi Bluth, the senior officer there, told Netanyahu in a closed meeting that mounting settler violence could ignite a major escalation. Madama itself has been hit by settler attacks. The army, even as it scolded Sukkot, said it regularly destroys “memorials and symbols of incitement” when the paperwork is in order. Sukkot called the sledgehammer “a small taste.”

Sources: BBC; Agence France-Presse via The Straits Times; The Jerusalem Post; Middle East Eye.

China Tells Citizens to Leave Eswatini: August 26, 2026

China has told its people to get out of Eswatini. The foreign ministry’s consular department said Tuesday that Chinese nationals and institutions already in the southern African kingdom “should evacuate as soon as possible or relocate to relatively safer areas such as South Africa,” citing “rampant cyber fraud and online gambling criminal activities.” Anyone who stays, it warned, faces “extremely high security risks, and the timeliness of receiving consular assistance may be affected.” Spokesman Lin Jian repeated the line in Beijing on Wednesday: telecom fraud and online gambling are “rampant,” public-order risks are “extremely high,” and China “will take necessary measures” to protect its citizens overseas.

Mbabane answered the same day. Acting government spokesperson Thabile Mdluli said Eswatini respected any country’s right to advise its own citizens, but called the picture of an exceptional security threat “unsupported” and “regrettable.” A recent police operation against suspected organized cybercrime, involving mostly Chinese nationals, was not proof the country had lost control, the statement said. It was “an isolated criminal operation” that law enforcement had disrupted. “Eswatini remains a peaceful, stable and law-governed State.” The kingdom “will not be coerced, disadvantaged or destabilised” over its diplomatic choices.

Those choices are the point. Eswatini is one of 12 countries, and the only one in Africa, that still recognizes Taiwan. Beijing claims the island as its own. Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te visited in May after an April trip was cancelled; Taipei had accused China of leaning on neighboring states to revoke overflight permits. The BBC reported that Beijing’s foreign ministry afterwards called Lai “an international laughing stock.” On May 1, Beijing extended zero tariffs to every African country except Eswatini. A commerce ministry source told The Korea Times more than 200 Chinese nationals work there in textiles, retail, and restaurants.

The security file is real and messy. The Times of Eswatini reported Tuesday that 40 Chinese nationals have been held since last month after first being arrested in March, with dozens of other foreigners, in raids on alleged illegal online gambling centers in Mbabane. Their lawyers say they pleaded guilty to immigration offenses, paid fines, were released on High Court orders, and were then re-arrested unlawfully. The Korea Times, citing the crackdown, put the year’s haul at about 200 foreign nationals, including at least 55 Chinese citizens. China did not spell out what, beyond fraud and gambling, makes the kingdom too dangerous to stay in. Eswatini says the raids prove the police are working, not that the country is falling apart.

Sources: BBC; The Korea Times; China Daily; Times of Eswatini.

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