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Disputes over Hamas disarmament threaten Gaza peace plan progress

Progress in the Gaza peace plan has stalled over disagreements on how Hamas should be disarmed, with Israel threatening to go back to full-scale war if the condition is not carried out quickly. The second phase of the US-brokered ceasefire, which Washington declared had begun in January, was meant to involve Hamas disarming, Israeli forces withdrawing and a Palestinian interim administration moving into Gaza backed by a Palestinian police force and an International Stabilisation Force (ISF). The 20-point plan, which is supposed to be overseen by Donald Trump’s newly assembled Board of Peace, is vague on sequencing, however. The Israeli government is pushing for the complete disarmament of Hamas to come first and Israeli officials have been briefing journalists that the US will soon lay down a 60-day deadline for that to be completed. “It is estimated that, in the coming days, Hamas will be given an ultimatum to disarm and fully demilitarise Gaza,” far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich told public radio on Monday, adding that the ultimatum would come from Washington. If Hamas did not comply, the minister said, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) would “receive international legitimacy and American backing to do it itself”. The Israeli foreign minister, Gideon Saar, reportedly told Israel’s security cabinet on Sunday that Trump would deliver his ultimatum to Hamas within days. However, the US president did not address the issue in his State of the Union speech on Tuesday night. He claimed credit for the return of the bodies of Israeli hostages and did not even mention the Board of Peace, which he had hailed four days earlier as a historic turning point. Even if a disarmament campaign was announced, it is unclear who would be in a position to receive Hamas weapons within a 60-day period. The National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), a collection of 15 Palestinian non-affiliated technocrats, has gathered in Cairo, preparing to manage the devastated territory, but it is still a long way from stepping into Gaza. According to a report in the rightwing Israel Hayom newspaper on Tuesday, the NCAG will present Hamas in March with a six-month plan to disarm, beginning with heavy weapons and ending with light firearms. At the outset Hamas would have to hand over an inventory of its heavy weapons, as well as a map of the network of tunnels it has dug under Gaza. The Israel Hayom account cites unnamed sources and incorporates Israeli talking points. Rival militias, armed clans and gangs would only be disarmed after Hamas, and every other step in phase two would be contingent on its prior disarmament. The report quoted sources saying that Israel would have full international backing to go back to its assault on Gaza if disarmament is not carried out. “It seems more wishful thinking than a serious plan,” said Michael Milshtein, head of the Palestinian Studies Forum at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University and a former colonel in military intelligence. The NCAG is far from ready to enter Gaza. Its funding has been slow to arrive and it is unable to enter the occupied territory without security arrangements. A police force is being trained to serve under the committee, but Israel is vetting potential recruits and has been vetoing those who served in the Gaza police under Hamas rule, arguing they are tainted by association. A few thousand police officers have been trained in Jordan and Egypt, but this is generally seen as an insufficient force for Gaza’s 2.2 million population in the aftermath of a devastating two-year bombardment. Indonesia, Morocco, Kazakhstan, Kosovo and Albania have offered troops for the planned 20,000-strong ISF and preparations are being made for a large barracks in southern Gaza, but the force’s mandate has not been agreed, and troop contributors do not want their soldiers to be tasked with wresting Hamas’s weapons from them. Analysts said Hamas would almost certainly reject the disarmament plan as described in the Israeli press as it required the group to surrender its main residual asset, its weapons, without any guarantee that Israeli would withdraw or other groups would be disarmed, leaving Hamas members potentially defenceless against armed rivals during a transition to NCAG governance. “The details in the Israel Hayom report would be promptly rejected by Hamas,” Muhammad Shehada, Gaza analyst at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said. “It basically asks them to hand over everything gradually. Hamas is more likely to accept freezing, locking up and decommissioning its offensive weapons (eg rockets), while retaining light weapons to protect themselves against clans and gangs or should the IDF resume military operations.” “The light weapons would be under a strict policy of no use, no public display; anyone showing a gun in public would be arrested by NCAG’s police,” Shehada added. The Board of Peace held its first working meeting in Washington on Thursday last week, but the session does not seem to have brought much clarity on the key issue of disarmament. Egypt and Saudi are said to be arguing for a decommissioning process modelled on the Northern Ireland peace agreement, with the phased disarming of all paramilitary groups, overseen by an independent commission. Shehada said the United Arab Emirates had sided with the Israeli position in demanding the complete disarmament of Hamas as a precondition for other steps. He argued that this was a recipe for going back to all-out war. “Netanyahu is doing everything he can to collapse phase two and resume military operations,” Shehada said. “He’s doing the same trick as in Iran, making maximalist demands to get Hamas/Iran to say no to, then persuade Trump that the military option is the only way.” Hamas’s belief that Israel is determined to go back to war has reportedly only reinforced its determination to hang on to its weapons. The Times of Israel cited a message from the Hamas leadership in Gaza to the politburo in Qatar, saying the group had to be “ready to fight the IDF again, as it is convinced that Israel is going to reinvade Hamas-held areas”. The same report cited “a source with knowledge of Israel’s thinking” saying that Israel had been seeking to persuade Trump that the disarmament of Hamas could win him his longed-for Nobel peace prize. In his recent statements, Smotrich has made clear he expects disarmament to fail, opening the door for the complete Israeli conquest of Gaza. “In the end, Israel will occupy the Gaza Strip, implement a military government and establish Jewish settlements there,” he said, adding: “It doesn’t matter if it happens in a year, two years, or three years.” HA Hellyer, a senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, said the Israeli approach would virtually guarantee the collapse of the 20-point plan. “The process is made to depend on Hamas disarming; otherwise, everything else is temporarily held up, until Israel decides to return to full scale war,” Hellyer said on X. “This isn’t a situation that lends itself to positive outcomes.”

Zelenskyy confirms US talks ahead of ‘trilateral meeting with Russia’, as Orbán doubles down on Ukraine criticism – Europe live

Former chiefs of Poland’s civil and military intelligence services face charges of misconduct in public office as part of a wider investigation into the previous government’s use of the controversial spyware Pegasus. Pegasus is a powerful tool designed by Israeli company NSO Group. It is capable of taking control of a target’s mobile phone, accessing data from secure messaging apps and even turning the device into a recorder. The two men, who led Poland’s Internal Security Agency and Military Counterintelligence Service, were charged on Wednesday, Poland’s prosecutor general said in a statement. The prosecutors allege, among others, that they allowed for the spyware’s deployment despite not securing the high-level clearances required for intelligence operations. They could face up to three years in jail, the statement said. For more on the domestic political controversies about the use of Pegasus, see Shaun Walker’s story from 2024:

Members of Iran’s elite accused of hypocrisy over children’s lives in west

Members of Iran’s ruling elite have been accused of brazen hypocrisy by allegedly using the state’s wealth to help to fund their adult children’s lives in the west while presiding over growing economic misery and repression at home. Opposition campaigners made the accusation against some of the clerical regime’s most powerful figures as a military confrontation with the US appears increasingly likely. Donald Trump has deployed a vast armada in the Middle East and confirmed he is considering strikes. Those singled out for criticism include Ali Larijani, Iran’s top national security adviser, who has a daughter living in the US and two nephews in Britain and Canada, despite having long been one of the Islamic Republic’s most vocal critics of western values. Larijani – a former parliament speaker and senior Revolutionary Guard – is believed to have played a key role in the deadly crackdown against opposition protests that gripped the country in January. Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, is reported to have tasked him with coordinating preparations for a possible war with the US. Anger at the aghazadehs, as the scions of the elite are known, is acute after the crushing of the protests resulted in a death toll that some sources put in the tens of thousands. “People are upset that the aghazadehs are getting dollar stipends to go to the west – the United States, Europe elsewhere – to study essentially on the state’s dime,” said Alex Vatanka, the Iran programme director at the Middle East Institute in Washington. After the protests, Washington vowed to “revoke the privilege of Iranian senior officials and their family members to be in the United States”, according to a social media post. It is unclear, however, how such measures will be implemented. One Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander who criticised the practice said 4,000 children and relatives of regime officials were believed to be living in western countries in 2024. Kambiz Ghafouri, an Iranian writer and human-rights activist based in Helsinki, said: “They made Iran a hell for Iranian citizens and sent their children to the west to live happily. If there was a referendum voting on whether people want children of the Iranian authorities sent back to Iran, I think more than 90% would say yes.” Larijani’s daughter, Fatemeh Ardeshir Larijani, was an assistant professor at Emory University medical school in Atlanta until last month, when the institution said it had terminated her employment after an online petition called for her deportation. Larijani’s brother, Mohammad-Javad Larijani, also an adviser to Khamenei and a former head of the country’s human rights council, has one son, Hadi, who is a professor at Glasgow Caledonian University’s technology centre in the UK, according to Regime Out, an opposition website. Hadi’s brother, Sina, is a director for the Royal Bank of Canada in Vancouver. The former Iranian president Hassan Rouhani’s niece, Maryam Fereydoun – daughter of Rouhani’s brother and former aide, Hossein Fereydoun – works for Deutsche Bank in London “overseeing financial flows from the Middle East”, according to Regime Out, which has urged the bank to dismiss her. Another US-based regime scion is Eissa Hashemi, an associate professor at the Chicago School in Los Angeles. He is the son of Masoumeh Ebtekar, a former MP who earned the nickname “screaming Mary” as a spokesperson for the radical students who held 52 diplomats hostage at the US embassy in Tehran for 444 days at the height of the 1979 revolution. Habibollah Bitaraf, a former energy minister and another leader of the embassy siege that triggered the rupture between Washington and Tehran, has a daughter living in the US. Also US-based is Mahdi Zarif, whose father, Mohammad Javad Zarif, was Iran’s foreign minister during the negotiations that led to the 2015 nuclear deal subsequently scrapped by Trump. A petition accuses Mahdi Zarif of “living a luxurious life in the United States”. “Until 2021, he resided in a $16,000,000 home in Manhattan,” it states. Elias Ghalibaf, the eldest son of Mohammad-Baqer Ghalibaf, a former IRGC commander, presidential candidate and one-time mayor of Tehran, lives in Australia and has been the target of a similar petition. Vatanka said the adult children’s western lifestyles were starkly at odds with the values their parents preached. “The core of the matter is hypocrisy.” he said. “You have an Islamist ruling order that for 47 years has been preaching all sorts of ways to behave, and we then see, one after another, children or grandchildren of the members of the elite living a very different life than the one their politically connected families back in Iran are preaching.” Vatanka said western countries might be reluctant to deport well-connected sons and daughters of the regime, seeing them as potential intelligence assets. “There’s always an intelligence value, if you are the CIA, MI6 or whoever,” he said. “Some of these connections might bring nuggets of information that can be useful. They become messengers. “There has been fundamentally no policy on how to deal with the offspring of the regime elite’s children. The west, by and large, doesn’t want to get involved in collective punishment or punishing someone just because of their origins.”

Russian firms have routed $8bn of trade through British island territories since invasion of Ukraine

Russian companies have used Britain’s secretive island territories to conduct $8bn (£5.9bn) of trade since the invasion of Ukraine, according to a report that highlights the flow of goods ranging from oil-drilling equipment to luxury yachts linked to Moscow’s political elite. The analysis, published a day after the fourth anniversary of Russia’s assault on its neighbour, raises questions over the role played by the British overseas territories in enforcing sanctions designed to turn the screw on the Kremlin. Written in exile by the Russian office of the anti-corruption group Transparency International, the report uncovers trade deals involving more than 150 luxury yachts, dozens of aircraft and equipment destined for Russia’s money-spinning oil sector. Analysis of 29,000 transactions identified: Yachts linked to allies of Vladimir Putin. Drilling kit for Kremlin-backed oil projects. Coal linked to Ukraine’s pro-Russian ex-president. A jet linked to the Chechen warlord Ramzan Kadyrov. Researchers found that more than 95% of the trade, uncovered by scouring official data, was routed through four territories: the British Virgin Islands, Bermuda, the Cayman Islands and Gibraltar. Most transactions took place in the immediate aftermath of international sanctions being imposed in 2022, although Transparency International also found many more recent deals in the data, which runs up to January 2025. Deals in 2022 include 65 transactions that use the description “yacht”, often using offshore entities as part of transfers between Turkey and the Russian port of Sochi, across the Black Sea. The number of yacht trades increased to 97 in 2023, including deliveries to parts of Crimea that had been annexed by Russia. One of the vessels that appears in Cayman Islands trade data, the $100m (£74m), 74-metre Universe, has previously been linked to Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chair of Russia’s security council and the country’s former president, who is sanctioned by the UK. Another, named the Marlin, was delivered to Russia via a Cayman Islands company in 2022, trade data showed. According to a report by the independent Russian media outlet Proekt, it was bought by the oligarch Suleyman Kerimov, who then gave it to a senior figure in Vladimir Putin’s inner circle. Kerimov is also on the UK sanctions list. A spokesperson for Cayman Finance said UK sanctions laws applied on the island and were “immediately enforced”. They said more than $9.7bn (£7.2bn) of Russian assets had been frozen as part of a joint effort with the UK government known as Operation Hektor, adding that the UK minister for overseas territories, Stephen Doughty, had called the operation an “excellent example of best practice”. Of the $8bn in trade analysed by Transparency International, $4.4bn involved companies in the British Virgin Islands (BVI), whose government has been warned by the UK for dragging its feet on plans to introduce a publicly available register of corporate ownership. Companies linked to the family of the sanctioned pro-Russian former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych have reportedly sent coal mined in the occupied territories of Ukraine to Turkey, according to the Latvia-based Russian outlet iStories. The proceeds from these sales were reportedly routed to offshore accounts registered to a BVI company found in the trade data. Transparency International said the BVIs were unusual among the overseas territories in that most of the transactions involving the islands were exports from Russia, including the purchase of natural resources from Russian companies. “This may indicate a particular priority for Russian companies in their attempts to conceal trade income,” researchers said. A BVI spokesperson said the data “does not appear to refer to any actual sanctions breaches”, adding that the BVI had frozen more than $400m in Russian assets in 2022. The islands’ government has created a dedicated sanctions unit to implement and enforce UK sanctions locally, the spokesperson added. The second most commonly used jurisdiction among the overseas territories is Bermuda, with a volume of nearly $3bn. Russian companies used Bermuda entities to pay for drilling equipment in the oil and gas industry, the report found, including gas turbines and piles destined for a division of the Sakhalin Energy group, which is building the vast Sakhalin-2 oil and gas pipeline. The UK oil company Shell pulled out of the Sakhalin project in 2022 and it is now majority-owned by the Kremlin-backed Gazprom. A Bermuda company also appears to have acted as the intermediary in the $55m sale by a Dubai-based company of an Airbus RA-73417 aircraft, which Russian journalists have reported was bought by the family of the sanctioned Chechen warlord leader Ramzan Kadyrov. A spokesperson for Bermuda said it “continues to ensure robust compliance with the obligations under the sanctions framework and engages proactively with entities to uphold the integrity of the jurisdiction.” They added: “We do not comment on individual cases; however, the sanctions regimes in force in Bermuda prohibit a range of activities and transactions and contain specific exceptions and licensing grounds.” Transparency International said: “Unfortunately, for many years now, we have observed a dysfunctional equilibrium in which illicit financial flows, tax evasion, sanctions circumvention and other forms of misconduct are channelled through firms and intermediaries registered in unaccountable jurisdictions.” The UK government has demanded that overseas territories such as the BVIs and Bermuda and crown dependencies such as Jersey and the Isle of Man introduce fully accessible registers of beneficial ownership. However, the UK has been accused of caving in to the BVI government by allowing it to limit who can access its new register. Gibraltar said it was a “leader in transparency” as the first overseas territory to establish a register of beneficial ownership, adding that transactions involving Gibraltar companies made up less than 1% of the trade in the report.

Wednesday briefing: Is the tide turning against Trump on tariffs?

Good morning. Let’s delve into the two Ts shaping the global economy right now: tariffs and Trump. Last week, the US supreme court ruled that Donald Trump had unlawfully used executive powers to impose sweeping global tariffs. In a 6-3 decision, the court found that the 1977 law Trump relied on did not give him the authority he claimed to introduce tariffs across the world. The ruling dealt a significant blow to a central plank of the president’s economic and geopolitical agenda. Trump took the judgment as well as expected: he called the supreme court justices “a disgrace to the nation” and announced a new 15% global baseline tariff using alternative powers. So what does this ruling mean for Trump, the US constitution and the rest of the world? For today’s newsletter, I spoke to Stephanie Rickard, a professor of political economy at the London School of Economics. That’s after the headlines. Five big stories US news | Donald Trump proclaimed his first year in office a success at the State of the Union address overnight, even as his presidency is dogged by low public approval ratings before November’s midterm elections. UK news | Peter Mandelson condemned the police for his arrest and claimed he was only taken into custody because detectives had wrongly believed he was about to flee the country. Reform | Unions and renters’ groups criticised Reform UK after the party’s business spokesperson pledged to introduce a “great repeal act” that would abolish Labour legislation on workers’ rights and protection for tenants. Education | Teachers and schools face “a huge ask” implementing the government’s special needs proposals, according to education leaders and MPs who otherwise gave the plans a cautious welcome. Health | Almost half the public delay or avoid contacting their GP surgery when they are ill, mainly because they think they will struggle to get an appointment, a survey found. In depth: ‘We have seen some pushback, even from Republican legislators’ Mere months after being re-elected in 2024, Donald Trump announced what his administration called a new chapter in the country’s economic history. On 2 April last year, dubbed “liberation day” by the White House, he unveiled plans for an extraordinary barrage of US tariffs on the world. To do so, he invoked a 1977 law designed to address national emergencies – economic or otherwise. Stephanie Rickard tells me that the supreme court ultimately ruled that while a president can act during a crisis, tariffs were not a lawful way to do so. It marked the first time the court struck down a major policy from Trump’s second term. Rickard explains that the decision on tariffs – taxes on imports imposed at the border on goods entering the United States from another country – reinforced a longstanding constitutional principle: taxation falls within the remit of Congress. “Congress has in the past given the president a lot of leeway in trade policy and negotiating trade agreements,” Rickard says. Now, however, there is a growing belief that the president has gone too far. “Congress has said this is not helping consumers in the United States. This is not helping the United States with its allies. And so we have seen some pushback, even from Republican legislators.” *** What’s different about Trump’s tariff policy? Trump’s tariffs policies are unprecedented, even by his standards. “Tariffs are usually really specific to protect a particular product, even down to very specific details of the product, say trucks with five seatbelts rather than two,” Rickard explains. “Trump is doing something different.” The US president has imposed sweeping tariffs across countries, such as a blanket tariff on Chinese imports, broad levies on steel and aluminium from allies, including the European Union. “That is a real change from what has come before, particularly in the past couple of decades,” Rickard says. Some countries have successfully pushed specific deals, such as the UK on the automobiles industry or airplane engines. “But Trump really has decided to use tariffs in this very blunt way,” she adds. Trump has justified the tariffs on several grounds, arguing they reduce reliance on foreign manufacturing and, crucially, generate revenue for the US government. “He’s even in the past promised to write cheques to Americans using the money that he’s raised from tariffs,” Rickard says. *** What’s the response been? It’s not just Congress that has pushed back against Trump’s tariff policies – they have also begun to sour among the general public. This is perhaps unsurprising: one of Trump’s central election promises was to tackle the cost of living in the US, particularly the price of everyday groceries. “We see public opinion changing as consumers start to realise that they’re the ones paying,” Rickard says. So as the cost of living crisis intensifies in the US, “public opinion is turning against these tariffs”, she adds. When the tariffs were first announced in 2025, the US stock markets reacted sharply. Unsurprisingly, Trump later walked back some of his most ambitious tariff proposals. While the US stock market did fall after the announcement of the 15% tariff, market movements have been more muted than many expected. Rickard suggests that could be because uncertainty may have already been baked in. “Trump has this history of announcing tariffs, walking back, announcing them, walking back, and then signing bilateral deals,” she says. “So some of that uncertainty is just priced in at the moment and so we just don’t see huge market reactions to them.” Across the world, there is widespread confusion on what Trump’s announcements actually mean. For some countries, she adds, Trump’s latest flat tariff policy could prove beneficial, including Brazil and China, where tariff rates would fall by 13.6 and 7.1 percentage points respectively. But for countries like the UK, which had already negotiated a 10% tariff arrangement, such a move would represent a worse deal. That said, it is still not clear if the new tariffs, which began yesterday, will be at the 10% rate on most goods agreed last May, the 15% rate, or customs default to pre-reciprocal day tariffs. For now, most countries and businesses are employing a wait and see approach. “No one wins from a trade war,” Rickard says. “Every country is going to be a little bit hesitant to engage in tit-for-tat retaliation … They’re going to hold their fire, and watch what happens.” *** Has the supreme court finally broken with Trump? The tariff ruling marked the first time the supreme court has struck down one of Trump’s second-term policies. But is it a sign the court is breaking with him? Rickard doesn’t think so. “The ruling was very specific about taxation and tariffs. So we wouldn’t want to over-interpret this and say the supreme court is reining in Trump,” she says. But the ruling is an undeniable defeat for Trump, she adds. “He can’t walk around threatening countries with tariffs under this particular piece of legislation,” Rickard says. “One of his threats has been taken away from him.” And when it comes to tariffs, she stresses, this is far from the end of the story. “The administration will look for other statutes in US law that give them authority to impose tariffs,” Rickard says. That process is already under way, with the administration launching investigations into alleged unfair trade practices. If those investigations conclude that such practices exist, a definition that can be interpreted broadly, Trump could still impose tariffs on a country-by-country basis. Another key factor is the approaching midterm elections in November. The 15% tariffs Trump has announced can legally remain in place for only 150 days, bringing their political impact close to the election campaign itself. “Prices are still really high, particularly on things like beef and coffee,” she says. “It’s an issue that will absolutely be brought into the midterm elections.” What else we’ve been reading As an extremely committed introvert speaking to strangers is not high on my list of fun things to do, but Viv Groskop does a good job here selling the benefits of random conversations. Martin This is an extraordinary investigation led by Niamh McIntyre at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism into gig workers in Kenya, including refugees, who are unknowingly building datasets for the US military. Aamna Christian Donlan explores Anlife: Motion-learning Life Evolution on the Steam gaming platform, which he describes as “somewhere between a full-blown life sim, a science project and a kind of haunted fish tank”. Martin Where exactly do the hopes of the British left lie? Greens, Labour or Your Party? Joe Todd makes a compelling argument that the answer can be found in all of the above. Aamna A delightfully nerdy and impassioned view from Nathan Young that the death of the downvote in social media interfaces is how a missing button broke the internet. Martin Sport Cricket | England became the first team to secure a place in the T20 World Cup semi-finals after beating Pakistan. Football | Newcastle rapidly saw off Qarabag in the Champions League, scoring twice in the first six minutes and ultimately winning 3-2, to set up a last-16 tie against either Barcelona or Chelsea. Football | Achraf Hakimi is to face trial for rape, the Paris Saint-Germain and Morocco defender confirmed via a social media post on Tuesday, going on to deny the allegation. The front pages “Mandelson hits out at police for arrest over claims of flight risk” leads this morning’s Guardian. The Times has “Mandelson: flight risk fiction led to my arrest”, the Telegraph goes with “Mandelson held to stop him fleeing Britain” and the Star has “Prince of Darkness”. “Minister attacks ‘rude, arrogant’ Andrew in historic Commons rebuke” is on the front of the i paper, while the Sun leads with “get orf your high horse”, and its report that Mountbatten-Windsor has been banned from riding. “Investors seek shelter in asset-heavy stocks as AI anxiety shakes up Wall St” is the splash of the FT. The Mail has “Greens plan to hand illegal migrants free house, a wage and NHS care” and the Express has “half of adults avoid going to GP for help”. Today in Focus On the ground in the byelection that could end Starmer Reform and the Greens both insist they can win the Greater Manchester seat of Gorton and Denton from Labour – and if they do, it could be another nail in the prime minister’s coffin. Helen Pidd reports on how the candidates and voters are feeling Cartoon of the day | Martin Rowson The Upside A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad In Cornwall, traditional fishing is being reframed as a real future for young people who want to stay and work locally, where the jobs available to them are often otherwise poorly paid and seasonally reliant on the tourist trade. At a Newlyn taster day, 17-year-old Tom Miller said fishing offers “a more steady income than labouring jobs” and that he “love[s] being out at sea”. Reece Kelly, 22, agreed: “I am getting pretty bored working in a supermarket. I love the sea and I like the idea of doing something outside in the open air that’s a bit more exciting than Tesco.” Young Fishermen Network founder Matilda Phillips says it gives young people “the opportunity to stay here in Cornwall”, earning a living and anchoring themselves in community life. Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday Bored at work? And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow. Quick crossword Cryptic crossword Wordiply

Japan to deploy missiles to island near Taiwan by 2031, says defence minister

Japan will deploy missiles to a tiny island near Taiwan within five years, its defence minister has said, in a move that is likely to inflame tensions with China. The surface-to-air missiles, which are capable of shooting down aircraft and ballistic missiles, will be located on Yonaguni – Japan’s westernmost island – by March 2031, Shinjiro Koizumi said. “It depends on the progress of preparing facilities, but we are planning for fiscal 2030,” Koizumi told reporters, giving details about the deployment’s schedule for the first time. Koizumi made the announcement amid a diplomatic standoff between Tokyo and Beijing over remarks by Japan’s prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, about Taiwan’s security. Takaichi told MPs in November that a Chinese attack on Taiwan could lead to the involvement of her country’s self-defence forces (SDF) if the conflict posed an existential threat to Japan. The remarks, which Takaichi has refused to withdraw, prompted China to urge its citizens not to travel to Japan, as well as restrictions on “dual use” exports to companies in Japan that Chinese officials say are helping to advance the country’s “remilitarisation”. Beijing has not ruled out the use of force to annex Taiwan – a self-governing democracy it regards as a Chinese province – under what it calls “reunification”. Japan’s defence ministry announced plans to bolster defences on remote western islands in 2022, as it shifted its security focus from threats from Russia in the north to countering Chinese military activity in the East China Sea. Yonaguni, which already hosts an SDF facility, lies 100km from Taiwan, and residents fear that they could quickly become caught up in a military confrontation in the region. Koizumi, who visited the island in November, said the ministry would explain the deployment to Yonaguni’s 1,500 residents next week. In 2015 they voted in favour of hosting an SDF base by 632 votes to 445. About 160 personnel keep watch on Chinese naval movements around the clock via radar sites positioned on a mountain peak. But many locals are concerned that Yonaguni, known for its miniature horses and hammerhead sharks, is being turned into a military fortress. The SDF base opened in 2016, and there are plans to station an electronic warfare air-defence unit on the island during the next fiscal year, according to the Kyodo news agency. Tokyo and Beijing are also embroiled in a row over repeated intrusions by Chinese vessels into Japanese waters around the Senkaku islands. The uninhabited islets, located about 150km from Yonaguni, are administered by Japan but claimed by China, where they are called the Diaoyu.

South Korea’s birthrate rises for second year with experts saying ‘echo boomers’ behind boost

South Korea recorded 254,500 births in 2025, the largest annual increase in 15 years, driven largely by a temporarily enlarged generation – known as “echo boomers” – now in their early thirties, alongside marriage rates recovering from Covid-era delays. The country’s fertility rate – the average number of babies a woman is expected to have in her lifetime – rose to 0.80 from 0.75 last year, returning to the 0.8 range for the first time since 2021, according to provisional figures released by South Korea’s ministry of data and statistics on Wednesday. The 6.8% increase in total births marks the second consecutive annual rise, although deaths exceeded births by 108,900, meaning the population continued to shrink. South Korea remains the only OECD country with a fertility rate below 1.0. Much of the rebound reflects what demographers describe as the “echo boomer” effect. Roughly 3.6 million children were born between 1991 and 1995, when births briefly rose after the government in effect ended its family planning policy. That cohort is now in its early thirties, the age at which birth rates are highest. Women in their early thirties numbered an estimated 1.7 million in 2025, up 9% from 2020. Park Hyun-jung, the director of the population trends division at the ministry, said the increase reflected the demographic effect, alongside sustained growth in marriages as Covid-era delays unwound and improving attitudes toward having children. Government survey data showed the share of respondents intending to have children after marriage rose 3.1% between 2022 and 2024. Births within two years of marriage increased 10.2%, continuing a recovery that began in 2024 after more than a decade of decline, suggesting couples marrying later may be bringing forward childbirth. Demographers caution that this demographic tailwind is likely to fade from 2027 as smaller post-1996 cohorts move into their thirties. Asked whether government policy contributed to the growth in birthrate, Park said she “cannot clearly analyse the correlation”, though she noted that young people appeared to be influenced by policies aimed at “removing penalties from marriage and childbirth”. South Korea has spent hundreds of billions of dollars over two decades on pro-natal measures, including generous cash handouts, housing subsidies, extended parental leave and childcare support. Some corporations now offer up to 100 million won (£51,500) per birth. However, experts cite persistently high housing costs, soaring private education spending, workplace stigma against parents and stagnant youth employment as structural barriers that policy has struggled to overcome. At the same time, the infrastructure supporting childbirth has continued to shrink. Paediatric clinics are closing faster than they open, while many municipalities now lack adequate delivery facilities, reflecting the long-term effects of years of ultra-low births. Final confirmed figures will be released in August.

Caribbean leaders call for ‘de-escalation and dialogue’ amid US oil embargo on Cuba

US interventions dominated speeches at a summit of 15 nations from the Caribbean and the Americas on Tuesday, as the region’s leaders met amid deadly military strikes against suspected drug boats and an oil blockade on Cuba. During the opening ceremony of the four-day Caricom summit in St Kitts and Nevis, leaders of the regional bloc called for a strategic collaborations to deal with the impact of recent US policies. The Jamaican prime minister and the outgoing Caricom chair, Andrew Holness, said that he supports “constructive dialogue between Cuba and the US aimed at de-escalation, reform and stability”.“We must address the situation in Cuba with clarity and courage,” Holness said. “Cuba is our Caribbean neighbour. Its doctors and teachers have served across our region,” he said. He added that Cubans are facing “severe economic hardship, energy shortages and growing humanitarian strain”, which could have consequences across the wider region. “It must be clear that a prolonged crisis in Cuba will not remain confined to Cuba,” Holness said. “It will affect migration, security and economic stability across the Caribbean basin. On Monday, Cuba’s UN resident coordinator, Francisco Pichón, told AP that the US oil embargo is preventing aid from reaching those still struggling to recover from Hurricane Melissa, which struck eastern Cuba in late October as a category 3 storm. He added that the energy blockade and fuel shortages “affect the entire logistics chain involved in being able to work in Cuba at this time, anywhere in the country”. The incoming Caricom chair and prime minister of St Kitts of Nevis, Terrance Drew, also used his speech to appeal for humanitarian support for Cubans. “I studied in Cuba. I lived in Cuba for seven years. I have friends there. I have people who are like family to me. They reach out to me and tell me of their difficulties. Food has become terribly scarce for some. Access to water has been challenging. Garbage fills the streets. Houses are without electricity,” he said, adding that Caricom should become a conduit for constructive dialogue on the issue. The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, is expected to meet with Caribbean leaders on Wednesday as part of the summit. In the last year, the US has attempted to impose a series of tough policies on the region. Amid calls for the Caribbean to protect its zone of peace, the Trump administration has been pressuring nations in the regions to reject Cuban medical missions, chill relations with China and consider allowing US military hardware in their countries. Rubio is scheduled to visit more than a month after the US attacked Venezuela and arrested its then leader, Nicolás Maduro, who has pleaded not guilty to charges of working with drug cartels to facilitate the shipment of thousands of tonnes of cocaine into the US. The US has also killed at least 151 people in strikes that began in early September and target suspected “narco-terrorists” in small boats. Many of the victims are from the Caribbean. The latest strike took place on Monday, killing three people in the Caribbean Sea. The US has not provided evidence that the targeted boats are ferrying drugs, and families of those killed in the Caribbean have decried the attacks. Associated Press contributed to this report