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UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged the world to “rev up the engine of development” at an aid conference in Spain on Monday at a time when US-led cuts are jeopardising the fight against poverty and climate change.Dozens of world leaders and more than 4,000 representatives from businesses, civil society and financial institutions are gathering in the city of Seville for the June 30-July 3 conference to seek fresh impetus for the crisis-hit aid sector.But the United States is snubbing the biggest such talks in a decade, underlining the erosion of international cooperation on combating hunger, disease and climate change.Guterres told delegates at the opening of the conference that two-thirds of United Nations sustainable development goals set for 2030 were “lagging” and more than $4.0 trillion of annual investment would be needed to achieve them.US President Donald Trump’s gutting of his country’s development agency, USAID, is the standout example.But Germany, Britain and France are also making cuts while they boost spending in areas such as defence.International charity Oxfam says the cuts to development aid are the largest since 1960.More than 800 million people live on less than $3.0 a day, according to the World Bank, with rising extreme poverty affecting sub-Saharan Africa in particular.Disruption to global trade from Trump’s tariffs and ongoing conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine have dealt further blows to the diplomatic cohesion necessary for concentrating efforts on helping countries escape poverty.The crisis meant children going unvaccinated, girls dropping out of school and families suffering hunger, said Guterres.He urged the international community to “change course” and “repair and rev up the engine of development to accelerate investment” in “a world shaken by inequalities, climate chaos and raging conflicts”.A blistering heatwave that is scorching southern Europe welcomed the delegates to the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development, an example of the extreme weather that scientists say human-driven climate change is fuelling.- ‘Colonial debt’ -Kenya’s William Ruto, Senegalese President Bassirou Diomaye Faye, Ecuador’s Daniel Noboa, Angolan leader Joao Lourenco and Sudanese army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan were among prominent Global South leaders in Seville.Among the key topics up for discussion is reforming international finance to help poorer countries shrug off a growing debt burden that inhibits their capacity to achieve progress in health and education.The total external debt of the group of least developed countries has more than tripled in 15 years, according to UN data.Critics have singled out US-based bulwarks of the post-World War II international financial system, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, for reform to improve their representation of the Global South.Painstaking talks in New York in June produced a common declaration to be adopted in Seville that only went ahead after the United States walked out.The document reaffirms commitment to the UN development goals such as eliminating poverty and hunger, promoting gender equality, reforming tax systems and international financial institutions.The text also calls on development banks to triple their lending capacity, urges lenders to ensure predictable finance for essential social spending and for more cooperation against tax evasion.Coalitions of countries will seek to spearhead initiatives in addition to the so-called “Seville Commitment”, which is not legally binding.But campaigners have criticised the text for lacking ambition and have rung alarm bells about rising global inequality.Hundreds of demonstrators braved the sizzling heat in Seville on Sunday to demand change in international tax, debt and aid policies.”Global South countries will never be able to decide how they want to do development if they are bound to the new colonial debt,” protester Ilan Henzler, 28, told AFP.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s rise in popularity during the war with Iran may already be fading, as pressure mounts at home to end the conflict in Gaza.Netanyahu claimed victory over the Islamic republic in the 12-day war that ended with a ceasefire last week, after President Donald Trump ordered US warplanes to join in bombing Iranian nuclear sites.Political scientist Assaf Meydani, in a column on Israeli website Ynet on Saturday, said that alongside a “victory for both Trump and Netanyahu” in Iran, the Israeli leader “will have to explain a series of failures”.Most notable among them, according to Meydani, is Netanyahu’s “failure to end the campaign in Gaza”, where Israel has been fighting to crush the Palestinian militant group Hamas since October 2023.”Hamas, though battered, has not been destroyed, and ‘Swords of Iron’ has become prolonged attrition,” Meydani said, using Israel’s name for its military campaign in the Gaza Strip.”The people of Israel are strong, but tensions are simmering.”Israelis fearful of the threat of a nuclear Iran rallied behind Netanyahu as he led the campaign against Israel’s longtime rival. Now that that war is over, domestic and international pressure has resumed to secure an end to the fighting in Gaza.A public opinion poll published by Israel’s Kan public broadcaster the day after Tuesday’s ceasefire with Iran suggested a rise in support for Netanyahu.But while his approval ratings went up compared to previous polls, 52 percent of respondents in the Kan survey still said they wanted Netanyahu — Israel’s longest-serving prime minister — out of office.Nearly two-thirds of those surveyed said they wanted the Gaza war to end, compared to 22 percent who favoured continuing the fighting.Israeli newspaper Maariv said Friday that its polling showed a “surge” for Netanyahu immediately after the ceasefire with Iran had “evaporated almost entirely” within days.In the coastal hub of Tel Aviv on Saturday, thousands of people gathered to demand a ceasefire deal that would bring home the dozens of hostages still held in Gaza since Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack that triggered the war.Liri Albag, who was released from captivity in January under a short-lived truce, told the crowd that Netanyahu and Trump “made brave decisions on Iran. Now make the brave decision to end the war in Gaza and bring (the hostages) home.”- ‘Terrible failures’ -Trump wrote on Saturday on his Truth Social platform that “Netanyahu is negotiating a deal with Hamas that will include the release of the hostages.”On Sunday, he added: “MAKE THE DEAL IN GAZA. GET THE HOSTAGES BACK!!!”On the same day, Netanyahu said that the war with Iran had created “opportunities” to free the remaining hostages.Netanyahu has also faced renewed pressure from one of his political rivals, former prime minister Naftali Bennett.Criticising the Netanyahu government’s “inability to decide” on Gaza, Bennett called for “a comprehensive agreement that includes the release of all the hostages” to end “the terrible impasse and political confusion”.”Netanyahu must step down. He has been in power for 20 years… that’s far too long”, Bennett told Israel’s Channel 12 in an interview that aired on Saturday.”The people want change, they want calm,” added Bennett, who is widely expected to run for office again in the next elections, scheduled for late 2026.Gil Dickman, a prominent activist demanding action by Israel to secure the release of the hostages, said that while “the operation in Iran was a success”, Netanyahu had “failed” to “make people forget his responsibility” for failing to prevent Hamas’s unprecedented 2023 attack.Dickman, whose cousin Carmel Gat was killed in captivity and her body retrieved from Gaza in August, told AFP that Netanyahu’s “terrible failures and the abandonment of the hostages will not be forgotten”.Expressing “cautious optimism” after Trump’s recent remarks, Dickman said there was “apparently an opportunity to end the war”.”We couldn’t save my cousin, but we can still save those who are still alive in Gaza.”

China has lifted a ban on seafood imports from most regions of Japan, partially mending a years-long dispute over Tokyo’s handling of nuclear wastewater.China and Japan are key trading partners, but increased friction over territorial rivalries and military spending has frayed ties in recent years.Japan’s brutal occupation of parts of China before and during World …

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Hajjar Shademani’s family waited for hours in the heat and dust after crossing the border into Afghanistan, their neat pile of suitcases all that remained of a lifetime in Iran after being deported to their homeland. The 19-year-old and her three siblings are among tens of thousands of Afghans who have crossed the Islam Qala border point in recent days, the majority forced to leave, according to the United Nations and Taliban authorities. Despite being born in Iran after her parents fled war 40 years ago, Shademani said the country “never accepted us”. When police came to her family’s home in Shiraz city and ordered them to leave, they had no choice. But Afghanistan is also alien to her. “We don’t have anything here,” she told AFP in English. Between Iranian universities that would not accept her and the Taliban government, which has banned education for women, Shademani’s studies are indefinitely on hold. “I really love studying… I wanted to continue but in Afghanistan, I think I cannot.” At Herat province’s Islam Qala crossing, the checkpoint is usually busy handling the cycle of smuggling to deportation as young men seek work in Iran. But since Tehran ordered Afghans without the right to remain to leave by July 6, the number of returnees — especially families — has surged. More than 230,000 departed in June alone, the United Nations International Organization for Migration (IOM) said. Since January, more than 690,000 Afghans have left Iran, “70 percent of whom were forcibly sent back”, IOM spokesperson Avand Azeez Agha told AFP. Of the more than a dozen returnees AFP spoke to on Saturday, none said they had fled the recent Iran-Israel conflict, though it may have ramped up pressure. Arrests, however, had helped spur their departures. – Few prospects -Yadullah Alizada had only the clothes on his back and a cracked phone to call his family when he stepped off one of the many buses unloading people at the IOM-run reception centre. The 37-year-old said he was arrested while working as a day labourer and held at a detention camp before being deported to Afghanistan. Forced to leave without his family or belongings, he slept on a bit of cardboard at the border, determined to stay until his family could join him. “My three kids are back there, they’re all sick right now, and they don’t know how to get here.”He hopes to find work in his home province of Daikundi, but in a country wracked by entrenched poverty and unemployment, he faces an uphill climb. The UN mission for Afghanistan, UNAMA, has warned that the influx of deportees — many arriving with “no assets, limited access to services, and no job prospects” — risks further destabilising the crisis-wracked country. Long lines snaked into tents encircling the reception centre where returnees accessed UN, NGO and government services. Gusty wind whipped women’s Iranian-style hijabs and young men’s trendy outfits, clothing that stood out against the shalwar kameez that has become ubiquitous in Afghanistan since the Taliban swept to power in 2021, imposing their strict interpretation of Islamic law. Deputy Prime Minister Abdul Salam Hanafi inspected the site on Saturday, striding through the crowd surrounded by a heavily armed entourage and pledging to ensure “that no Afghan citizen is denied their rights in Iran” and that seized or abandoned assets would be returned. Taliban authorities have consistently called for “dignified” treatment of the migrants and refugees hosted in Iran and Pakistan, the latter having also ousted hundreds of thousands of Afghans since the latest decades-long war ended.- ‘Have nothing’ -Over one million Afghans have already returned to Afghanistan this year from both neighbouring countries. The numbers are only expected to rise, even as foreign aid is slashed and the Taliban government struggles for cash and international recognition. The IOM says it can only serve a fraction of the returnees, with four million Afghans potentially impacted by Iran’s deadline. Some of the most vulnerable pass through the agency’s transit centre in Herat city, where they can get a hot meal, a night’s rest and assistance on their way.  But at the clean and shaded compound, Bahara Rashidi was still worried about what would become of her and her eight sisters back in Afghanistan. They had smuggled themselves into Iran to make a living after their father died.  “There is no man in our family who can work here, and we don’t have a home or money,” the 19-year-old told AFP. “We have nothing.” 

Bangladesh’s biggest port resumed operations on Monday after customs officials called off a strike that had disrupted the export and import of goods for around 48 hours.Sehela Siddiqa, Joint Tax Commissioner and secretary of the NBR Reform Unity Council — a platform of protesting workers — confirmed the resumption of activities at Chittagong and all …

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